They Were Here

Last night when we went to work the potato bed, we discovered a new treasure:

I love finding these around the farm. We have a nice collection of arrowheads, grinding stones, and spear heads. We have always been called "Potato Creek" with the designator of "Virginia side" or "North Carolina side." The aboriginal people lived here tens of thousands of years ago, as long as the New River has flowed, I am certain, and have left behind little reminders that this was once their home.

Somehow, it makes me smile when I find one of these goodies. It seems, as I hold it, I can feel the hands that made it. I can feel them sitting in the sunshine, bent over their work, planning and dreaming about how they will care for their family with their hand fashioned tools. I can hear them singing under their breath and hear the children playing in the field nearby. Wood smoke fills my nostrils and the smell of cooking fish and potatoes drifts in the air. The sky is a blue from my childhood long before the smog became so bad that we can no longer see the aurora borelas as when I was six. There is no noise beyond that of the small band living together, growing their crops, and then moving to the Piedmont where it is warmer for winter.

Then, I am whisked back to now usually by some rather large dog who still believes he is a puppy and wonders at my standing and looking at something he cannot see. I like to think of these as gifts from those people -- a way to connect our lives and to somehow demonstrate that live continues here when we go There. I wonder what the woman who lives here in another ten thousand years might think of my treasures...