Saying Goodbye

The time has come to say goodbye to this old place, a place I've known for all of my 70 years, a place that was here long before my memory, a place that my great-grandparents came to from Alabama over 125 years ago. a place that is thorny and harsh but yet lush and beautiful, a place that has seen little change in that century-plus time frame but yet a place that has experienced the drastic change from what was encountered by American pioneers to Americans who have entered the space age and the age of electronics, a place that is quiet and peaceful but yet a place that screams with wildlife of whitetail deer and bobcats and raccoon and opossums and a million squirrels and red foxes and coyotes and rivers and creeks and bayous and red clay and wild lilies and flowers of every sort and sweet gum trees and crape myrtles and lush long-leafed pines and hickories and walnuts and chinquapins and oaks of a hundred different varieties and a place that ...

I leave this place with so many mixed emotions, some of woeful sadness and others of great happiness to be returning to the Arizona I came to love after I first loved this place.  But we must say goodbye to everything that is dear to us and look forward to what lies ahead.

I will be posting rather sporadically over the next couple of weeks as I make the final preparations to leave this land in good hands with another.  Between the time the above photo was taken a few weeks ago, the rains came and that gentle waterway known by some as the Attoyac River and others who call it a creek (and in some places near here it is actually a bayou) flooded and water went over those six feet high banks and sprawled for a hundred or more feet into the pastures to make it impossible for surveyors to even reach the property boundaries.  The survey of the river bank is all we're waiting for to close escrow and allow me to return to my former life with a wonderful daughter and an awesome grandson who I left in Arizona five years ago to return here to care for an aging mother.

 I'm in the throes of final packing, trying to sell a vehicle, dealing with utilities and banks and dozens of other entities, saying goodbye to relatives who I will probably never see again to the point that I'm feeling overwhelmed.  We're in the midst of a beautiful autumn here and I want to post some photos of autumn leaves that I know I'll never see again so maybe I'll drop by periodically until I finally say goodbye to this place and get relocated and somewhat settled in a new home.  But I'm not saying goodbye to you, blogger friends, only taking an extended leave to accomplish a new goal.

And here is the young man taking over the responsibility for this place, a young man whose family has been intertwined with mine for the past four generations.  After my father died over 20 years ago, his grandmother, a neighbor, called my mother every single day for the next 20 years until she herself was hospitalized and died suddenly.  He is in his 30s, works as a fireman in a neighboring town and serves as the captain of our local volunteer fire department, has a few cows of his own on his mother's place just a short hike down the road, has cattle on two other pieces of leased property.  He and his wife who is in school obtaining an RN degree have a two-year-old daughter and are the perfect people for this old place.  They are young and full of vitality and new hope and new ambitions.  He was described to me just a couple of weeks ago by someone many years his senior as the hardest working young man he knew.  You don't hear words like that about too many young people anymore.   He will take care of this place (he's already rebuilt a failing barn and cleaned up areas that had been left to nature) and I know he will love it for a lifetime.  I couldn't leave it in more capable hands!