Words of History, Remnants of Faith

It is a late fall morning. I walk through a stand of trees, revolver on my hip, gauging as to where a good place would be to set a tree blind next. The woods are chilly from a passing cold front, the air violent and raw, leaves piled on the ground, with only small bits of grass able to come up for air. I savor the crispness of the air, the breeze surging through the woods, its floor littered with fallen branches and the footprints of invisible deer.

At the base of one tree was the trunk of another felled during a storm and for a moment I could stop, sit, think and take some photos of the landscape. Had it been later I could have taken a nap there, leaning against the tree. I've done that while pheasant hunting, setting my gun down and exhausted from miles of walking, simply leaned against a tree with a patch of sun tattooing my skin and slept. My black lab would drop to his haunches at my side, sniff the air for trouble, then doze himself, twitching to rabbity dreams.

As kids my brother and I would sleep in the yard on many a starry night, dragging out the little pup tent and setting it up under the canopy of the apple tree. We'd lie on our backs in our sleeping bags out on the grass, tracking satellites through the air and speculating on the nature of the heavens and why the plain Hershey bar was just better than the one with nuts in it. We were kids, and there were no worries, about elections or taxes or bears or the future. We'd wake, ground cold and soggy with dew, and hike back those 10 yards to the house, bleary eyed from lack of sleep yet energized with the joy of believing that we would live forever.

The woods still fascinate me. To drift in thought in the presence of the trees and the nearness of the earth is much of what I feel when I'm flying. In it I get a sense of the truly spiritual. Not as Christ in the wilderness, but in the ablution that comes from placing ones self on the alter of the earth, and for just that moment, picking out a little infinity from the ceaselessly gnashing teeth of time.

My shadow is small against that of the trees, reinforced in the smallness of my form next to their trunks. There is comfort in my smallness, for I am stricken by the thought of the tremendous history of this tree, mighty roots as old as this land, knitting themselves to the earth, embracing the soil with firm resolution not to be parted from it without great force.

I'm not the first person to pass here, in the ruins of an old farmhouse, the remains of a chimney, choked by plants that search out implicit ghosts. People were born here, people likely died here, only a chimney remaining, no house to warm.

Then, a few yards away from the farm house, the bones of a small animal, a raccoon it looked like. How long had it lay here? Long enough for the bones to bleach to soft white, the flesh now part of the earth, the eyes, silent spheres of history. The shape was benign as if the creature simply stopped quietly and ceased to breathe, unlike other bones one finds in the wild, the animals of the tar pits, trapped in the primordial ooze in the posture of shock. Other animals dropped while running, the bones scattered by predators till the remaining pieces are simply laid out in a question mark.

The bones were in the shape of tranquil sleep, as if the animal simply lay down for a much needed nap, waiting for death to catch up.

It only takes a few days for an animal to decompose during the summer months, likely when this creature took its last breath. Why I've seen hunters lose good game, simply because in the occasional hot temperatures of an Indian summer, a kill left too long can turn quickly. Only a few days to return to bone, to the simplest components of life, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur. Only bones left, pressing into the soft welcoming earth, the soil a rich bed of late summer.

Sometimes all I find are bones, laid bare to the elements, or burned clean. With the right temperature all things will burn, yet bone itself stubbornly resists all but the hottest of fires. Even when all the carbon is burned from it, bone will still retain its shape. An insubstantial ghost of itself, it crumbles easily, the last bastion of the person's being transformed into ash. Yet in that ash remain large pieces, calcined and with the consistency of pumice, yet when held in the hand, almost seeming to posses a trace of warmth from within their core.

I think back to another place, bones straining with a load, a young girl in labor, and with a sharp push of painful might onto a bloody sheet, another warrior is born, a little girl of red hair and spirit. She held her just once, looking into a face as scrunched and wrinkled as one who had already lived, as wise as time. She touched the soft red hair with her lips. marveling at those hands, the little, perfect bones of her hands. She touched those hands, tracing the tiny bones with her own, offering a touch that's as instinctive as it is futile Her green eyes looked at some place far in the future and said those words she wouldn't say again for 18 years, speaking in a sweet, thick whisper that can only come from the heart's infinite longing.

We're born, we die, and in between we live as hard as we can, until the day comes when our bones, as well, become part of the rough skin of the planet, as time settles into itself. My home might as well be gone, my things small mementos to someone who loves me, but I will be memory. Remembered like the smell of wood smoke, sprinkling ash upon the cradle in which we all will sleep. But it will be a sleep long denied, I hope, as I place my hand on my hip.

I pick up one of the bones from the ground , and my mind goes into it's usual thought process. For even if they have no voice, sometimes what they say proffers a clue. Who was this person? In what manner of violence was their end? It's a world few wish to visit, yet it drives me, the mystery, the puzzle, perhaps because I realize that the final mystery is ourself.

The use of physical evidence to build a theoretical model of a given crime or accident scene involves a number of sciences, the chemistry of death, and the engineering of the body. Even in the cold quiet of the wood, I stop and survey the scene, making mental notes in my head. How long had it been laying here? Bones, especially ones that have burned, do not give up a time of death. For that you need to trace the extent of decomposition in volatile fatty acids, in muscle proteins and amino acids, all which are normally destroyed in a hot fire. Even in the woods, simply surveying my environment, my brain sifts through ideas, time lines and theory based on simple white bone. I pry a bone from the soil, the blade's cold, sharp whisper drawing out that which may be hidden but is not afraid to speak.

For it can tell me a story.

I walk among the dead, sometimes without cause and sometimes for reason. Treading carefully on the small broken artifacts of life, part pathology, part engineering, going beyond either. For after the mechanics of motion have stopped, after human physiology has broken down, and what once was animated life, a heart that loved, a soul that dreamed, is reduced to flesh or ash, decay or dried bone, the dead will still bear witness. As sanguine angels in cold marble muse, so will I, long after that which is of the earth is returned to it.

Perhaps that is why life, and the protection of it is so dear to me. Be it a small unborn baby, or my own person, I will do all I can to protect it, or die trying. The bones tell me no stories today that I do not know, branches above moving above like a priests hands over the cup, moving with that defining gesture of nature's absolution. What's formed of earth returns to it, amidst the dying brass, lying softly vanquished, there in the juncture of faith and death.

Leaning against the trees, sun glints off mighty stone and wood, the secret whisper of wind invisible to me and silent. Would we find the beauty in anything if we lived forever? Would the gems of thoughts and feelings and desire be so precious if we knew they would always be upon our shelf? Or would they fall to the earth, trickling through our hands like water, evaporating on the cold ground, because we thought our hold on them was eternal. Life is fleeting and beautiful and I will fight strong to hold onto it untilthe last measured breath.

Perhaps why that is why I believe so strongly in the Second Amendment, for with each loss I see what is left is even more precious to me. Was it not the rights of those that planted these lands, and their fathers before them, to free themselves from tyranny, to carry arms to protect and preserve these plots of ground? Ground that they labored until death to maintain and preserve for the next generation, leaving only the remnants of their homes and the whisper of their courage.

The land is precious, as is the fruits of our hard work. As I walk through the woods, I rest my hand on the bone that makes up the grip of this weapon, feeling the cold power of its strength that in turn flows through my arm, emboldening my step. That feel of cold hardness, of bone, of steel, a sense of communion with the infinite, where for a moment, the world has a sense of equilibrium, the ordered composure of life not easily taken.

As I turn to head back to home, the words of Benjamin Franklin come to me.

"God Grant that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, "This is my Country."

I walk this land, the last fading echo of those words in my head, words spoken in simple unquestionable defense, not of what used to be, but what IS. This IS my country, and THIS is my land. I believe that as strongly as I believe that I have the right to protect it, to protect myself from those that wish me harm. I am part of this land, and it is part of me. I have earned the right to be here, and will protect that until there is nothing left but thought and bone.
- Brigid

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