Sand Hill was a dusty little trailer park, really out in the middle of nowhere. Forty minutes to the west was the quiet forest village of Woods Park. Twenty minutes to the north was the desert-like town called Aberdeen. Sand Hill itself was hidden away down a steep hill, so that most people passing between Woods Park and Aberdeen didn’t even know it was there. A set of those green postal boxes (rural route) sitting at the side of the road was the only thing that may have hinted at the small community that existed down the dusty old side-road. An old faded sign had once declared "Welcome to Sand Hill Mobile Home Park," but the paint job had peeled and even the graffiti was barely readable anymore.
It would be fair to say I’d grown up in Sand Hill, fair to say I’d lived there my whole life. Now that wasn’t technically true, as my parents had lived in Glensmore when I was born. The first two years of my life were spent in Glensmore. Then something had gone wrong in my daddy’s head, and he’d gone bye-bye. So mommy had moved back to her childhood home of Aberdeen. By the time I was 3, we’d moved into the comfy double-wide trailer I called home in Sand Hill. Our lot was one of the bigger in the park, it had quite a yard in fact. A big grassy hill came down into what we called the back yard; at the top of the hill was the road for the next level in the park. Now some trailer parks are built with a carefully planned design in mind—nice neat roads, each at perfect parallels to one another, with trailers neatly placed in an orderly fashion, to keep the pattern proper. Sand Hill was not one of those parks. No, Sand Hill had grown, organically. Roads up hills, roads criss-crossing in every which way, roads curving round dirt cliffs. Trailers scattered throughout the tangled roads, some lengthwise, some widthwise, and some just kinda stuck in there wherever they may have been put down. The lot sizes ranged from large (big yards, and often outbuildings) to tiny (you may as well share your neighbors bathroom.) We had one of the larger of the lots, but I think I already mentioned that.
The park was surrounded by wilderness. There was cliffs, caves, creeks, big hills and even a couple lakes of various sizes. Half-way between forest-country and desert-land meant we had quite a mix of landscapes and vegetation as well. Big willow trees whipped their weeping branches in the wild winds, while sage-brush and cactus lined the dusty hills at the north-end. Tumbleweeds were often seen rolling along the roads, like something out of an old western movie. The park was large and sprawling, but the wilderness around it was even bigger. It was a glorious place to grow up in, lots of places to explore, hide and play. Even better, out in that vast wilderness were paths, special paths. Paths that led to places that parents never know, or maybe have forgotten. Paths that led to whole other worlds.