Coming Out of Nowhere

“The earth near our place/ was cradle, / it rocked us— / became our skin. / House doors opened, / spilled us out, / we disappeared into trees— / they clothed us in delirious green. /. . . We knew the song / of this place, made it up, / sang it—”   Homestead life is often romanticized as a valiant, resilient family persisting in the clean isolation of pristine wilderness, living off the land and depending only on each other. But there can be a darker side to this existence. Linda Schandelmei