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Foreword G ood stories challenge our sympathies and make us see the world afresh. From the humblest anecdote to the greatest novel, they make sense out of the chaotic flow of events. Good stories tell us who we are. They also tell us where we are. The stories in this little anthology conjure up various corners of Brant County, or as I prefer to think of it, the valley of the middle Grand. They find their focus in a variety of locations, from the hurrying river that divides the village of Glen Morris to the clustered hills around the Paris forks and the ancient crossing once known as Brant's Ford. There is nothing new in such a focus. Before the advent of written language, all peoples told stories rooted in particular places. The stories helped keep their knowledge of those places alive. In turn, the sight of those places reminded people of the stories attached to them--and of the invaluable wisdom those stories held. In this way, our distant ancestors made a kind of memory bank of the land. Their cultures, which is to say their very essence as peoples, were kept there-- in that mountain, in that riverside grove. It is a relationship many indigenous people still understand and practice, which the rest of us have forgotten. Today, books and computers do our remembering for us. Yet the urge to write about particular places persists. It seems we are haunted by a nostalgia for our lost intimacy with the land. And so, on the following pages, you will read of first love on a bridge over the Grand. Of a moonlit skate from xii