Stones under Heaven

She came a thousand miles on a wagon with her beloved. It was a thousand miles of creaking oak wheels, dust storms, high winds and rain. A thousand miles of being pregnant with child number 3 and the constant jar and bump on a literal sea of prairie. A thousand miles of wondering how her family was back home, is her Mom okay? is the farm doing well? missing the smell of cookies in Mom's kitchen. And through it all she had nothing at times but hope, faith, and her precious beloved. Her beloved's hands were calloused from the leather reins, dark brown from day after day of pounding sun and his voice hoarse from encouraging the horses to take just one more step. A few months earlier Colorado was a place so distant it seemed worlds away. The stories of it's beauty were hard to believe but they would take this journey together. She only knew that if nothing else that in that togetherness they would see this land. Their success and failures would be THEIRS and theirs alone. There was something fulfilling and even a bit selfish about knowing that even their disappointments would be hers and his alone. Every hardship, every joy, every reward was theirs to share. One hundred years later just west of Creede Colorado they shared something else, two piles of stones, for decades unmarked watching the sun rise in the morning and the heavens give birth to the stars at night. No one really knows their story. I only know that when that last stone was placed atop the pile the person who placed it there so long ago, as did the Lord, knew that her and her beloved truly belonged… together.

S.B. McWilliams