In My Own Backyard

In My Own Backyard by Judi Kurjian illustrated by David R. Wagner Text and illustrations copyright © 1993 by Charlesbridge Publishing All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc. Published by Charlesbridge 85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02472 (617) 926-0329 www.charlesbridge.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data Kurjian, Judi. In my own backyard / by Judi Kurjian; illustrated by David R. Wagner. p. cm. Summary: A young child looks out a bedroom window seeing the backyard as it would have looked if she had seen it during various historical and geological periods. ISBN 978-1-60734-295-3 [1. Space and time—Fiction.] I. Wagner, David, 1940 – ill. II. Title 93-18472 PZ7.K956In 1993 I woke up one morning to the sound of a bluejay squawking outside my bedroom window. Raising the window shade, I wondered how many other jays had lived in my backyard. Then I wondered how many people had stood where I was, looking at this very same place. To my surprise, as I looked across my mother’s garden toward the brook, my backyard began to look like a farm. People were cutting hay with old-fashioned scythes like I had seen in pictures. Next to the brook was a strange old building with a waterwheel. The hills were plowed fields for growing hay and corn. What I was seeing out my window was my backyard one hundred years ago! I closed my eyes and shook my head. When I looked again, the farm was gone, and people were using a team of oxen to drag a tree trunk to the building beside the brook. It was an old-fashioned sawmill. Men at the mill were pushing the trunks toward a big saw that cut the wood into boards. Maybe the boards from the sawmill would be used to build houses and barns for the first farmers in the area. Then all at once, right before my eyes, the sawmill disappeared. A covered wagon and a band of settlers were trying to find their way through the river valley that was my backyard. Their wagon carried food, books, clothes, and iron tools. Their leader was asking a frontiersman about what lay ahead. The settlers were using my backyard as a stopping place as they looked for a place to build a log cabin. As the settlers rose to leave, a mist blew over the brook. When it cleared, I saw a group of Native Americans. They were lined up to take turns shooting their bows and arrows at a target. In the same spot where our summer barbecue is today, a woman was cooking meat that sizzled over the fire. Newly-picked corn, squash, acorns, and berries made me think that this must be a harvest celebration before the first settlers came from Europe. Snow began to fall, as if it were winter. Through the swirling blizzard, I sensed that time was moving backward very quickly. A thousand years. Ten thousand years! Back to a time when great ice sheets moved down from the north and covered the land. When the snow let up, my backyard was covered with blue-white ice, a mile thick at its highest peak. The only sound was of the ice creaking and scraping the rocks and frozen land as the ice moved forward with a mighty weight. Then, in a blink of my eye, the ice was gone. People wearing animal skins were trying to drive away an animal that looked like a big, furry elephant. I saw a frightened family crouching near their fire. They were holding tools made of stone. I could see paintings on a flat rock wall of the shelter where they slept. Then the animal and people ran away, and it looked much warmer in my backyard. Tall grasses and giant trees grew in a land of wild beauty, a land where no person had ever walked. The animals did not look quite like ones I had seen at the zoo. As they came to the brook to drink, I under