how the west was won

how the west was won

fiction
edward w pritchard

Two hundred yards behind the house where I stay two or three lots come together that are overgrown
with briar sticker bushes, misshapen ten foot weedy trees and assorted old  bricks and junk. Last year a ground hog lived back there but for the past year gradually I have been going back there taming the area with my partner my three and a half year old grandson who I watch during the week that I have been teaching to be a boy in the Native American Indian sense of the word boy as a young man enjoying nature and the World around himself. The area in the back yard we have been working on, my grandson and me, is about one hundred yards from Long Lake of the Portage Lake system which in all probability back in 1725 had a small Indian village on the very spot where we hatchet and rake.

Yesterday I taught the boy how to use a shovel, to clip sharp briar strands and to rake and shovel. He picked raspberries in the very hot sun while I ran the mower over the near finished area. The plan is to put a couple of folding chairs back there and a small tent to watch the stars and meteors from at night. It's a snug and safe little area but we will keep the rake and shovel around for protection and security.

When I was young like my grandson if I had been abducted by Indians and taken to their village I would have been the boy who kicked and screamed when it was time to return to civilization. Before the little guy starts to attend school and learns to use a computerized cell phone I hope we can watch the shooting stars at night by our fire in our little annexed area just West of the Portage Lakes once
a prime hunting and fishing area for Native Americans. It will be a nice end to my life and a good start to his.