Boulders and Bigfoot

I went on a hike yesterday. It was about 8 miles long and it seemed to be completely uphill. It was a long, yet fulfilling day spent with my fiancé and one of my best friends. Along the way we would stop, mostly to catch our breath, but also to admire the beautiful fall scenery and the landmarks along the way. About halfway up the mountain we started seeing boulders protruding from the ground. One small one we saw looked like a giant dog paw. This reminded me of a story….
When I was 5 we lived on Ft. Benning Army post in GA. We lived in the military housing and it sort of resembled a very plan townhouse/apartment. There were 5 or 6 of these homes per building. They were brick from the bottom to the second floor, where they switched to vinyl. Ours was a “lovely” shade of moss green. We lived in “D” which was on the right half of the building. On the left half of the building was a hill that had a large area that had been washed out. Being Georgia this pit was made of orange clay. On the occasion that my mom would allow my brother and me to play on that side of the building, we would gather friends and head to “Bigfoot’s footprint.” We had somehow come to the conclusion that this pit had areas that resembled toes and the pad of a foot and so, logically, it must have been the footprint of Bigfoot. We would emerge, orange from head to toe, from the “footprint” after playing, when the street lights came on and it was time to wash up for dinner. We never failed to have fun in that clay pit.
Several years later we drove past our old house and my brother and I asked my dad to stop the car so that we could go see “Bigfoot’s footprint.” Were we ever surprised! It was tiny; probably no more than 5 feet across in any direction, if that. It was really kind of disappointing to realize that a memory we had had for so long had been so skewed; that the Bigfoot footprint was really just a small eroded hole in the hillside and not a giant playground as we had remembered. But the funny thing is, when I think back to that time of being an orange, dirty kid, I don’t think about the reality of it all. I think about how we would play with our friends and fantasize about what Bigfoot had been doing to leave that footprint. I remember the fun first, the reality later.
Isn’t it wonderful?! To be able to hold on to those fond, sweet memories. To have them even when you know that there is a truer reality out there.