Smell, Taste, Feel, Sound
When editing remember:
– Check me over 2 more times (no distractions)
– Using sandpapers as a verb to personify the breeze.

THEN:
We’d reached the fence line, metal cross hatched wires held loosely by a rotten wooden post could’ve easily reached my shoulders, but kids like me that have climbed over before have lowered the weak metal to my waist. It’s quite ironic, this is a structure build purely for the purpose of keeping people out and here I am climbing over it. I lift my first leg over, resulting in the wire awkwardly poking my groin, making me feel as if I’m being cut in half. I then quickly lift my second leg to relieve the pressure. On my left, parallel to the fence line, a large pile of concrete blocks rest motionless. I always love jumping from block to block on this concrete pile, an unnecessary detour but certainly worth while. To the left of me, a familiar sparse of pine trees stand tall and proud while below the green roof top of pine, a coat of pine needles carpet the forestation. To my right, dirt mounds cover discarded items, with dense vegetation consuming the mounds like a plague. The familiar stench of pine, loose gravel, rabbit waste and out of control greenery circulates through my nasal region. The cool breeze sandpapers my face with the thick dust blown from the dirt road ahead which trails down the moat between forest and mound. I love not knowing if I’m allowed to be running through this area, jumping from the highest climbable surface, chasing down rabbits with stones and sticks or crawling through our mansion huts we’ve built from nothing. It’s all about the thrill and adventure, that’s what I love so much about this place. Like lego it has so many possibilities, with amazing gems scattered across this gold mine of opportunity.

When I break down what the place really is, it’s pretty much a junkyard scattered across the landscape of a forest. As a kid I didn’t think of it like that, I thought of this place as my personal playground of opportunity. “One mans junk is another mans treasure” and this wasteland, it was my treasure. I had so much fun and so many memories were made in this place. Mum and Dad always told me to be careful because of all the hidden sharp objects, broken glass (which we broke) and with the weapons we yield, but these were the reasons why I loved spending most days here. Ever watched the “Journey 2” featuring The Rock Johnson? It’s a movie where they travel to a mystical island with strange monsters, where large animals become small and small animals become large. The mysterious island from “Journey 2” was what this place was to me. At the end of the movie they all come home with amazing memories of their adventures through the ‘Mysterious Island’. Just imagine that island and those memories but on a smaller scale?

NOW:
It was so nice when I could spend all my days in ‘The Forest’. I’d easily take the opportunity to go back to those days if I could. Only one problem with doing that now is that I’ve got nothing to go back to. A golden brown soil replaces my familiar landscapes forestation and junk. Fragments of old tree scraps lay in dark brown stacks scattered evenly across the bare lifeless flatlands. No more trees, no more rubbish, no more pine stench, no more birds chirping and no more kids playing. A feeling of emptiness fills my heart, as empty as the land that lays before my feet. Once a place of happiness and adventure, now a desolate field of cut down memories. An understandable extension of land for the increasing population but a crestfallen thought. The thought that the bearer of my childhood has been send to the guillotine. An innocent victim which can only be prosecuted for the creation of fond childhood memories. The fall of an old childhood friend engulfs my soul with sorrow. A strange feeling comes over me, a feeling when your stomach doesn’t sit right; standing in a recognisable place but your senses don’t recognise it. My hand reaches for the soil and the cold touch of soil brings a shiver upon my body. It’s a truely distorting thought to see it all gone, something you know so well and spent so many years playing with destroyed within a week.