Meditation on a Disappearing World
On the trail, I come upon a stone structure, the only thing left of a human settlement. This forest is where my grandfather used to bring his children. He would rent a cabin for a vacation and my father and his brothers and sisters would wander the woods the way kids do. The roads that took them back here have shifted and I’m not sure what these stone structures are for, but without people or the roads they are just artifacts now.
They are the artifacts of a grandfather who died long before I was born. My father was a surprise baby, born late in his life and my father didn’t have me until he was old enough to have been my grandfather so there was more than eighty years between my grandfather’s birth and mine.
Still, I know the voices of my aunts and uncles, and I can hear his calling through the forest. It is an amalgamation of theirs. My father is the youngest of much older siblings and acting like a kid, so they’re exasperated by him. I think of my grandfather knowing that he won’t be able to keep up with him and staring up into the sugar maple leaves just starting to turn red.
Last week, I drove past the neighborhood in Niagara where they lived, and the house they had was gone. Most of the houses were boarded up. They moved there from a coal town in Pennsylvania. They tell me that house has been condemned because the mine is going…
