The Hills of Home

Yesterday I took a ride into my past. When growing up, my father worked for an oil company (drilling and pumping). The company owned three houses in a wilderness area and housed the families of the workers in them. When they closed the oil operation there, they burned the houses so they would not have to pay taxes on them. However, they could not destroy the magnificent setting.

The setting, as you can see, is a marshy area surrounded by forested hills. As children, we would sometimes find arrowheads left by Indian cultures long before we arrived on the scene. I used to imagine the Indian children who had played there before we did and wondered what their life was like.

When I explored yesterday, I realized that there were few traces of our lives there. We had passed the way the Indians had, silently, leaving the beautiful environment intact. May it always be so.