Original Land

The circle of stones in the field across the beaten dirt road was overgrown with weeds. To get to it I had to trudge past the decaying barn with its' splintering boards and rusting nails careful to avoid stepping on an errant piece of jagged metal. The gate had collapsed sometime ago and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The neighbor's cows crazed the hillsides freely up and down the valley; my mother kept her garden firmly locked from their devastating defoliating presence but they wandered our unused pastures snuffling out tender shoots of grass.

My dog ran ahead and chased them off occasionally running into a mother cow with calf who would chase him in return with a hot snort. We made our way up the field climbing carefully through the barb wire fence, me holding it up so the dog could slip under, his belly close to the ground to avoid catching his fur in the wire. It had happened once before and I had knelt to cut him free with my pocket knife as he whimpered quietly. He sported a funny patch of shortened fur for weeks after.

We climbed up the grassy hill with stunted birch trees rustling their papery leaves in the wind at us with our passing. The dog disappeared and reappeared in the underbrush searching for ground birds to scare up into the air with a leaping bark and a wagging tail. I stopped and picked daisies along the way until I had a large bundle in my hand. I kept my eyes on the surrounding ground searching for pieces of white bone that the past winter's frost heaves had exposed to the elements. The mountain sheep would die of hunger or predators during the winter and their bones would become part of the landscape. I often searched for their weathered skulls to take home with me adding to a growing collection.

The rushing creek babbled at the bottom of the field swirling around our swimming hole where I had scraped my leg the day before. Fat grasshoppers jumped into the air as my pant legs disturbed the tall grass; their brethren calling to them in the vast expanse of the field. The sun beat down on me scenting the world with the smell of drying grass and baking mud. The original homesteader of this land settled here more than a century ago; he sold goods to the miners and raised pack mules. A tragic small pox pandemic ripped through the neighboring native tribe and he buried them in trenches because the glut of bodies were too many for individual graves. In the very early spring up in these hills you can hear child-like laughing in the distance; the ghosts of dark-haired children running through the fields.

When I reached the apex of the hill the great circle of ancient stones was waiting for me. Each boulder was covered in red lichen creeping into a different pattern on the surface. These rocks had worked themselves into this circle thousands of years ago as the earth moved and bits of the mountain above crumbled down. I scrambled atop of the biggest boulder situating myself to have a sweeping view of the valley below me; the cabin we lived in, the old shed, the broken barn, the lush belt of foliage snaking along the creek bed, the languishing fields stretching out before me golden in the sun. The dog settled onto the dusty ground in the shade of the great boulder. I closed my eyes, inhaled the dusty golden scent of this original land and felt home sink down deep into my bones.