Frontier Lands Frontier Lands

The Editor’s Desk

by Samir Shukla

Digging a hole in the ground one day on land we recently acquired, a tree root and a stone blocked the shovel. The root was wrapped around the lodged stone, both relaying an unspoken notice that I would need to work harder with the shovel in hand to finish the needed hole. I dug around the stone and poked away at the root with the tip of the shovel. Sweeping aside the dirt to pick up the rather large stone, the root, a portion of it shredded by the shovel, held its ground. Who knows how far it stretched underground, the nearest large tree was about 20 feet away. The root didn’t want to let go of its buddy, attaching itself to the thinner part of the long stone.

I don’t generally enjoy doing yardwork. This land is different. It is more than just a yard. Here’s the thing, going from the typical small front and back yards of a home we owned and then moving to many acres of land we now inhabit gives a sense of vastness, a sense of a new frontier, along with confusion. We want to remake this land, but where to start? Now with many acres of land we own, the yardwork of past years seems like child’s play. This is no longer yardwork; it is now all about acres work.

We are clearing land. Doing some digging here and there. Pulling out fallen branches and twigs from the overgrowth before we clear it with a mower. We worked in the comfortable springtime sun, the ground beneath had that pleasing wet soil aroma from a drizzle the previous night. There was a steady breeze keeping sweat at bay on this mid-spring day. The glorious summer is just a few rainfalls away, just about knocking at the door. In the dark chasms of winter, I long for summer, practically on an hourly basis. I enjoy all seasons, winter, not so much. The cold nights of winter have their moments and a quiet aura, but I generally wish winter came with a fast forward button.

We keep clearing the land, overgrown weeds, and bushes around nearby trees, collecting fallen logs and sticks and setting them aside.

This land reminds me of one of my favorite film genres: Westerns. In Western lore and films, the pilgrims and frontier people load up and head out in their wagons, point them towards West and eventually find or acquire plots of land, sometimes huge plots of land, and then proceed to work the land to make it into a homestead. They build a home, fenced fields for horses and animals, clear pastures, plant stuff, dig the requisite well for water.