Flashback: To Another Era

Prompt #6: “Were you enamored with another era as a child? Is there a time in history you thought it would have been fascinating to live in? Why?”

My answers are simple: Yes, Yes, and because I read it in a book.

When I was in my early elementary years, my Social Studies book had a unit on American Indians–and I was absolutely fascinated by it. I spent long hours poring over that book, books from the library, and most especially the article in the Compton’s encyclopedia about American Indians.

I guess I don’t know which “era” particularly I was interested in, but the “American Indian” lifestyle was what I wanted. Of course, I freely mixed between tribes in choosing what I wanted to emulate.

I would have a Hopi dwelling, an adobe pueblo in the cliffs. I’d wear moccasins (I tried rather unsuccessfully to make my own using some brown fabric I’d found in my mother’s stash.) I’d make beaded buckskin clothing and weave beautiful blankets. Of course, I’d eat pemmican. Naturally. I was an old pro at making it with the maple buds that littered our driveway.

In those days, I loved to practice “stealth”, sneaking up on siblings or otherwise like I would on an animal I was hunting. I also practiced running like the wind, making endless circles around our darkened church sanctuary while my parents were having Bible study in the fellowship hall.

Later on, pioneer days appealed, fueled by my love of the Little House books and Janette Oke’s “Love Comes Softly” series.

I wanted to build a house from logs found by the crick bed, chink it up with a nice mud plaster. I wanted to stuff a tick with feathers or hay (my romantic ideas didn’t really consider allergies those days). I wanted to kill a chicken and boil it, to sun-dry wild-grown fruit, to make cheese from my own cow’s milk.

Thing is, this particular yen didn’t die.

I don’t yearn for those days anymore (since my romantic view has tarnished somewhat and realizes that being a pioneer would be HARD work)–but I still want to do all that stuff.

Reality shows were just beginning when I was in high school, and I dreamt of a show that I’d be on that would let me pretend to be a pioneer for a month or a year. (Eventually, I think PBS did create a similar show, but I haven’t seen it.)

Now, as I window shop for houses, my heart is often pulled to those properties with a house that’s not at all a house of my dreams but that has the luxury of 19 acres or 23. A crick. Outbuildings.

I could keep a cow, I think–fresh milk for making cheese. (Yeah right–my family comes from dairymen, and keeping dairy cattle is seriously hard work.) I could heat my home with wood I “make” myself (as my family calls it when they ask my grandparents if they can come up to “make wood”.) I could grow everything I need to live on, keep bees for honey, maybe get sheep and take up weaving.

Never mind that keeping such a home would be a full-time occupation for more than one person–and that it’d probably leave little for paying the infernal property taxes. It’s still a pet dream of mine–to escape into back-to-the-land pioneering.

Of course, I have to make a living, so these imaginings stay in the realm of imagination. But this year I have a plan to do some of my pet projects. I have a friend who keeps chickens and I plan to buy one. I have some whipping cream ready to be churned to butter. I have recipes for cheese and some rennet stored up. I’m gonna be a pioneer some day, you just wait and see.