field-work

It could well have been an afternoon in mid-summer; only the occasional yellow birch leaf eddying out of the current reminded me that it was the first week of autumn. Where the Black River widens in a sweeping eastward bend just below Mill Road in Irasburg, we followed our guide, the author and photographer John Miller, to the site of a sawmill, where now only foundation stones and ironwork remain. What recreated the structures at this site for me was not necessarily the industrial detritus becoming obscured beneath canes of quarrelsome blackberry, but the stories of the place - of the well-worn hardwood ramp up which workers would winch logs from a riverside landing - of the ice backing up after spring breakup - of the sounds of daily work in this small valley.

As we walked back up over uneven ground to the road, I thought more about how stories are only one part of the larger piece of the history. Although critical, and representative of a 'people's history' of place, it is around events, places, and vocations that stories circulate and about which they can help us discover a great deal.