The Hill Beautiful

‘I just need to go there…’ was all the explanation he could offer.

Sometimes summers are cold when winds roll in off Lake Michigan, but not this trip. With the rolling hills painted with wild flowers, Nick Grassmid had taken leave from the sea and returned home to Eastport, and to that big farm high on the hill.

For the second year the ‘new house’ his family built sat vacant.

Summer smells filled his head. Family voices once heard tending gardens seemed to echo on the wind.

He scanned the horizon. It is a panorama seared into childhood memories.

In the northwest, beyond Grand Traverse Bay, Nick observed an ore boat ambling beneath the towering Traverse Point Lighthouse.

He stood where the ‘old house’ had been. From the sunset porch, on a fourth of July, his family watched fireworks launched from Northport’s sheltered cove in the west, more than twelve miles away across The Bay.

Every night from the southwest, Old Mission Point peeked through his bedroom window. The light there blinking every few seconds comforted him while drifting to sleep.

Nick walked around to the sunny side of the crumbling foundation. Stretching due south for eighteen miles, all of Torch Lake and its many hues lies cradled and shimmering between the green hills.

On his left, a distant tractor caught his eye.

Off in the east hill after hill, checkered with fields and orchards, reach as far as one can see. The farms look the same, though gone are the two-cylinder John Deere workhorses, their noisy chugging remembered like a chantey sung through annual chores.

Nick kicked around in the tall grass searching for the rock. It poked from the ground near the exact spot he remembered most. From there he looked up and tried to estimate where his bedroom window had been.

“Jump honey!” His parents called playfully. “Just like Superman!” His father caught him and told him he was the bravest boy in the world.

Standing there, the leaves rustling in summer’s balmy breath, Nick Grassmid contemplated life in these hills those long years ago. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and numerous cousins all helped after his parents purchased the land.

Nick recollected his first time walking into that strange smelling house. They all called the name of an old woman who might still be there cleaning.

And though only three years old, he clearly recalled being captivated by the view. Nick could only point, too young to articulate his awe.

Mother stroked his hair and promised softly. “That’s Nick’s view.”

On the north side of the house, on the same side as the well, there are still the chicken coops. In the old days it made sense to have the well right beneath the house.

The coops are silent.

The Grassmids raised and slaughtered chickens. Nick grinned thinking of the butchering parties. A last memory of his younger brother was of him laughing at chickens flying from a chopping block, sans craniums.

Butchering was family work. Great Uncle Henry and Aunt Mabel lived a mile up the road. Uncle Nels and Aunt Pat had a dairy farm a few miles on toward Ellsworth. Aunt Roxy’s clan farmed just outside Central Lake. For every crop, harvest time triumphs were celebrated family gatherings.

They are all gone now.

Great Uncle Henry’s gambrel barn and saltbox house have long out lasted him. Inside his magnificent cowshed, every piece is hand-hewn— even ladder rungs! The grange came first. The old Dutch have a saying that goes “A barn will build a house, before a house will build a barn.” A family anecdote recounted how his immigrant ancestors first lived in the new barn with all their animals.

Grandpa and Grandma Grassmid have gone on as well, but not far; they are laid to rest in the cemetery beside Torch Lake. Nick has attended many funerals there, but his first was when Little Henry was buried with the puppy.

When the old house burned, housekeeping moved to a chicken coop.

Somehow, even those days of distress now ring golden. After the fire, the Grassmid’s rallied. The chicken coop was clad with tarpaper and christened the ‘bunkhouse’. Meals were picnics cooked over a campfire; and as the campfire dwindled at the end of those long summer days, they held hands and sang songs to the Lord.

Nick’s grandfathers organized the building of the new house. A large tractor shed was slid onto a fieldstone foundation. A floor was poured. Water was piped from the old well and a fresh septic laid in.

Everyone came over and offered a hand.

For one summer in the late fifties, bathing meant swimming everyday: maybe at Torch Lake, or perhaps at the swimming hole under the bridge in Ellsworth; his cousins often took Nick to the town park in Central Lake, but he best loved Grand Traverse Bay; with an air mattress for his ship, he’d sing himself a song about yellow-bellied-scaly-wags and pretend crossing the sweet blue sea.

Now Nick stood alone in a stranger’s yard dredging memories.

Nick loaded up and charted a rough course north along the dirt roads to Uncle Nels’ dairy farm. His heart sank rounding the last bend when he sighted the “sold” sign.

This was the last farm in the family.

He parked by the well head about twenty feet from the house. The door was open, but no one greeted him. Inside Nick found a lone soul busily sweeping.

“Nicholas!” Called Aunt Pat. “Want to see something spooky?” She spoke as if he had been standing there for hours. Pat’s tired hand led him to the living room.

A lump floated up in his throat. But for a shallow pile of trash, her home was empty.

A year had passed since the last of the Grassmids buried Uncle Nels. His children had all moved to Detroit. Aunt Pat couldn’t farm alone.

“Gotta be out tomorrow.” Her eyes welled. She began reminiscing, pouring out waves of stories that had him alternately laughing and tearing for her 35 years there.

Later, Nick walked up to the dairy.

Cows no longer wait to be called in from the fields. He’d helped hook them to milkers. Children carried milk pails and poured them into the separator. Twice each day they washed the milking parlor with big hoses. It was a modern barn with an ample well of its own. Every afternoon a pumper truck came and transshipped the milk to market.

Behind the barn, he climbed to the top of the sandy bald. Nick finally rested. He dropped to his knees and pushed his hands into the soft warm soil.

Near the ground the air held a bouquet of Chicory, Golden Rod, and Milkweed.

He touched them and smelled his hands.

He pulled some Queen Anne’s Lace and pressed it to his nose. It called to mind the view from the hill. “De Schoone Heuvel” Grandpa called it in Dutch: ‘The Hill Beautiful’ where Nick Grassmid rolled in wild flowers and first beheld the beckoning waters beyond.

De Schoone Heuvel could have stayed in the family.

Far below a car roared by throwing a dust cloud with a distant lingering rumble heard in its wake. Nick remembered how his family’s fifty-five Chevy wagon became a familiar sight to the farming families who peopled western Antrim County. They had settled there following the lumberjacks who trailed the trappers, all preceded by missionaries searching for aboriginal sin.

Two hills over, he could see the Dutch Reformed Church built by his grandfathers’ own hands.

“It’s all right, son.” The minister told Nick. “Little Henry is with Jesus now.”

Something went wrong with the well that night.

Nick’s puppy barked.

Nick woke and found his parents calling at the window. He hesitated.

His mother screamed, “Jump!”. Just before leaping, he heard his brother’s cry for help.

Puppy stayed with Little Henry.

From his fathers arms Nick pointed into the fire. An inferno roared from the cellar upward. “My toys all burned up!” He cried.

At that moment came the shrieks.

Father dropped him and stopped his mother from running into the flames. She fought him, then buckled and wailed into hysteria.

Nick sat back on his heels and lifted his arms skyward. “I don’t understand. They told me the feelings would go away.”

With an ebbing summer sun mellowing upon the hillside, there was something for which Nick was certain. By next nightfall, he would be back aboard ship with the very last farm gone missing from his family.

Nick often returns to the Hill Beautiful in dreams… and nearly every year to mark the anniversary of Little Henry’s passing.

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