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eBook Category: Mainstream/Humor
eBook Description: We didn't look at the land we had just purchased and see amber waves of grain. I saw tumbling fences and old barns to tempt my paintbrush. My husband saw the end to threats from irate neighbors when our three horses escaped into their suburban lawns. Our three daughters saw long, lazy afternoons riding their horses through endless fields and quiet dusty roads. THE LAND saw a family who needed an education in farming.

eBook Publisher: SynergEbooks, Published: SynergEbooks, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2005

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [539 KB], eReader (PDB) [103 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [83 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [75 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [120 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [142 KB], hiebook (KML) [247 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [166 KB], iSilo (PDB) [69 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [85 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [135 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [112 KB]
Words: 26902
Reading time: 76-107 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 074430805

After hounding real estate offices around our area and reading every listing in our local newspaper, we found an ad that interested us. 42 acres, seven miles from three lakes. We clipped the ad and headed for the real estate office.

"The property is about seventeen miles from town and eight miles from three different lakes." The real estate salesman tapped his finger against a section map spread on his desk to where a blue highlighter outlined the parcel.

"Oh ... doesn't that sound great." I gave my husband a visual nudge, already seeing our dream home amid tall evergreens and lush fields. He took the offered map as I added a view of a mountain and a stream through three-story windows. I'm not a farmer, so pictures of amber waves of grain weren't forming in my mind.

"We'll take a look," my husband said in the usual cautious tone he used when dealing with salespersons of any ilk.

At six hundred dollars an acre-even in the sixties-the property had to be at the back of beyond-or further. But that was alright, we wanted out of suburbia! After vague directions from the real estate salesman, who wasn't about to accompany us out into the hinterlands, we pointed our car north, map on the seat between us. We headed away from the city and suburbia where our three daughters, three horses, two cats, a St. Bernard, and a Chihuahua awaited our return with the good news that we were the proud owners of lots of land with lots of grass for our three hay-burners to eat.

We'd been driving for nearly two hours, enjoying the sunny day and the countryside unfolding around us, even though we had long since lost any hope of finding the listing in the paper that lay on the seat between us when Hubby said, "I think we took a wrong turn back at the end of the blacktop." His words scattered my mental picture of green pastures stretching to a far horizon, dotted with not only our three horses, but maybe a few fat cattle to help with the food bill. We'd been seeing enough cattle in fields we passed for me to form a nice picture of just what I would like in our own fields. With an artist's eye, not a farmer's, I pictured our own red-brown cattle with white faces grazing in lazy afternoon sun, their color complimenting thick, green grass and blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. I was also forming a picture of me adorned in a crisp white apron gathering creamy tan eggs in a pretty wicker basket lined with a red and white checkered cloth.

I focused dream-dazed eyes on the gravel road in front of us. At least this one was wide enough for two cars to pass each other. "Are we really lost?"

"As far as I'm concerned, we are," my husband grumbled.

When he slowed the car I cried, "Don't quit yet. Let's drive for just a bit further. At least this road is wide enough to turn around on when we decide to."

"Wait." Hubby squinted through the dust-coated windshield. "I think we might be coming into something. I just got a glimpse of houses between the trees up ahead."

That would be interesting; we hadn't seen any signs of habitation for more than eight miles.

Back when we were still traveling through the twentieth century we had turned onto a narrow dirt road named, Grandstrom Road. Even though it was very narrow it was beautiful with tall pines and hemlock and cedars crowding both sides. Overhead, the intertwined branches made a canopy and sun dappled our windshield through the lacey tunnel. Behind us, our tires left a rooster tail of dust.

After about four miles, the road narrowed to only two tire tracks-a stretch of road right out of history. I had begun to feel like a real pioneer following in the tracks of the brave souls who went before us. I wouldn't have been shocked to come upon a covered wagon being drawn by a team of oxen or a farm wagon drawn by a draft horse. Could we have driven right through a time warp and were now following the Oregon Trail-or some such trail?

Suddenly we came face-to-face with a stump. Not just any old stump. This one was fourteen-feet tall and at least eight-feet across and it was, indeed, right smack dab in the middle of the narrow road. We stopped and looked at it before turning to each other and laughing. Where in the world were we that the highway department left stumps in the middle of a road? Ah, but we were in the pioneer mode and we eased our car around it and were on our way as tire tracks in the dirt indicated many others had done before us.

A few more miles and our narrow road came to a wider gravel road. "Which way?" hubby asked.

I shrugged saying, "Right, I guess." It was as good a choice as any.

We made the turn and that's when we got the glimpse of returning civilization. On our right, a tall foothill poked its rounded green head into the cornflower blue sky. On both sides of the road green fields rolled and tumbled down slopes and up over small hillocks, looking weedy and overgrown for the most part. Sagging barbed wire was tacked to staggering lines of thick cedar posts that leaned like rows of drunken old men. A little further on we laughed when we saw cedar pickets woven through rails and rusted wire, and nailed to trees like broken and missing teeth of a giant.

We passed three houses set way back off the road amid patchy fields and gnarled old fruit trees when hubby said, "I think we'd better turn around. I don't even know where we are."

Forgetting the nature of every man to drive on endlessly searching for a place without daring to ask directions, I said, "Why don't we stop at one of these farms and ask. Maybe they could give us some directions."

And of course, my husband stopped right there and pulled into the nearest farm. Not! In typical male fashion, we drove through the tiny cluster of farms and stopped only when he realized that we are probably on the verge of losing civilization again.

He pulled the car off the road, nosing into what looked like the beginning of an ancient overgrown driveway. Only about twelve feet of it was visible before it became lost in a tangle of trees, brush, and sprawling blackberry vines that towered above our car. My fanciful mind saw it as a green cave. Did Hansel and Gretel's cabin lay beyond the tangled barrier?

"I'll turn around here."

My vision of green fields and fat cows began to fade. "I sure wish the property were right here," I said looking out the window at the quaint-and very rustic-farm across the road sitting in its own rolling fields and humped-back gnarled fruit trees. "And that foothill ... or mountain--isn't it pretty against the blue sky? Let's get out. I'd like to walk around a bit. I'm tired of sitting." Besides, I'm a painter and the wealth of old buildings, sheds, and magnificent cedar barns with sagging spines and silvered sides we'd been passing had prodded my artist's mind into overload. Why hadn't I thought to bring a camera?

"It feels good to stand," my husband agreed as he unfolded his six-foot frame and stretched beside the car. "We've got a long drive back home."

I laughed, joining him beside the car. "In whichever direction home is in."

"Look," Hubby said pointing to what looked like a nearly obscure sign hanging by one rusted and twisted wire from a gate of rotting, moss-coated rails. It was so hidden in the overgrowth that we would have missed it entirely if we hadn't gotten out of the car. "It looks like a sign of some sort."

"I wonder what it says."

"Don't know. It's so dirty, I can't read it."

Four hands pulled and tugged at the vines covering it.

There it was, nearly hidden in a tangle of blackberry vines, vine maples and huckleberry bushes, all matted together with thick sword ferns. It really did look just like the fabled forest from Hansel and Gretel. The sign was mud-spattered, ripped and more than half disintegrated by the elements. But we could just make out: FOR SALE

After studying the sign for a moment or two, Hubby said, "I'll be..." and went to the car and returned with the papers the salesman had given us. "This must be it!"

"Yeah ... right. Quit teasing."

"I'm not. Look."

He wasn't teasing. The phone numbers were the same. With renewed vigor, we tugged and pulled at Mother Nature enough to get the gate partially open and nose our car just through it.

My husband is not an adventuresome person and not knowing just what might attack our tires under the nearly waist-high grass, he stopped the car just inside the collar of huge evergreens that completely hid paradise from the road.

Once again, we got out of the car and just stood beside it, our eyes sweeping the vista surrounding us.

Have you ever walked into one of Europe's massive cathedrals and felt so overwhelmed that words were beyond you? That the simple act of moving your feet was beyond you? Have you ever seen a sunset so beautiful and peaceful that given the command to describe it you're totally without words? That's the way I felt that day when I was finally able to walk on ahead of my husband. I'm half Scottish and in my nature is a touch of the fey. I feel things--or imagine that I feel things--which makes my solid Finnish husband shake his head.

While I stood there with the warm afternoon sun on my head and shoulders, with the only sounds those of insects in the tall grass, the silence of that long-forgotten homestead began talking to me. Reverently, I moved through the tall grass, brushing my jeans into a world that had been ... and now slept in total silence.

Waiting.

An overgrown pasture surrounded me, rolling and tumbling down hollows and up small hills. Sapling alders dotted the waist-high grass. The silence was complete! The tall evergreens with graceful boughs surrounding this bit of paradise seemed to be waiting for some decision from me. Heat wafted up from the ground and I smelled a land waiting for rebirth.

The old driveway, barely visible in the tall grass, curved upward four hundred feet through a sea of undulating green to be lost where an ancient orchard crouched in its gnarled decay. The fruit trees-cherry, apple, pear, and plum-were old enough to be collecting Social Security, their moss studded limbs tangling with the tall grass at their feet. On closer inspection, we were thrilled to see apples formed on nearly dead wood. Cherry and plumb trees showed signs of having borne fruit earlier in the season.

There were plenty of signs that bear and deer used this orchard as their own personal cafeteria. I pictured the trees as old people reaching out to us with gnarled limbs, hoping for us to give them rebirth. Did a pioneer family plant these trees? Did the woman in her long dress and shawl collect the fruit and make jams and jellies for her family over a cookstove? Did small children run and play through the orchard when it was, itself, young?

Nearly hidden in a green jungle we found an old root cellar half buried in the dirt with relics of the past laying about ... most of which we didn't even have names for. We also found a small log cabin, doorless, windowless, and sagging into the earth. Swimming our way through the grass, we came upon a small musty smelling, dilapidated, four-room house nearly reclaimed by thick vegetation and moss. Yes, this must have been the home of my pioneer family. Its windows were long gone and two plank doors hung askew on broken and rusted hinges.

On a knoll further up the hill in front of us, a barn like none I have ever seen watched us. The enormous structure was made of huge logs painstakingly squared with an adz by hours and hours of hard labor. Intricate interlocking corners fit each log together on all four corners attested to a skill lost to most men of today. We found out later that a Finnish man, who had come from the old country, bringing his skill with him, built the barn, cutting the locks into the ends of the logs the way he was taught by his ancestors. Stepping into the barn, we saw it had gone through several changes. Would the magnificent building adapt itself to our three horses and perhaps some of those red, white-faced cattle we'd been seeing?

"I can't believe this is it!" I was still turning around and around with the wonder of the land and with shock at the way we found it. "It's ... almost spooky. Isn't it?" I said, rubbing goose bumps on my arms. Was the past reaching out to us?

My level-headed husband replied with practiced patience, "It has to be it. The phone numbers are the same; and I don't see anything spooky about it."

Oh, well ... he isn't Scottish-he's Finnish!

We had found the forty-two acres!

Back in the sixties, the nation was undergoing a migration to the country. If work demanded that men didn't settle too far from the city, then suburbia was the place they chose. However, many families were even going further out from the cities looking for a simpler lifestyle.

Were we just trendy people wanting only to take part in the new move? Not really ... well ... maybe a little bit. We also had those three big, wondering hay-burners back in suburbia. I feared if we didn't get them out, the neighbors were going to take up a petition and have us all moved out-probably tarring and feathering us first.

But why did we feel we had to move to the ends of the earth? My husband was a building contractor and the move would mean long miles of travel to where suburbia was growing rapidly with split-level and tri-level homes. I'm visually impaired and I couldn't drive and I knew I'd be on that forty-two acres until someone took me off.

Actually, we had three reasons to move: Daiquiri, Peggy, and Delight. And our budget dictated that the move be far enough from town to afford the land. It was that simple.