My family homestead is in New Mexico, where my mother's great grandfather hauled one tree at a time by horseback from the great river to their tiny plot of land several miles away in the middle of nowhere, to build their home. Until it was finished (over a year later) they lived in a root cellar they'd dug (the FIRST thing they did when they homesteaded), a hole in the ground where NINE people survived the harsh winter of 1901.

The homestead still stands, although very much delapidated. It smells like a cedar closet, which made me imagine what it must have been like new. My mother's uncle told me it positively shined - gleamed like gold and honey, as every day his mother and her mother would polish the beams from floor to ceiling.

The hole in the ground still is, and it was astonishing to see how small. I am 5'10" and I rose above it when standing on its floor.

In the middle of the D-R-Y New Mexico desert, my family carved out its ranchers' identity that survived the dust bowl, the great depression, two world wars ... My (great) Uncle Russell is the last remaining family member to have been raised there.

At night time, on that New Mexico plain, you can touch the stars with your fingertips. You can hear the ghosts of my family's neighbors, still looking for their 114 acres of government land, sold off to a greedy rancher when promised to them, so they died without shelter in the blistering cold winter. My great great grandparents were the ones to survive, to hang on to their property, greedy rancher be damned. They were determined to make a life for themselves out of nothing, because nothing was all they had to begin with.

My uncle's grandmother planted the row of trees along the edge of the property that now stand tall and seem to have been there forever. She knew them as seeds; he knew them as seedlings. My heart will forever be sad the day some ignorant cuss decides to chop them down.

His last remaining aunt, Great (great) Aunt Neva, finally sold the property where the homestead stands, to the same greedy rancher's offspring. She gave no forewarning, allowed no discussion. Just simply sold it off one day to the enemy. They now own it all. Graciously, they allow my family to tend to our ancestor's graves, and visit our homestead - which they promise to have no intention of destroying. All they ask is a phone call in advance, so no one gets shot as trespassers.