Gathering: Homespun Essays from Beech Tree Lane

Bridges were few in a swampy land. His weather, this week, was cloudy, fair and rainy. His work was arduous. More bridges needed building.

To get to the plank stage there is first a tree. Then the tree is cut down and boards are hewn – grueling work, done in rain, on a fair day, sometimes with clouds. Day after day you work the wood until a plank is born. And then you haul it off. It’s a gift you’ve made to be put to work as a bridge. For yourself. For others. It is what they did.

They cut timber and built bridges and dressed bedsteads. These ancestors were skilled at being and doing. Helping one another, taking care of themselves. William took the time to record a note each day about his life. Because he put ink on paper, we know what he did, where he went, what the weather was like. We know his friends, when they married and when they died. He recorded facts. 

I search for feelings among his words. If they are there, I do not find them. Feelings do not matter when you are building bridges; doing matters. What is is what is.

Though the actual journals were lost in some fire along their journey to the here and now, the words have not been lost. Someone transcribed them. Someone along the way copied the pages and those pages are now preserved as PDF documents, shared on computers that William’s words, his ink and paper, could not have imagined. “Was at home and …”

What are you working on that helps those around you?

What do you enjoy that others have put in place for you?