The Land

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Robert K. Swisher Jr.. The Land

THE LAND

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Robert K. Swisher, Jr.

For Boots, living ghosts, and arrow heads … only the coyoteand the crow know for sure …

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He rode his pony up to the peak that looked as though a giant hand had reached down from the sky and taken a great handful of dirt and then closed its hand and let the earth trickle through its palm until it was a tall spiral and then with careful balance had picked up a great flat rock and placed it on top. It was a tall spiral with a top like a table. And then with rain and snow and time the sand structure had become rock.

To Shining Moon, this was not an evil place, but a place of time. A place where man had worked and tried to discover his soul and heart. Here was the mark of men trying to transcend the ages. Men just like him. And then Shining Moon, who had never drawn or thought of drawing, searched around the spiral peak and found a hard-pointed stone, and returning to the peak he spent many hours scratching at the hard rock. When he was finished, he stood back and looked at the horse he had carved on the face of the rock. To him it was not a beautiful horse, but for all time, whoever saw this figure would know it was a horse. And for a moment, Shining Moon felt immortal. He felt beyond the grasp of time and death, love and hate, hope and dreams. He was a part of the timelessness of the rock. His soul would forever stand with the rock. And another man in another age would stand and look at his horse, and he would know that he was not alone. That there was an affinity between men. And Shining Moon was proud, but also a little bewildered. Never again in his life would he feel not needed but would always know he was a part of the chain. A small link that was mankind. From that day forward he was no longer a child, but a man. A man strong and unafraid of the world. But he would never return to the rock. It would never be the same. He would still at times look at the spiral from a distance and be able to retrace the strange faces and images of the ancients and see the horse he had etched upon the stone.

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