I drove yesterday late in the day to an old place. An old place that takes me back to days long past, when I was young and carefree and life seemed to be also. Many years ago, in the late 70's and early 80's, I lived in an old cabin outside of Sedalia. To get there you drive up Hwy 67 a few miles, up into where it enters Jarre Canyon. That's where I went, but the cabin isn't there anymore.

A few years after I moved out it burned to the ground. A friend of mine was living there, and he got home one day just in time to see the fire department knock down the old stone fireplace that stood in the center of the house. No one knows how the fire started but some suspect it was arson. My friend and his wife lost everything except the shirts on their backs and the cars they were driving home from work that day.

I have been up there a few times since, but it has been awhile, and yesterday, with the rain and the snow, and the foothills white and the tops of the buttes hidden by fog, it seemed the place to go. I don't know why.

The oak that once hung over where I parked are dead now, skeletons wet and dark. The steep driveway is almost hidden by growth and the trail that once led to the back door is faint. I hike up to where the old cabin once stood. Trees are growing where it once was.

Its always a shock, and time maybe blunts it some, and yet when I see the kitchen sink, where I once washed my dishes and the old gas heater, which sat in the kitchen and was saved for those really cold mornings because using it meant lugging propane tanks around, when I go back and see these things 30 years later burnt and tossed in a pile, its always a shock.

My friend's motorcycle, which was parked on the porch, still sits there. Everything is burned off it and the cooling fins on the cyliders are melted from the intense heat, but it still sits there. I poke around a bit more and find a couple of old rock walls that I built. It makes me smile to see them still standing. I find a small piece of quartz where the old fireplace stood and slip it in my pocket. There were some beautiful pieces of quartz set into that fireplace once.

I think it is easy to get caught up in the moment, to think that today's problems will never end, that tomorrow will never come. I think it is easy to believe, especially when we are young, that we will live forever. I think we can get caught up in acquiring crap and building our legacies and our businesses and our careers, and we think all of that is going to last forever. And it doesn't.

I try looking for the cemetary. It is just up the hill and the trail is still visible. The original homesteaders are buried there, and a fence once encircled it. Outside of the fence I had buried Hank, my closest friend and companion that I had adopted from the Humane Society in Michigan when he was 7 weeks old. I had thrown him in my VW and headed west. For 3 years we traveled everywhere together until one day he was hit by a car in Jarre Canyon. Things are too overgrown and wet and I can't find it. Oh well.

Its getting dark as I walk back to my truck. The aspens by the creek are bigger now and just starting to turn. I remember bonfires and laughter, music and friends. I remember Octoberfests and horseshoes and cold January mornings and hauling water in 5 gallon jugs.

I remember all this and more, but when I turn around for one last look it is all gone, swallowed up by the forest and time and a fire that no one knows how it started. Some of those friends are gone now, too, and many of the others have scattered far and away. It is all memories now. As I drive off I see the maple are turning, bright yellow in the fading light. I am glad I came back.