Here at the edge of the cornfield that my grandfather turns into winter silage, trees brace the sky. The valley hills slip slope by slope, rippling alongside the river below. Deciduous and coniferous trees comprise the dark, layered and deepening place where my uncle took me deer hunting once. We are all emigrants in this raw form of life that is no longer so. We as settlers followed the human path to success rather than the ecological one. There are many directions to take, “…the road less traveled by,” which is disorienting as is orienting.
Up over the hill, the slope ripples down like the waterfall we played in as kids even though grandma said to not cross the fallen tree. This compass leads directly to a trail where footprints and shoveled dirt reveal a stately familiar place. Here the sun sets, east to west. First, the golden yellow of an afternoon sun makes the pigments of human skin goddess-like, sensual. Then, brilliant hues of poppy orange and lemonade pink lick the tips of sugar maple leaves. Farmhouses and barns blur into nature’s rainbow, but still remain portentously present. The signs declaring the emerald soybeans free of pests glow, and the wheat reduces to a glimmering abstraction.
From the highest point of my grandpa’s land, the valley disappears into dots of towns, roads, and cell-phone towers as bonfire smoke alerts the location of teenagers eliciting memories for future generations. Meanwhile, their parents gather in homes to do the same, inducing constellation maps that we try to remember or makeup, our own versions of origins as if we have the knowledge to do so. Painted construction yellow trees and cairns lead us forward to the next day searching for the missing hiker. Here, we return to the edge alone less than together, dependent more on nature than less. We appreciate Earth’s wonder and are humbled. We are the bear relying on the salmon run, the fox hunting the hare, the spider catching the mosquito. The feeling is lithic, archaic, solid, and transient.
Earth shutters and quakes as we shatter the serenity with our egocentric views. Where we come from, wells dig deeper, drier, sucking out and up aquifers to make the valley hills stink. The river across from my grandpa’s farm will implode one day. We will see it filling, mixing with the trees that once defined the skyline. Ancient shells fuel us until there is no fuel left because we have starved Earth to feed our stomachs.
