The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.


TREASURE IN THE HEARTLAND

A Place To Land

by db Conard, The Quill

No one could have known what each length of bail twine would add up to over the years. To me, it was that blessing that touches your life when you least expect it.

The greatest Treasures in my life are my three sons, Adam Joshua and David. This week it was all about my oldest, Adam and a day that as a father I have worried about for ever. The day that he would fall, a day, that I felt sure had to come.

Since before Adam could walk he was a climber with no fear. He couldn't walk across the room, but he could get to the top of the kitchen counter as if by magic.

As Adam grew older his climbs grew higher. He will spend hours climbing a mountain so that he can spend just minutes skiing down. It is called extreme skiing, and he can have it.

By profession Adam is a Landscape Architect which for the most part keeps his feet on or near the ground. He specializes in rock work, building some pretty fancy water falls, which are up to fifty feet tall, using stones weighing thousands of pounds.

Adam's latest thing is old building materials, which he acquires by what he calls deconstructing old farm buildings. His company will take those, no longer useful farm buildings, and using green techniques, make them useful. To do this, Adam disassembles the lumber and beams leaving behind a piece of clean landscaped property. While working on his latest project, a barn in northern Montana, Adam was climbing around in the eaves when as he reached out for a hand hold, the board he grabbed came away in his hand.

Adam was almost able to catch himself, with "almost" being the key word. He missed a second hand hold, and fell twenty feet to the floor of the barn.

Most of us can imagine the accumulated clutter that finds its way into old structures like the one my son was about to tear down. Well, more than one hundred years of use had left quite a collection of equipment and farming castoffs in this old barn, filling the floor with all kinds of spears and hard edges that were not designed to be fallen on.

Adam said that he was surprised how much time he had to think as he fell. He knew that it wasn't going to end well and could only imagine the worst.

Divine intervention, is what I call the saving of my son.

There was only one spot on that barn floor that he could fall on that wasn't edges and points, and Adam landed on it.

Over the years, as animals were fed, the twine that held the bales of hay together were removed and tossed into a pile. When Adam found that pile at the end of his fall, it was several feet high, and the best thing he could have hoped for as a place to land.

Who could have known what each piece of twine might mean in the years to come to so many lives. I could have received that nightmare call only parents can imagine. Adam could have been crippled if not worse, and the world of family and friends could have been forever changed by loss and mourning.

It would have taken only a few minutes to gather the twine and drop it on a burn pile, it could have had no purpose other than being good for critters to nest in, yet for years it grew and in the end, it was there to save my son's life by breaking his fall.

Adam reached out to break his fall, and did manage to break his arm, which is a good thing in that it was a cheap lesson that perhaps might encourage him to be a little safer and not think he is invincible.

I know where my thanks go, and my mind and my heart haven't stopped saying "thank you" for this blessing to my Heartland. My son is hurt, but safe and alive, and that to me is truly a Treasure.