Rocky Ridge Farm
I drove us out of Kentucky and into Missouri rolling over the Earth through the sunset and a sky full of stars. We camped for a night in a campground and were treated to an immense early morning thuderstorm with lots of lightening and thunder but little rain. In the morning we looked around for the campground people but found no one so we left them with a silent thank you and drove an hour west to Mansfield where in 1894 Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder moved with their 7 year old daughter Rose. Our bedtime book for the past year or so has been a ‘Little House’ book and when we finished the last of them, discovered a series about Their life here in the ‘Land of the Big Red Apple’. There turn out to be 3 more series about Laura’s mom Caroline, her grandmother Charlotte, which we are reading now and which takes place in Roxbury Massachusetts, right near where Katie, Bob and Maya lived. There are T stops named after places in the books. Our next series is about Martha, Charlotte’s mother and Laura’s great-grandmother. So here we are pioneering pilgrams all.
As the fates would have it as we pulled up into the parking lot across the street from the house Ambiana informed us she was not feeling well and could not make it through the tour of the house. I carried her outside and she spent a few hours napping. I went into the museum which was full of artifacts from the book. Ambiana surfaced enough to go back in with us all and she marvelled at Pa’s fiddle, pictures of Laura and Rose and Almanzo, the slate Laura used as a girl and the teaching certificate she received in ‘These Happy Golden Years’.
After walking the grounds, soaking in the place and having a picnic lunch in the parking lot we drove to the graveyard to pay our respects to their moldering bones for they all live on in our souls. Ambiana was listless, it was in the 80’s and hot & she didn’t want to get out of the car so it was just Jakobi and me and the graves.
We left the graveyard and drove an hour into some Missouri town and ran some errands, hit a thrift store and found a local park to make and eat dinner. Jakobi chased birds and swung in the swing; Ambiana lay sprawled on a blanket and pooped her pants. 🙁 Back in the car at sunset heading West with the gals snoozing and TC Boyle’s Channel Island saga in my head: it’s about Nature and our relationship to it; Ama wants to heal it, Dave wants to save it but it’s more about themselves than it is Nature.
