I first heard the term mitiblende in 1964, at the beginning of my senior year in high school. I came home and encountered a burglar in the apartment. Ignoring my mother’s pleas, I went after him. I then proceeded to scale a six-foot cinder block wall and followed him into an alley. That’s when a confrontation occurred. As a defensive maneuver, I hit him with a glass Purex bottle.

Upon learning of the altercation, my mother said, “Joe, you got to learn how to mitiblende! I didn’t like any of that – that man could have hurt you.”

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In 2013, forty-nine years after encountering the intruder, I was invited to join my first cousins in paying the annual taxes on fifty-six acres of undivided interest in Salene, Texas. The property essentially represented the transfer of generational wealth by Rosie Edwards, my great-grandmother, in the form of heirs’ property. From a mitiblende perspective, I soon learned that parents not including estate planning in occasional dinner table discussions could position their children for future legal problems.

I recall thinking, how truly peaceful it must be throughout the changing of the seasons. Here in this setting, where one-hundred-foot-tall pines ascend to greet azure blue skies. A place where radiating sun showers illuminate dew-laden leaves and caress the rugged landscape. I also envisioned that as I navigated the late March to mid-May brush and vegetation, shadows from the overhanging trees would dance playfully across my red clay-covered boots. Shadows in the form of dark colorless patterns that ebbed and flowed as if choreographed by a wind, rustling through skyward-reaching pink and white dogwood tree roots.

As we carefully traversed the dense brush and heavy vegetation, I couldn’t help but think, what if the vines wrapping around my boots from the floor of the woods were the symbolic hands of my ancestors grabbing at my ankles and imploring me not to sell?