There Used to be a "Pretty-ish Kind of Little Wilderness" Behind MyHouse

I spent my childhood in a house on the dead end of the street. No, we're not talking about a neatly groomed cul-de-sac, we're talking about asphalt that gradually turned to grass, which quickly turned to woods.

It was really idyllic - there were woods on the side and behind my house, with little trails cut into them for us to explore, and, as the neighborhood slowly lost all other wooded areas, ours stayed.

Then, when I was 12, we moved to the "real" country. We had 4-wheelers, chickens, and multiple dogs and cats, and we sometimes shared our property with other people's cows. Again, idyllic - lots of exploring outside, turning trees into playhouses with only our imagination and nary a nail or board in sight.

Now, I live in a neighborhood again, and, again, in the back of the neighborhood with a little wood behind my house. One of my favorite things about this is that I get to look out the kitchen window and see green as I'm washing dishes.

But recently, someone has bought the property behind us and built a house, and it looks more and more like they're going to develop further.

Y'all , my heart is kind of breaking about this. I realize they were never my woods to begin with, but they sure brought me joy.

It's kind of like a very mild form of torture or something - every night, I go to sleep thinking, well, surely they're done now, but every morning I wake up and they're back at it again.

But there is no great loss without some small gain, and my consolation is that, if I get up early enough, I can now see the sunrise out of my kitchen window. Along with a house and the few scraggly trees they left behind...