Do You Have a Favourite Reading Spot?

My favourite reading spot when I was about thirteen was a huge boulder, which sat on the edge of our hydro creek. The boulder was covered in moss and lichen, orchids and shrubs. The generator rumbled away in its little shack behind and the water gushing out of the turbine created a roaring waterfall, which fed into a small creek.

On particularly hard days, when I wanted to disappear for a while, I would take the dirt track from our house, climb over the fence and follow the stony pathway along the creek. This path was a haven for me. The sound of the creek rushing over stones and splashing down mini waterfalls, hedged in by green cushioned rocks and thick ferns was a fantasy world. The air around was cooled by the leafy trees, which stretched over my head filtering the sun. The path wound around bends, disappeared down little gullies and climbed small hills. It seemed to me that it could stretch on forever. Really, it was probably just my dawdling that made the walks take so long. I would stop to watch the creek, running my fingers through the icy water, imagining sprites playing in the liquid amber, listen to the birds and think how wonderful it would be to fly and wandering off into the bush looking for secret clearings.

Then I would get to my boulder and climb up the rough surface. Grabbing on to the flexible branches of small trees and carefully skirting around the orchids so as not to crush the delicate flowers to find the perfect place to sit on the soft moss. Making sure I was hidden from anyone’s sight below.

I could sit there for hours and get lost in my books. One of my favourite books at the time was, The Hawk And The Jewel by Lori Wick. The story was about Sunny Gallagher, a young English girl who was thought to be lost at sea when she was a baby but had been rescued and brought up by the emir of Darhabar, on the Arabian coast. At thirteen, Sunny is whisked back to England where she has to relearn all that she has grown up knowing. She meets her ‘real’ family, has to learn how to dress properly and eat English food. She has to figure out how to live in this strange new world, how to act, talk and even think like a proper English woman.

My confused heart related so well to Sunny and her struggle to find her place in another culture and learn to love another family. I soaked it all in while I sat on my boulder with the sound of the hydro generator thrumming through me, and the smell of damp earth surrounding me.

Reluctantly, I would come back to reality, often at the sound of kids running past and me ducking my head to keep out of sight. I would climb down from my hiding place and make my way slowly home; head in the clouds, dreaming of places I had never been. 

That walk home—along my haven path—was like a slow shedding of the fantasy and stepping back into reality.