There are moments in life that don’t feel important at the time.

They seem ordinary…routine…just part of growing up.

It is only later—sometimes decades later—that you begin to understand that those moments were not ordinary at all. They were the beginning of everything.

I recently came across an old photograph of my Grandpa Ben Dodson and me standing outside his house. I don’t know exactly what year it was taken, but I do know what it represents.

That small house, the front porch, and even the old wooden washboard table sitting nearby…that was my launching pad.

At the time, I had no idea.

My grandparents were both born in 1882. Even when I visited them in the 1950s and early 1960s, it felt like stepping back into the late 1800s.

There was no indoor plumbing.
The kitchen sink had a hand pump, drawing water from a well.
The house was heated by a potbelly coal stove.
The bathroom was an outhouse.

As a kid, I remember thinking…this is a lot of work.

And it was.

But what I didn’t understand then was that I wasn’t just visiting a place.

I was being introduced to a way of living…a way of thinking…a way of seeing the world.

Some of my clearest memories are not of big events, but of simple conversations.

Sitting on the front porch.

Or sitting beside Grandpa on that old washboard table.

That’s where I began asking questions.

Questions about the land…about how things used to be…about where we came from.

It was also where I first held an old stone axe head that Grandpa had found on the farm. He gave it to me, and without either of us knowing it, that simple act sparked a lifelong interest in rocks, fossils, and relics.

And it was where I first began asking about our family history.

Grandpa didn’t say much.

At the time, I didn’t think much about that either.

It was only years later that I came to understand why.

Today, that farm is gone.

People drive by the site every day and have no idea what used to be there.

A four-lane highway now cuts across what was once a pasture where my dad and I hunted rabbits. Later, that same field became a place where he would hit golf balls and I would catch them with my baseball mitt—his way of practicing his golf game, and mine of practicing baseball.

The old lane that once came off Troy Road—where I first learned to drive a car with my dad sitting beside me—is now a paved entrance leading back to a commercial complex.

What was once open farmland is now a mix of gravel, dirt, and industrial activity.

The house is gone.
The barn is gone.
The pasture is gone.
And so are the people who gave those places meaning.

But the lessons are not.

Looking back, I now see that those visits were not just childhood memories.

They were the beginning of a way of life that I would carry forward without even realizing it.

That farm was where my curiosity began.

It was where I first learned to observe.

It was where I first started asking questions.

It was where I first connected people, place, and history.

In many ways, it was where I first began becoming what I now call a “steward.”

At the time, I thought I was just spending time with my grandparents.

I didn’t realize I was standing on the launching pad for the rest of my life.

As I continue going through old files, photographs, and memories, I find myself seeing things differently.

Moments that once seemed small now feel significant.

Lessons that once went unnoticed now stand out clearly.

And places that no longer exist physically still exist very much in the path they helped create.

It makes me wonder…

How many of us have places like that in our lives?

Places that quietly shaped who we became.

Places we didn’t fully understand until much later.

Places that, even though they may be gone, are still very much a part of who we are.

Maybe the real lesson is this:

Pay attention to the ordinary moments.

Because one day, you may look back and realize…

They were never ordinary at all.

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