MY SENSE OF PLACE

A long time ago, farther back than most can remember, a man from Ireland came to settle in the mountains in southern Montana. Cornelius Sweeny then married, and had four children; Tom, Mary Alice, Margaret, and Anne.

Tom moved to Alaska and now owns his own insurance company. Margaret married Bill Booher, and together, they had four children, all grown now. Mary Alice married and had three children. She is now the mayor of the small town just south of where she grew up. Anne married Bill Sitton, and they had four children one of which is my father, David Sitton

Of the four children my great-grandparents had, there is only one remaining, my aunt Mary Alice. I was three years old when my great-grandmother died and still remember her. I can quite clearly remember the way she would hold my hand, and the smell of her house . . .

I only recently learned what my great grandmother's live was like. Her family lived on a huge spread in the Elkhorn mountain range. Her husband and his brother built a house, an out house, a dairy barn, a regular barn, a corral and a road with their bare hands.

On my sixteenth birthday, my family and I took a trip out to the old homestead. I went in a car with my aunt, Mary Alice Upton, and my Irish cousin Maeve, who was visiting. As we drove down the bumpy, winding road, Aunt Mary pointed out various landmarks, like the old school that boys would burn down every fall, the road that they used in the winter when the main road was snowed over, the place where the old stage coach line ran through their property, and her special place, the place she went when she needed to be away from the small stone house where she grew up.

And then, as the car crested the hill, we saw it.

The collection of tumbling old buildings and rocks about a yard might not impress some, but to me, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.

The buildings were old, and falling apart, and all that remained of some were the foundations, yet, it was so beautiful. To hear my aunt describe the house and the buildings, to practically hear her and her siblings running throughout the yard, was amazing. Then, as we walked about on the property, we saw the land as she had seen it as a girl growing up. The boulders were more than hunks of stone, they were giants who slept in the imagination of an active six year old. The trees were castles that the British were attacking; she and her brothers would have mock wars every day, with the Irish always defeating the English. It was suddenly so much more than a homestead; it was a home.

There are huge boulders all over the property, remnants of the last ice age. And in the middle of one of the biggest boulders, a huge tree grows out of a crack. Old stone rings from tepees can still be found. The land we owned stretched as far as the eye could see. The grass was green and fertile, with none of the noxious weeds that now plague southeastern Montana. The old paths made by her brothers are still there; faint, but there. As we walked about the property, the past almost literally came alive. Our old homestead is a place of memories, good and bad. The freedom my great-grandfather felt as he finally owned his own land, and the heartache he felt leaving it are all still there. The trials and hardships, the laughter and fun are as much a part of the land as the grass that grows there. And now, it feels as though I finally have a place; a place to belong, and a place where I came from. Although the land had to be sold in the 1960s, it's still a place where my roots began.

That's my place.

Essay of Place Issue
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