Sandown, NH

I am going to my “happy place!” Do you have one of those? You know, the place you can retreat to in your mind to escape or find rest from the cares of the day?
My “happy place” is tucked away in my mind and has been engraved on my heart since before I can even remember.
It’s an old burlap hammock that used to hang between two birch trees. When I climb into it and lay back…..with some wiggling around I always find the perfect spot. Then it seemed as if I am floating. One leg usually dangles over the side and my foot rest on a snake like tree root which conveniently forced its way through the ground in a perfect spot to push off from. Then keeping a steady, gentle rock of the hammock I am close to peace and rest.
Looking up, I see a canopy of light green leaves flutter above me with a gentle breeze. The summer light shining through them makes them look translucent. Usually in autumn, they turn yellowish or even gold like in appearance then they glitter and dance above like a flapper from the forties.
If I sit up in the hammock, the house my Granddad built is behind me, the lake is in front of me at the bottom of a small hill. Lilly pads cover the cove inlet in the summer and sunsets fall just over the horizon on the other side of the lake. The same lake, I swam across with my Grandmother, skipped rocks on with my Grandfather and ice skated on with my brothers. In the summer, the lake was the color of ice tea and in the winter it was frozen so solid that we could walk out to the middle, around a small island and even play hockey on it! Once I saw a fish in the ice. The fish was perfectly frozen, caught off guard by Jack Frost’s little trick meant it was unable to move till spring. I stood staring at it for a long time and imagined the ice thawing and the fish swimming away as the thickness around it gave way, setting it free.
My whole inner world can be seen from that hammock!
It was my Granddad’s hammock but we all fought over it in the same way we would fight over the front seat in the car or the window seat in a plane. Even the adults would fight for it! It was the perfect place.

I remember daydreaming, reading, drawing and floating in that burlap sack between two birches as early as I can remember and well into my teens.
Later, when I was in college and returned to Christ, rededicated my life to Him…..I spent the first two weeks of my NEW life, every morning in that hammock. My time with God, my devotional life started there. I would get comfortable and with my Bible and a cup of coffee, I gently rocked. I gently started each day with God under a canopy of lime green leaves and pillars of white birches.
Both my grandparents are with the Lord now. The house is sold and someone else gets to stand amongst the birches of Sandown and look at the sunsets and lily pads.
But I can’t say I miss it…..because like I said……It is engraved on my heart and I go there often. I figure, if I can still see it when I close my eyes…still feel the burlap under me and hear the water lapping the shore of the cove…..then I haven’t lost it but have taken it with me.
Do you have a “happy place”?