Keywords
ranch, dynamite, river
Document Type
Essay
Description
My father stored his dynamite here in this barn-dynamite he used to change the course of the river. A decade after he died, my brothers Ed and Jerry got rid of the dynamite. I can imagine how they got rid of it. I can see them throwing a stick at a time down some canyon; a stick a time after urging the old fuses to burn, first slow then fast, until the leaking, seamy stuff had been ''gotten rid of.' ' No matter what they did with it, I suppose that it all went off, and no half box of unexploded dynamite lies strewn down a bank waiting to surprise someone in the hot distant future . But dynamite is not here anymore in the hay-littered barn where rats gnawed away for generations; I am here in carpeted comfort, in the barn at Magee, unbuttoning my pajamas in the night's heat , putting my feet on the cold rafters above the loft.
Recommended Citation
Mortensen, Pauline
(1986)
"The Curve of the River,"
Inscape: Vol. 5:
No.
3, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/inscape/vol5/iss3/4