“Cut your own wood it warms you twice!’’ This is one of the things that my grandpa used to say. Work hard now and it will pay off later. I wake to the sound wind whistling through the nearby willows. I open the door and walk from the old trailer that we use to sleep in to the ranch house. The fresh dew on the grass tickles my feet and awakens me from my grogginess. I see Grandpa talking with two ranch hands on the porch. I say hello to first granpa then to Keith and David. I open the door and am greeted with the smell of fresh biscuits and gravy. Its quiet, just the sounds of the kitchen and the wind outside. I gaze out the window toward the pastures and see stables and hay bales. All of the cattle are grazing on the mountain, Grandpa says.

Today we are going to Deadwood to hunt for arrowheads, something that we do every year. I get in the backseat of Grandpa’s old ford pickup. We drive down the highway and then turn off on a dirt road. I hop out to open a barbed wire fence that blocks our way. I stand aside to let the pickup pass through then get back in. Now the road is more bumpy, and lots of dust floating in the air. The road is narrow, with sagebrush encroaching from both sides, just wide enough for that old ford to squeeze through. I reach for the sunflower seeds in the seatback in front of me. I grab a handfull and eat one. It tastes like like dirt. I throw the rest back and spit it out the window. The mountains were barely visible through the smoke from all of the recent wildfires.

We reach our destination and I get out, glad to be off of the bumpy road.

I Iook around and no one meets my gaze. They're all looking at the ground.
I look to, and see a lot of brown dirt. I look some more, determined to find something I look everywhere, for about a whole hour, to no avail. I ask grandpa if we can leave but he says that if you try hard enough, you will find what you’re looking for. I take his advice. Then I see something. It’s glistening black surface contrasts with the dirt and makes me take notice. I walk over toward it, realizing that grandpa could have just picked up at any time. I picked up out of the dirt. It was obsidian, as black as night. I touched the edges and realized how razor sharp they were. The sun was starting to set, casting rays of orange red and yellow over the mountain range. We drove off, and I was happy that grandpa had taught me the important lesson of perseverance.