A Slice of Heaven

 

   On Sunday a guy at church asked me if Teresa and I were moving to town. What! If we ever did move it would be to Massachusetts where our kids live and there are no plans for that. He said he had seen in the paper that we had sold our land. One of the joys living in a small town is that everyone knows your business. This is helped by the fact that almost everyone is related at least through marriage and that the local paper publishes the court report and a list of land transactions.

  I could understand why my fellow parishioner was confused. The land transaction list gives legal descriptions such as "the northwest quarter of the southeast section" so that it's hard to know what exactly is being sold. I told my curious friend that we had only sold one acre of our land to a neighbor.

  In October our neighbor Mark asked if he could buy this acre and a very oddly shaped acre it was. Mark said he wondered if we would sell him a 33 foot wide strip of land (two rods) along the west edge of our property running south from County Road 8 to the south edge of our property, a distance of a quarter mile.. This strip would equal one acre exactly. A rod used to be an actual stick 16 1/2 feet long used by surveyors. It was a good measurement because there were 320 rods in a mile. According to folklore, this was the length of the rod medieval ploughmen used to goad their oxen.

  Mark had made his request one day as Teresa and I were walking on County Road 8 along on the north edge of our property. Mark had pulled over in his pickup to chat, something he often does when he sees us out walking. After a bit of chat, Mark asked if we'd ever be willing to sell him the above mentioned two rod wide strip of land. He offered a very good price for the land.  We were confused at first, but fortunately we were standing right at the north edge of the strip of land Mark had in mind. The strip would run straight south, across the gently sloping field, through a border of woods, across the river, through the spruce trees on the other side of the river, ending at the old barbed wire fence along the south edge of our land.

  Mark has recently retired from several decades of driving snow plow and road grader for Roseau County Highway Department. He has time to think. He lives along County Road 8 across from us and a bit to the west. He grew up another mile west along this same road. He told us when he was young he and his brothers used to fish along the river on what is now our land. They would work their way up stream till they were back by their home. Good memories. He lost his pocket knife along the river bank long ago. 

  He said if we sold him the land he would clear a 33' wide strip of woods to the river's edge and put up a deer stand. He would put his deer stand to the north of the clearing in a grove of spruce trees. He would always shoot to the south away from the road. He could put one of his grandchildren in the stand so they could get a taste of hunting. Mark and his siblings own a large chunk of hunting land a few miles away so this acre of our land would be a kind of play-hunting land and also a memento of his youth. Mark asked us to think it over.

  We did talk it over and saw no objections. This strip of land is across the river from our home. We would have no view of any hunting activity. We gave Mark a call later that day and told him to contact his lawyer and start the process. We could tell Mark was happy because stopped over every couple of days to describe every jot and tittle of the legal process.

  We were going to be gone for a month and would take care of the transfer when we got back. We told him to put up a deer stand if he wanted because hunting season was about to begin.  He didn't put up a stand, but while we were gone, he cleared his shooting lane and dragged the trees up by the road. These trees really belonged to him but he said we could have them for firewood. Nice!

  We signed the transfer papers at the lawyers office on the last day of the year. Mark's wife Vernell joked that Mark should rent a metal detector and see if he could find his old jackknife. I feel good about the whole thing because I now realize if we ever incur large gambling debts, we could sell off our land strip by strip. But I don’t see that happening  

Mark's shooting lane, looking north- two rods wide by 80 rods long