“Let’s Get to Work”
I thoroughly enjoy hiking in the mountains. Thankfully, my legs (and attached joints) work well enough that when I get moving I am able to keep moving. Through the years I have enjoyed covering miles and miles of foot trails. Every trail is simply amazing. One never knows what one may see just up ahead, around the next bend, over the next ridge, along the next stream, or from high atop the next peak. The wonderful sounds of cascading/babbling/gurgling mountain streams are unmatched any place else. Just to be able to pause, to draw refreshing air into one’s lungs and fragrant organic smells through one’s nose is thrilling. And, the wide variety of colors are delightful.
In particular, I like walking into a cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and finding evidence of human habitation from days long ago. When the GSMNP came to be, the folks who lived there had to be moved out. Most of the buildings they left behind were burned by the park service. It makes sense. Had the buildings been left they would have been used for a variety of “illegal” and “illicit” purposes (camping, storing, making corn liquor, etc.). For the most part, all that one sees are piles of rocks marking where buildings stood, rock walls that mark the boundaries of fields or orchards, box woods that served as ornamental shrubbery, yucca plants and jonquils, and cemeteries (most often on hilltops overlooking the home sites). Occasionally, there are old rusty buckets and other pieces of metal strewn about.
I love to sit quietly at the location of one of these abandoned homesteads and just listen. I heard the sounds of leaves rustling in the breeze. Of course, there is the buzz of those ever present pesky insects. The beautiful songs and chirps of birds filter down from the canopy of the trees proudly and majestically standing nearby, providing shade for my respite. But I also hear sounds of voices, muffled by the passing of the years. Mothers are calling the young ones to get cleaned up before dinner or supper. The voices of the younger children can be heard, calling to one another in the midst of the games they have created to play. However, the loudest of the voices, as I survey the piles of rock and the long fence walls, are of the men and older boys as they work to “scratch out a living” and tame the forest into a homestead. Dads are yelling, saying to their sons “Let’s get to work” as they begin pulling on one end of a cross-cut saw, or say “Git up there” to a team of mules pulling a turnin’ or lay-off plow. In the stillness of the morning hours, before the break of day, fathers holler “Let’s get to work” as they roust sleepy-head lads out of their sleeping place. “Thar’s cows to milk, hogs to slop, aigs to gather, buckets of water to bring from the spring, and firewood to carry in before we clear rocks from the new ground.” If there was any hesitancy at all on the part of the lad, “Boy! I said ‘Let’s get to work!’”
Hard work. A day’s labor. Satisfaction. Accomplishment. Sowing, hoeing, tending, gathering, preserving, heating up, serving, enjoying,… Completeness. A good feeling!
While Labor Day celebrates the efforts of working men and women in manufacturing; may it , also, give us cause to celebrate the efforts of those in our family tree that worked hard in order to build the homesteads of our heritage. Whenever you pass by an old homestead, or an old tobacco barn, or a silo alone in an abandoned barnyard, or old piece of equipment (farm, construction, or otherwise), listen for the muffled voices of yesteryear saying “Let’s get to work”. Just maybe the path to our future wellbeing is dependent upon the sweat of our brows, callouses on our hands, and the focused toil of our creative energy. “Let’s get to work!”