My great grandmother was born on St. Patrick’s Day, 1862.  It’s not a bad birthdate if you are Irish, and I’m sure that’s something my great grandfather must have thought himself.  They would start a family, and she would share with her children what most parents do:  her earliest memory.

Hers was remembering the relocation of Indians as they traveled through the woods near her home.

Today those woods are known as ‘The Section,’ or in some cases ‘Section 10.’  The vast majority of the 640 acres that make it up are still standing silently in timber, divided only by North River which meanders its way amongst them.  This was the river the Indians and their escorts were traveling along and camped near, building a fire a mile south of the young girl and her window.

Her son, who I can’t remember, would tell his children the same story about the grandmother they didn’t know.  Afterwards, they could lay in their beds like their dad and his siblings had, looking out their own windows, seeing the same bright glow in the darkness of the night, and fearing that the whole world might catch fire.

The things that were possible in the days before yard lights.

The orginal fire was likely a paltry thing, fueled only by wood.  Yet in the retelling it grows, fueled now by wood and imagination.  The world survived it, though my great grandmother, the Indians, and the original fire they shared are long gone.

The walnut trees that witnessed the event would last another hundred years.  They never viewed it with the apprehension the young girl did.  They had seen plenty of Indians before.

In the 1960’s the trees would be logged.  Iowa, in case you didn’t know, grows some of the finest black walnut in the world.  Those particular trees were of such exceptional quality and size they were exported to Japan.

Somewhere in Europe, perhaps, a beautifully grained walnut veneer lies across a fine table.  There in the veneer, underneath the varnish and the wax, lies the last physical connection to what my great grandmother saw all those years ago.  Some will bemoan the logging of the old walnut, thinking it would have been better had the tree fell and rotted naturally into obscurity.  Perhaps they are jealous of it.  As for me, I think I could appreciate the table.

Wandering down my own path, I sometimes come upon the memories and experiences others have drug out of the woods to me.  A few I’ve drug out myself.  Occasionally, I do what many do.  I pull a sliver out of this one or that, and try to build something that will last.

“I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life in three words:  It goes on.”  Sometimes in a story, or a table, a part of us goes on with it.