Legacies are built by small moments. Moments tied by consistency and stacked brick by brick until a fortress. There is a point — a point whose clarity is discovered in reflection — when these moments become eternal, remembered, stored in the minds and hearts of a posterity. Then, there is legacy.
My grandfather’s death caused us to ponder his legacy. Rekindled memories, pictures in the mind, moments of significance — all rising like an inspired congregation. But, to me, one moment emerges from the rest.
Youthful anticipation fills me as we roll up the tremendous mountains before us. Englemann spruce, douglas fir, quaking aspen, all drifting by like a cloth wiping over the truck windows. At the summit, there is a clearing, and our small caravan moves line-wise into an open field bordered by towering evergreens. Cars, trucks, campers, and horse trailers take their places along the shady treeline.
I hop down from our camper and help my grandfather unload the horses from the trailer and tie them up to graze. He is quiet, conspicuously contemplative. His eyes flick from the ropes to the horses, but he does not see them so much as feel them as he loops the knots with well-trained hands. His mind is elsewhere.
Leaving me to finish, he makes his way down the line of shaded vehicles to a young couple unfamiliar to me. Their faces appear puzzled as he reaches out his long, thin arm and points in my direction. Reluctantly, they return to their small car, carefully — almost cautiously — opening the doors, as if to not make a bother.
My grandfather turns and makes his way back. “Can you help me load up the horses?” he asks me.
“But we just got them tied up…” I say, hesitantly.
“We’re trading spots with that car over there,” he says, nodding toward the small car and its confused occupants. My position being angled from the vehicle, I can see an infant asleep in the back seat.
“But — ”
I stop. His expression is strangely serene, so comfortable, so sure; the edges of his lips curving up slightly. His movements are deliberate now, his attention wholly focused on untying the fresh knot with his skilled hands. He seems to be relieved of something, like he had performed an act he was instructed to perform, and it is done now. I see he is settled in his decision and he has no intention of telling me why.
We untie the horses, hitch the trailer, and move to the small car’s parking space, as it takes ours. Again, we unload the horses and tie them to the trailer.
The whole ordeal is exhausting. My stomach grumbles. I climb inside the camper and find my grandmother arranging things.
“Grandma,” I ask, “do we have any macaroni and cheese?”
“Macaroni and cheese?” she laughs. “Well, it is your favorite, isn’t it? We can check in the cupboard.”
She begins searching the shelves when I hear it. A cracking, a thunder, cutting through the air. Looking out the open back door of the camper, I see the trunk of a huge tree, its bark shifting toward us. The cracking. “Get out! Get out!” The words erupt from my mouth. I run, run instinctively, leaping from the back of the camper, the tree bearing down on me. I look back as I sprint perpendicular to the tree’s path and see my grandmother at the camper door, looking up, an expression of horror.
She won’t make it. Turning, she dives back into the camper as the tree crashes onto the roof, smashing and flattening the metal casing and structural beams, then rolling to the side and falling to the ground, hitting with a boom that makes the horses jump with such fever that they pull the trailer several feet forward.
A silence. Dust falling in the air. I move back toward the camper with speed of body but reluctance of spirit. The quiet. Then, a rustling movement from within. A head of dark brown hair filled with branch bits and pine needles materializes.
Miraculously, she has no injuries. The camper is severely damaged but not irreparable. As we calm the horses and try to gain some sense of order, the infant still sleeps in the back seat of the small car.
“Heavenly Father,” I think, “thank you for saving the baby, but couldn’t we have moved our camper somewhere else?”
My grandmother sees me and guesses my thought. She laughs within herself. “It did some damage, didn’t it?” she says.
“Why did he move it here? If he felt like he was supposed to move that other car, why would he put our camper in its place?”
Her eyebrows raise and she appears more thoughtful now. “I’m not sure,” she says with an exhale as she sits for a moment. “But I have a feeling if we weren’t there someone else would have been… When your grandfather feels something, he acts. He has faith.”
Her smile returns. “It’s a good thing your grandpa is a welder. Fixin’ this old thing will be a good project for him.”
I smile and say nothing. I can see him across the field talking to the others with his glinting teeth flashing in the firelight. Now, he appears to me even taller, more dignified, than before. I feel proud to know him, to be his grandson.
