One morning as the month of June exhales and the hot breath of July sweeps through our lives, we begin gliding along the ever-fragile twigs that balance on the curves and dimples of the earth. We peer out into the forest; it’s endless depth -- greater than that of the ocean -- ensures us that at no point is there a barrier that restricts us from exploration. This forest -- our world -- is a hidden fortress. We are the kings of the castle. Our riches lie in the whimsical air that pulses through our eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. It rinses our bodies of the pollutants and poisons that make home in our buildings and houses, the pollutants and poisons that slowly engulf our cities.

We start our day by making bridges across the calm stream. The bridges are built by fallen branches that rested peacefully against tree trunks. Dozens of branches are placed on top of the ripples of the stream. They sway like a baby's crib as they peer up through the treetops and into the bright sky enlightened by the red hot fire ball that never dared to challenge the trees: our fearless bodyguards. We walk across these bridges which connect us to our sense of wonder. We notice the shapes of each and every tree and bush as we pass: smooth, rough, pointy, crumbly. They all lie together, embracing their differences and using them to remind us of our diversity. They are scrambled throughout the whole forest, forming countless paths that we could potentially travel. Some we travel more than others, but we’re always moving, always exploring, always looking for more opportunities to create and imagine. It is our destiny, our livelihood, our reason for living that keeps us from stopping and resting along these paths.

Night has begun to fall. The sun gives up its fight with the trees, as it always does. Twigs are being collected by the dozens and thrown into a pile that rises on top of a small clearing stripped of any vegetation. There is no oil, no lighters, no laziness. We set our goal in front of us and work until nature gracefully accepts our ambitions and starts the fire right in front of us. We reflect on the day we just had; every old paths we revisited, new paths we discovered, encounters that we made. We never felt threatened or scared today. We sit at this fire and tell stories of our imaginations. We tell about our moat with the bridge, our kings castle, the hundreds of bodyguards we have patrolling the whole depth-less forest. We hear the night crew begin work. The crickets and frogs discussing all of their own adventures to each other. Although, what we keep our ears strained to are the distant sound of engines chugging along different paths, man made paths that keep them in one direction all of the time. We wonder why they do not want to explore the world and create their own imaginations rather than wait for their leaders to create rules on how to correctly move along their paths, making them have to stop when they’re told and keep to a certain lane illegal to be crossed over. As we continue to think about the outside world our fire begins to die out, leavening a heaping pile of ashes that are camouflage with the uneasy darkness.

Our ashes continue to pile up higher and higher, day after day. We do not tend to them anymore, we just do not have the time. In fact, our fortress has begun to get dull and lifeless, as our maintenance crew has begun to take more and more days off. Any questions we have had are now being answered by small metal devices, much less space consuming than the miles of forest that used to answer our questions. We are slowly turning away from our forest kingdom, we’ve just lost some interest in it, that’s all. We’ve discovered devices that can change the temperature of the air around us. We do not need fires to keep us warm anymore, we leave the ashes alone. For all I know now, the forests haven’t changed. They sit there waiting for us, trying to reel us back in, but we see no reason to. We do not give them another chance. Slowly nature has become nothing, and now and then my stomach aches and anxiety sets in. I have realized that soon enough when I look out of my windows, I will see nothing but those ugly pile of ashes; the forests recently destroyed by an untamable monster that we weren’t there to stop in its tracks. Maybe, one day, I will look out of my window and see the Phoenix rising from the ashes, as it always does.