Owning Land but for a Moment

It’s generational deep in my American culture to desire to own land. It took decades for me to acquire an amount of it larger than a normal lot. Now that I have it, in my circumspective (is that the right word?) and presumably wiser years, I realize I don’t really own it.

Let me explain.

I’m a genealogist on occasion. I dig through old family records, and when I do, I often come upon land deed records. Guess who owns that family land now, 112, 240, or 85 years later? Not me! Nor my kin. Some somebody that we don’t know owns the land now.

My relative, I can see, ‘owned’ the land for only a decade or perhaps a few decades. A blip in time. What he and she did with that land at that time — that’s what has lasted beyond their years. It matters how the land was managed, if trees were left standing, if more trees were planted, if a fruit seed was put into the earth, if the meadow was mowed or dug up, or if a pond was installed. It matters if they killed all predator mammals, or if they destroyed every beaver dam.

What my ancestors did on the land is what impacted the land.

They did not get to keep it forever.

Their lives were short.

my chaos garden at the pond’s edge

My life is also short. I will not ever see the forest trees reach their greatest potential. I am living with the results of the deed owners of the land I am on now. Somebody in the 1800s chopped down all of the largest trees, so I will never see my trees become as massive as they saw. But I am thankful for a past deed owner who took the time and money to install a spring-fed pond. It attracts wildlife and is the ‘crowning jewel’ of our land. His actions have impacted the land – and me – beyond the years of his life.

I hope whoever is on our land in a hundred years will enjoy the trees I plant (I hope they’re massive by then.) I hope their families will pick the fruit from the trees I planted. And I hope they will see the Monarch butterfly migration, the red salamanders, and the big black bears, all because I stewarded the land well while it was “mine.”