Summary.
My summers as a child were always bliss. All I needed was space to run around, to explore. I didn’t care much about friends. I was in my own little bubble, in harmony with nature. Animals were my friends. I had so much fun exploring the surrounding woods and hills. I went everywhere by myself. That was even when I started school and moved away from my mountain home to the city, but only for the school days. Summers were back in my beloved mountains. I had a few “summer friends”, different every summer. That started at about age 9 or 10. There weren’t girls my age around, so my friends were a girl much younger than I, then two brothers about my age. The last group was a girl my age with her two sisters and their distant relatives – two brothers our age. That was my last summer in Russia; last summer as a kid. I was eleven. It was my best summer that I remember. The others are in a haze, a glorious one, but cloudy in my memory. I was too young and carefree to remember.