I have been told that on the rails of Big Sky Rail, which took over a CN branch in 2011, the lonely trestle I first saw 80 years ago is in close proximity to a small forest of crude oil storage tanks. The report disturbs me.
Before the Second World War, when I was six or thereabouts, I was a happy passenger in a Model A Ford driven by George Donaldson Melville. His son Geordie was my friend. We were on our way to see the trestle and the ravine it spanned. The ravine and its surroundings were an archaeological site. I didn't know the word, but George Donaldson Melville did. A veteran of the Great War, the man was a walking encyclopaedia.
When we walked down into the ravine, I was amazed to see a huge tangle of bleached bones. Our mentor raised no objection to two little boys delving into the pile. Almost immediately, I found a sharpened bone. My memory can still hear my friend's father saying, "You've found a treasure, Willie. It's an awl made out of a buffalo bone. A man made it and a woman used it to lace together pieces of buffalo hide for tents and clothing."
I can't remember all of the questions two little boys posed to him, but he answered them all, patiently and with the faint remains of a Scottish brogue. He gave us names for plants and animals, including the bull snake that slithered out of a rock pile. He told us about the Indians and how they lived. And died. He took us to the hill tops and showed us the patterns of stones they had formed.
"These are their graves," he said.
He said it sadly. Geordie and I were sad, too.
In the long interval of years, the bones and stones disappeared and the old trestle became a limiting factor in the weight of trains and the speed they could travel. When CN Rail announced that the branch would be abandoned, West Central Road and Rail of Eston forestalled the abandonment by replacing demolished elevators with producer car loading sites. In 2011, rail traffic ended at a WCRR loading facility west of Eatonia. In 2014, the rumour mill says the line will end at the rebuilt trestle, which will serve the tank farm. It says crude oil will be hauled on Big Sky Rail through Eatonia. (There is already a transloading facility on Big Sky Rail west of Glidden.)
The places are not as important as the process. Long ago, George Donaldson Melville could answer all of my questions. In 2014, nobody is answering questions or even asking them. There have been no accounts in the print media about the crude oil tanks beside the old trestle. The owners of the tanks have not been identified. Their intentions have not been made public, nor have the intentions of Big Sky Rail. No account has appeared anywhere of an archaeological survey being made on the hilltops where I looked sadly long ago on the graves of people who were in this land long before Europeans began to plough up the short-grass prairie.
Something is wrong.
