LJ Idol Week 2, Deconstruction
It stood on the corner of 228 acres which were laid out at the juncture of East County Road 64, a dirt road which helped to keep its windows always in need of a cleaning and county road 9, a pathed road where people drove too darn fast. It was a tiny white house with an old falling apart dairy barn and some horse stalls behind it, and equipment sheds alongside. To any city dweller it must have appeared a fabulous candidate for deconstruction, but to me it was paradise.
For seven years I woke to the sunrises across the fields to the east and went to sleep to the sounds of the cattle across the street lowing as they bedded down for the night. Tractors ran all night just to bring the crops in on time, their engines whirring like lullabies. In summer I sat outside barefoot on the steps with my coffee just pondering the day to come. In the old dairy barn I milked goat after goat, every day, twice a day, the rhythm of my hands on those teats was the same as that of the life song I sung during the days that passed on that farm. In the horse stalls I nursed sick animals to health again and I pulled baby goats into this world, warm and wet, yet stubborn to enter this great new world. Beside the house I dug the soil, and planted, and harvested and knew that it was good to live in such a manner. In the side yard I collected eggs and we butchered poultry, bringing about sustenance with our own hands and the land beneath our feet. Out back I prayed in the sweat lodge, for rain, for the land, and for the next seven generations. Everywhere I touched that land with my feet it was beautiful, and every step was a song, a prayer to the Creator sung out in words of thanksgiving.
Every day I lived a dream.
Until the bulldozers came.
The land lord broke his contract with the farmer who had worked the land all his life. Then we were given the notice that we had to move away, to leave our paradise. That was a sad day, but even worse was the news that the house would be torn down and the farmland turned into houses.
We avoided driving passed that corner for months. Neither my mother nor I wanted to see the tearing down of the buildings and the digging up of the land.
When we finally drove passed it again they had laid down asphalt over the dirt road. Where once hundreds of Canadian geese used to settle for the night in lush fields that produced food, now houses stood, each one looking like the next. The old dairy barn, where for decades someone had milked cattle, and later goats, was as devalued as the land. Anything the contractors wanted to destroy or alter they did. I find it funny that they are called contractors at all. They excel at making contracts with other humans but they never speak to the land. They don’t make promises to preserve it, not usually.
I wonder how the land is breathing under all that concrete.
I wonder, where are the bones of my dead animals, so carefully buried.
I wonder what of the next seven generations. How will they eat? Where will the farms be allowed to exist.
I wonder what of my dream. Sometimes I think it died there under concrete and steel, buried in my sorrow.
Now I make other tracks. I walk upon other lands, yet my feet still feel the earth and I sing a song of gratitude for the life all around me. I shall never forget that old dairy barn and how my soul grew and grew as I busied my hands within its walls just milking goats. I know the rhythm, and I remember, and it is the rhythm of life, and living things.
When I think about going back to that place in my mind I am always saddened to remind myself that it no longer exists. The memories though, they are etched into my very being. The farm girl in me remains, for ever and ever.
For seven years I woke to the sunrises across the fields to the east and went to sleep to the sounds of the cattle across the street lowing as they bedded down for the night. Tractors ran all night just to bring the crops in on time, their engines whirring like lullabies. In summer I sat outside barefoot on the steps with my coffee just pondering the day to come. In the old dairy barn I milked goat after goat, every day, twice a day, the rhythm of my hands on those teats was the same as that of the life song I sung during the days that passed on that farm. In the horse stalls I nursed sick animals to health again and I pulled baby goats into this world, warm and wet, yet stubborn to enter this great new world. Beside the house I dug the soil, and planted, and harvested and knew that it was good to live in such a manner. In the side yard I collected eggs and we butchered poultry, bringing about sustenance with our own hands and the land beneath our feet. Out back I prayed in the sweat lodge, for rain, for the land, and for the next seven generations. Everywhere I touched that land with my feet it was beautiful, and every step was a song, a prayer to the Creator sung out in words of thanksgiving.
Every day I lived a dream.
Until the bulldozers came.
The land lord broke his contract with the farmer who had worked the land all his life. Then we were given the notice that we had to move away, to leave our paradise. That was a sad day, but even worse was the news that the house would be torn down and the farmland turned into houses.
We avoided driving passed that corner for months. Neither my mother nor I wanted to see the tearing down of the buildings and the digging up of the land.
When we finally drove passed it again they had laid down asphalt over the dirt road. Where once hundreds of Canadian geese used to settle for the night in lush fields that produced food, now houses stood, each one looking like the next. The old dairy barn, where for decades someone had milked cattle, and later goats, was as devalued as the land. Anything the contractors wanted to destroy or alter they did. I find it funny that they are called contractors at all. They excel at making contracts with other humans but they never speak to the land. They don’t make promises to preserve it, not usually.
I wonder how the land is breathing under all that concrete.
I wonder, where are the bones of my dead animals, so carefully buried.
I wonder what of the next seven generations. How will they eat? Where will the farms be allowed to exist.
I wonder what of my dream. Sometimes I think it died there under concrete and steel, buried in my sorrow.
Now I make other tracks. I walk upon other lands, yet my feet still feel the earth and I sing a song of gratitude for the life all around me. I shall never forget that old dairy barn and how my soul grew and grew as I busied my hands within its walls just milking goats. I know the rhythm, and I remember, and it is the rhythm of life, and living things.
When I think about going back to that place in my mind I am always saddened to remind myself that it no longer exists. The memories though, they are etched into my very being. The farm girl in me remains, for ever and ever.