i cannot catch hold of the peculair magic of those [childhood] places... no effort of will can restore to me that perception, that view of the horizon not yet tainted by fururity- it runs through me sometimes, but i cannot summon it. and yet everything i would say about place depends on it, and everything i search for in myself involves some deep fantasy of its restoration. my best, truest self is vitally connected to a few square miles of land.
-birkhert, on places, homes and objects.
to which i imagined him, six years old and blonde, trailing through a path that wound through evergreens, boulders, and the atlantic. a little boy who wanted to create a garden that looked just like Monet's garden for his mother. a perfect setting for boyhood.
