Joe Burris is thinking about how quickly the places where childhood memories are made can disappear:

One of my all-time favorite songs is Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, mostly because of the verse, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Having moved several times over the years, I’ve often returned to old stomping grounds to discover they’ve been transformed in the name of urban development.

Few have bothered me so as when I saw that a once popular wooded area, near an office park where we live in Alexandria, Va., has been leveled, apparently for another building. The area, with a couple of gravel paved paths and two adjacent hillsides, was where my wife Mpho and I helped teach our daughter Nyaniso to ride a bike.

I remember one time she told me how she wanted to tackle the hilly road but was afraid she’d lose control of the bike coming down.

“Sweetie, we must face our fears,” I told her. Then we went to tackle the hill. I could see her trepidation as we reached the top, but on she went. She firmly gripped her bike and managed to keep control all the way down.

“I did it!” she exclaimed when we reached the bottom. Then we climbed the hill about five more times.

Later, she saw an array of water sprinklers in the distance and suggested riding through them.

“I don’t know, Sweetie,” I said. “I’m afraid you might get all wet and catch a cold.”

“Daddy,” she replied, “we must face our fears!”

Now, the spot of many of her childhood memories is gone. I drove her by the site the other day, and she almost cried.

“How can they do that?” she asked.

I really had no answer _ after all, Alexandria’s full of vacant office spaces _ and I wondered how many other children’s memories had been bulldozed. Perhaps from now on, when we’re out on family outings, I’ll bring a camera along. Eventually, snapshots might be all that’s left of what once was.