On Knowing The Land

[Bob Stepp]

If on a clear day in october there is a single dark puff of cloud on the northwestern horizon....a man sees it within moments of coming outside (that swift eye-sweep of the sky that you find in old rurals, even those ending their days in rest homes and wheeled onto a terrace for air) and guages its probable meaning.

Bouncing through a pasture in a pickup and passing a cow on her left side, he somehow discerns a wire cut on her right shoulder and checks it for screwworms, hemorrage, or infection. At supper he may rise from the table in response to sounds that others have not heard, and go to the porch to learn where a pack of marauding dogs is running or a family of coyotes has its base.

On a dusty path in the hills he can tell you, if asked, what creatures meek or fierce have trotted and slithered and shuffled there the night before. Distant columns of smoke have messages for him, as do neighbors' tractor sounds, shots, the urgent cries of jaybirds and crows, the alarm coughs of unseen deer, hillside seeps, and the tinge of blooming sweetclover on dame evening air. All these things lodge in him and combine into understanding, for they are a part of his world, and so integrally is he.

............John Graves, From A Limestone Ledge, 1980

[CWO3ROBBIE]

It was the same with people who live on and from the land in any part of the world. My ancestors in the East, The people I met in the West, in Turkey, in Italy, in Germany. Their numbers dwindle daily.

[caseyjo]

Beautifully aroused my senses....Thanks....K