When I was a kid there was a pond at the bottom of the hill at the end of our road. It was called Turtlespond by everyone young and old. This was where we hung out. We caught frogs, fish, snakes and turtles there. We hunted small game in the surrounding woodland. Our mothers gathered wild flowers and plants to bring home for their gardens. Our fathers came down with us to ice skate in the winter.

In the summer it was quiet and smelled of undisturbed life stretching back into time. In the winter there was laughter, shouting and the smell was of fresh fallen snow and wollen mittens drying over open fires.

That was a long time ago. Seasons pass, leaves fall, ponds fill in to become wetlands and wetlands dry up. From what I can see in the satellite image, a canopy of trees now dominate where turtles and frogs once basked in the warmth of the sun on lazy summer days and sometimes still do in my dream times.