Perspective

      

     Earlier this fall I took a walk in the field across the road from our house. The land was up for auction and the fence gates were left open for public access. That particular field had previously been off limits because it kept cows and horses and was surrounded by electric fence. I have looked at that field from out our front door for the last eighteen years. I've watched sunrises over it and thunderclouds pile high above it. We've been amused by the calves' antics every spring and I've marveled at how lush the grass grew from all that fertilizer. I knew it must afford a beautiful view because it sloped up and chances are, in this county, if you are on a hill top or mountain top, you will see a beautiful view. 

     When we moved here in 2002, our land and the surrounding five hundred plus acres had just been auctioned off in five parcels. It boggles my mind that one person once owned all of this beautiful land. It was used simply for farming but I'm sure that farm life was far from simple. It must have been very hard. The three hundred eighty-six acres across from us was purchased at that time, a large log home was built on it and then it was subsequently sold ten years later for a nice sum, log house and land all together. This year, that owner divided it even more, into five smaller parcels, and auctioned it off once again. Little by little the land is chipped away into smaller and smaller pieces as the price for acreage climbs to exorbitant amounts.

      Also this year, the thirty-five acre parcel with a modest modular house constructed on it next door to us (on the left in the photo above) has also gone on the market. It's another beautiful piece of land that once was a working farm. There is an active spring down slope from where the farmhouse once stood. The foundation for a windmill stands crumbling at the spring and the brick milk house with its cement tub for keeping the milk cold is still intact, although barely. When the land was sold at auction, the farmhouse was razed and the modular house was built on the site. My heart cringes at the thought of it, but that's the way of it these days. I have walked that land many times and searched for any sign or remnant of its past life. I had hoped to find a bottle dump or anything but I have found nothing really. My metal detector has led us to old tractor parts buried a few inches beneath the soil and we have dug up more barbed wire fencing than I care to tangle with. I found a couple of horseshoes and an old bottle cap from a soda that someone seemed to enjoy under the shade of a large tree. I would liked to have shared that nice, cold drink with the old timer whom I imagine took a break from plowing that day to sit in the shade for a spell. I would have enjoyed hearing the story of the land and the day to day life that was lived out upon it. The old timers are gone now, too. 

     I did keep company with our lovely neighbor, Darys, for several years until she was moved away into a nursing home. Her family owns some other hundreds of acres behind us and up the road. But, Darys wasn't a story teller. She preferred to hear my stories and I could not coax her to tell any of her own. Perhaps she thought she didn't have anything interesting to tell or perhaps it was too painful to tell. I will never know. But she was a lovely lady and we spent many an afternoon together in her hundred year old schoolhouse home, surrounded by heaps of history. 

      It was fascinating to see the lay of the land from the hill across the road the day I took these photos. I have walked it all, including the back roads behind the tree lines in these pictures. The land never appears the same from the road as it does from a hill or from a plane. I often thought I was walking west when I can now see from these photos that I was walking south. These birds eye views put it all in perspective. Our little place among the fields and hills and mountains looks so insignificant from afar. Yet the daily life that we live within it is all encompassing for us. We focus on work and more work, what shall we eat for dinner, and what clothes will I wear today, and do I need to dust the furniture. I suppose our own personal history may seem uninteresting and insignificant from this vantage point. The crazy thing is, our insignificant lives do matter. The fact that that we wake up, move forward, lend a hand, contribute to society, love people, hug an ailing friend, give a word of encouragement, it all matters so greatly. These are the threads that create the tapestry. Someone wrote that our lives are contained within the dash chiseled between the dates of birth and death on our gravestones. How much life can we pack into a dash? It wouldn't be measured by time so much as quality. I've just decided that I will ask for an exclamation point rather than a dash between the dates on my gravestone. It's all a matter of perspective and an exclamation point speaks volumes more than a dash even though I am just washing the dishes this morning and baking some cookies. Maybe I'll take the metal detector out and dig up some more barbed wire, too.