On our recent trip to Montana we walked around several ghost towns. One town is being preserved by maintaining the buildings that have survived. We wandered through another town that is returning to nature. No attempt is being made to save any of the buildings. Another town from the same period is not a ghost town because people are still around and have changed enough with the times that the town and people can make a go of it.
All this got me to thinking about our homes and our cities. A town can be built up with homes, stores, churches, bars (always lots of bars in mining areas) and other structures. Then when the mine plays out, or the railroad goes through another town or a large employer leaves, or some other circumstance affects the town and its people, people leave - sometimes everyone leaves and then you have a ghost town.
This led to thoughts about our move across country after 34 years in our Worthington home. Heather Farrell blogged here about leaving her home. She likened the experience to women in the scriptures who lived in tents their whole lives - and those tents often moved - to feed and water their herds, to avoid war, to follow kin, to go where the Lord told them to go, and many other reasons.
I think of our ancestors. What led the Cathcarts and Alexanders to leave Ireland and settle in central Illinois? Why did the Floyd family go from Maine to Michigan? Or the Browns from Ontario to New York (back & forth several times) and then to Michigan? Did Alson Ames really think he'd be one that would find gold when he left Illinois to go to California? Why did the Holtons move from Vermont to Kentucky and then Illinois? The Sodowsky families went from Virginia into Kentucky right alongside Daniel Boone. In each of these cases the women and children ended up in areas that weren't very "civilized." Life was not easy. Our move across country was easy compared to their moves. We were going from nice house to nice house - from wonderful community to wonderful community. How did those women feel about their moves - about establishing a home and helping "civilize" the wilderness or near wilderness?
I know this is rambling - I'm just stringing together some thoughts I've had lately. The other day I read an article by Claudia Bushman. She wrote about her lifetime with husband Richard Bushman and all the moves their family made for his academic career. She noted that when a family moves, the man moves from "something to something else," usually a new job - or the gold field, or the adventure of the wilderness, or free or inexpensive land, or whatever it is that attracts men to move on. Said Bushman, the woman and children move from "something to nothing and must begin new lives under new circumstances all over again."*
At one of our reunions in London, we walked over to the old elementary school building. Dad and his brothers and my siblings and I went to school in that building. We sat on the steps and looked at Dad's childhood home directly across the street. I asked about the special feelings he had for the house where he spent his entire childhood. He replied that it was just a house and he really didn't have any feelings about it. I thought Dad was just being his "we don't talk about emotions" self. But now I understand. On my first trip back to Worthington after our move, I drove by our North Street home. I was glad it appeared cared for but my heartstrings weren't tugged other than I felt gratitude for the happy years we spent there. Now it's just a house. 112 North Oak Street, where I spent my childhood, is now just a house. I have wonderful memories of it, but I don't feel any sense of lose connected with the house.
Farrell wrote: "... once you take all the people who are dear to you out of it, a house is really nothing more than a big box to store stuff in. When we die we will take nothing of this life with us except for our bodies and our intelligence, everything else will be left behind. And truly, the more I think about it, the more I see that each and every one of us on this earth are already "dwelling in a tent". None of us are permanent fixtures on this earth, we are all "strangers in a strange land" (Exodus 2:22) who are just passing through on our way towards our eternal home-- our promised land... When I think about it that way I see just how silly it is to put our faith in material things, like our homes and our possessions. Yet it is so easy to do. I am so grateful that the Lord let me see my little house for what it really was-- just a tent-- one of many of the stops [we] will take before we get to where our real home is."
The people who lived in the deserted towns we saw last week moved on to another stop in their journey here on earth.
Kirkland is a wonderful stop on our journey through life on earth. This is a good place for our tent.
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*Claudia Bushman, A Charmed Life,
Journal of Mormon History,
Vol. 38, No. 3, Summer 2012, page 5
mage -freeldsart.com
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