Somehow I got reminded of an author, Barry Lopez, whom I hadn’t read for a number of years so I went searching out a couple of his works. Lopez is an environmentalist and his writing is reminiscent of Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, Aldo Leopold, and others. One of the Lopez books, About This Life, contained a chapter that spoke to me quite loudly, “A Passage of the Hands.” In essay form, he tells of the memories in his hands: “. . . the subtle corrugation of cardboard boxes, the slickness of the oilcloth on the kitchen table, the shuddering bend of a horses’s short-haired belly
. . .” In another passage he tells of working for a summer on a Wyoming ranch: “It was strengthening to work with my hands, with ropes and bridles and hay bales, with double-bitted axes and bow saws, currying horses, scooping grain . . .”
Remnants of touch linger in my own memory and begin to take shape: the warmth of an egg plucked from under a squawking hen, shivers from touching an unseen lizard in the dirt while checking my gopher trap, polished wood of an oft-used pitchfork, sandpaper rasp of a cow’s tongue, softness of the sheep fleece,
. . . sting of blizzard-driven snow on my bare face, wetness of a rainstorm with no shelter nearby, heat of the summer sun in a cloudless sky,
. . . heft of wheat in my cupped hands, jolt from the recoil of a 12 gauge shotgun, calluses in my palms from lifting hay bales, lightness of foot after shedding overshoes in the spring, hot glow after catching a hard hit baseball,
. . . draw of a fillet knife through a fish belly, pain in my ankle from the kick of a horse, aching throb in my knee after driving a motorcycle into a junk pile,
. . . my bride’s kiss on our wedding day, holding my new-born sons for the first time, and now --- holding my grandchildren.
