I didn’t think conversation was possible, given the noise. And now I was becoming distracted by the delight of riding the tail end of a tractor grinding through spring mud and by the valley view that opened as we got higher. It was like starting out on a carnival ride. An adventure! The newness of it cut through the layers of caution and doubt and angst and ennui to a quickening down at the center of me. I was already touching something real.
The bristle-cut back of Brassard’s head half turned. “You okay back there?”
“I’m fine,” I screamed.
He moved the throttle and our speed picked up. “Yep, it’s not for livin on, not for farmin,” he bellowed. “Can’t get a car up there. Cuts its sale value. Maybe you could swing a right-of-way from the folks at the top of the ridge, but knowin them it’s a slim-to-none chance. Need a hell of a long access road, power and phone, forget it unless you’re a millionaire. Cell phone, maybe—don’t know, but we don’t get reception down at the house. You want to get away, this’d be the spot.”
I didn’t try to respond. The engine noise coming through the bobbing cap on the exhaust stack was too loud. We ground up to the first steep rise, where the trees began, then turned left and followed a pair of ruts that ran parallel to the ridge. A rugged, near-vertical face of granite reared on our right. The ground was drier here, better traction, and now the tractor swayed not from the yield of mud but from hard uneven ground knuckled with bumps of granite. I held on until my fingers ached as we took a hairpin and angled up the other way. Soon we were above the cliff, and through the trees I could see the farm below. When the breeze shifted, the diesel exhaust blew straight back into my face. Between it and the rolling motion, I began to feel a little sick.
After another hairpin and a longer curve, the track began to level out and we emerged on top of a sort of plateau, forested but clearly once inhabited: on a patch of brambly open land, a few ancient apple trees surrounded a stacked-stone cellar hole, mostly filled in and grown up in blackberry cane. Once we got onto the flat, Brassard ratcheted down a brake pedal and cut the engine. I stepped down, but he stayed in his seat above me, a florid-faced knight on his mechanical steed.
“Well, this’s it. Property line on the far side, west boundary, is about where the hill comes down. Down to the bottom there you’ll see the old stone wall, that’s the start of Hubbard’s land, next farm over. Up to the top, you go until you hit the big jumbled boulders on the slope there, that’s about the end. Goslants own everything above the rocks.”
He took off his billed Agri-Mark cap and scratched his head. “You want me to walk it over with you?”
It was clear that he didn’t want to. I wouldn’t have minded a better sense of where the land began and ended—I understood that borders were important in property transactions—but more than anything, I wanted to be alone here. I’d hoped I would know my refuge when I found it, that there’d be a certain pull from the soil or the trees, some song of recognition, to assure me that this was my place to go to ground. I needed to listen for it without distraction.
“I’m fine walking around by myself. I can explore and I’ll come down on my own. You don’t need to come up for me, or anything.”
He was frowning off uphill. “Some water up here,” he said doubtfully. “Had to’ve been for someone to live here back when. Seems I saw a spring once. Couldn’t tell you where, you might want to scout it out. Good to have water.”
Then he set his cap firmly on his head, pushed the button on the tractor dash. The exhaust cap bounced and the motor rattled to life. “Yep, fine with me. Got enough to do, that’s for sure. Just you walk around. You can’t find me when you get down, look for Earnest. Be a nice piece up if you don’t mind walkin in. Four-wheeler could do it. Winter, you could get up with a Ski-Doo.”
He turned the tractor in a half circle, one wheel motionless as the other pivoted around. He waved once as he headed away. He was gone from sight as soon as he made the first bend. The tractor noise dwindled until it became inaudible.
I was alone on an almost-level forested hilltop where I’d never been before in my life. Through the trees, I could see other hills rolling away to a distant backdrop of mountains.
I turned in a slow circle to get a quick view in every direction and felt a tick of fear. I knew there were bears and bobcats out here, and I’d watched Deliverance back whenever.
But I loved it. Not yet so much the land itself, which I’d barely seen and which seemed only ambiguously acceptable; I loved this moment. Just being here, having this adventure. Or just being—awareness of being itself kindled in me.
Chapter 2
I know, personal stories are supposed to begin with some kind of life history, but I don’t want to tell you a great deal about the person I was before I found the land. Much of it’s boring. Some of it’s awful. I was the Hindenburg going down in flames when I first arrived. And now it strikes me as a distraction from what matters.
But, of course, any present or future has its roots in a past. I could pretend that my seeking a patch of wild forest was a typical back-to-the-land impulse, a sort of ordinary thing to do. But there was more to the tropism. I’d had two wretched, horrid years and was in abject retreat from my prior
