This is my forest...

I am Flint Sky. This is my forest. This is my forest. My father hunted in this forest before me, and my sons will hunt here after I am gone.

So says a character in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. The next day he is dead.

My own father passed away almost two weeks ago, and in a strange way I resonate with Flint Sky's words. Or rather, I feel that I could resonate with them, except that my family shares no long-term relationship with a tropical rain forest. Nor any other kind of forest, for that matter. Not even a family farm, nor an ancestral house somewhere.

Dad and I hunted together in the desert, but all that land now belongs to a huge corporation who knows and cares nothing of our past. We fished together in the mountains, catching little trout out of little reservoirs. But the reservoirs are filled to the top with silt, the result of unusually severe winter storms many years ago. Other people own the cute little cabin where I spent many a summer. The house I grew up in was demolished a long time ago, and it was a company house anyway, not really much of an ancestral home. Mom and Dad bought a house "in town" (Douglas) when I was in college, so I never really lived there. And they sold it when they reluctantly moved to Tucson to be closer to family. We sold the Tucson house when Dad moved into an assisted living home.

Somehow, it seems that dealing with the loss of my dad would be easier if there were a family home somewhere. But America is no longer a land of family farms and ancestral homes. Homes are just houses that we invest in, and then hopefully sell for a profit.

Maybe this is a part of the reason that Americans worship youth and despise age. In the jungle, people grew old because they knew how to survive. This demonstrated to successive generations that older people possessed valuable knowledge. Even on the family farm or in the ancestral mansion, there was the sense that the older folks knew things the younger ones didn't. But the farm was perhaps easier to manage than a wild jungle, and a house required even less effort and knowledge than a farm, and so the progression has logically reached the point where real estate, a commodity, is best managed by the younger, more aggressive, business-minded professionals.

I love the house where Pam and I live, and I think we have made it an amazing place. But I have no illusions about any of my children moving into it when I no longer live there.

Another line from the movie: I am Jaguar Paw, son of Flint Sky. My Father hunted this forest before me. My name is Jaguar Paw. I am a hunter. This is my forest. And my sons will hunt it with their sons after I am gone.

I am Michael Edwin, son of Clarence Thomas. It feels very strange to belong to the oldest living generation of my immediate family. My family hunts no forest, farms no ground, retreats to no ancestral home. Where will I find my roots now that my parents are gone?