Still A Pioneer, Sean Burke

Sean Burke

Smoke billowed from the stack as the wheels of the iron beast awoke from their slumber and started their long pilgrimage on cold rails. A messy faced man set down his bag on the wooden benches lining the inside of the car and leaned his head out the window. He gazed through the crowd that were seeing off their soon to be departed, through the men and beasts that made their business down the muddy streets, through the freshly built wooden stores and stables. The man’s eyes were set on the hills, trees, and rivers that his heart sent him to fnd so many years ago. He was older now, and his body and mind let him know. Time was moving too fast for him. Sitting down, he reached into his old leather bag and pulled out a pencil and a journal dated “1824”.

September 4th, 1876

When was the last time I put my thoughts to words? When I had youth, energy, and a dream. It’s a shame man’s fatal faw is time, but then again, what would our lives be without it. As I sit and write, the world I have become used to is fashing by me. I am glad I was able to enjoy it in it’s full when I frst arrived with wagon and ox. Much of that virgin world still lives in me today while pick and shovel makes work ravishing it. I cannot blame the men who do it, I earned a good dollar from that type of work when I frst arrived.

But I digress, I don’t mean to tell you about my life. Just my knowledge of it. Scraps that I have picked up in my years along the coast and now that I must return East it would be meaningful to leave a part of me behind. I only hope you will listen to a few words from an old man who once was a spike driver, a gold panner, a surveyor, but all still a pioneer at heart. I frst arrived in a land where the trees stood tall and the air was quiet. But given time, we all change. The trees will fall and the cacophony of metal striking stone will follow. One afternoon you stand tall and proud, and the next morning a cane will be in your hand. What I tell you is not meant to send you into the streets looking for life (although it will be where you look), but to prop your heavy head up. Look at the light and then look at the shadows. You will see all the stories you will ever need that way, and with that you can live.

The old man stopped writing, looked over the paper, and then returned to it with pencil in hand. Trees were a green and brown blur as the sound of pencil scratching on paper mixed with the lull of the train car’s wheels. With a faint sigh he tore the paper from its roots in the spine of the journal, and let it slip out the window. For a moment the sheet was a bright speck of white against a backdrop of gray rocks before it was snatched by the wind. Sent through forests and plains, over rivers and valleys, the thoughts on that paper would arrive where they were needed. All it would take would be time.