I'm so glad on a whim you and Cindy decided to make another trip and explore these scenes of intense if brief activity... vast activity from recent but almost forgotten past, details scattered by epic failures. In each place, it's very like a dream. So much happened in each place. Injuries, triumphs, joys, and sorrows... Words spoken in anger. Threats. Boasts. Promises made. Proposals. Acceptances. Rejections. Men and women made love in rooms no longer there on nights hot and dry, cold and wet, with the hours ticking by, with more work to do in the morning. Expectations to meet. Bosses to answer to. Hours to log. Pay to claim. Fears to conquer. Opportunites to capitalize on. On shelves there were photographs of mothers and fathers. There were desks built by craftsmen and chairs that people were grateful to sit in. There were painted doors and potted plants. Bruised knuckles and sacks of flour and sugar and the smell of pancakes on lucky mornings. Men whilstled songs and paid for meals with fat wallets. Letters of joy were sent and received. Knives were sharpened and dulled from use. Pencils recorded commerce in ledegers that have all returned to dust. But inevitabily came the crushing news as the high tide of revenue went out and left our pioneering denizens stranded on the beach of misfortune. Minds were crowded by thoughts of what to do? Thoughts of desperation. Earnest prayers were whispered in vain. Earnest curses were shouted in rage at the sun, in the night and again in the morning. Sweat dripped from furrowed brows of all ages. Already this so soon the end? How to pay debts owed? How to get out? Where to go? What possessions to take? What things to leave behind? Tearful goodbyes. Picks and shovels and buckets were touched and let go for the last time, left down in the mine after hope was done. What to say to those back home... what to say to the mothers and fathers and neighbors who had hoped to share in the wealth of their sons... after those dreams failed to materialize? Yet worse was for those whom fate took all, their bones lost and buried in graves unmarked, their flesh dried and turned long since to powder. Bones in the mines. Bones in shallow graves below the Nevada sun. The unrelenting sun that has continued to rise and fall, rise and fall, 365 times a year through 100 years or more since a faceless place in the Nevada hills became Somewhere... and then returned to anonymity. These places are graves. Graves of towns. Graves of time. Holy graves of American history. Every mine has thousands of stories to tell, if they only could. So we listen to the dried timbers, crumbling bricks and old tin cans, they are the ghosts of civilizations of our forefathers and brothers and sisters and mothers. Messages in bottles that broke on the rocky shore. No doubt to a few reading these journals may such places speak, stirring momentarily a breeze through the underground vaults and rivers of memories buried deep in our souls. Dreams from the past. Smells of wood and earth and rust. Wedding rings and lovers lost. Names that escape us. Precious sons and daughters who died too soon. Homes that burned as we watched dumbfounded. Pathways we walked a thousand times in shoes that are gone tied by laces that broke. Yes, these are graves of experience that some would rather not remember dug with purpose into the granite of meaninglessness. Or maybe it's just our habit of seeing things wrong. Or not really seeing at all. Perhaps there is a way to see our travails in a different light. The rocks, the timbers, the regrets, the lodes we pay homage to in odes such as this? Were we could see all differently, what would there be to see? The laughing face of futility driving home the bitterness of loss? Or might our days and hard tales melt into transparency as we awaken before the Light and Love of Total Forgiveness that exists within all things, that empowers. Us. Ever. Onward.
