If I close my eyes and listen with my inner ear I can still hear the voices. The voices of people calling out orders, conversations at break time and the preshift prayer for safety. When your job is to dig deep or run the big machines on a highwall you tend to be a little more conscious of mortality. A few weeks ago I told you about my one and only day working on a strip mine and it happened just a little ways “down yonder” from where I took this photo. At the time I thought that there would never be an end to it. I helped as hired muscle but after that the real miners came behind me and pulled light from darkness. The coal that they harvested went to power plants and steel mills. It’s very possible that some of it would have made it from West Virginia to California. But that seems like a lifetime ago now. The voices are only echoes in the cosmetic moment we call time and the mountain has a way of reclaiming what’s her’s.
The ground heaves and throws and the grass spreads across the landscape to bind steel. The trees come next to sure up those bindings with roots that bend, break and swallow iron and steel. Heavy beams are slowly pushed aside like children’s toys. In God’s creation that which is idle is cast aside to make room for renewal.
It’s given to mankind to subdue the land but to land its own charge is to be wild. Without consistent effort all that is left is a mystery for some future archeological explorer to find the bands of steel and marvel for the world that was. And for Chandra, here are your trees growing in the railway that you asked to see. 🙂
Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.
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