e.Yesterday I climbed on my four-wheeler and went for foray out over the countryside hereabouts. Now, to do this you must be familiar with the land, where the old logging roads wind through the timber, where the wire gaps are in the fences, and where the old home places are hidden in overgrown pastures.
I had my camera with me and decided to take some photos of the old wrecks of houses and barns, the collapsed cabins that have settled to earth in a grove of trees, the faint marks of humanity on the land. Then it hit me: All these structures were standing when I was young.
The old relic of a house was inhabited then, a family tending the fields in the creek bottom. This pile of boards and logs was a place, though abandoned then, had the traces of children in the upstairs bedroom where I sifted among their scant leavings. I realized out there yesterday that I have experienced a broad span of years in the surrounding land. Let's just say that yesterday I felt experienced.
Twas a beautiful fall day and I gloried in it, accepting my continually broadening span of years as something more than simply a relentless aging. History resides in me. I know these things personally. They don't come from old books. In fact, in a certain way I wish I was older.
I wish I was personally acquainted with the folks that lived in that sunken house. I would like to see their faces in my mind, perhaps have attended a spare one-room school with their rambunctious offspring.
Then, I would have even more to muse about on a clear fall day in the Ozarks.
The Hired Man at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm www.rockeddy.com
