Walking on the ground and rocks, among the vegetation, watching insects and birds. Since I was a child, I liked to do it. On the way back from school there was always a detour, never the way the other children walked... the asphalted streets.
My mother would wait for my other sisters and me by the window or on the stairs of the building and watch our friends and their mothers arrive. She taught us to be independent, and we would come home from school by ourselves. And although of course she worried, she already knew why we were late. We liked to walk in the hills near the school. It was our playground, our daily contact with nature.
Being in nature, walking among it, observing what surrounds me, that is one of my favorite activities, because it makes me feel in balance, full of life, at peace and I enjoy it very much.
And as I have lived for many years in a city, I have looked for alternatives that would allow me that contact.
I participated in a scout group called Las Guías Scout de Venezuela. It was a very good experience, we were only girls, young women and the adults who were the guides. I have good anecdotes of that time in which I remained in the group.
In a practice trip we made to a forest near the city of Caracas, we were assigned to a group of children to take care of them, I was a seventeen-year-old teenager. In that place there was a rock wall where the park rangers had placed a very long ladder to climb to the top and reach the forest. I was very adventurous and, like most young people, I didn't feel fear, but I didn't see the danger either. So I started to climb up to see what was beyond. It was an impulsive action, I wanted to know where it was taking me, and this without the authorization of the older guides. When I reached the top of the forest I was very excited about my feet, but when I turned to look down I realized that the children had begun to climb, following me.
"What a danger!" I immediately thought, they might fall. I yelled at them not to climb.
But it was too late, about five children were close to the edge and I helped them finish climbing. The others had already been lowered by the older guides. We could barely observe that marvelous forest, because of course we could not continue to enter its wonders as we wanted. For them and for me, it was an adventure and also a learning experience, because I was responsible for what could happen to them and on certain occasions you have to be careful. Of course, I got a big scolding and just as it is very easy to go up, it was complicated to come down.
This attraction I feel towards nature motivated me to study Agronomy and for this I went to live in a smaller city, and I had to withdraw from the Group of Guides, although I continued to visit them during vacations. And it was a great help for me when I was assigned in the university a Botany work that consisted of collecting samples of plants and submitting them to a drying process to preserve them, which is called a herbarium.
I had the opportunity to go to a camp with the group of Guides and as I no longer belonged to it, they took me as assistant cook. I who in my life had never prepared a meal, I think I did not even know how to fry an egg, or make an arepa. But I did my best, everything, to justify being taken with the group.
The place where we arrived was a wooded, wet and cold area in a mountainous landscape. The bus was on a very narrow dirt road with curves, from where you could see the cliff, I remember that a group of firefighters accompanied us on the trip. Arriving at the site, we saw two dormitory houses with large windows covered with wire mesh to protect from mosquitoes and the kitchen and dining area. A beautiful river ran along one side of the camp. For me, it was as if I had arrived in paradise.
Those were days of training for the girls, the wings, and the guides, as well as games, laughter, and swimming in the cold river.
Once I finished my duties in the kitchen, I would go hiking in the mountains, collecting plant samples, observing and enjoying nature. There was a lot of diversity and I listened to the sounds of the animals, birds, monkeys, crickets. Besides doing the herbarium work and taking some samples of plants I did not know, my contact with everything around me made me feel that I was in a magical world, the plant world. I sat for a while, closed my eyes and breathed in the aromas coming from the flowers, the trees, the wet earth.
The last night on the mountain, we made a bonfire and sat around it. Under a black sky full of stars we sang, danced, laughed, we were all happy. Holding hands, we sang "The Farewell song of the scouts"
It's but a farewell,
It's but a brief farewell,
Very soon by the fire,
The Lord will gather us together.
And the magic of the forest had its effect on us. And I thanked it for allowing us to be there, to be part of it.
And as for the work I felt very proud to hand in my herbarium to the Botany teacher and I thought I must have a very good grade but... it was not what I expected and as I was not satisfied I went to talk to her and this is what she told me.
"Your herbarium has very good samples and there are three species of plants that we don't have in the collection of the Faculty, and we are going to incorporate them, but you missed some details in the identification label and that's why I lowered some points".
I came out of there a little disappointed, but then I remembered what I had enjoyed and learned to do my job, and that was the most important thing.
Thank you very much for reading my participation in Creative Nonfiction in The Ink Well: Prompt #8
