The rain pings in the copper pots we set on the floor and soaks into our blankets. Rain and sun and wind: I feel this country stripping away what we once were. In the sunlit mornings we stretch the blankets out on the prairie grass to dry. Along with the iron plow I bought in Milford, I have carried back these blank journals and a book by a man named Thoreau for myself and the children. What we will become frightens me. As the boys cut wood for the worm fence they are building to keep the stock out of our fields, they catch glimpses of the Indian boys running in the woods. Leaf children, Hazel calls them. I can see the bitterness in Asa and Caleb’s face as they hack at the forest and drag up heavy limbs. How they long for such freedom yet there is so much work to be done. I tell them those boys are like the grasshopper of Aesop’s fable. They play now and will not be ready for winter. I tell them whatever I can to keep them working, even as I wonder. Who is wiser after all? We who plant more than our family needs for the sake of commerce?
