Section I, Chapter 7; First Line:

There will be no cowrie shell to tell her they’ve found their home.

A forced migration, one not of the spirit, is void of the signs that mark a destination as home. But there are other roads to take, paths of mind and spirit, that sometimes provide other guides.



Note: This will be the last of these for a while. Tomorrow will mark a return to images; thereafter . . . [shrug]. Some histories contain too much pain to wade through and come out the other side, and I cannot afford to get trapped right now. There are other stories that need to be told, other spirits who should not be forgotten. Perhaps it's their turn.



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Section I, Chapter 6; First Line:

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Her ghosts walk all the time, not only at October’s end.

There are ghosts all along each path of migration; mysteries, too. Some will be understood, their puzzles solved, only long decades after departing from a stop along the path. 

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Section I, Chapter 5; First Line:

The one place of refuge along this dry and dusty road she travels is a big yellow building with brown wood trim at the center of a city block.

Migration sends a child into the unknown, in pursuit of goals not her own. Once in a great while, a place of refuge all her own appears.



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Section 1, Chapter 4; First Line:

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The ghosts in this place are unfamiliar, speaking a language her own spirit cannot understand.

Sometimes spirits line the detours along a migratory path. Sometimes, what lines the path is a void, more frightening that the ghosts could ever be.

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Section 1, Chapter 3: First Line:

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This migratory path is forcing her to become someone she doesn’t know.

Sometimes, the path of forced migration changes you into someone you don't recognize. Sometimes your ghost lives in the mirror; sometimes it inhabits a whole other world, known only to you.



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Section 1, Chapter 2; First Line:

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She can feel the ghosts in the halls, especially on dark and cloudy days, but nowhere near the number that crowded the high corridors of the poor kids’ school.

Forced migration often leads to the forcing of other things, as well, including enforced loss. Sometimes that loss spawns ghosts of one's own. 

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Section I, Chapter 1; First Line:

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It’s a brilliantly sunny day in September when her father stalks into the principal’s office at her new school.

When one is set forcibly upon a path of migration, obstacles and detours are not always immediately recognizeable, much less surmountable. But sometimes, ghosts of a time long past can help to clear the way.

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Migration, Section I, Chapter 1; First Line:

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On a late summer’s day, yet still far earlier than it would have been back home, her mother takes her to her new school to enroll before the start of the new year.

Sometimes there are no comforting ghosts along the path of migration, only the monsters of loneliness. But sometimes, the path can be rerouted just a bit.


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Introduction, Chapter 7; First Line:

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She passes a solitary summer to the tune of the rolling potash trains and the acrid scent of sulfur.

Forced migration is never comfortable; new worlds are strange and often hellish. But if you're lucky, once in a while you can still find moments of joy in being.



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Introduction, Chapter 6; First Line:

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The new house is not without its horrors.

Migration leads you to  new places, places inhabited by new spirits. The ghosts are not always friendly.



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Introduction, Chapter 5; First Line:

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Soon enough, they migrate north and east, to the other side of town.

When migration takes you far from what's familiar, you have to find a place to call your own. If you settle deep within that place, you may hear its own ghosts walk.

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Introduction, Chapter 4; First Line:

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It’s not long before they migrate a small distance further, to another small, cold house a few blocks away.

When migration is forced by powers greater than your own, you have sometimes have to go wears others take you. Sometimes, you leave ghosts behind you on the path.

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Introduction, Chapter 3; First Line:

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And so begins her new life, what she knows of it, anyway, in this hard, harsh, cold desert place.

There are hard lessons along a migratory path: new languages, new people, new customs, new climate. Some lessons teach by example — and some by the example of what not to do. 



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Introduction, Chapter 2; First Line:

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They stay at the motor court for what seems a small lifetime, probably only a few weeks, but long enough for it to become normal to her, a home of sorts.

Migration teaches of life in ways you can never anticipate. You learn that who you think is a friend may be your assailant; you learn that safer friends may yet be kept from you by force; you learn the power of loneliness.

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Introduction, Chapter 1; First Line:

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The first stage of her migration passes in a blaze of bright winter sun.

Migrations aren't always a journey in a straight line. Sometimes, they're not even progress.



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Migration. Introduction: Departure. First Line:

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It began with her father angrily throwing their belongings in the back of the car.

We are a people whose story is rooted in migration. Sometimes, the migration becomes very personal indeed: forced, without options, over burning bridges and boundless backtracks. This was the beginning of mine.


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The past is gone; the future will not be; all there is is now.

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The place that I lightly fictionalized into Hunger Road? I know now that that will be my only way of going back. It doesn't exist anymore.

I made the mistake last night of looking it up on the satellite view of Google maps. Everything has been razed to make way for the dull brown fields of factory farms.

House. Barn. Shed. Orchard. Pond. Marsh. Raspberry patch. Cherry tree. Weeping willow. The trees that lined the road.

All gone. All of it.

Also, the house where I was born, backed by my father's garage? Razed to make way for a parking lot. My history. Erased.

I sat here and wept.

The only place home exists is in memory, and in my spirit.

It was not this way only months ago, although the changes had begun. But this has occurred only since I began writing, and my grief is a profound and indescribable thing.

I have wept intermittently all day. I didn't realize the extent of the hold the place had on my heart, on my soul, something far deeper than flesh and blood and bone. I also didn't realize it, but I suppose I was hoping, against all hope, that someday I would be able to return, just for a moment, to bring Wings and show him the land that was my own soul and spirit, the earth beneath me feet and the life that flourished upon it that was my own life, that gave me life.

Now all that remain are the ghosts of the trees — oh, yes, far more than merely the maples; virtually all of them, all along the road — the ghosts of earth and water and sky. Even those ghosts exist only as shimmering reflections, their edges softened, shortened, lengthened by the middle distance of memory, like the image of the willow in the pond that is no longer there.

We say there is a bridge to cross between the worlds. The only bridges I have found are the ones I have built on faith and the aid of Spirit. Some burn even as I cross, flames licking at the soles of my moccasins; others become walled up, denying me a way back.

I cannot bring myself to return to the place of my birth, nor to the place the immediately followed Hunger Road. It's too close, this knowledge that it is all gone, the wound too deep. And so, the next story picks up with my departure from that latter place, a forced migration of my child's body and spirit.

It's a long story, one that I may only be able to tell in pieces. I have no future in the sense that most people consider theirs, since I have no children. The past is gone; nothing there remains. All there is is now.

The ghosts that live in my memory are my only bridge now between the worlds of my past and present. Perhaps this is the lesson Grandfather has been trying to teach me. But our story is a story of migration, and my own migration is not yet complete. There are bridges of the spirit yet to cross.

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