The sign stands, a hole punched through its center, a beacon and invitation to some and a warning to the rest, in the middle of a newly cleared corner of our two roads. It proclaims its intention, calling to any who have the means, hinting at nothing of the ruin. Secretly we wish swift and terrible loss to any who might be contemplating its promise. Clearly the plan is laid out, partitioned, intersected, and plotted. We are all quiet about the inevitability--acknowledging the possibilities make them more real for all of us. The children, even the ones who cannot yet read, know what it means; illiteracy is no escape.. We understand what lies ahead, and that it is just a matter of time. Land for Sale.
One hundred acres, completely unremarkable save the fact that forty are still in timber. Some farmer a couple hundred years ago either tired of the toil in clearing the rest or ran out of the funds to do so. I like to think that he wanted something left to sustain the wildlife he was driving out with his plow, but the most likely he fell short of time, money, or both. The fields are rented, plowed, and planted by a neighboring farmer, and sprout soybeans in some years, corn in others. When they are planted in corn they are mazes for all our children, cool green forests of symmetry. When it is a year for soybeans, they wilt in the August heat and are ignored until fall when it becomes a game after harvest to find the pods left on the ground behind, some soggy and empty, others still full of beans and ready to be eaten. Something no child wants to eat on a plate is rendered exotic and magical when found in an October field.
This however, has been a year for corn; the walk across the field is bumpy and littered with the ears the deer have not yet found . Left behind too are the impressions made by the roots in the soil, tender fossils waiting for a thaw to release them again into the mud. The treeline looms, tangled and wispy in the late afternoon sun. As usual, the dogs are way ahead of me, alternately running, glancing behind to check my follow and sucking in the olfactory mysteries of the earth. Approaching the transition between field and timber, where the goldenrod still stands, a lone antlered yearling buck bolts from the cover and makes his way across the field, aiming no doubt for the woods across the road. Dogs and I turn and follow. We all three know treasure awaits.
Within minutes of sighting it, the deer is forgotten. What had started as a hunt for the missing antler has morphed into a pilgrimage to the pasture. The wind was too loud and chilling to stay up top anyway. For the nearly twenty years I had known this family, I had never understood why anyone called it pasture. In the suburban pathways of my brain, pasture looked like a grassy place, full of clover and daisies. This place had no clover, no cows, and looked suspiciously like the woods. But once it was all those things, save the clover. Time and and cowlessness had changed it into a wonderland of oak, wild roses and pokeberry. The stream, surely once muddied and fouled by the livestock, is clear and quiet. The snows of late have melted, but not contributed much to the watershed. In places it is knee-deep with undercut banks suggesting a time of high water, but mostly it is rocky and shallow, stones littering the water’s path. Here and there the deer roads cut through, leaving a trail of mud on either side. The dogs take their drink and fuss in the water, run the length of the stream until they are forced to land by an impassable downed tree in their path. Looking into the water for signs of some life I see nothing. It’s there, under the surface, waiting on spring, but invisible to me.
Walking one's own land is a mental as well as physical endeavor. Thoughts confront me there which would not while exploring territory owned by others whether the ownership is by friend, family, or government. Public lands feel never wholly mine, no matter if I am alone while walking them. Knowing that the rocks and soil, the forests and waters are tended by someone else somehow diminishes them, if only subconsciously. A matter of trust, I guess. The problem, I think, lies in the ‘tended’ part. Nothing here is improved, nothing cleared, made neat and comfortable. The trees rot where they fall, the roses claim the space they can. While I love the land that I have a right to by citizenship, it is not mine. Hiking with my brother in his southwestern deserts is discovery, surprise and wonder, but it is not mine, not my history.
Walking here, in the microcosm of my acquired family, I find the stones that have lain for hundreds of years, the trees not cleared by my husband’s people, and the knowledge that my path, which today I borrow from the coyotes and deer, is the same path that the people who lived and hunted, prayed and danced here, walked for ages. I am not wracked with lust to fill my pockets with stones and moss the way that I am in other places, always a vain attempt to make the land mine, if only by theft. The rocks strewn throughout this stream are pocked with fossils—each one a certain stowaway in my pack were I anywhere else. Here they are companions, landlocked captives that I am comforted to know will not leave in anyone else’s pockets. I can let them lie because I know that they are mine, that they may stay in their eternal homes because one day I too will make this place my home, if only in spirit and dust.
Memory too, is the binding agent between this place and I. I do not know if it is truly a genetic memory, brought on by my bond with this soil, or simply one conceived by the victories and lessons wrought in these woods. Each step reminds me of what we, my husband and children and I, have found and lost here. The
found list is thankfully longer than the
lost list.
In the field above me now is the place we found the owl, mortally wounded and dazed. The place I stand is where we tended to her, hoping to patch her up and send her on her way for the evening’s hunt, and there is a spot not five minute’s walk from here, the exact location known only to my husband, where she was given back to the earth at his hand. Where the two creeks come together is the place we have lain under an early May moon, listening to the howls and screams of the owls until the new light came, when the day was given over to the cardinals. This spot too, where I roam looking for signs of our owls, is where many thanks have been given; by Mike for the deer he dressed and carried back to the house and by the coyotes for what he left behind of her, steaming in the November dusk. Back in the field is where Mike’s father and grandfather found the arrowheads, turned up by their groaning tractor. This is the place we brought our children to camp for the first time, the place where our old dog napped, dreaming of her youth and rabbits, after an afternoon of exploring. Up the hill are the morels, climbed to and discovered by the children; down the creek are the skunk cabbage whose scent fascinated them, and across the stream are the giant roots of an oak that made a perfect resting spot for a little boyspreading around him like great lazy arms. Blocking the creekbed farther along is the Big Rock. Five feet tall, three times as big around, it is impassable by water or human. The granite is mottled by lichen and pocked by age; a constant source of wonder for all of us. The nettles are asleep now, but come May they will surprise us again with their bite and delight us once they are carefully picked, steamed and eaten. Yet further along the deer roads, down past the roses and through the trillium, dutchman’s breeches, and wild ginger, is a barbed wire fence, beyond it someone’s land, but not ours. The edge of the earth.
As much as I try to resist the thoughts, I cannot help but wonder the value of this place; I know its value to me and my people, but to an outsider, seeing only space and prosperity, I wonder…..how much would all of it fetch? One hundred acres, plowed and tiled, ready for tract (or better yet, custom) homes could mean a windfall to us, even after splitting the spoils. It could mean financial security, a new house, a bigger car, or simply more land, somewhere else. Bigger, better land to leave to our children for them to sell, divide and conquer. We could have the place across the mountains we talk about, the land for our old age, the spot for new rambles, different treasures. But to what fate would we be leaving this place?
I am nudged from my mental wanderings by the crows calling to me from over the ravine, speaking in a language I do not yet understand, or have somehow forgotten. I cannot make my way to them fast enough to find out what they are yelling about, but know that they have found their day’s treasure too. Mine is not the shed antler I had hoped for, but a soggy and compressed package of fur and bone. The dogs have shown it to me by way of exaggerated grunts and snuffles. Before it can be ravaged further by their noses I scoop it up, turn it over and gingerly slip it into my pocket. It will be a present for the children, a mystery to be either saved, whole and unscathed, or dismembered and forgotten. It will be up to them what to do with it, but I like to think they will marvel at what it holds, yet leave it as it was found. We carry on, the dogs and I, me noting the coming dusk and deepening cold and they beginning to think about supper and sleep. The walk back to the house, which now glows warmly from the far side of the fields, is uneventful but happy. Supper for all three awaits us as well as the giggling of the children and the sound of the tea kettle humming. The next time I walk here it will be spring and the bottom will be grown up again, barely navigable and thorny. The stream will be full and the birds will be nesting. There is still now, the time when I will climb the steps and pull open the ancient door that does not lock, wipe my boots and ready myself again for family. Tenderly, I will pull from my pocket the afternoon’s treasure, pass it to whichever child greets me first, and hope for the best.
.........................................................................
Since I wrote this two years ago we've lost one dog to the gods and two parcels of land have been sold. A house has appeared on one. Two years in a row now we've found poached deer dumped in our ravine just off the road. This year the dumper also left beer cans, liquor bottles, a motorcycle magazine, and receipts bearing his name and address. Antlered and unmolested, the sight of the two bucks senselessly, wastefully tossed onto our property was more heartbreaking than the selling of the adjacent land.
The world continues to confound me.
As morning dusk moves slowly aside to give orange skies a foothold on the day, the world awakens with movement, sound, and color. The nightbirds slip back to their places among the branches, roosting off the warm hours until twilight again welcomes them to their work. Bats melt away, going somewhere, everywhere, nowhere, all at once. I am never able to see the last one drift back into the woods; they simply vaporize into the morning, taken up by the warming air and sun.
