Our House on the Hill

“Once upon a time – a little girl lived in the big woods – and a little gray house made of logs. The great, dark trees of the big woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees, and beyond them were more trees.” For a time I, like Laura Ingalls – Wilder called one such house my home. It was a place such as this that Bree (properly called Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah), came to invite my brothers and me off towards grand adventures; where the worlds of Robert Lewis Stevenson became the backdrop for the worlds  we created, where knights and fairies waited to meet you if only you looked in the right places and where every day was an adventure in our very own hundred acre woods.

Like all seasons, come to an end, and are here for a brief second, the years, which I got to call the house on the hill my own, were short. Yet it happened during those golden years of childhood that made special moments go on for years and years. At the ages of seven and eight I lived with my mother and father, five brothers, and one sister on the mountainous, 22 acre woods of Redmond, Oregon. Our beautiful home sat on the hill, looking over forest, mountains, and far in the distance, the other cities and people that lived beyond my world. But I felt my world had everything. Surrounded by greenery, I truly felt the words that my siblings and I recited together “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack no good thing” (Psalm 23: one). As I looked over the lights at night from my mother’s bedroom window I wished deep down that everyone who inhabited those places might have at least one year like mine where they too might experience what I knew. Because, I thought that if they had what I had, perhaps, there wouldn’t be so many hurting people at the corners of streets, searching for someone to extend Hope to them; they would have experienced enough love in that one year to last a lifetime, and have made enough dreams to carry them into their old age.

The house on the hill was nothing short of magical. In the spring time the sun would stream through my windows, and I would race there to find a family of deer migled with bunnies grazing our little lawn of grass. In the winter time, I would lie in the snow, with numb toes and fingers, marveling at the intricacies of the snowflakes. The land to the right of the steep, winding path that led to my house was a precarious rock outcropping, which sloped down on the opposite side and opened up into more forest. This dangerous territory was quickly claimed by my two older brothers, and given the ostentatious title of “The land of Jidah” (Judah and Elijah put together). My sister, who is four years older than the eldest of us (nine years my senior) ventured farther than anyone ever dared to go. She would go on her own from miles past our forest and over a fence that opened out to a field straight out of Green Gables. With our baby brother still at home, my brothers Joshua, Judah, Elijah and I were only allowed to explore our backyard under one condition: we carried the walkie-talkies with us, and we radioed back home every few minutes. My father would give them to us and say, “stay together, look out for each other, and don’t leave the little ones behind.” And so we did. We did for all those years in our forests. We did when we moved away and no longer homeschooled. We did all through middle school and high school. And even now we are at our respective colleges, those instructions have knit us together. I will always have my brother's backs and they will always have mine. We share each other’s highs and lows as though 2169 miles did not separate us and as though life has turned into one long adventure through the woods. We would march out the door singing “following the leader” like oh so many little lost boys and come back to the tune of “hi ho” as though we were seven dwarfs. Because in that place, we were. We were Pooh bear and Tigger, Piglet and Owl; we were Peter and Susan and Lucie and Mr. Tumnus (no one wanted to be Edmond). We were the Boxcar Children, we were Jacks and Annie being whisked through magic tree houses; We were the VonTrap family, and our house on the hill connected them all. 

We each had our favorite spots in the woods. Elijah and Judah preferred the acres right of the hill they called Jidah, my little brothers Joshua and Joseph spent a good deal of time at the base of the hill in a spot miraculously fitted with a trampoline, zip line, and tree house visible from the hill— I say miraculously because when we first arrived at our home those things were all there— my favorite place, however was to the left of our hill. If you made your way past our little grass outcropping where deer and bunnies grazed, down the hill, past the tree house and the zip line and through the trees you came to a little stream that ran through the woods for miles. The stream was deep enough to plunge into yet it would have been very difficult to drown in. The banks of the stream had long blades of grass which I learned were called mermaid hair, that swayed and bent with the water. There was a little bridge that could not have been more than three feet long, that for a time we used to play Pooh sticks until that game grew old. However. That little precarious bridge crossed over to my favorite place to be on all twenty-two acres. On the other side, the forest was not quite so dense. The sun would stream down in big patches through the pines and each of the trees here were noticeably younger than most of the other land. They formed a natural glen that was more peaceful and quiet than the rest of the woods. No matter the time of day the light danced with the trees and the brook always seemed to be laughing. It curved to invite the greenery to join it in its journey and for that reason you could not venture too far in one direction for it became too difficult to see where the stream actually started and the shrubbery ended. They went on together farther than we could venture. It was there that I encountered the gentle voice of the Spirit of God. I would go not to ask anything and neither did He ask anything of me. I would go just to be, when I got frustrated with my limited 7 year old vocabulary and didn’t quite know how to express to God all that I was feeling. And I would go, and he would know and I would know that he knew. My little brother Joshua would accompany me for a time, although since I mostly just walked about, thinking, listening, and dreaming he found it a better use of his time to be an official member of the Land of Jidah (our older brothers had him sign his life away in a contract of their making). But each of our lands suited us. It was there that I learned to dream, to see more than just what was right in front of me and what it truly means to Believe. Wandering my little glen, exploring our lands with my brothers, reading and being read to in our house on the hill—that was the place and those were the days where I claimed my faith for my own. How could you not in a space like that? As I laid awake in my very own room one night (the first and the last time I had my own room), something changed. I got permission to get up and read my Bible (something I had done before but never just randomly). I did the same thing the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after, and have never stopped since. Because as a child, in those forests, with my siblings, dreaming, believing, playing, I fell in love with Jesus and I never wanted the adventure to end.