Where I grew up the land had been settled and farmed, but all trace of those buildings had been removed before the time in the 60’s when my grandparents bought the property. A big adventure in my childhood was when we could become child archeologists and find evidence of the past farming families. So, a metal detector often got pressed into service and found cans, lids, horseshoes and railway spikes. We also found bottles, old machine parts and a ramshackle sleigh attributed in family lore as being from the year Santa crashed there. The other enduring evidence were piles of rocks at the edges of the fields. These rocks, we knew had been moved by human hands from the fields and placed at the side so that crops could be planted. Each rock was laboured over and probably cursed about, and here after all these decades the piles sat silently, grown over with moss, at the edge, the human hands long gone that had toiled. We all get to be here for a time, and we get to work hard, find joy and curse over difficulties and challenges. At some point this rock piles of our life will be set aside. I guess what I know for sure is that we leave marks, we leave clues and we can often leave behind our rock piles. These great challenges of right now will eventually move to the rear view and we will again be at a next phase of things. Here is to that adventure and for looking for the lessons and the memories all the way along. The rocks got moved out of the way so that something could grow, there is always something to plant and plan.
