Smelling the Smoke of a Thousand Campfires

By David Wrolson:

General Patton described his vision of past lives in a poem titled "Through a Glass Darkly."

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

I sense these lives differently.

If I close my eyes just right, I can smell the smoke of a thousand campfires. I think they are Roman, but I am not sure. I can sense the dark woods of Teutoburger Wald closing in. Teutoburger Wald where 3 Roman legions were destroyed by Germanic Tribes.

I can smell the horseshit and the sweat and fear of men at the Horns of Hattin. We were so thirsty there.

The earth thrums for me in Colorado. I was Cheyenne there at the height of our years of power.  I hate the Comanche. Later we fought the white men together, but in my time we were enemies. They killed me, I think. I was at the height of manhood when I went away. We could not know how fast the buffalo would go.

Now I go west across the plains, always looking for something. I am looking for the buffalo and I am confused that they are gone.

I hate the movie Dunkirk to the core of my soul and with the heat of a thousand suns. You can't hate that movie as much as I do just from one human life. I hate it on behalf of those who died with me and those who killed us.

I am a farmer now, and the earth is in me. I have been a farmer before. I can feel it, I know it.

Now, I know nothing of horses, but I yearn for the day of the horse. Something big is missing in this time. It took me a long time to figure it out, but the horses are gone and things just don't seem right without them.

I like to see what is over the hill. I have scouted new paths and visited new lands.

I have hunted Zimbabwe in this life. That patch of land is very important to me, but it is Rhodesia that I love. I have been there before with Burnham and Selous and Rhodes. I love that land as I love no other. But it is gone now. I lost someone very close to me in Rhodesia. I know it. I feel it.

Was I Burnham? Did I lose my daughter there? Was the jolt of recognition I felt when I opened his biography "Scouting on Two Continents" real or merely imagined? He was a scout, but he was also oil and mining and those are in me as well.