Minnesota Memory

I come here when I feel lost or when my voice is weak. Deliciously alone, I sit on the rock next to the birch clump and gaze across the gentle waves of the lake on our farm. To my right is dense hardwood forest and to my left a sloping pasture that leads to cattle barns and corncribs. I know if I call out, down the pasture slope, an echo will return to me. It is good to know there is another voice if I need one.

The white birch stands high above the water, surrounded by oak trees and boulders dragged from nearby fields. Empty paths of dirt and sand give mute evidence to the occasional presence of cattle. Below the hill, gray foam from the lake rubs against the shoreline, marking the sand with curious hieroglyphics. The breeze off the water is warm and fragrant with the smells of lake and fish.

I see a different perspective here from my seat on the hill, away from everyone. Our little farm hugs a hollow like the rim of a bowl and the barn is built into its side, nestled deep into the earth. The damp lowland by the barn door is wet and smells of loam and cow manure. Chickens peck in the dirt. Pigs squeal in the the hog barn next to the steer shed. Buck, our border collie, gazes idly at the Jerseys beginning their daily trek to the barn for evening milking. Daddy opens the barn doors and calls out, “Come Boss! Come Boss!” The cows lunge awkwardly up the step to the barn with full udders swinging back and forth.

Mama makes supper in the house beyond the barn. Wearing cowboy hats, the little kids play in the yard, riding tricycles that are pretend horses. Their mouths move but I am too far away to catch the sounds they make. I see the spot where I belong when I’m not lost, when my voice is not weak.

Gulls call from the water’s edge, Daddy calls the cows to the barn, Mama calls the little ones to supper and I lift a firm voice and call out to no one in particular, to everyone in my world, “I’ m coming!” The voice echoes back to me, “coming, coming, coming.”

I start down the slope for supper.