What if?

What if—I had moved away from the valley I live in, when some scornfully questioned, why stay and stated the waters are too abundant. The clay soil will reap no garden. The sun goes behind the hill chilling the valley early making a garden take longer to grow and the winters you never know what they will bring.

What if I had moved and left the place I was born?
I would have missed a piece of destiny Thursday July 9th 2009 and all the other life-changing experiences before.

I’ve always felt there is something special about this old house and life in this valley, for human and animal. If someone asked me to explain the special, I am not sure I could. I guess my explanation would start with, this house. It holds a sense of calmness, harmony and a way of the world, between the open spaces of the plank walls. The dirt floor below preserves history untold, there for me to hear, if I choose to listen. The land is a place where the animals speak of souls from a time before, and offers teachings, that a simple life is better.

Some feel the abundance of water running off the hills filling the creeks, ponds and any crevasses to overflowing, is a curse. However, before electric came to the valley, the running water and the wealth of life it carried, were praised and welcomed. The clay soil preserves, furrowed deep, beautiful and sometimes hidden surprises to those patient enough to have waited.

Thursday July 9th started like most days. Waking at 3:30 am, after a cup of coffee, the dogs and I turned horses out early before the heat and flies were bothersome and tended to the gardens. I went about my other morning chores too, until it was time to open Herbs & Things doors.

Like clockwork, on a warm day, by 10 AM, the flies were bothering the horses and they were ready to come in. Leading them in, I noticed a white car pulling up to the driveway of Herbs & Things. It stayed for a moment then drove away. They must have been reading Herbs & Things sign, maybe they’ll be back later, I pondered as I closed the stall doors. Not much later, while gardening behind the house, the dogs started barking. I walked around front and was thrilled to find the white car had returned.

Inside the car were two elderly people. A man and a woman, the woman was driving. The man got out ducking his head to clear the doorframe. He stood about six feet four, was nice looking, aged, tan and fit. I surmised not a day over 75. I greeted them and asked how they were.
He replied that they were good, but that he was very frustrated and was hoping I could help him. I told him I’d do my best.
He asked how long I’ve lived here and his eye widened with hope when I told him almost fifty-five years.

His story began, 75 years ago, when he was a foster child. Pointing at my old house, he was almost sure he lived here around 1931. The reason for his uncertainty was, though the house looked like the house, at the time when he lived here he remembered a big barn sitting adjacent to the house, where my barn is now. The barn was big enough to stable cattle below, farm equipment above and a hayloft for hay above that,
I told him, yes, there was such a barn when my parents bought this place in 1950, and though they tore down the barn, leveled the drives going up to the barn, the floor from the big barn is still there, under my barn built in the 1960’s.


I learned that barn stabled 34 cattle and he had the chore of milking 15 by hand every day and each cow had their own watering cup. Because there was no electricity then, each water cup was spring fed, from water running off the hill piped to the barn from across the road.
He liked the fact, when I told him, some old pipes are still there, under the soil of this ‘new’ barn.
Turning and looking at the hill across the road, he questioned again if this was really the same house. Because the hill across the road, now over grown with 40-foot trees and brush, did not look like the hill that was clear land, he would ski and sled down. With excitement growing in my chest, I shared with him, as a child, I too with my sister would sled over there down tilled farmland and that cows grazed there too.

Asking him to hang on a moment, I ran into the house to retrieve, like a child wanting to show a prize procession, my only picture of when the barn was still standing, and the hill that was clear and tilled. I assume as he ran his fingers across the glass of the framed black and white aerial photo, he was finding memories.

He gazed at the house again, his eyes flickering with pictures of the past and told me it had no electricity then either. In detail he described the kitchen upon entering the house, where the other rooms inside are, and that his room was upstairs. He described the floor furnace that once burned coal, in the middle of the dining and living room. I told him that floor furnace still heats the house, but with natural gas, instead of coal.

He described the cistern in the basement that gathered water from the running waters across the road, supplying the house with water and the hand pump used to pump the water to the kitchen, which I told him my parents removed, after my dad dug a well for our ‘electric’ water supply and put modern plumbing in the house. However, the old pipes from across the road and cistern were still in the basement.

He told of the summer he worked and lived in the woods as a teenager, in Colden, cutting wood for someone. He walk to the corner store where an account had been opened for him, once a week for supplies then returned to his tent to continue his woodcutting. When that summer was over, he attended Springville high school. His eyes widen with amusement, when I told him I also attended Springville high school. Springville Griffith Institute? He questioned. “Yes” I said, “Graduate of 1972.” He did not graduate from there, he had only gone for one year, and then left this area.

Excited they had stopped, I asked where they were from and if they were visiting family. They looked at each other with understanding grins and told me they were from Arizona and they were not visiting family, but on a sentimental journey of his youth.
“I am 92 years old and not going to live forever”, he said, “ I’m visiting some of my roots before I die. We were here four years ago but did not stop.”
His wife then said, “But today…I told him, we ARE stopping.”
I said, “well I guess today was the right time for you—and— I.

The joy that’s filled my soul, will last a while, from participating in his journey to the past. Going back to a time when something thought to be a nuisance(the water) was blessed and loved and that someone loved this old house and the land around it as much as I.

What if—
I had ever moved. I would have missed a 92-year-old man (in the greatest shape) from Arizona, on a sentimental journey, visiting the house he lived in as a foster child.
What if—
I had ever moved, he would have missed me too, someone that could tell him that the things he remembers are for real.

Putting into words my sense of fulfillment from this simple but deep visit of a man on a quest, taking me on a journey through time, with a boy of 1931, is difficult. All I know is he shared a piece of himself, giving me the ability to visit the past, which filled my soul with riches of no monetary value.

I would have missed a chance too, had I not experience this, to answer a question people often ask.
Is time travel possible?
My answer is yes, —though not through the physics of a Quantum leap, but through the eyes of someone on a sentimental journey of his life.
I am glad I was—here— for this journey in time.