I grew up in a very small town in the Midwest. A small town named Ava in Southern Illinois, to be exact. Ava had a population of about 750 people; the biggest city near us was about 30 miles away and had a little under 8,000 residents. Next up was Carbondale at 26,000. Cdale was about 45 minutes from my childhood home, but there were always things to do there. But I was never old enough to drive there on my own and my parents never wanted to drive the 40 miles, so I didn’t get to be there often.

Now I’m home for the holidays visiting my mom, who is actually moving out of our small town to Florida. She’s starting a new chapter in her life, which also starts one for me. This is both exciting and terrifying. The place I call home whenever be home again. Although home is where my mom is, Florida will be a completely new place for me. Growing up around here I never really came to completely appreciate all that was around me. All I could ever think about was getting out of the small town and moving on to bigger and better things. So for the last couple weeks while I’m here, before I go off and have an adventure in Europe, I decided that I need to appreciate all of the things that I blew off as boring, small town normality.

I started acting on this newly kindled appreciation by going and visiting some of the natural attractions we have here. Call Southern Illinois what you want, but it's certainly not lacking in natural beauty. From the bigger town of Carbondale, it’s a short jump to the city of Makanda, home of Giant City State Park. The park has trails going through the woods and a beautiful lodge that people come from around the world to see.

I never appreciated this site when I was younger. I had only gone maybe once or twice when I lived here, but never of my own volition. Sure, I liked being outside, but that’s mainly because that’s where I was always told to go play. So coming back now for a short time and being able to appreciate all of the natural beauty that I took for granted when I was younger is somewhat magical. We never went hiking or camping when I was younger, though sometimes I got to go with Girl Scouts. That was always fun, too, but since I was with a group I wasn’t able to do whatever I wanted. Now that I’m older and I have my own mode of transportation, I can do whatever I want to do and go wherever I want to go and relive any experiences that I missed out on his child.

In the small town I grew up in, basically the only thing that there was to do was to ride around town on our bicycles. My brother and I (when I got old enough) would take our bicycles and ride to the center of town. From there we would usually buy a soda at the local mom-and-pop shop and, if we had the money, get a piece of pie from the restaurant in town. We’d then go to the park and hang out with friends who also lived in town. Not too many of my friends lived in town, not friends that were my age at least, so I ran around with a lot of kids who were younger than me.

Now driving through the tiny town that I once called home, I see a new generation of kids riding their bikes to the center of town just to play on the old broken down play equipment. Many of these kids will grow up and have kids who do the same thing for fun. Repeating patterns that haven’t changed for years. Although now, instead of knocking on their friends doors hoping they’re not in trouble, that their parents don’t send them away, they probably just text their friend to go outside.

All the joy that I once got from taking my bicycle and riding it as fast as I could up and down hills, through the streets, trying not to knock my soda over, seem so far away. The simplicity of what I grew up enjoying changed the way I thought of more exciting things to do. Just going to town to go grocery shopping was exciting to me. But then, slowly, the magical adventures I had on my bicycle slipped away as I grew up and got bored of “child's” play.

Some places aren’t as magical as they once seemed, and at the same time some grow into something more magical. There is a special park in Carbondale, Boo Park, but those of us who live around here always called it Castle Park. It got this name because the park isn't necessarily what you would call a park in larger states. It’s not just an open grassy field; there’s no walking path or boring old plastic place structures. Instead what the owners have built is a magical place of fairies, dragons, unicorns and, on one side of the park, there is a huge castle that has mazes, secret tunnels and all sorts of knights and trolls standing guard.

When I left my home town years ago, I never thought I’d miss it. Sure, maybe I would miss some of my friends back home and I would miss my mom, but I never thought that I would miss the small town that I called home for so long. That said, I would never move back; getting out was the best thing I've ever done for my life. If I would’ve stayed, and followed the same paths as so many of my friends here have followed, I would never be able to pursue my dreams. I wouldn’t be who I am today. And if I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t really be able to appreciate where I came from.