staking claim
As a follow up post to the previous post “on my land”, the reason for walking the land that day was to make the final plot map before the final closing.
We met the geometra at the site mid-day when he did the final measuring, and plotting of the land points. I wanted to drive in the first stakes and as he drove up, he handed me the gloves, a hammer, and pin-pointed each angled point of the layout of the land with the satellite navigated surveying instrument. The first was up towards the entrance to the road, a part of the plot that II’d walked on many times in these past couple of years.
Then as we walked over the dried and harvested crops that were crunching and cracking below my boots, I realized that I hadn’t ever actually walked into the expanse of the lot. I’d only ever walked down one side of it, as for most of the entire years before it was always planted with crops. But after the last harvest of the summer wheat, the owner had decided it probably wasn’t worth another plant, since we were scheduled for closing before the seed would produce. So in the past month or two it had been left, dried, and cleared.
This is how it came to be that I found myself in the inner edges of the plot that day, walking the outline of the shape of the lot, and hammering in the stakes. Looking back up at the road, and it felt much larger than I’d imagined, and all of a sudden I felt one of those pangs, which I’m sure will keep happening throughout this process, where the realness of the situation descended upon me. I was standing where one day I would wake up, hang my hat, create community, harness personal rituals, and live.