Written by Rex Beaton Hewitt Edited by Ashley Hewitt I left my father’s basement apartment. I walked to the driveway, I looked at the strip of land between the two driveways. There was six or seven white birch, about 30 feet high. Beneath the trees, a picnic table sat with grass growing up all around it. I walked to the end of the driveway, to the road. I looked at the arm; there was a ruffle on the water. I turned to the right and walked toward the end of the road. I walked passed driveways to the houses and cabins. I came to the fence, I looked into what used to be hay fields and the grass in the fields was knee high or higher around the edge of the fields. In the centre, alders and aspens were growing. When I got to the little graveyard, I stopped and looked around. There was no smoke from a chimney or an animal of any kind in the fields. I heard a dog, but I realized the dog was on the other side of the arm. I kept walking to the end of the road. I was thinking about all the hard work my great grandfather and his children had done clearing this land to use for hay fields and now Mother Nature was taking it all back. I had lots of questions about the land. How long did it take to clear? What kind of timber was on the land? And how did they clear it? And especially about the removal of the stumps in the fields. Only people who have cleared land knew the backbreaking work that goes into it. “Unlike the Bishop, playing golf on a Sunday morning and gets a hole in one - its not who I could tell, it’s who could I ask.” I slowed as I made it to the end of the road. Almost half way up the hill, close to the end of the road, I turned and looked around through the eyes of a five-year-old child. I saw a log pond, sawmill, a forge, a wharf with a shed on it. There were boats tied to the wharf, to the left of that was a sawdust dump. Handmade up one side of the boat, pound out, from that was an icehouse where ice was stored for use in the fall. I guess my memory banks went on tilt or something because through the eyes of a middle-aged man, all I saw was a clear strip of beach with no sign that man had ever set foot on it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The line from a poem from my school days: “And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.” The owner of a cabin at the end of the road came out, got into his car and came down the road. When he got abreast of me, he stopped. He rolled down the car window and we exchanged good mornings. He asked if I was getting some exercise. I said no, I just took a stroll down Memory Lane.   Submitted By: NULL