You Cannot Own This

Duncan Crary, in an essay for his Small American City project:

Along the route, we cut across a farmer’s field, to eat sandwiches on the wall of a Pictish broch.

When the farmer spotted us from his tractor perch, and eventually nodded in our direction, I asked the children: “Do you know the farmer?”

“No.”

“Are we allowed to be here… on his land? On this?” I asked.

“Ye cannae own this,” Tom said, and patted the ancient stones of the broch, set there long ago. “Ye just take care of it for a while.”

This is stewardship.