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Eternal Harvest by Lelia Thomas

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This is one of the pictures I took while in Mississippi to bury my family’s dog after she passed away in March of 2004. Mournful things can come with such mixed blessings. In the loss of my dog, who was most certainly a part of our family, I got to go back to the place where my childhood thrived most. In a way, her passing birthed something, or at least renewed it, within me by way of this place–something that was in my past and hers.

One thing I love so much about this land is that it doesn’t change all that much. A lot can change in a year, in even a day, but when I go back here, though everything around it has changed, it is still the place I grew the most in, and it still has the potential to let me grow some more.

The trees are still fifty feet and more in the air, deeply rooted and heavy-limbed. The hills still roll, and the flat areas are still flat. The pond hasn’t lost or gained any water. The grass is still kept low where cattle mull about freely within the large amount of space. Bamboo and cattails still grow up the road a ways, and I vaguely remember my father teaching me how to tie knots and make fishing poles on mist-filled dawns when I was five years old. The two giant white oaks still stand stoically, almost in even stride, at the front of the property. My father’s old friend Bobby still farms, raising crops across the road.

Before I went back–for the first time in ten or so years–I always wondered whether I would ever find that flood of emotion in a place again. As my father dug a grave for our old, loved dog, I went out with my camera, retraced some of my steps, as I’ve mentioned in other photographs from this same visit.

There’s something funny about the south and the southwest that northerners and northeasterners will never understand, sadly. Even in the dead of winter, even after hard freezes, things don’t ever really seem to die. I’ve been up north during winters before, and things seem quite literally dead, almost hopeless, until spring turns in to blow it all away with blooms.

The south isn’t like that, really, and as I looked around, taking pictures, I realized it’s always in a sort of eternal harvest. It never ceases to provide, on some level.

People can take a great lesson from this picture, from places like the one I describe here, and from similar experiences. Live life with constant turnout. No day should be led to lay dormant. And you will find, as I find, even those days which seem so lazy and pointless are later days you cherish and yearn for most.

A lot of people say, even I’ve been known to say, “Live this day as if it were your last.” That’s such wonderful advice, but worldly minds are not built to understand the concept of death being a day or less away. So live your life, not as if this day is your last, but live it as if it is your most important project, your most beautiful piece of art, and constantly give it to those who will see it for what it is: the purest, truest art, a canvas constantly adding new layers of paint and scenery. You can be an eternal harvest as well.