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| The west face of Notch Peak, House Range, Millard County, Utah |
The question of ownership was illustrated to me one Thanksgiving Day. There had been too much food, television and talk. I needed fresh air. Realize this is hard to obtain, when a development is surrounded by feedlots. Outside, there’s an occasional house. Open fields are turned up and over. To the west, the direction of my walk, the House Range rises. Somewhere between here and there are the remains of Topaz, a Japanese Internment Camp, a subject never taught while I was attending school in Utah. As I travel, my awareness is asphalt. The course gray lane heads for the horizon. A mound of manure, cattle and flies await at the end of an extremely long block. To the right, there is an irrigation canal; the fields are much lower. A wood frame house sits in the bottom of one of these fields. Scattered trees are bare. Clouds are thin and the sky is high. Whether this is the way it was, I can’t really say. Even the strongest memories are more poetry than prose. However, I am fairly certain about the thrashing of birds, a heated squabble over land, and that’s not just because they were in flight. The trespasser was gliding in with ease. The other, was a fluster of homeland panic. Horses roam fields filling in with wind. Deeds mean nothing to the mice, rabbits, cats and dogs that wander around staking out territory. An array of overlapping inhabitants claim to own the place. Every layer seeking control while coyote calls rule the night. And who or what has claim enough to stop all this clamor? The wind will be the wind you know. And the wind picking up a little dust is carried away.
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| Topaz Japanese Internment Camp hospital foundation. |
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