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"Separated by nearly 30 years and bridging several cycles of my own proverbial death and rebirth, these pictures were taken at my favorite spot on the farm of my childhood.
Atop a sandstone promontory at the peak of the North Ridge on the Old Cecil Farm, there is a sand-filled depression that my mother and I used to keep cleared of debris, building stick villages and such in the smoothed strata of the circular feature.
Today, I returned to the North Hill, with the quiet goal to find the landmark of my childhood, if it remained.
I set off up the hill, not letting myself be detered by the changes wrought on the topography from logging and 25 years' erosion, but holding to what I remembered and mentally overlaying it on the present contours. I let myself be vaguely drawn upward without over-analyzing what I felt and saw.
The ancient sandstone bones of the Appalachian ridge grew visible through the trees where they jutted invitingly above me. As more became visible, I saw them largely unchanged from my memories, shapes so familiar to me. My eyes rolled over the structures, telling me I had been led to the exact section of ridge I had hoped to find, though not with any particular certainty of it's location.
So as I climbed the last corner of the most prominent rock outcrop in sight, I recognized a deep crack in the outcrop that is the approach path to the top of the Sandrock, and I was there once more.
The pit was still intact, in need of tending (which I did), and I was thankful. Two saplings are now growing atop the rock as well, bravely beginning their lives where the odds lean towards failure, but guarantee hardship. Making it work, like we all must -- roots in the past, rising to challange the future, doing the best with what we are given.
I am so glad to be able to continue this thread in the great pattern, to find what was thought lost, was merely waiting. It renews my sense of continuity and belonging with the Universe and the land I was raised on. I wonder, how many others have discovered this rock, tended this mountain, contributed to the energy that drew and welcomed my father, mother, myself, & like minded stewards before & after to this land?"
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*NOTE: Jesse works at SustanU clothing company which makes the t-shirts I order for CCA. He met his wife before birth (their mothers were in lamaze class together!), and now has a baby daughter of his own.
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