Jim and I are heading up to the Black Hills for a vacation from life. The effects of covid have affected us enough, so that “getting away from it all” seems like a good thing. Our life with covid wasn’t much changed. We got the virus in November, a very mild case, and we had work the entire time. Even so, the unsettled nature of the whole thing made a difference. Our first stop on our trip was at Robert and Wilma’s, my mom’s brother’s place where they have been as long as I can remember. My grandparents and two uncles raised cattle and corn and milked cows close enough together that a half mile one way and a mile another would get to either of my uncle’s homes. Grandma and Grandpa’s house was ‘the place to be” and was twice a year, summer and winter for all the years until I left home. We’ve been back here of course, we visited Grandma and Grandpa a few times when the kids were little, sometimes when Mom and Dad were there, sometimes when they weren’t, and not often enough. There were a few family reunions, two or three well organized ones, every ten years or so. We’ve been up for canoe trips when the kids were teens. Grandma and Grandpa have passed on and we hardly ever get up there now except for funerals. Robert and Wilma, who are some of my very favorite people, are well worth visiting, and it we’d like to go oftener than we can. We go now in other directions, pulled by family members farther away.
So, we planned to spend some time with them on our way. We are planning this trip without a “have to
be here by this time” itinerary, so we can really enjoy ourselves. We turned
their direction at the Ainsworth Airport, a way familiar to us, since it’s the
way to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Uncle
Robert lives a mile east of the “home place”, but not on a through county road
and we can never remember the right road to turn on. It’s easier for us to go a couple miles out
of the way than wander around rural Brown County. Driving through familiar, but changed country
is a bittersweet experience. Only one
house on “Grandpa’s road” is lived in, the others are abandoned and look like
it. I know I’ve been up here in the last
5 years for reunions and I’ve seen these things before, but coming this time
wasn’t for a special event, just a homely visit to a favorite Aunt and Uncle.
Back in the day, my uncle milked cows, but for several years the barns are
quiet and empty. There are more weeds
around the buildings where there was activity in all of our younger days.
Aunt Wilma invited my Uncle John and cousin Lila for
supper. “Aunt” Ethel joined us. Aunt Ethel is Aunt Wilma’s sister, so she
isn’t any relation to me at all, but when your cousins talk about Aunt Ethel, I
called her that too. We sat long around
the supper table that evening, telling stories new and old. Telling of funny
things we’ve seen and heard and done.
Catching up on people we knew then and know now. The family is growing,
since time doesn’t stand still, cousins have grandchildren and I can’t keep
track of the extended family.
Leaving their place the next morning along familiar roads to
head west to the next stop, I remembered sensations belonging to many years of
travelling those roads, walking the hills, irrigating the corn fields, eating and
playing games with aunts and uncles and cousins. This place does something to
me. It’s where my roots begin. It was my
favorite place to go. I can’t describe what those feelings are in words, they
are deep and familiar and lovely.
Heading west, through the gently rolling hills, the greeny brown of
mid-August, I remembered how green they can look under the deep blue skies of
an early wet spring. It gives me great satisfaction to gaze across those lonely
hills. I feel something deep inside me. They’re mine. They’re where my story
begins.
Leaving Valentine, the landscape changes, the hills
gradually grow more rugged and less green.
You can see miles of rolling grassland, on one side marked only with the
fence next to the road, and on the other the same except a single power pole
line. There are valley’s interspersed with homesteads and hay fields, but most
of it is lonely grassland with a few windmills surrounded by cattle.
As we went farther west and then north the horizon grew
increasingly hazy. There are wildfires
farther west and north and the smoke lies heavy on the horizon. The sun sets and rises as a red ball.
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