Lonely On the Mountain

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There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Pa said that when I was a boy. There was a hot, dry wind moaning through the hot, dry trees, and we were scared of fire in the woods, knowing that if fire came, all we had would go.

We had crops in the ground, but there'd been no rain for weeks. We were scrapin' the bottom of the barrel for flour and drinkin' coffee made from ground-up beans. We'd had our best cow die, and the rest was ganted up, so's you could count every rib.

Two years before, pa had set us to diggin' a well. "Pa?" I asked. "Why dig a well?

We've got the creek yonder and three flowin' springs on the place. It's needless work." He lifted his head, and he looked me right in the eye and said, "Dig a well." We dug a well.

We grumbled, but when pa said dig, you just naturally dug. And lucky it was, too.

For there came the time when the bed of the creek was dust and the springs that had always flowed weren't flowin'. We had water, though. We had water from a deep, cold well. We watered our stock, we watered our kitchen garden, and we had what was needful for drinkin' because of that well.

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