It was good to be there. The Farm.
One last time, with ma and pa and Zac. Walking through the field,
the tall grasses, the bushes, trees, riverbed of rock and sad.
Here, the cathedral. Where
movies were watched late at night powered by an old pick up truck.
Here the field, barren as it should
be in the dead of winter. Yellow stubble is all that's there now.
Nowhere to be seen are the pipes thirty on each side of the riser, that we
moved so many days, so many times, in wheat, alfalfa, and some new
fangled canola seed. The vast expanse of the field cannot hold the
memories and feelings of just one Packer, let alone an entire family.
Grandpa bought the farm to teach his
kids to work. His grand kids worked there, and played there. Disc
golf, camp outs. My only memories of tin foil dinners are from the farm.
My first memories of dutch oven cooking, and at the old camp ground, that
burned with the great fire, i learned that if you put water in a paper cup and
put it in the fire, the cup won't burn. Opposition in all things?
maybe. Maybe just a cool science trick.
The old campsite. The old out
houses. The old trailer, with the flattened corpse of a porcupine.
just below the dike. Which kept the flood waters from the old
houses.
Sucker fish in the ditches.
A pond. And an old cabin.
Half of the farm was fun,
exploration. The other half was some errand for mother. Usually
getting rocks. And on this day, we had one last task. to haul wood
from the old cabin, which Grandma Ruth said held the first white man born in
Bingham county. So we haul wood. Dad says its enough, Mom says we
need more. We get more.
My blue shirt has cockaburrs all over
it. this time i don't remove them. I still haven't. they
are my last connection to the farm. No annoyance, their hooks keep them
in that shirt through washes. Their hooks are like the hooks of memory.
The hooks this place has in my soul.
And so as an accord has been reached
between the parentals, and the wood we have is all we get, I snap a picture of
dad looking across that barren field the stubble hiding the potential of the
coming crop. this land has been less than half my life. It has been
all of his.
I let the hooks in my soul tare a
little piece out. And i leave some of my soul here, in this land, located
between Thomas Lane and the Mighty Snake River, just down stream of Wadsworth
island.
Part of my soul will always be here.
If i ever drive past the curve in the road, where the Snake is closest.
I will feel it. I will remember this space, where the old cabin's
wood was stacked, where Grandma and grandpa made their own cabin, before the
fire, and where i entered a car to leave this place.
Good bye cotton woods. Good bye river bottoms. Good bye Farm.