Opinion : A grandfather\'s moment to celebrate nature and progress

The area where this picnic shelter is located was once a corn crib.

Ari (short for Arianna) got halfway across the bridge and sat down.

It was a moment this grandpa has been dreaming of for years.

Nobody noticed in the spring of 2003, shortly after I arrived in Vinton, that I had begun clearing the brush and weeds from the woods and pasture of the area we still call "Grandpa's farm, although he's been gone for almost 10 years.

Nobody noticed when I walked through the waist-high weeds and found the concrete pad which once supported a corn crib. I couldn't even tell the difference after I shoveled a layer of dirt and leaves from it.

After years, however, of doing things nobody noticed, I can see that I have created a place where even a baby can walk.

I took the granddaughters to grandpa's farm Tuesday evening. We walked to the picnic area which I built on that concrete pad. We walked to the fence, then to the bridge I built over the creek.

As the girls ran along the path, following each other and the dog, I realized that the project I have been working on for the past nine years is becoming a success.

My grandfather was a gardener; he spent his warm weather months planting a couple of large gardens. Although the kids and helped him at times, he was happy to do the work himself.

Me, I never could grow anything, despite Grandpa's best efforts to teach his city boy grandson how to take care of a garden. But I can cut things down and burn them.

When I arrived in 2003, there were areas of the farm that were overtaken by thorns. In some places the thorns grew 20 or 30 feet into the trees above them, and came back down to the ground to take root again. I remember the first time we drove on what is now our gravel driveway.. it was not even a path up the hill. I remember the sound of the weeds brushing against the car.

My plan was to live here and help my father take care of the land. But he died six weeks before we moved in, leaving me to figure out what to do with the house.

I started to work on the land, figuring that "someday" I would also try to fix the house. But a leaking roof in 2008 meant a year-long renovation of the house, virtually all on the DIY basis. I did it myself, with the help of my kids, and some advice from people who actually know what they are doing. While that project is not yet done and probably will never be totally finished, the before and after photos show a startling improvement.

Like the house, the land will never be totally finished. There will always be thorns to remove, dead trees to cut down, and paths to create.

But for a moment this week, I saw my granddaughters Arianna and Liana enjoying the land the way I hoped they would when I first arrived here nearly a decade ago. I just hope they continue to love coming here when my great-grandchildren are old enough to follow the same paths my granddaughters walked.