Where Did the Mountain Go?

I remember seeing a cartoon in the paper. It showed three little children jumping, running and laughing on a very small mound of earth. The father is looking very sad and disillusioned thinking of himself as a boy on this same small mound, but in his memory it was a huge hill. I am not sure who, if anyone is credited with the saying ‘you should never go back’, but I do know for me it was very true.

I had returned to a place where I spent my early years climbing a mountain, fording a raging river and hiking forever through a huge forest. Like the Dad in the comic, it saddened me, for as I walked over a small rise, jumped a 3 foot wide stream, and cut through a small group of trees - for the life of me I could not find the mountain, river or forest. If I had not gone back, that raging river would still be flowing and the forest would have grown even bigger.

The other mountains that I played on, I am sure are still there, but I am ‘never going back’ to check on them, for fear that they too, may have disappeared leaving a small mound in their place.