{"id":9268,"date":"2016-01-19T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/?p=9268"},"modified":"2016-01-19T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T18:30:11","slug":"edens-border-where-objects-have-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/2016\/01\/edens-border-where-objects-have-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Eden\u2019s Border: Where Objects Have Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"IMG_8506\"<\/a>We\u2019ll have to go back to the gun shop today. There\u2019s no way around it. It seems that the barrel with the modified choke got left there when my mother placed the twenty-gauge up for sale sometime before Christmas. But since there weren\u2019t any takers, we went back to the shop to retrieve it when I got home in December. Unfortunately, the owner forgot to give us the other barrel, so we\u2019ll have to go back. My brother has decided he wants it.<\/p>\n

The only reason she was selling this shotgun out of the many others we have is because nobody could remember how we came to own it or whose it was in the first place. Coming from a long line of hunters, our family has stories behind these weapons. Among them, there\u2019s a rifle with a scope my grandfather deer hunted with (we used to have two buck heads that he kept mounted on his wall in the study), an A.H. Fox with an engraved plate that my other grandfather traded a man for during the Depression, a 410 that my own father began to hunt with, and an Ithaca with a sawed-off stock that I was given as a boy because the gun was originally too long for me.<\/p>\n

Of course, each of these things carries a cache of stories behind it, and memories of long walks in bracing weather through fields of sage grass and beside fencerows of pennyroyal bushes. We raised bird dogs, so they were all about during those walks, their tales flashing like flags, their breath wild with expectation. The picture of a setter when he\u2019s on point, every muscle tense with pent energy as he waits for the birds to be flushed, is just as rewarding as anything that happens afterward. In life, the moments just prior to the ultimate consummation may be the least remarked upon of our many joys here.<\/p>\n

When I was a boy, it was my job to feed the dogs, whose pens were in a field behind the house. I would tramp down there every afternoon when school was out, climb the fences with a bucket of dog food, and beat back the frenzied pleasure of each dog as I entered his cage. There was no running water down there, so I had to edge out across a tree that had fallen into a nearby cow pond, scoop up water in the now empty bucket, and haul it back to the pens to pour into each dog\u2019s water pale.<\/p>\n

But back to the gun. Since none of us gets to bird hunt like we used to (most of the farm is developed now, and few places remain where people will let you quail hunt), the hoped-for sale of one of the many weapons we have was sensible. And as to this one, as I\u2019ve said, nobody knows how we came to own it. We can trace the lineage of the others, but not this one.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve decided that without any tie to a narrative, a thing is as cut loose as a rock in outer space. Even a fairly innocuous memory\u2014a purchase, a gift, a trade\u2014anything that explains how an inanimate object has crossed the path of a life, can require one to take pause over it. It may still be sold or discarded, but it goes with a story at least, so that the disposal is a conscious one.<\/p>\n

In the same vein, we were also selling saddles this Christmas\u2014or trying to, at least. Just like hunting, we don\u2019t get to ride much anymore. My parents raised and sold horses my whole life, and at one time before the farm was broken up, there were eighteen brood mares on the place (along with herds of polled Hereford and Brangus cattle). We used the horses too; they weren\u2019t just for sale and show. We got up the cattle with them. But since all that\u2019s passed, a barn full of western and English saddles just isn\u2019t required anymore. Still, after all of our cleaning and polishing of the leather, the only ones we could put up for sale with a clear conscience are the ones that weren\u2019t tied to a good story. That\u2019s not good business, I suppose; nevertheless.<\/p>\n

But I wonder how many things now accumulate stories about them. These items that I speak of are related to a rural past and to rural pastimes. They come from time spent with family and friends during episodes of work and play. Without the occasions for such use, how many narratives can spring from them? Indeed, how many stories can come from the juncture of technology and lived life?<\/p>\n

I may be wrong, and hope that I am, but I just can\u2019t imagine a time in which I would pause over the sale of an HD TV screen or an iPhone. I can\u2019t fathom a tug at my conscience when I donate my Apple to charity. No tear will be shed over the accumulations of my suburban life.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to that harness hanging on the wall, it\u2019s a different story, and it\u2019s different because there is<\/em> a story. Perhaps the limits of affection do lie somewhere within a zone of the natural world, Eden\u2019s border, that smells of worn leather, gun oil, and the musk of a lemon-speckled setter, lathered from her hunt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A.G. Harmon<\/a> teaches Shakespeare, Law and Literature, Jurisprudence, and Writing at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His novel, A House All Stilled,<\/em> won the 2001 Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel.<\/p>\n

\"GL<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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