We live in a land of accidental monuments. Mostly, they were erected in the beginning of the last century and were not intended to mark the passage of great events. They were intended to be the beginnings of something. They dot the landscape in the form of leaning or tumbled down buildings surrounded by tree groves dying of thirst. Sometimes there are moldering corrals of rotten boards brought in by trains that no longer run. Sometimes the county road that once led to them is still passable. Sometimes those roads have been overtaken by what was pushed aside to construct them. Often there is only a depression that marks the root cellar where precious vegetables were stored for the few years that the dream survived.
The story of the monuments that haunt this land is long and complicated. It involves immigrants, droughts, blizzards, and Federal Government programs that ignored the nature of the land. It is a story that has been romanticized in every medium and whose true impact has been largely ignored. But there is not room here to tell that story. It is too sad to squeeze into a few paragraphs. The story I want to tell is simpler. It’s a couple dozen lines about last night.
Twenty years ago we built a cabin. With a little help we buried a water line and electric cable from an existing well to a concrete foundation we’d formed and poured and finished in the warmth of a couple spring days. On that foundation, we built a floor and laid up fresh milled logs that joined together in a nifty way that sealed the wind on the outside and the clean, fresh pine smell of the new wood on the inside. We nailed shake shingles on the roof, plumbed the bathroom, and installed the finest windows and doors we could afford. When we finished it was new and bright and as full of promise as a yearly colt. We were young and assumed that mortality was real.
Bear Butte was framed in the backdoor by design and from the tiny front porch you could see the finest sunsets in the world. It was a clever human structure that stood defiant in a land of constant wind, crushing snow, and violent fluctuations of temperature. But from any window, if you knew just where to look and if you looked closely, you could see the monuments of other human structures that once stood just as defiant.
It’s been twenty years and the cabin still stands but the promise has faded. There have been complications and no one lives there now. But last night, on a rare visit, those shake shingles kept an icy rain off my back one more time. The old wood burner strained to care for me like no one has cared for that cabin in years. The wind came up around mid-night and I could feel it slipping through the joints that had been so tight when the wood was yellow with youth. I rose to stoke the fire and it dawned on me that every dream of the future is new and unique. I came to realize once again that I am a creature of The Great Plains and, perhaps more so than any other place on earth, that time is the sandpaper of life and our monuments are built by the unsuspecting.
This essay by Dan O'Brien was originally published in November of 2005.
27 comments
reminds me of “Equinox”, one of my favorites, as the setter snuggles up against me. Thanks.
Thank U… Amazing read …
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the Great Plains. I live on a small farm in Kentucky but have been drawn to the Western Plains for many years, is it possible I was there in another time?
Such a heart-warming story, thank you for sharing. It is a dream, for me, to stop by and share stories and coffee. Blessings.
To be able to paint a picture with words is a gift, please keep sharing you gift.
This country-born and bred girl…half a continent from the plains, those beginnings, and sunsets thanks you. Fifty years away from home and serving others in need. The space of places is calling me to return…your words come from one who hears w/the heart.
A great reminder of how precious is the place in which we live.
Great article!!
Thank you, Dan. Your words bring the plains and land alive. I’ve never seen them and hope to one day. The structures here in the lowcountry are different in some ways, but evoke the same sort of bittersweet thoughts and memories. the ancestors and those who came before had hopes and dreams and stories we may never know, but I imagine their energy surrounding us as i walk the land they knew long ago. Thank you.
It was heart warming to read this essay and folks’ comments. I am a conceptual artist. I have left small art pieces in these “monuments” through southern Arizona and New Mexico. I have placed, photographed and documented over 270 art pieces in such “monuments.” RocknW Art Studio, Tucson AZ
I enjoyed your writing. We city boys galloped on our bikes through temporary monuments and walked to school by climbing over back fences rather than use roads and sidewalks The last time I saw the house where I grew up, it was becoming a monument that very poor people of different backgrounds than mine called home in a Los Angeles slum. Yet, the idea that “time is the sandpaper of life” remains for all of us. I wonder if the bookcases my parents built in our old living room still exist.
You made me melancholy, so now I will go visit a camp house deep in a giant cypress swamp built sixty years ago, still up on stilts to keep the rising waters out. I read all the wall carvings of those before me, inspect the treasure mounts old and new, imagine how hard their life was and be ever so thankful of all I am today. Thanx Dan for reminding me.
I like to see cabin and read your writings.
Sad because we are selling our 100 year old farm
had 100 year old barn restored 2 years ago. IOWA.
Holstein cows were milked there by my father and 3 brothers.
memories, brings them to me when I read what you wrote.
Great article. Really brings back memories of my youth.