It was not uncommon when I was a kid for Dad to stop the tractor out in the field, get off, and pick something up from the ground. He had a keen eye for ancient stone tools (usually flint) that would turn up as the ground was being tilled.
He did not find big things on our farm like he did on his travels to the Dakotas right after he came back from the war. The big hammerhead was most impressive.
His descriptions of what he found on our farm—fragments of an arrowhead or a hide scraper—always tripped my imagination. I tried to imagine what it was like for Pawnee boys about my age to explore the same terrain I was exploring. There would have been no roads or fences, and the boundaries of where they could roam would be different. I imagined them trying to hunt game with small arrows tipped with what Dad said were bird points—the smallest of arrowheads and spear points in his collection. I wondered if they felt the same things I felt and had the same hopes of mastering the landscape as I had.
The story of how our farm came to be platted, titled, and owned is not very kind to my imaginary playmates who lived here long before us. The kinship I feel toward them is filled with awe, sadness, and regret. I hope that the way our family has lived on the land for over seven decades is respectful of their time here.
These memories remind me that we are all simply borrowing the land from the future and not masters of it. We are kin of all who have lived on it and who will live on it.
Nurturing soil—nurturing community,
Jay
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