My Family Legacy

Here are the remains of a family legacy. As a child growing up in California I listened with great enthusiasm to the stories my grandma told of her own childhood in South Dakota.

Her life was one of hard work. Those were the days when you worked the land, put up your food to get you through the winter, and made your own clothes and soap.

As a little girl grandma would have to go bring the cows up from the Cheyenne River. She always told me how this could be very hard to do by horseback. Sometimes it meant miles of riding, often in the dark. I listened with unintended detachment, as if I were reading a Little House On The prairie book.

Then last year I visited this magical land of grandma's stories. The fence in the picture is all that remains of the homestead. I stood at the edge of it and looked down below to the Cheyenne River and imagined a little girl on a big horse driving cattle up the breaks. I get it now.

In her 90 plus years of living grandma reflected to me that people have a lot more money and 'things' than in days past... But it seems they used to be happier.

If the days of Armageddon come, I want grandma in my cave!