The Beautiful Things

After a long absence , I decided to return to the house where I was born. As I stood at the gate, I saw the drive twisting and winding towards the old house. Opening the gate , I let myself in. As I walked toward the house, I sensed a changed in the place. The drive was no longer the wide, well kept-drive that I remembered; it was narrow and unkept. As I bent my head to avoid a low-hanging branch, I became suddenly aware of what had happened. Nature had come into her own again, and slowly, in her insidious ways, she had encroached on the drive and the house with long tenacious fingers.

The house came into view. No smoke came from the chimney and the lattice windows gaped open. The whole house was surrounded by the woods that had triumphed in the end. The tortured oaks stood cheek by jowl with the beeches; the branches of the beeches formed a vault over my head like the archway of a church. This were not there when I lived in this house as a child