The Geography of Childhood

I am working on an article/presentation on the concept of space, nature, animals and childhood. In what ways does our immersion within a natural world, the space that surrounds our home, our path to school, our after school dreamtime affect who we are and who we become? Surely who I am has been deeply formed by growing up in the middle of a city where the Queens borough Bridge defined my skyline and floated above the rooftop world where clothes were hung and hide and seek were played. the dizzying drop to the ground always offering an edge of terror to the black tar sponginess of irregular shapes and secret spaces. Then again, roaming through wild grass on the edge of the ocean, establishing my kingdom of dune-home, secret paths through swamplands-- all of these childhood imaginative space, a shining circle of being in which I could breathe, be myself and rule.

My story is but one. So, how does the world as nature, as animated, appear to the young child and offer her an ontological anchor? What living beings spoke to you when you were five? And told you their secrets? Adults are divorced from the camaraderie of the child and animal world. Both child and animal are small, viewed as insignificant and indeed, as we might say today, are marginalized from the adult world of power and action. Ah, but are they? Or do they inhabit an alternative world in which animals confide in the child and the child rules her kingdom by the sea, in the playground, backyard, dusty alley. What world is revealed to children that adults have lost the ability to see, to sense, to feel?