I am far from the land and have no pictures to offer, but seeing what was once my home awoke in me memories of what was. I can only offer this. A recurring memory that came back in a dream There was a time in my youth when I explored. I had well over a thousand acres of untrammeled wilderness with caves, sinkholes, wooded areas so thick the sun never touched the ground. Southwest Virginia to me was a vast adventure waiting to happen. Blackberry bushes that ran wild over vast distances which we would spend many summer hours picking for the winter jams and jellies they would produce. Walnuts, that in the fall would stain our skins as we picked them for local stores. Wild persimmons which drew our mouthes until the first frosts, and during the late summers, paw paws and their soft delicate flesh. We were not well off, in fact some would call us poor, but for some reason we werent quite aware of that. To my brothers and I poverty was a foreign concept, we had food, we werent always full (what young man ever is), but we never went hungry. Cabbage soup didnt need meat to fill us, and Velveeta cheese was for us the cheese of choice, often with a slice of tomato to round it off. The garden we labored on gave us our onions to be hung in the basement and potatoes to be stored in a pit, green beans to be canned, and corn. It was all good and for our consumption. In terms of possessions we had two bikes for four kids, lots of plastic toy soldiers, and the ubiquitous stick that would be sword, staff, rifle, and whatever else we wanted it to be, oh and one Red Ryder BB gun-a prize in any young mans hands. My parents werent much for hovering over the kids, they didnt hover much at all to be honest, both worked. We were, for good or ill, left to our own devices, which in the giant lands left us open to all kinds of mischief. Waves of settlers had come to Copper Creek over the centuries, the first groups followed Boone through the Cumberland Gap to Kanetuckee. The many creeks and rivers fed by the Appalachian climate rainforest kept trout in the brooks, deer in the laurel and flocks of wild turkey to roam the countryside. It was a marvelous place to explore. The hills with their cross cut cow paths showed the meanderings of cattle as slowly they worked their way up and down the hills with a slow patience. Where the land was relatively flat, thistle would grow in menacing patches with their bright purple blooms. One navigated those thistle patches with utmost care. Buzzards saw everything as they would lazily turn on the heat thermals provided by a hot sun on a humid day. They seemed as uncaring as we were in our childhood. It was one such day that took me deep into the forests and hills. In those areas with the regions history the past held homes that were often built and almost as often abandoned. To tear them down would have required effort that those who moved on felt no need to put forth. It isnt unheard of to run into such places, old, abandoned, worn with time, now purposeless to those who built it. It is not strange to find such empty places where people once were, hollow homes and even graveyards where a generation or two might have lived, loved and died, and then moved on, as we all do because life is temporary that way. So on that day I began meandering, walking along paths into a thicker and darker forest during a late afternoon. I would go up a hill, then down, then up again, and down. I would follow a stream between hills and watch with fascination as it would roll into a limestone cave and disappear into the darkness. Staring into those caves I could almost believe Verne had it right and one of these paths would take me away from where I was to the center of the earth. That would be a later adventure I thought. Right now I just wanted to see where the path would take me. Soon the trees and brush grew thick and the path became more overgrown, less cattle moved here, and slowly the path transformed into an old game trail. On either side the brush was high and while the trees had before been back in copses they began to stalk closer to the trail, extending their shadows. Finally the path seemed to peter out, the trees stood high around me and the forest was thick with laurel and shade. The sun of the afternoon grew longer too. Unlike so much in this world, it wasnt as if I suddenly feared the forest or the lesser light. There was little there that worried me, I was familiar with what was around me in the wild, with the animals that ran it, the plants that occupied the land, we were all familiar with each other. I was curious and for me the rabbit hole was the forest and for me the adventure lived there. As I stared into the darker shadows, I saw something that was unnatural for the forest. An old home long since camouflaged by trees that grew round about it like ancient guards holding a prisoner. A dark almost black wood with moss and timber worn to include long streaks of grey that only dried out old lumber would have. This was a home that was placed here, it gave shelter and then it was given up and lost. One does not find such loneliness and walk away, one explores it to understand it to feel its existence, giving it that spark of life it might have missed. So I walked around to the entrance through a doorway that lay past old grey posterns that marked the boundary that was once a home to kith and kin. The light of the day while dimmed somewhat still showed walls of another time. The plaster on those walls once held newspapers that were used as insulation during the cold winters of this land and that plaster held the print of a period long since gone. Prominent for me was the headline showing the assassination of Lincoln and the fears of a nation that still bled from its self inflicted wound. The remnants of a stone fireplace and hearth were on one end of the home. Small gaps along the lower wall gave evidence of animals that replaced the families that once lived here. Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it with her own when we walk away. It will always be that way. The floor was treacherous with holes in it and there was a small thin set of stairs that ran up a side wall to what was an attic or small room for sleeping. The steps, their middles rotted held no safety for me, so I walked along the edges testing each step as I went further into the shadows above. I woke, and the memory suddenly seemed so clear, but there was more and it seemed to bother me. Again another night with little sleep but for a short time the same dream of a memory, only more clear than before. It is as if it were speaking to me, and in a way it is comforting whisper. One should be familiar with dreams they reflect our own wild abandonment when our eyes like curtains close and no one can see. That time in my youth was innocent, the time was different, and the weary worry of the world seemed much farther away from me, even as it seemed much closer to my parents who, upon reflection worried much more during that tough economic era. Perhaps one of the many stresses that eventually broke the bonds of marriage they had once forged. I didnt notice, the tensions of family drifted away as I went adventuring to other places, just as I then entered the forests and hills, worlds away in an Eden with no one but me. So I walk up the edges of the stair as I have in the past and dream so many times before. I could see the rot on the steps, and underneath an abysmal darkness that seemed much deeper than the inches I had risen with each step. I was acutely aware of the sun through the broken places in the roof above, the shadows slowly moving as the edge of light shifted east to the suns westward path. The green leaves of the sugar maple seemed darker than before from what I could see through the gaps in the roof but they would wave and beckon me higher as I moved to that upper room. As I moved up and surveyed the room below I saw more detail and life. A black snake raced across the other side, making almost no noise as it hypnotically shifted away, the noise skittering along a ledge showed itself to be a perched mouse with the brightest orbs staring at me. I could almost read the question in its eyes. As I pulled myself up my head came level with the old floor. It seemed sturdy enough, except for a missing floor board or two and maybe some warping. At the other end I could see a bare upper level portal with the branches of a nearby tree intruding through it. There was also stuff laying everywhere. Ragged clothing rotted and veil thin most of it little more than cloth strands that like a curtain hung from the beams. Clumps of leaves shivered when I pulled myself up, a redundancy of homes for the lesser beings. A wooden doll of sorts with some hair and painted eyes that stared emptily into the air. Birds swooped out of the upper window startling me and almost pushing me off balance as I grabbed a beam to steady myself. Each step broke the silence with a deep creak as I hunched my shoulders and kept my head down in that small low room. A meager bench with two of the legs missing lay heaped in a corner, and most distinctly, a cradle lay at the far end under the window. Just as I noticed it a breeze blew in and seemed to push the cradle causing it to rock slowly. I have to admit I smiled at this. Scary movies are the norm for so many people, I was just not that interested in fear then. Branches of the tree shimmered and sheltered over the cradle as I made my way to it. The swaying of the crib went once or twice more and then just as suddenly stopped. This was a childs room, and a mother once resided here. She hovered over the child in that cradle, she might have filled this room with her song to quiet the babe. She may have worried when a fever took. She may have wept, if the child was lost to this existence. This was a womans domain, because in here her authority, her strength and her love would be the fierce determinant that guided that fragile life. I know I didnt think that then, but now, with the years behind me, it seems so obvious. Memory strips the ignorance of youth, and places us back where we were with the mind of a more cunning being than who we were, knowing more but less confident in our knowledge and more wary of our ignorance. I think that is why we sometimes wish we could go back and change things. I wonder when the family left this lonely place, if they thought fondly of it? Where they happy here? Or glad to be shed of it? When I left Southwest Virginia, I saw no future there for me. I was glad to have it off my back. To me the world beckoned as the forest seemed to then. It wasnt until much later I realized that there was beauty all around, that happiness wasnt mandated by where you are so much as who you are. The richest of men are sometimes never satisfied, while the poorest are sometimes the most contented. I wasnt content (or else I would have remained), but I didnt realize how much I would be walking away from. Nor that my contentment would not be found elsewhere so much in someone else. So I walked over to the cradle that rocked. The sun had begun setting and the reddish dusk filtered through the trees casting about crimson in the blackness. It was then that I looked into the cradle, and I saw nothing. Flaked paint, old wood, some leaves and dust. The meaning this cradle had was now lost in time, and like the past, darkness enveloped it as it returned to shadow. In my youth none of these thoughts occurred, it was only a shrug as I turned and walked away. giving no more second thoughts to where I was or what I had seen. It was darker now, so I hopped down and walked out the door. The sky was less bright and the evening star had begun to make itself known as I stepped away. The wind whispered as my companion and it caressed me as I found my game trail and cowpath and then moved back to the small home in Copper Creek that we would ourselves later leave for bigger and better things. I wonder if I could still find the house we resided in? Or perhaps the one I had discovered? I dont know. There are many houses like that. Some are secure and remain always, others are obscured by time, and still others are repurposed for other things, both greater and less. That day though, that day remains locked in my mind now. Its existence had faded over time, like a forgotten shade, but for some reason it reformed itself and came back to me stronger and more clearly in recent days. What it means to me I dont know. I am not one for interpreting dreams, prophecy is a dicey thing, and frankly, I am just not a good guesser. I just know that Copper Creek, the Appalachians, the people and places are old and beautiful with history. Worn and venerable they retain a dignity that those of us who have left it sometimes fail to recognize.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 02:17:40 +0000
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