Treasures Left Behind

Cleaning out the house has been a chore.

It takes time to go through twenty years of accumulation of stuff, some of it worth saving, most of it not.

A lot of it came with us when we moved from Bozeman, including a box labeled rocks and another labeled iron. Opening them for the first time in decades I was disappointed to find they were just that — a box of relatively unremarkable rocks and old horseshoes.

What had I been thinking?

At least it was easy to dispose of them.

Another rock is more difficult to toss. A recent find, it’s a Native grindstone that I unearthed when burying my dog Jem nearly four years ago. An artifact from another time, it fits my hand and is worn smooth from use.

Like the spur I found a couple of years earlier, it is evidence of the people who lived and worked the land long before I arrived.

I’ll keep the spur. Burnished by time and weather, it’s decorated with rosettes and scrolling and has a large rowel. I found it while walking through the sagebrush, eyes on the ground so I didn’t trip.

The grindstone I will return.

It’s been on display in the house since I found it but drew little attention. It looks a bit like a russet potato and unless you pick it up, you would have no idea its purpose.

I like the idea of taking it back to where it was last used. Perhaps it was left behind in a move, not unlike the one Barb and I are undertaking.

“We’ll get a new one when we get settled,” I can imagine a Native woman telling her husband. “Just throw it away. It’s nearly worn out.”

Barb has been telling me the same thing lately whenever I hesitate a little too long in disposing of my “treasures.”

I’ve left a few things on the prairie myself. The transponder from Dot’s e-collar comes to mind. Hardly as aesthetically pleasing as a worn grindstone or a cowboy’s lost spur, it may nonetheless end up on someone’s mantle a century or so from now, the molded plastic drawing oohs and aahs.

I know where the grindstone belongs, on a flat bench above the creek where people once lived, and then for some reason left.

Just like me.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]