Fairbanks

Sometimes you search through the woods, then turning the last of many corners, pushing through dense limbs of oak or cedar, you walk onto the stage setting of a life that happened long ago.

Like you're suddenly in a darkened theater, waiting for the curtain to go up on whatever Shakespearean tragedy you've stumbled into. The longer ago the curtain rose, the fewer clues await you upon this stage. Stacked rock walls, rising upward past the knee, covering maybe a quarter acre, maybe stacked rock corrals like old man Milsaps over toward Oak Crossing's of the Brazos.

Not naturally occurring. We're sure of that. Then long nails, more than a few rounded heads, rusted once-molten hammered fingers that held rotting timbers no longer visible here, perhaps carried off by prairie fires. Rusted nails, laying in the too fine loam, brown with regret.

There's a rise just behind, a vantage point it would seem, off toward the towering mountain where a man could put a cabin, but I see no signs. Walking back, more pictures, I find colored glass, "W I" on its head, part of a word or a company name like Mason from back east. Two letters you might puzzle over, before we lose our light.

There's a break in the old fence line, depressions, treads, a path wagon-wide that leads out to a road, forced there by the pincers of the canyon, leading north toward the pass, south to cross Palo Pinto Creek.

A man lived here, I was told, two wives, one at a time, dying, both, don't know why, buried up there on that mountain, side by side, up there in those woods.

Life was harder then, or at least more to the point. Stacked rock walls, light fading to the west behind the tall ridge, growing dark.

More walking is needed.