Earth, Air, Fire, Water "We were young in wonder." Author Carolyn Sweers grew up on a farm in the 1940s and '50s with the leisure to play, imagine and observe a way of life that has since all but disappeared. Though she would eventually leave the farm for college, she returned for regular visits. She penned the first draft of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, a book of philosophical insights based on that long-vanished rural childhood, some 30 years ago, honing the lush reflections into a volume of evocative prose. The book not only captures, in vivid images, what life was like for a child on a farm before television and the highly structured play of today's youth. There is a mystic element to Sweers' observations and insights - a reminder that the "ordinary" when experienced vividly, can be the bearer of both insight and wonder. Earth, Air, Fire, Water is composed of 48 vivid and memorable recollections of that rural childhood clustered around the primal elements from which the volume takes its name.