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My first memories of the breadth of the world and of distances don't amount to much. once, when told that my parents had gone to Aizpute, I wondered what this 'Aizpute' was; and, when told it was a town, I had to ask further, "What's a town?" The answer was that there were houses next to each other for long distances, and I had to ask, "Do they reach as far as to the church (i.e. about 3/4 kilometer)? For a long time I repeated the words 'town' and 'Aizpute', and in my thoughts wondered at just what sort of thing it was, where there were so many houses and where people drove to. It remained a riddle for a long time.

A considerable while later, when I was a swineherd, i and my playmate Juris Grantins-- also a swineherd-- pondered how to build a bicycle ["vella-peda"] to travel long journeys. Juris said we could ride past some forest-owner's estate in the direction of the place he came from, and I agreed. In our or the other family's part of the loft I found a broken spinning wheel. I brought it in pieces over the gate ["uz 'parvartu'"] and Juris and I worked diligently but without finishing, as we never got to ride.

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Translated by Peter Kalnin

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