It was my favorite place on earth; it was my second home. I spent all my childhood summers there—reading in the hammock under those majestic, swaying pines, running through the fields until my nose ran so badly I had to sit down, catching frogs and fireflies at dusk down by the pond. My grandparents’ property in Vermont held a piece of me, a piece so large that I couldn’t possibly envision my life without it. I looked forward to the four weeks we would spend there: four perfect weeks in July when I was surrounded each day by the brilliance of nature. However, as much as I loved those ten acres, I never really saw them as anything more than simple recreation—that is, until I learned my grandparents were selling the house. The beauty and perfection I had forgotten to appreciate all those years was now being overshadowed by guilt, grief, and regret; I could not find it even now that I was desperately trying to.

At the beginning of our last summer there, my mom, fighting back tears, clumsily mumbled some incomprehensible words about the house being on the market. I didn’t know how to react at first—her words hadn’t quite sunk in. Besides, I rationalized, with so many houses for sale, why would someone want to buy ours? My logic was shattered within seconds, for my mom subsequently mentioned that several families were interested, and that one of them was coming to view the house and property tomorrow. I was heartbroken, and as I stormed out of the house and into the woods behind it, I could tell that I would never see my favorite place in the world the same way again.

The next day, we prepared for the guests. I intentionally didn’t shower, and I honestly think my mother did the same. When the family arrived, I led them, two young boys and their parents, into the living room where my two cousins, about the same age, sat building a block tower. The guests’ children immediately walked over to the tower and kicked it down. They laughed and walked back over to their parents, who only laughed it off. My mom insisted that I take the two young boys outside and show them around, and I reluctantly agreed.

“So this is our house now?” one of them asked.

“Not yet,” I scoffed.

“It’s alright, I guess … only it seems a bit boring, don’t you think Sam?” the other one asked.

“Yeah, it’ll need a trampoline or something,” the one named Sam answered. “And we’ll need to pour some sand near the pond so we can have a beach. This place just needs a load of work, and after that, it’ll be fine.”

I could feel the blood rising to my face. How dare they say anything—anything—about this place? They didn’t know the things I knew! They didn’t know that Indians used to live up on the hill, and that that’s the reason we found so many arrowheads and rounded stones up there. They didn’t know that at night, I could fall asleep within seconds because thousands of tree frogs joined together to create a melody stronger than any sedative. They didn’t know about the secret hiking trails behind the snow shed, or about the cool, deep swimming hole at the end of the stream. They didn’t know a thing.

When our guests left, I ran up to my room and promised myself that I would appreciate every little thing from now on: no more simple fun. I would take mental pictures of everything, and I would store them deep in my mind for a day when I could scarcely remember the house simply from my own memories.

The next day, I took my grandfather’s old, battered copy of Robinson Crusoe out to the hammock. As I sat there reading under those gargantuan pines, I could not focus on their beauty, as I was trying to, but instead only on the fact that the new owners and their children probably wouldn’t even notice them. It wounded me deeply to think that they would most likely walk by them each day and scarcely notice their splendor. I tried impossibly hard to appreciate them because I hadn’t fully before, but my mind was clouded by images of the neglect they would surely soon endure.

The fields my grandfather had so dedicatedly cared for never looked the same to me again either. Of course they were still a lush shade of green, and produced fragrant bales of hay each time they were cut. However this was not what I saw. I saw only the abandonment I was sure they would soon suffer. I was certain that the new owners wouldn’t lay new seed each spring, and that the boys would probably be bothered by the smell of fresh hay that I loved so much. The fields looked the same to the real estate agent, but not to me. They were forever changed in my eyes.

The frogs down by the pond would probably be tormented, and the fireflies I loved to catch and release would probably be kept in jars for days, waiting to die. Each time I captured a large, croaking bullfrog, I was injured at the thought of its future anguish. They were all still as large, and they all croaked just as loud, but I could not bring myself to see them the same way. I now could only see them as incurably ill patients, as prisoners on death row.

These new people would certainly never look for arrowheads or skipping stones. Each time I found a great one, I felt the need to pick it up and save it in my drawer. Who knew if they would ever be found again? And what of the hiking trails behind the house that my grandfather had so carefully marked all by himself? All his trailblazing would surely go to waste. From then on, whenever I walked those paths, I could not focus on the beauty of the maples or the coolness of the breeze through the birch trees. Instead, I could only think about the desertion those trails would soon feel. The paths remained the same to everyone but me.

The fact that the tree frogs could no longer put me to sleep was perhaps the most hurtful thing that summer. Like a mother’s lullaby, this melody used to immediately send me into a deep, carefree slumber. However, as the summer came to a close, I would lay awake for hours thinking about the nuisance this noise would inevitably be to the new owners. It destroyed me to think that they would try to block out something that had once given me such immense comfort. For me, the tree frogs’ song lost its soothing power. It became distressing.

The summer ended and the house sold. We went back to our home in Texas, and I cried each night for a month. I truly felt like I had lost my best friend. The house and the property it sat on had been the most steadfast things in my life: they remained unchanged, every summer, for me to return to and grow with. They prepared me for the school year ahead, and they helped me cope with the misfortunes from the one past. I learned simple things there, like how to swim and ride a bike, but the most vital lesson was taught during my last summer—how to overcome great loss. My steadfast companion had gone away, but in doing so, it left me with the greatest gift of all: the ability to move on.