Article by Ethan Kirschner Art by Liz White
The fields glittered with gold, shining brightly amidst the midday sun. Bright and yellow, hints of brown and auburn, green complemented the gleam. The fields rolled, on and on, smashed between the freeway and subdivisions. They rolled from the steep, rectangular hill delineating one side of the road to school, through the gulches where an old wood building stood, across the plains and up, growing until they reached Green Mountain.
Cows roamed these fields, brown and black, speckled, spotted, and solid, grazing and releasing manure with the most horrible smell. It wafted over the road. Close the windows. Yet for all its terror, the smell was sometimes nice — a reminder that the cows were here, living.
Occasionally horses appeared, brown, white, black, and gray, speckled, spotted, and solid, coming out from behind the homes or over the hill. Magnificent. Gallant creatures, briskly walking, joyfully running. Sometimes they stared out like they were looking at you or seeing something you couldn’t. Beautiful, were these fields. Nature, wild, grand, and peaceful.
At the time, I did not know these fields were actually a farm, and the cows and horses were owned by a farmer. I did not know that the farmer would sell the land, had sold the land, and would remove the cows and horses — those majestic silent creatures with fur glowing in the sun. My mom told me, but I often forgot things like that. Those things were unimportant to me.
When it finally sunk in that the farmer had sold the land, I was worried. We all were, my siblings and I. We loved that land, its simple beauty and existence. We loved the cows and the horses. For a while, it seemed like the sale was called off, that the horses and cows wouldn’t actually leave, and the land would remain as it was. The animals roamed those fields for years. We forgot.
Sunflowers grew along the edges of the fields. Tall, gold, honey, amber. They popped up, standing along the fence and decorating it with life, in contrast to its stillness. Shining petals stood out, prominent. I recall going up to them once, inspecting the number of petals on each head, the complex pattern of seeds spreading out from the center, the buzz of bees around them, content and slow on a warm summer day.
When building started at Green Mountain, the sunflowers there disappeared. The ones lower down, within our sight, remained alongside the cows and horses. The initial building was slow and uneasy. It was distant — hidden above us by another subdivision. To us nothing was happening, so nothing had happened, and nothing would happen. The fields remained.
During this time, my sister had a dream. Horses were her favorite animal, white horses especially. When we saw them, she beamed, pressed her face up against the car windows. In her dream, she was in a herd of horses, the world blanketed in snow. It was cold, icy, frost everywhere. She was standing close to a white horse. Briefly, she looked away, and when she turned back all the horses were gone. Brown, red, black, gray — no sign of where they went. With these other horses went her white one. She searched, but they were nowhere. She was alone.
“I can’t find my white horsey on the snowy hill,” she told our mom. There were tears in her eyes.
Although my brother and I made fun of my sister for the dream, I enjoyed seeing the horses too, and hated when they hid. I thought of what it was like to lose our dogs, loving and gentle members of our family. I knew what she felt.
Later, wanting to rationalize the dream, I decided the white horsey hadn’t actually disappeared. It was still there in front of my sister, looking at her, but its white coat blended in with the snow, the eyes lost in the turn. Now, I question that interpretation. With what has happened to the fields, the cows, and the horses, the dream seems less like a child’s imagination and more like a prophecy.
Around the time of the dream, the horses appeared less often. They were always more elusive than the cows, but the number of appearances decreased to where it was an event if they appeared at all. The cows too slowly dwindled, rarely seen except for a few occasions on the hill. Then that stopped. The farmer finally moved the creatures away, and development came into our view.
We lost something over those years. Something childish perhaps, some belief that what was good would stay forever. In its place, I gained a realization: “Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.” Yet, I still felt like it could.
They took a long time to build that subdivision. Over seven years. Most of the fields remained, and though those houses were a scar, their villa-stucco style wasn’t that distasteful. Gold replaced with bronze. In addition, they stopped building down Green Mountain, instead building towards the freeway. Yes, the development still expanded, destroying our fields, but it was distant again. It left most of our gold. Furthermore, the cows and horses occasionally returned, giving back joy. Something gold can stay, Ponyboy.
Then in my last two years of high school, the developers prepared for total takeover. They tore up part of the road to school, crunching it down to one lane. They added sewer lines, power lines, and a sidewalk before re-adding a lane. They also worked in the fields, hidden by the hill and houses.
While this development appeared quickly, it felt slow. The developers had trouble getting water rights from the city, extending the time half the road was unusable. Things seemed stalled, fizzled out. When all lanes finally reopened, it was a celebration of returned normalcy. But behind it was a realization that things might be happening again.
We got a dog during Covid, like many families. During walks I took her through the neighborhood behind our house, giving me a better view of the fields. Last year, before I came to CC, they started building houses there, but behind the other homes. Except from certain angles, I couldn’t see anything. Certainly not on my walking path. When I went home for a break, I took my dog through that neighborhood, and I saw it. The fields, the gold, the auburn, the brown, the green, the sunflowers; they were torn up by massive machines. Wide, ugly dirt roads were destroying my gold. The grasses remained only along the fence, replaced by massive yellow dump trucks and gusts of dust.
The new houses were ugly too. Grey and dirty blue and brown, lacking any light or character. They were not bronze like the other subdivision. They were not even steel. They were mottled, rusted iron, poisoning the landscape as they dissipated into it. It wasn’t alive, but dead and depressing.
I stopped walking in that neighborhood, but a slip of gold remained. The primary one, the one I always saw. It shrunk, kept shrinking, but it remained. Maybe something would be saved.
This past winter break I returned home. It’s just ugly dirt roads now too, soon to be houses that add no character or emotions — asphalt and heat in place of nature, peace, and gold. Those fields with their grasses, cows, and horses, their beauty and simplicity, are gone now, existing only in memory, glorified as something of a past life. Things were better when I was younger. Only an undergraduate in college, and I’m already feeling old, broken down.
“Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.” No, nothing can, but why couldn’t it stay for longer, for another fifty years, for when I grow so old that I forget about it, and even then take another fifty years, so the following generations can still enjoy them for some time? The gold will fade for someone, but why did it have to fade for me?
I was originally going to end here, but then I figured I should research where in The Outsiders that quote appears. As it turns out, nowhere. It’s actually two different quotes: “Nothing gold can stay,” spoken by Ponyboy, and “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” These quotes aren’t some cynical outlook on life, but rather an urging to keep seeing and supporting the good in life. Yes, the beauty of a sunrise will fade, but why should we let all beauty fade? Try to keep the gold. Our lives will be better if we do.
My gold may be gone now, but there is much more gold out there, gold I can try to help keep. And not all gold I have close connections to is gone yet. Much of it still remains, even if partially faded. Maybe that “white horsey on the snowy hill” truly is lost, or maybe it is merely unseen for a moment until your perspective readjusts. That white horsey is still there, staring at you. It is never gone — not until it joins the other horses. You are not alone. Gold can stay.