For most of my childhood and all of my adolescence, from before I began kindergarten until after I became an adult, I lived in one room—a room that changed and grew as I changed and grew. Designed and redesigned as what I was and what I wanted to be surrounded by changed. Still, some aspects of my surroundings were beyond the reach of my changing hands. The room always had four walls, two windows, and a roof above its ceiling… Thump. Pow! BAM! Every year, in every season but winter, the roof was pounded by walnut husks. Outside, less than ten feet away from the outer corner of the room, was a walnut tree. Its limbs stretched beyond the edge of the room’s outer walls and over the roof. Its roots, deep and wide-spreading, likely reached below the foundation of the house. The room, with me inside of it, was surrounded. The walnut tree must have grown and changed like me, it was alive, but it was so much older and larger than I was that its changes were mostly imperceptible to me. We grew on different timescales, so I could only experience its seasonal changes. In the winter, outside of each window, I could see the sky and the twisting limbs and branches of the tree. In the spring and summer, I could see only green. When directly illuminated by the sun the leaves glowed a light bright green, camouflaging its suspensefully hung walnut husks. Not due to be fully mature until fall, in the warmer months most of these bright green husks still clung to the tree. But, sporadically, a few would drop. Clunk. This rarity made every instance startling. As soon as I had forgotten the sound, Thump. I was shocked into remembering where I was, into awareness of my surroundings. On the hottest of summer days, I would hide in the room to escape the heat, the reality of my environment, and nature would go on knocking—letting me know that I could never truly hide. I could not escape what I had never left, what was all around me, what was inside of me, what I was. Knock knock.