I recently had the pleasure of following a stretch of Oregon’s Highway 97 between Biggs Junction and Bend. I was on my way to reunite with my past, to embrace an old friend and celebrate the present by honoring some yesterdays.
The plow was frozen fast in mid furrow. A tractor wore a hard December’s snow.
Hands rarely idle were still tending to hungry critters gathered there in a huddle, marked by nostril-fed clouds of steam… standing in wait of tossed hay, in wait of fairer weather, and less-cruel winds and softer days…
It was a journey filled with glances into a distant past, before the demise of newness, before the slow erosion of rain, snow and sun had taken its toll on everything that lay under that unrelenting sky. On this day I looked on rusted barbed-wire, disc and plow…scenes of decades of weather-grayed timber and shake… scenes of the element-decayed remains of shelter and shade.
I thought about the calloused hands that had put all of this together. I thought of the ravaged stand against time that, at last, had begun the return of wood to the ground from whence it came, and rusted iron and brick to the receiving earth below. I found myself wondering along the way about the shuttered windows of old homes, and faltered family businesses and gas stations there.
I thought about the dreams that had begun, been brought to fruition, then brought to their knees and finally laid to rest. I know I was off the main Interstate…no truck stops or Safeway stores…no wide shoulders or street lamps around…just long rows of hard ground, planted and watered by the snow and rains…urged on to flourish by the power of prayers and God’s good grace…
And, in the distance, I saw a rusted Massey Ferguson, a plow, and disc…and a faltered old John Deere in deep weed and ill repair. It once took a second mortgage and a leap of faith to secure the outfit. Then more ground was broken, more hours in the noonday sun, and long after the shadows grew long, he toiled and she watched from the home on the hill to call him home ahead of the storm…That was thirty years ago and a dream now at rest…but they still reminisce… Time now for bouncing a grandson on his knee…a generation removed from the fields and the old-time certainty of farming’s uncertainties…
Before the desert was turned over and the sagebrush burned, there was just the majesty of the Three Sisters and their companions in solemn sentry…mountains to feed the streams and rivers, and adventurers’ and wanderers’ thirst and appetite for clear days of distant artistry and food for thought.
There was but a vision, a hopeful promise and a faithful homesteader’s prayers. There were green timbers sawn in a mill, the old hard way…and a need for shade, for shelter…for a home to the prancing team that pulled the plow and combine over the rolling grounds…a loft for the hay that sustained it all. There was a youthful sinew and a bounty of day with no quit in sight. There were four seasons…the dusk and the dawn…all the hours in between…and an ancient urge to plant, to tend, to harvest, to raise, water, feed, slaughter, and market it all.
On Oregon Highway 97, or Alberta’s Provincial 2…the dreams and sweat were all the same…Matthew Landsman
Matthew Lyle Landsman 