Home Land

a recollection of home, and the places I found to escape it.

My older sister and I played make-believe with stick swords and grass wands and looked for fairies we both believed in too much. We went adventuring whenever we felt cooped up in our tiny house in a sea of emptiness, provided that it wasn’t winter and Dan’s cows weren’t out. Scribbled a note on a ripped piece of notebook paper so our parents wouldn’t worry, and ran away.

The fence at the old barn shook under our weight, and separated our backyard from the fields. Old bottles and rusty metal and cow pies dotted the landscape. We picked wildflowers, found walking sticks, collected stones or relics from times past, and bickered about where to explore. Occasionally, one of us would slip in the mud as we tried to hop over the irrigation ditches, inciting the other’s laughter, assistance, and sympathy.

Here, we could not hear the shouting, the slamming doors. We talked often about leaving home. But where would we go? The nearest town was eight miles away. The pasture was our only hope for escape, if a temporary one.

We abandon places we love so something dangerous can feel at home.

There is a leaning willow on the southeast corner of the fields, which has fallen too much to one side and pulled up enough of its own roots that it made a deep hollow in the ground, yet it is still alive. It’s close to the canal, but never flooded, even on the days when the water was high. We could sit among the roots and have picnics, or climb the leaning tree. Yellow water irises and cattails clung to the edge of the water in spring and summer, and we could watch the ducks swim by or listen to the bullfrogs and crickets. I was convinced I would build myself a home here, and a bridge that stretched out to the island in the middle of the canal that was only visible when the water ebbed. We abandoned this place when we noticed rock chuck burrows in the hollow’s walls.

The rusty Model T hunkers on the far side of the canal. To get to it, we had to traverse a narrow bridge over the dam, which gushes several thousand gallons of white water every minute. Neither Cora Lee nor I attempted this until I was eleven years old, because our dad made the perils of falling into the water frighteningly clear. On the other side, we had to be careful to not get nicked by wild rose thorns and blackberry brambles. The old car had been abandoned, with no tires and a missing hood, in a clearing of trees. While we were fascinated, we kept a safe distance, concerned that feral barn cats might dwell there.

The hedge lane was my refuge. I only discovered it at nearly seventeen, and both my sisters had already moved out of the house. It was a rocky stretch of land next to the highway, lining the southwest edge of the pasture. There were blackberry bushes and honeysuckle vines, and big shrubs that I couldn’t name that bloomed exquisitely in the spring. Some of the maintenance bridges in the area were overrun by briers, but the few accessible ones made excellent seats to watch clouds and birds pass overhead, or gaze at the shallow stream as it burbled by. If ever I needed to think, or get out of the house, or escape my parents, I would leave a note on the kitchen table and take my troubles out to pasture.

Author's Note

I'm open to any and all constructive critique!