X had marked time in the limestone ledge since the Paleozoic seas covered the land. Time, to an atom locked in a rock, does not pass.
The break came when a bur-oak root nosed down a crack and began prying and sucking. In the flash of a century the rock decayed, and X was pulled out and up into the world of living things. He helped build a flower, which became an acorn, which fattened a deer, which fed an Indian, all in a single year.

From his berth in the Indian's bones, X joined again in chase and flight, feast and famine, hope and fear. He felt these things as changes in the little chemical pushes and pulls that tug timelessly at every atom. When the Indian took his leave of the prairie, X moldered briefly underground, only to embark on a second trip through the bloodstream of the land.

This time it was a rootlet of bluestem that sucked him up and lodged him in a leaf that rode the green billows of the prairie June, sharing the common task of hoarding sunlight. To this leaf also fell an uncommon task: flicking shadows across a plover's eggs. The ecstatic plover, hovering overhead, poured praises on something perfect: perhaps the eggs, perhaps the shadows, or perhaps the haze of pink phlox that lay on the prairie.

When the departing plovers set wing for the Argentine, all the bluestems waved farewell with tall new tassels. When the first geese came out of the north and all the bluestems glowed wine-red, a forehanded deer-mouse cut the leaf in which X lay, and buried it in an underground nest, as if to hide a bit of Indian summer from the thieving frosts. But a fox detained the mouse, molds and fungi took the nest apart, and X lay in the soil again, foot-loose and fancy-free.

Next he entered a tuft of side-oats grama, a buffalo chip, and again the soil. Next a spiderwort, a rabbit, and an owl. Thence a tuft of sporobolus.

All routines come to an end. This one ended with a prairie fire, which reduced the prairie plants to smoke, gas, and ashes. Phosphorus and potash atoms stayed in the ash, but the nitrogen atoms were gone with the wind. A spectator might at this point, have predicted an early end of the biotic drama, for with fires exhausting the nitrogen, the soil might well have lost its plants and blown away.

But the prairie had two string to its bow. Fires thinned its grasses, but they thickened its stand of leguminous herbs: prairie clover, bush clover, wild bean, vetch, lead-plant, trefoil, and "Baptisia," each carrying its own bacteria housed in nodules on its rootlets. Each nodule pumped nitrogen out of the air into the plant, and then ultimately into the soil. Thus the prairie savings bank took in more nitrogen from its legumes than it paid out to its fires. That the prairie is rich is know to the humblest deer-mouse; why the prairie is rich is a question seldom asked in all the still lapse of ages.

Between each of its excursions through the biota, X lay in the soil and was carried by the rains, inch by inch downhill. Living plants retarded the wash by impounding atoms; dead plants by locking them to their decayed tissues. Animals ate the plants and carried them briefly uphill or downhill, depending on whether they died or defecated higher or lower than they fed. No animal was aware that the altitude of his death was more important than his manner of dying. Thus a fox caught a gopher in a meadow, carrying X uphill to his bed on the brow of a ledge, where an eagle laid him low. The dying fox sensed the end of his chapter in foxdom, but not the new beginning in the odyssey of an atom.

An Indian eventually inherited the eagle's plumes, and with them propitiated the Fates, whom he assumed had a special interest in Indians. It did not occur to him that they might be busy casting dice against gravity; that mice and men, soils and songs, might be merely ways to retard the march of atoms to the sea.

One year, while X lay in a cottonwood by the river, he was eaten by a beaver, an animal that always feeds higher than he dies. The beaver starved when his pond dried up during a bitter frost. X rode the carcass down the spring freshet, losing more altitude each hour than heretofore in a century. He ended up in the silt of a backwater bayou, where he fed a crayfish, a coon, and then an Indian, who laid him down to his last sleep in a mound on the river bank. One spring an oxbow caved the bank, and after one short week of freshet X lay again in his ancient prison, the sea.

An atom at large in the biota is too free to know freedom; an atom back in the sea has forgotten it. For every atom lost to the sea, the prairie pulls another out of the decaying rocks. The only certain truth is that its creatures must suck hard, live fast, and die often, lest its losses exceed its gains.

Aldo Leopold

Thanks for making this world a better place to live.The earth would be much better if we had more people like you.

I know we already signed your guest book, but we miss you so much and we think about you every day. You will never be forgotten.
Love Lois and Michael and the kids.

Tom was many things to many different people; son, father, helper, friend. What I miss most about him is not what he did, but who he was.....I miss him simply because he was Tom.

WE ALL ENTER THIS WORLD IN THE SAME WAY, AND ARE ABANDONED, ABUSED, ABIDED OR CHERISHED. SOME DARE TO CHALLENGE; SOME RISE IN STRIFE; A LOT SUCCUMB TO A COWARD'S PATH; AND THEN THERE ARE A CHOSEN FEW WHO MANAGE TO ACCOMPLISH IN THEIR LIVES A BLESSED HARMONY. TO GATHER IN EVERYONE TO BE BROTHER, SISTER, FRIEND, AND PARTNER ON LIFE'S ROUTE; TO LIVE IN MANY LEVELS AND TO BE IN ACCORD WITH ALL.
TOM EXITED THIS WORLD LEAVING IT A BETTER PLACE FOR HIS HAVING BEEN HERE.

GOD BLESS HIM!

AUNT "BUNNY" (YVONNE DECKER)
HIS FATHER'S SISTER

Tom was such a good friend, he helped in so many ways and would never accept more then a thank you for acknowlegement. My life was made richer from his friendship as were many others. The type of person Tom was is the model that so many of us aspire to be. Tom was well loved and will be missed by many.

OUR SON

TOM WAS OUR YOUNGEST & ONLY SON. HE WAS THE JOY OF OUR LIVES WHEN GOD GAVE HIME TO US. WE ALMOST LOST TOM WHEN HE HAD ENCEPHALITIS AT AGE FIVE. HE SURVIVED & BECAME A WONDERFUL MAN WITH A BIG, TENDER HEART. HE ACCOMPLISHED MOST EVERYTHING HE PUT HIS HAND & MIND TO, & WITH MAUREEN, THEY DEDICATED THEIR LIVES TO THE WELFARE & UPBRINGING OF THEIR TWO CHILDREN, ABBI & BUZZ. HE LEAVES US ALL WITH BROKEN HEARTS, BUT WE KNOW HE IS IN A BETTER PLACE IN THE COMPANY OF HIS GOD.

MELBA & PHIL COURSOLLE, HIS MOM & DAD

OUR BROTHER

OUR FAMILY NEVER KNEW THAT SO MANY PEOPLE LOVED OUR BROTHER! WE ONLY KNEW THAT WE DID. STORY AFTER STORY WAS SHARED WITH US ABOUT THE KIND, COMPASSIONATE ACTS HE PERFORMED FOR OTHERS, ALL THE TIME ASKING NOTHING IN RETURN.
WE BELIEVE ALSO THAT A BAND OF ANGELS SWEPT IN & TOOK OVER FOR US IN OUR TIME OF GRIEF. THEY ORCHESTRATED THE SERVICES, VOLUNTEERED ALL THE MUSIC, DESIGNED THE URN FOR HIS CREMATION, DONATED, PREPARED & SERVED A GRAND FEAST & PRESIDED OVER THE SERVICES. THIS INCLUDED THE VISITATION WITH TRADITIONAL DRUMMING CEREMONY, FUNERAL SERVICE & CREMATION SERVICE.
OUR PARENTS WERE CONCERNED BECAUSE THEIR PASTOR DID NOT KNOW TOM. LITTLE DID WE KNOW THAT HE CAME WITH HIS OWN... FATHER JIM NOTEBAART, & HIS OWN SPIRITUAL
LEADER, RAY OWEN & HIS OWN SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY/CHURCH, THE PRAIRIE ISLAND DAKOTA NATIVE AMERICAN GROUP.
FROM THE GOSPEL GROUPS, ROCK BANDS, SOLOIST, FRIENDS, RELATIVES & CO-WORKERS WE HAVE BEEN AWAKENED & BLESSED WITH YOUR OVERWHELMING OUTPOURING OF LOVE & SUPPORT. WE ALWAYS REALIZED THAT WE HAD A VERY SPECIAL PERSON AMONG US. A MAN WHO SOMETIMES WENT TO PASS OUT MONEY TO HOMELESS PEOPLE (JUST BECAUSE "HE FELT LIKE IT") & WENT TO THE CEMETERY ONCE A MONTH TO TALK WITH OUR BELOVED DECEASED GRANDMOTHER. YES, HE DANCED TO A DIFFERENT TUNE. BUT, OH WHAT HIS DEATH HAS TAUGHT US ABOUT WHAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT ABOUT LIVING LIFE.
HE LIVED SIMPLY & PEACEFULLY. WE'VE NEVER SEEN OUR BROTHER ANGRY, SARCASTIC OR MEAN. HE WAS THE ESSENCE OF KINDNESS, GENTLENESS, UNDERSTANDING & FORGIVENESS. WE NOW SEE THESE TRAITS MANIFESTED THROUGH HIS CHILDREN, WHO WERE THE LIGHT OF HIS LIFE. A LIFE CUT SHORT BUT POWERFUL IN IT'S DIVERSITY, CONTRIBUTION & LOVE.
YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW ALL OF YOU HAVE HELPED US THROUGH THIS TIME OF MOURNING. HE HAD THE MOST WONDERFUL "SEND OFF" & WE'RE SURE THE ANGELS IN HEAVEN HAVE SAVED HIM A LEAD SPOT IN THEIR HEAVENLY CHORUS. OUR BROTHER'S LIFE ON EARTH WAS MORE CHRISTLIKE THAN MOST PEOPLE WE'VE EVER KNOWN.
GOD BLESS ALL OF YOU FOR ALL YOU'VE SHARED WITH OUR FAMILY.

ANNETTE WEBB & SUZI BARLOW, SISTERS