La Vega

I can't seem to get rid of this underlining business, and I am too distracted to do my homework, so here is a short story from last year. 

 

 

La Vega

San Luis, my home town. To date, it is considered one of the poorest towns in Colorado. Did really I plan on making my way out into the world, like any cliché , happy-ending story- would? Yeah, maybe I had dreams- but did I really think it would happen? Nah- and guess what, it didn’t. Still, 62 years later- I still live in San Luis. No, not in the same house, I live a block away, directly across from the La Vega- the oldest church in Colorado. San Luis is my home town,  I am Leroy Medina, and this is my story.

In my youth, when hands didn’t have their rustic leathery look, I thought my parents were from opposite worlds. My mom was my preserver and my dad, I considered, was our destroyer. The three of us worked, and in a town of only 300 people- work was one thing you could really get good at. My mom was a collector. A berry collector, and every fall she would compose one of her many sweet jams.  We worked in the comfort of our kitchen, taking the newly picked berries and storing them like memories. My Dad on the other hand, burned; he burned the history of the Sangre de Cristo forests. He said he burned because the trees were sick. How could you believe a middle aged man that loved to play with fire?   

My father burned and burned, till there were no more “sick” trees in the back country. Now it there was only the patch near the north-west side of town. Despite our town’s pleas- he still went through with his disastrous plan. That hazed afternoon that changed my thinking. The day my father’s ‘controlled fire’ went astray and burned our town’s most precious possession: La Vega. I remember shoveling the melted stained glass, and coughing into the ashen air, while my father tried to explain his reasoning to the local police. After they took him away, my life took on a new direction. I worked night shifts with my mom, sealing her mason jars while in the day I explored the fire-eaten woods.

As I learned the ways of the forest I pieced together of my father’s once mysterious life. I learned about the Pine Beetle- and its effect on our Sangre de Cristo forests.  I trailed the once thickly forested woods of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains searching for my answers. I so recall the day when my calloused left hand grasped a wooden support as I stepped out to look below into the valley of singed forest. The brim of my deep green ranger cap slipped below my hairline. The idea hit me like a shot strong of whiskey. What I saw there, over the ridge, looking out, was dots of green faintly nestled into the charcoaled burned wood. My father had not been destroying, he had been paving the way for new life. He was making room for the new shoots to sprout.  As my life lengthened and theirs shortened I came soon to realize what my place in the world was.  I would follow my mother’s guidance and preserving the forest, and jarring/captivating the memories and then finish off with the touch of rebirth and new life- like my father had subtly taught me.  

When looking down at my hands in my old age now, it is almost as if my parents are looking right back at me. Still today I contain the sweet scent and feeling of jelly underneath my fingers and the coating of new soil and new life on the back of my hands. Do you really think I could’ve made it to the red carpet? Yeah, maybe. I did have dreams- but did I really think it would happen? Still no- but guess what? I still live in the little town of San Luis, directly across from my church- La Vega.