A Time To Dig

After moving into our first house, I was informed that the yard and the to-be-created garden were my jobs. That new garden became serious work. Small silver maples and old, gnarled roots had to be chopped, axed, then dug out, and removed. Buried rocks required back-breaking dislodging and removing. Hardened earth begged for tilling. I learned that gardening was much tougher than dropping a few seeds, watering the ground and smelling the flowers.

After three days working the ground, the area began to take shape. As I raked the the newly loosened, dark soil and picked through the accumulated matter, I noticed a greenish stone poking through the surface, looking much different than anything else my rake had uncovered. I picked it up, wiped off the the dirt on my jeans, and closely examined the chipped object. It was not a regular stone at all. Its shape was that of a large arrowhead.

Well, as it turned out, that greenish stone was, in fact, an arrowhead totally intact except for a tiny piece missing from its tip. A local historian was able to identify it as consistent with markings found on the stone tools and weapons of the Wyandots, a Michigan tribe loosely related to the Iroquois of the Eastern Woodlands. I also learned that the Wyandots lived in the Detroit River basin and often hunted in the Fox River region, a region adjacent to my property and my house.

I still have that arrowhead, and whenever I look at it, I think of those first people who inhabited my community long ago and how one of them left behind a token for me to unearth and to discover. A cultural seed for thought, reminding me that the past does share some time with the present.