We headed north to Montana for Thanksgiving, to my husband’s childhood ranch. There, to celebrate the holiday with us, were aunts, an uncle, cousins, and grandpa. The days were beautiful, the food was delicious, the games were fun, and the time went by far too fast.
One morning, while the late November sun warmed everything to a comfortable fifty degrees, we stepped outside, my husband and I, and before we knew it, we were exploring the old buildings. It all started when I peeked through a hole in the wall in the original blacksmith shop. Among a jumble of old tools, tin cans, and oil barrels, I saw the old wooden toboggan that I’ve heard so many stories about. Before we knew it, we’d pulled open the big sliding door that had come off it’s track, and stepped inside. As we walked the warn wood floorboards and looked at what was left of the original forge, he told me about all the time he’d spent in that shop as a boy, watching hired hands fix things – weld them and mend them, get them going again.
From building to building, we went, we looked and he told stories, and we saw all those past generations with new eyes – the skill of the Swedish stone masons who chiseled local limestone for the foundation walls well over a hundred years ago, the simple design, the simple carpentry, the old beams, the roughly milled wood, the timelessness of it all.
We ended up at the old stone springhouse (the photo there). It was built to straddle the small creek that runs behind the house, a perfect place to keep food cool back in the day. It’s falling down now, but still has the original work table and screened cupboard inside. He told me about playing by the hour in that little stone house as a boy, about hiding out and smoking driftwood, about keeping food squirrelled away inside for emergency hunger.
And there was a sense, that day, of wanting to take the hand of yesterday, and the hand of tomorrow, and join them together, so both could be stronger and neither be forgotten.
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