The forgotten orchard

There is a road I traverse every day, along with many hundreds of other people going about their day-to-day business. Along that road are patches of land here and there, still in their natural state, without the typical installments of houses, commercial buildings, or tidy little rows of shrubs dotting cedar bark mulch. There is one patch of wildness in particular that caught my eye, recently.
Fruit trees are in bloom right now, so those trees with blossoms stand out rather vividly against others wearing fresh spring green or deep evergreen foliage. This is how I noticed that, among the grove of trees on this particular piece of land, there were several in bloom. The grove was not neat and orderly, rather, it was slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding thickets of vegetation. I wondered if the fruit trees had been planted by one of the Norwegian settlers during the last century, at the time that much of the old growth forest was cut down and floated south to build Seattle, leaving fields where cows would graze in their place. Farms and fruit trees, people and progress. But now, this orchard has been neglected, forgotten. Unlike the old forests and so many other young trees nearby, these have not yet been cut down, their roots pulled up and burned, the ground dug up and covered with pavement or houses, erasing all memory of their presence. Instead, the forgotten orchard is being accepted back into the wildness that still lives, that is now surrounding it and softening the man-made order that once tamed the forest and pushed its beautiful savagery away.
As I pass by this forgotten orchard, I wish that I were a child again, free to explore unhindered by knowledge of private property boundaries. If I were small, walking barefoot, and uncaring of the reality that home was several miles away, I would leave that road traveled by anxious commuters and find an opening in the hedge.
Hidden by briar bushes and trees several times my height, I would find the footpaths used by the deer and nocturnal creatures, and follow them through the forgotten orchard. The sound of automobile traffic would fade, the calls of robins, blackbirds, finches, mourning doves, and flickers would emerge, and the lulling, gentle sound of breezes rustling through leaves would wipe away the demands of time. Finding a sun-dappled patch of grass, untouched by mowers for many seasons, I would lie in that nest and gaze up through the blossoming branches of the fruit trees. Come summertime, I would find the best trees for climbing, and discover what fruit ripened on the branches. I would find the best places for hiding from intruders, and for sitting to watch the wild things. If I were to lie on my stomach, knees bent and bare feet in the air, chin resting on folded arms, still and silent, I might see the fairies come out to play. Some with wings like butterflies, bold and colorful, others with delicately veined and glinting wings like dragonflies, they would emerge from their secret hideaways in the forgotten orchard. Sitting on toadstools to tell stories, sipping nectar from flowers, dancing in the soft green moss, or singing Olden Faerie songs, they would exult in this place where my imagination brings them to life, as it drinks its fill from the magic of a beautiful, blessedly forgotten grove.