The Places You'll Go

On a cargo ship to Gabon, Africa.  Two years old.  Missionary parents.  For the next four years we lived in the rain forest.  And that is how it all began for me: the traveling, the love of Africa, the way the world seems wide.  

I love that my life began this way, whatever the future may be.

Of All the Places

Of all the places I have lived, this one is unique because it has so long been my home.  I know its secrets and stories.  Its seasons are familiar to me.  I have walked it after midnight, and before morning.

In the distance the waterfall is constantly roaring.  There is mist on the hills in the morning, and phantom flowers perfume the forest.

Strangers sometimes fear it, but the forest is a friend to me.  Oh, I fear it too, but not in a hostile way.  I miss the forest now that it is being cut back around our houses.

I have lived in three main places; Gabon, America, and Cambodia; but I would say Bongolo, Gabon is the place I know best.

Inspiration

"The world is too wide," she said.  It comes from the story of the Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, by Hans Christian Anderson.

Two little porcelain figurines were trying to escape from a cruel grandfather figurine who would not let them be married.  They climbed up and out the chimney and into the wide world.  After a moment, the shepherdess began to weep because the world was too wide.

In the end, the chimney sweep helped her go back down the chimney where they found the grandfather had fallen off the sideboard and broken his neck.  The grandfather's neck was fixed with a rivet allowing him to nod his head 'yes,' and so the shepherdess was allowed to marry the chimney sweep.

I love this story, especially the part where the shepherdess and the chimney sweep see the whole world from the top of the chimney...and the shepherdess begins to cry because it's just too wide.