The day was warm “comfortable” the sun was shinning that gold of autumn that gives everything a gold hazy look. It was quiet except for the hooves of the horses treading softly on the thick grass and their soft quiet breathing and the soft whisper of the wind. The smells were that of good dirt ,leaves freshly fallen and grass.
We were crossing the high mountain pasture when it started…
I could hear the Oliver tractor running and I smelled the diesel fumes, and off in the distance I could barely see it but it was there and Grandma was telling me to sit still. I was sitting in her lap on that old tractor as she drove it along for the boys and Grandpa to pick up rock and put them on the farm trailer behind the tractor. Thud ,thud, dud,thud, crack, the boys were talking faintly.. Then over to one of many low places to add the rock to the walls being built to hold the soil, so it did not run off with the rain.
As we moved along on our horses I thought about the old muscadine vine we all ways picked from in the fall and how we used that same old tractor and trailer to reach the muscadines from, and what wonderful jelly Grandma made with them. The vine is gone now.
I could hear faintly Grandpa saying “get over here and help me stretch this barbed wire, here you nail that steeple.”
As we rode along quiet down the trail my ears were so full of voices, my eyes of scenes, my mind of memories….It sure seemed crowded and loud so much so that I had to look around to see if it really was just Les and Me on our horses…..
So much has changed..the timber has been cut it was over 200 years old… everything looks different… the forest only lives in my memories now. But it does live and I can walk or ride up the old road bed in my mind and see it again lined with the Easter flowers (Mommas name for the little blue flowers of spring) and moss. Or walk the old road that went from our house to Grandmas and look for the place where an old still was suppose to have been operated so long ago.
My beloved Grandma and Grandpa are gone now…but they live on in my memories and in me by their influence and the love they had for me. I hear their voices and see their faces all over this farm. From homemade chicken pies, pear preserves, gardens with fresh vegetables, and flowers and the quilt Grandma made for me that I sleep under every night to the horses, dogs, cows, ducks, horse ridding and the love of this farm I shared with my Grandpa.
their words and laughter are but whispers on the breeze their time but memories in my mind. But oh, all just as real to me, as when they were being lived.
