Holy Land

Vine DeLoria, the great Lakota historian and writer, writes of the concept of sacred land and holy places in a manner that can be understood by country people world wide. Time,place, space and distance are fluid concepts and while a simple country boy may not have read of a philosophy or cosmology that explain this fluidity, he understands it and accepts it as an implicit reality. The past is not something that happened long ago to those of us tied to the land.

The past happened then, is happening now, and will happen in the future.

I type this sitting about seven miles from where my first white ancestors settled here in the 1650's. When I was young I was a politician and represented a district that, while still in my county, was not where we were/are/will be from. During my second term in office I had an opportunity to move to my current home. There were several reasons to move that everyone would understand. But there was one reason that most others would not understand. My home is beside the cemetery where generations of my family are buried. To further confuse outsiders, it is not the fact that I have family in that soil that matters, it is that that soil is in my family. The draw is not the DNA of those living close by.

The draw is the dirt.

When Crazy Horse said, "One does not sell the land upon which the people walk," I understand quite clearly that the unspoken portion of that sentence is "for any price."

My daughter asked my Grandmother what is was different about us that made us stay here for generations. She asked, "Why don't we ever go somewhere?"

The response said it all, "We already are somewhere. If it ever gets so that we are not somewhere, then we can go somewhere else."

I feel a deep pity for those without such ties. We do not have to go somewhere to find ourselves. We have nothing to run to or to run from. We belong. We were. We are.

There are many great reasons for outsiders to want to preserve the Corollas. My feeling are more personal and perhaps stronger. These are part of my Holy land. Though the remnant lives only on a small patch of beach about 75 miles to the southeast, the fabric from which that remnant comes was the only horse that existed in this part of the nation for about the first three generations that my white ancestors lived here. They continued to be the horse of poor folks here for another generation or two.

They pulled our plows. They helped us cut trails trough the swamps. They hauled in our nets. They carried us to war. They pulled brightly decorated, yet simple, wagons to the churches for our weddings. They pulled our darkly draped little wagons to the cemetery.

As we moved they moved us. but not far. Not far from our homes. Not far from their homes.

Not far from our Holy land.