I remember spending hour upon hour of my youth looking at spiders and their webs, following columns of ants, catching snakes (sometimes poisonous!), watching birds flit from tree to tree, seeing giant clouds race across the vast Missouri sky, grabbing crawdads from behind in Buck Creek, finding baby bunnies in the blackberry patch, seeing our kitty give birth and nurse her kittens, catching frogs at the pond and making torches from the cattails there, lying at the foot of my bed to watch lightning and then listening for the thunder, sitting transfixed beneath a winter sky full of brilliant stars beyond counting, and catching bumblebees in pink, pollen-filled clover.
