farm life

We Can’t Go Back

LaShelle

My love of nature and small farm living didn’t burrow its way underneath my skin on some random Saturday afternoon. Instead, it was deeply rooted into my history years before my childhood began. It was planted and nurtured by my grandparents and their parents before them where it blossomed like a flowering vine that somehow wove us all together. It started sometime when people valued the kind of richness from life that flowed from calloused and hard-working hands, but like an invasive species… it never let our family go.

In a diner amid a small copper mining town… a tiny slip of a waitress with auburn hair was taking orders during the lunch rush. A shy but dashingly handsome man made the extra effort of sitting in her section as soon as he had set eyes on her. He was quiet, fresh out of the Army, and kept to himself. Yet he tucked his long legs underneath the booth and studied the barely five-foot-tall girl with the fresh face and crooked smile as she danced around tables and balanced discarded dishes onto her arms. The sound of her laugh made his heart swell and he couldn’t help ease dropping whenever she made small talk with the locals.  

It was the kind of earth swelling moment where a plot twist hung in the air. Yet it took time to unfold all of the pages before they realized just how important those first moments between them really were. Thirty-eight lives were in the making on a day that otherwise would have been insignificant. If the soldier had chosen another diner, or the girl had called out sick that day. If he had stopped in another town, or she had accepted the marriage proposal from the rich gentleman who wanted to build her a big house in the city… maybe then things would have gone differently.  

Instead, she chose him because they could talk for hours, because they shared a love for Arizona, and most of all because he loved adventure as much as she did. He didn’t give her a fancy pick-up line like some of the other soldiers had attempted to do. He treated her with loving kindness and it felt as if their souls had found what they never realized they had been searching for. He had the unique ability to drop everything and start over just because he wanted to see something new and it fueled a life well-traveled. 

Together they taught their children how to read a map at a young age and how to navigate rough terrain. As their family grew into having three boys and two young girls, my grandfather took a contracted job for the forestry service. They were able to camp at campgrounds that were closed for public use by joining teams of men yielding chainsaws and hatchets. They would cut down what they called “dog hairs” which were large gatherings of small trees that could easily make a forest fire become uncontainable. 

The men would cut the tree trunks to the ground while the women and children would follow behind and stack the limbs into large burn piles. My mom was eight years old and my Aunt Susie was five but they all hiked the woods together. The work in the Arizona sunshine wasn’t an easy accomplishment especially in locations like Flagstaff, Prescott, and on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Yet nothing tasted better than the fizz inside a chilled bottle of root beer or a delicious sandwich after hours of hard work. My mom’s favorite treat was listening to the great American broadcaster Paul Harvey over the radio while she ate her lunch among family. 

My grandfather (Dale, or as I call him “Papa“) and my uncles Vaughn, Clay, and Brent frequently crossed paths with wildlife that found a way to humble them. On an evening where they returned to their camper after a long day in the woods, a bear had ripped the door off of their icebox and had used its teeth to pry into their supply of canned goods. Their camper trailer had been all but ripped apart. My Papa had to load his riffle to search the grounds and make sure that the animal wasn’t lingering somewhere nearby.  

In a separate incident a herd of elk bounded through the forest and soared over a fence when a calf got its leg hung up in barbwire. To this day my uncle Brent (the youngest of the three boys) still recalls running to my grandfather’s truck to retrieve a pair of wire nippers so he could help rescue the thrashing infant. It was a moment of awe that left a lasting impact on my Papa’s memory as well. He talked about it with such fondness and reverence in the years that followed. I still remember my own first encounter with elk when I was left in wonderment over how they sounded a lot like singing blue whales that vibrated around mountains rather than within the swells of ocean waves.  

My grandmother (Helen) left her children in the care of her mother (my great-grandmother) one winter afternoon so that she and my grandfather could photograph a heard of elk that were making their way to a local feeding station. They never did come across the elk that they were looking for that day, but as they made their way down the mountain my grandfather nearly stepped on a rattlesnake instead! Backing up ever-so-slowly he reached behind him so that my grandmother could place large rocks into his open palms in order to discourage the snake from coming any closer. As she searched for one boulder after the next, she nearly served up another rattler instead.  

There was a sudden shock when the two of them realized that they had stumbled upon a den of rattlesnakes. Everywhere they looked the ground was camouflaged and covered with them. My quick-thinking grandfather located a walking stick in order to very carefully pick their way through the path home. He kept my grandmother close behind him as he poked at the ground to see if anything moved before placing another foot in front of them. It took a lot of extra time but thankfully they made it back to safety. 

Beyond forestry contracts and working in the copper mine, my grandfather had other odd jobs as well. He road and adored horses. He had a friend who married into ranch life and owned several head of cattle. My grandfather would lend a hand sorting and moving them. When I was younger my papa worked as a ground’s keeper for a hospital near Chicago where he blessed others with his ability to make things grow from nothing. To this day those who knew him talked about how incredible his gardens looked and how no one has been able to measure up since.  

When my Papa finally planted roots of his own… it was on the twenty acres he and my grandmother had invested in. They built a life together in a town that was smaller than the town where they had first meet, surrounded by mountains near the border of Arizona. They had dreams of building a house that they could grow old in but settled for a large greenhouse and added several rooms onto their mobile home instead. That well-loved house helped raise the five additional children that they adopted together.  

Two of my uncles bought land in other states, and my mom has taken over the upkeep of the farm in Arizona. My Grandparent’s love of travel, and desire to live life on their terms taught me how to fulfill the dreams of my own family. Our son Nikolai at seven years old has visited sixteen states in the United States and we are working on adding to that by planning trips to Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park in the near future.  

My grandfather isn’t here anymore but his legacy continues in every adventure we take and in how we build lives of our own here in the mountains of North Georgia. I sit and marvel over watching pine trees taller than apartment buildings sway in the balmy spring air and I smile because I know how proud he would have been to see me here. But as my wonderful Grandmother likes to remind me… “We can’t go back. We can only make new plans, new memories, and continue moving forward.” 

Nikolai reaching up to pluck an apple
Nikolai hiking our farm with us
My Great Grandmother Jessie, my Papa, and my grandma Helen
My handsome grandfather in his Army uniform
Bisbee Arizona, the mountain town where my grandparents meet, fell in love, and where my grandfather worked in the copper mines
My Papa & I when I was young
Nikolai & my grandma saying our goodbye’s to Papa many years ago
Papa, my mama, uncle Vaughn, my aunt Sue, and my beloved Grandmother Helen.

Published by LaShelle

Tea drinking, mountain living, wife, and mother. Writing and photographing my way through through the south.

35 thoughts on “We Can’t Go Back”

  4. What a lovely post. I had fond memories with my grandfather too, though they don’t really compare to your lovely stories. I remember trekking through the jungles with him or travelling up to the highlands, all on a whim. Back then in developing Malaysia, that meant a lot of walking and taking random buses around. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be one of the formative memories I’d keep to this day. Thanks for sharing your awesome stories, and of course, the pics are amazing as usual!

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    1. Stuart, I’m SWOONING over here! What amazing memories you had and I’ve never been to Malaysia but I can picture that it’s lush, full of greenery, and absolutely stunning. I’ll bet I could take AMAZING pictures there too!! Where do you live now? Is your grandfather still alive? Does it thunder and rain like the monsoons of Arizona? Thunderstorms are my favorite!

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      1. Still live in Malaysia, and no, my grandfather has passed for more than a decade now. And yes! Thunderstorms do happen, but I’m not sure how it compares to those in Arizona. The only thing I can imagine about your area is thanks to Breaking Bad, which takes place just next to your state if I remember correctly. Of course, Arizona seems more desert-y in my mind, which I may be wrong, lol.

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      2. Arizona is mostly desert but not all of is, for example they still get snow there! Places like the Grand Canyon, flagstaff, cottonwood, and a few other areas are more lush and covered in trees than other areas are. Arizona isn’t my favorite place but there are places within it that are very dear to my heart and are more pretty in my eyes than the desert is. That being said… it doesn’t rain much there but when it does…. A big storm called a monsoon can drop a month of water within just a few hours! 😉 monsoons are pretty amazing. As far as North Georgia goes… it’s nothing like the movies. If you google things like “ Helen Georgia”, “dahlonega Georgia during Christmas”, “suches Georgia” you’ll get a very different picture of how life is down here. Big stunning farm houses, incredible comfort food, and the kind of people who will help pull your car out of a ditch even though they’ve never meet you… that’s what North Georgia is like. Then you have places like “Wormsloe plantation” in Savannah Georgia and the ocean and a miniature Grand Canyon without having to visit Arizona at all… it’s enough to knock your socks off. 🥰❤️

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  5. Such beautiful memories, LaShelle. Well, maybe not the rattlesnakes.😉 I love posts such as these because they give readers insight into why you are the person you are. We adopt many of the same attitudes and love for the same things that our family had. The most important job in life that you and your husband will have is to love your child and teach him essential core values.

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    1. I like stories like this because I know that my grandmother isn’t going to live forever. I got to call up all my aunts and uncles and research this information and I even spoke with my grandmother and great detail about things that I had never heard before. In the end I know that my son will miss out on hearing these stories because they will die with her in many ways. A good portion of my family doesn’t even speak to one another. I actually called my grandmother and was talking to her more in depth about some questions that I had about various other things and she ended up telling me another story that I had never heard before and I am looking forward to telling as well. And again hopefully my son will be able to read these and hear about his family history in a way that he may not be able to remember in the future and my grandmother won’t be around to tell. ❤️

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      1. All of that will become even more important to your boy as he gets older. Humans have a natural curiosity about wanting to know where we came from.

        Once I was driving my mom to see a specialist about six hours away. By then, she was in her 80s, and I thought I’d heard every story she’d ever told. We had the best trip as she related these stories I’d never heard before about my dad’s courtship of her and how this other guy tried to date her after her boyfriend (later my dad) went off to college. When my dad heard, he made it a point to come home every weekend. 😊

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  7. A beautiful tribute to how family can be with us always– and that can be a good thing. Your connection with your ancestors is strong. I love your photo of Nikolai grabbing an apple. Charming

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    1. Thanks! I’m a photographer (though these are older images, I haven’t shot anything new in some time because we don’t get internet out here 🤪). Thanks for the compliments Ally! Hope your weekend is going beautifully

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  8. LaShelle, this was such a moving post about how your grandparents love was the very foundation for your beautiful upbringing… farming does sound like it runs in your blood! What a wonderful dedication to your family.. You take beautiful pictures by the way!

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