My Youth in Arcadia?

Oh GREAT!

I'm romanticizing my youth now.

"At the end of their lives, all men look back and think that their youth was arcadia." — Goethe

Well, not the circumstances. Not the loss of a father or the social problems. I think I'm geographically romanticizing my youth. I grew up in the woods in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. One of the still wooded areas of Silicon Valley. My back yard was a County park and refuge. I'm missing miner's lettice and random encounters with coyotes. I miss walking for hours and not seeing any people. The best parts of my formative years were with my cats and dogs and the local flora.

When I think of Arcadia I think of a wooded utopia. I think of te woods around where I grew up.

I remember when I realized they had a I really needed to live. Short of hunting for protein, I knew all the edible plants, and would regularly munch them.

I've started looking at pictures of miners lettuce and soap plant longingly. I', missing hanging out in oak trees, invisible to passers by.

Et in Arcadia ego