Mary Van Pelt
My archive of personal letters, original drafts and unfinished projects is preserved at the bottom of the Rio Grande County Landfill somewhere between Del Norte and Monte Vista, Colorado. The archive consists of boxes of various sizes, approximately 7.5 linear feet.
In the distance at the top of the hill I see giant bulldozers, a whirlwind of dirt and paper rises. That’s where I’m going for today’s funeral; I’m here to bury my cardboard boxes.
Before my arrival at the county landfill, I once imagined a beautiful letting-go ceremony, friends gathered around sacred flames, stories told and goodbyes to the past. I imagined a beautiful ritual, but city ordinance prohibits an open fire in my backyard. My friend Susan lives in the county outside the law. She has a fire pit, but the annual spring winds canceled our plan. And really, I have to ask myself, how much attention do I want from friends? To touch each letter one last time before it’s consumed by flames? Do I want to mourn each collectable stamp that I’m not saving, and beautiful envelopes that hold memories too heavy to carry forward? Should I hold all this in storage for a distant future, an unknown scholar researching rural life and stories of psychiatric oppression in the twenty-first century? Or take the plunge today knowing I must move forward. The archive must go. It no longer matters, letters burned or letters buried.
On a Friday afternoon in September, I stacked the boxes into my Toyota Corolla and headed west from Alamosa toward the San Juan Mountains. Each box sealed tight with duct tape, each box like a child’s coffin.
At the landfill office I paid a waste disposal fee of $3.67 and was directed up the rugged hill. Wearing sandals, I stepped out of my car into soft mud with a foul odor and broken glass; I heard the voice of my dad, “You should be wearing shoes.” A page from yesterday’s Valley Courier was stuck and flapping under a chunk of cement; biting horse flies couldn’t be ignored.
Two bulldozers stopped moving, a man stepped down, he pointed to the place for my offering. I quickly unloaded my boxes not wanting to impede the daily work of giant machines pushing rubbish; the personal significance of my letting-go ceremony was completely invisible to them. I left the boxes to be buried underground.
That was it, the undramatic conclusion of my unseen ceremony. The late afternoon air was cool and thunder clouds gathered as I drove away, the hills of Del Norte disappearing in my rearview mirror.
I released part of my history on that day more than five years ago. Now that the boxes are gone I have more space in my shed. Sometimes I feel like a piece of my heart remains at the landfill. Other times, my heart knows I can write better stories without heavy clutter looming from the past.
Mary Van Pelt is a writer of letters, journals and short stories. She lives in southern Colorado near the Rio Grande. paperpelt@gmail.com