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© The Goatherder

Having traveled this old world over and having seen quite a few things in my few years, it was getting nearer and nearer to that time we all think and dream about as young men, which meant time to retire and time to either start enjoying life or start a second career.
Since my eighteenth birthday, I had traveled and moved from hither and yon. So what do you do when it is time to stop the gallivanting and settle down to a normal life? Heck as a young kid in my teens my dream in life had been to buy the Old Draper Place which sat at the base of Porter's mountain and was known as Buford's bottom. I had dreamed of putting a white board fence around it and raising Aberdeen Angus Cattle. But before I had even made enough to support my family, much less buy a house or new car, they had built oil storage tanks in Buford's bottom. They had also built convenience stores on each end of the bottom, which had shot my dream down.
Now what does someone who has spent 24 years in the military traipsing around do when they retire? Where do they go and what do they really do when they get there? Being no different than millions of others, I did not know and really had no ideas.
What would I do for work when I retired? What was the job market like for someone like me? Could I do like so many others I had known? Could I do what they had done, which was to come back and putter around, and then be bored to death? Well, not be bored to death but maybe be so bored that the fruit of the grape would become my chief form of sustenance so I would die at an early age?
Well one day I took the dog and went up into the hills to think this problem over. Got back in a real neat place out in the wilds, in a small secluded spot, where I built me a little fire, brewed a cuppa, and lit my pipe.
I sat back and started to watch the clouds float by. Guess I had been sitting there drifting in never never land for a half hour to maybe a couple hours when I remembered something old Sergeant LaBeaux, one of my drill instructors at Parris Island, had said sometime during the first couple of days after I arrived for boot camp. That being, "Gentlemen, you can never go home after you leave and come here." Well at that moment I thought, bull hocky, just another piece of Marine propaganda. Man, any fool knows that home is home, is home. I didn't think much about it after that day, but forgot it and went my way. Heck that was just another one of those non-subtle ways they had to get you to become a puppet.
First let me say that there is nothing more soothing and no better way to solve a problem than to go to the hills, away from everyone, or to go for a long walk. And so, on this day I had a good cuppa. On well it was an old GI mess kit cup which I used while hunting. And of course, being out like that, I had my pipe and some tobacco, which to me were good.
So I sat there looking at the sky and hoping some deer, or at least an old coyote, would walk into my view. I just sat and then this thing the old Marine Drill Instructor had said came to me. Man it hit me like a bolt of lightening, Kerwham!
First, I remembered the time he had made the statement, and then I began to remember other things. But most of all I remembered how miserable I had been when I got out of the Corp and moved back to Virginia, and back to work. My plans at that time were to work, go to night school and save my money until I had enough to attend college. That lasted less than a year and during that time, I had been the most miserable person on earth. I went back into the military, brought my family and we moved and grew.
Then I thought about where I was from and what the conditions had been like. I thought about what I had grown to like and to do. Also I thought about the friends who had gone to the military, pulled a hitch, and then come back. Some had assimilated quite well and were happy, while others had never been happy at all with the old way. What would I do? What kind of business could I open? Could I be happy back there with all the changes which had occurred in the intervening years? Would my sons become hicks, or would they learn about the good things in life? Would they grow up with desires I had been trying to instill in them?
Right now, it seemed that all I was doing was asking questions. Then I looked down on ridge, oh about a hundred and fifty yards to the East, and saw six Mulies ambling along. Three does, fawns, a nice spike, two bucks, a three point and a nice old five point. They were just ambling along, browsing and slowly making their way out the ridge. I would guess they were going down to the creek for a drink since it was getting late in the afternoon, and was about time for them to drink and start the nightly grazing.
Suddenly a movement caught my eye. About a hundred yards further down the hill stood a scroungy old coyote. He was looking at the deer and probably wishing he had one for his supper. He must have been an old one for he was surely the skinniest and scroungiest coyote I had ever seen. He watched the deer for five minutes or so and then he trotted off, knowing full well that he wouldn't have any of them for his supper.
About that time, something spooked the deer and they ran over the hill, out of sight. I looked down and saw that my fire had burned out. All that was left was a small pile of white ashes, which I had ringed with light brown stones. I poured the rest of my cuppa on the ashes, covered them with dirt, then stood looking around.
Yes, I had made my decision and I felt good about it. I imagined it was the same decision my wife would come up with, and a decision that make our family a happier and better one. I guess old Sergeant LeBeaux knew what he was talking about when he had said that once you leave home you can never go back. For home, I have discovered, is like everything else. Change occurs. And so I have resigned myself to spend my days remembering and dreaming about what a fantastic place it had been. It had been the place of my birth and the place where I had lived as a child. (tomWYO, Dec. 26, 99)





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