Fields of the Past

I grew up on a ranch in the mountains of northeastern New Mexico, a long time ago, long before you were born. When I breathe deeply, I can still smell the sweet grass on the wind and the rich, damp soil. I can hear the cattle lowing, the horses nickering, and the far-off whistling of the wind through the mountains.

If I dust off the furthest recesses of my memories, I can still see rolling hills of lush green grass dotted with shady shrubbery stretching up to become the magnificent sloping mountains on the horizon and beyond. My pa’s cattle are grazing alongside wild bison and antelope. The sky is a breathtaking shade of cyan spattered with puffy clouds in the shapes of cute bunnies and majestic birds and serious faces.

In the winter before the snow, the hills and mountains brightened into liquid gold. No animals are grazing, the bison and the antelope had already migrated southwest for the winter and the cows were already rounded up and stowed in the barn by Pa, my brother, Steve, and I in anticipation for the first snow.

And the house-no, villa was so beautiful. It was designed by my pa’s pa to look like one of those Italian villas. He told my pa that he wanted it to look like the very one he stayed in while finishing his education in Europe with his own personal spin on it. I can still remember studying each of the hand-painted tiles paving the pavilion on those lazy summer afternoons with Steve.

My room was in the east wing of the villa, sharing a wall with Steve. We each had our own wash room and we shared a play room across the hall. My parents’ room was in the west wing as well as rooms for the most important guests. The center of the house was designed to look like a hunting lodge, with dark hardwood floors, bear-skin and cougar-skin rugs, and tens of hunting trophies on the walls.

I wish I was there, but alas, it is now impossible. When I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the army and was sent to Europe to fight the Germans. I met my wife, Elaine, in France. She was an army nurse who cared for me after I got a leg injury. We didn’t get married until after the war, when we reconnected in Albuquerque.

Though France and Germany are very beautiful countries, their hills and mountains could not compare to the ranch that raised me. It just wasn’t the same. Nothing beats old memories, I guess.

While I was at war, my parents regularly sent me letters. When I was away for only two months, my ma wrote to me to inform me that Steve had died, having fallen off his horse while herding cattle and got trampled. I didn’t believe it for a long time. It’s hard to believe that someone is truly gone when you already haven’t been around them for a long time.

The funny thing about people is that we believe that we are invincible, same goes for our families. Tragic accidents and deaths only happen to others, never us. It’s world-ending when it happens to us.

Three months after Steve’s death, Pa broke more tragic news to me. Steve’s memory and my absence made the ranch no longer a home, so he sold the ranch to a wealthy entrepreneur and moved to a duplex in Albuquerque. This was also difficult for me to believe. The ranch, like Steve, was a pillar of my childhood, how could it possibly be gone?

After Germany surrendered, I returned to New Mexico, meeting my parents in Albuquerque. I stayed in the duplex with them until Elaine and I got married. Elaine wanted to move to the East Coast, where she grew up, and since I had nothing to stay for, we moved to Boston.

Boston is nothing like the ranch. The only nature in the city are little pockets contained in parks, too busy and loud to satisfy my nostalgia. No dirt roads, no horses, no cows, no bison, no antelope. Just asphalt, stray dogs, stray cats, mice, rats, and pigeons. The sky was rarely the brilliant blue of the skies of my true home, rather, it was usually in gray tones due to the ocean and air pollution.

I never had the chance to return to the ranch. Life moved too fast. First, I was acclimating to not being in active warfare, then I was getting married and moving across the country, having kids and maintaining my career. There was always a more immediate concern to be taken care of than revisiting the past.

The only time I had the chance to go back was after I retired, fifteen years ago. It wasn’t until I was seventy years old when Elaine and I decided to go on a road trip with one of our kid’s families to New Mexico. All along the drive, I traveled back in time to the good old days, riding on horseback through the dreamy pastures with Steve and going hiking with Pa on the same mountains that Americans moved westward for. In my mind, the strong winds tossed my hair around and the sun subtly baked my skin.

Except the ranch does not exist anymore. At first, I thought that we were in the wrong place, but the GPS told me that we had not, in fact, taken a wrong turn. Gone were the rolling hills of amber and in their place were neighborhoods and factories, a town hall, and shopping centers. The mountains on the horizons were now nothing more than a haze. Gone were the grazing animals, and in their place was the same wildlife that existed in Boston. Dogs, cats, mice, rats, and pigeons. It was unbearably hot there, with no cool breeze to take the edge off.

Elaine and I found the villa. At least, a third of it. It had been turned into a museum. The young entrepreneur Pa had sold the ranch to had sold the land and the villa to the government. Only the main wing remained. It looked the same on the outside, but the interior was completely remodeled. It no longer looked or felt like a hunting lodge, it is now an industrial-style building. All that remained of my childhood home was a handful of painted tiles, a pair of hunting trophies, and some photographs with informational plaques that sorely lacked knowledge on the history of the ranch.

I can still remember the feeling of my heart shattering. On the road trip, my hopes for reconnecting with the nature that raised me, to feel the presence of Steve’s ghost, had grown exponentially. What I found was the hollow shell of my early life, surrounded by a town that did not know nor care about what the ranch meant to me.

I retreated to Boston, the pain of remaining in the town that replaced the ranch was too much. I have never left Boston since. I’ve spent the past ten years trying to replace the memory of the town with my memory of what came before it.

I am only talking to you about this because I know I will be gone soon and this is my only way to immortalize that ranch. Steve’s memory as well as the memory of Ma and Pa live in that villa and the scenic hills that surrounded it. I hope you do the jewel of my heart some justice.