SOWING SEEDS OF THE POMEGRANATE: A GARDEN OF MEMOIR
Julia Kathleen McManus
B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2007
PROJECT
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
LIBERAL ARTS
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
SPRING
2010
© 2010
Julia Kathleen McManus
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
SOWING SEEDS OF THE POMEGRANATE: A GARDEN OF MEMOIR
A Project
by
Julia Kathleen McManus
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Jeffrey Brodd. Ph.D.
__________________________________, Second Reader
Douglas Rice, Ph.D.
____________________________
Date
iii
Student: Julia Kathleen McManus
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format
manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for
the project.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
Jeffrey Brodd, Ph.D.
Liberal Arts Master’s Program
iv
___________________
Date
Abstract
of
SOWING SEEDS OF THE POMEGRANATE: A GARDEN OF MEMOIR
by
Julia Kathleen McManus
“Sowing Seeds of the Pomegranate: A Garden of Memoir” is a work of creative
nonfiction. The inspiration for this project goes back more than thirty years to the late 1970s and
early 1980s, a time when the author lived in the backwoods hills of Middle Tennessee.
This work is composed in three aspects. First is the story itself. Second are snippets of
myth, folklore, and sacred literature woven throughout the story. Third is the journey of the
woman telling the tale as she moves from youthful womanhood to become a mother.
The story begins with a group of people who, in the mid-1970s, decide to join the
growing “back-to-the-earth” movement. For them, this means leaving the northern city life
they’ve always known to become part of a community of people following a different way of life
in the southern hills of Tennessee. Their journey forms the core of this story, and the author’s
involvement the lens through which we glimpse them.
The idea to incorporate myth, folklore, and sacred literature into the story came about
through the author’s studies at Sacramento State University, and from her firm personal
conviction that the peoples who told these stories are not so different from ourselves. Their stories
are relevant still, if only we take the time look for the connections to our own lives. These threads
of story are woven throughout human history.
The final piece to tie these threads together is the story of Persephone and Demeter. This
myth is used to illustrate the author’s personal journey from the young woman to the mother: she
embodies Persephone at the start, and becomes Demeter by the end.
, Committee Chair
Jeffrey Brodd, Ph.D.
______________________
Date
v
DEDICATION
This project is dedicated to: my late father and lifelong friend, Al Sutton, whose
encouragement and support throughout my life was the bedrock of all my endeavors, and whom I
deeply wish was here with me as I complete this project; my mother and beloved friend, Jo Ann
Sutton, without whose love and support I never would have come this far in my life; my late
brother and much-missed friend, Joal Sutton, whose interest in mythology and folklore rivaled
my own, and whom I also wish was here to see me through; my brother and friend, Keith Sutton,
whose down-to-earth attitude and practical advice were always welcomed; my husband and
dearest friend, Jim McManus, who put up with many years of late nights and long hours, and
whose constant encouragement and support were essential to me; my daughter and cherished
friend, Brenna Kingsbury, who was always there with a willing ear to listen, a careful eye when
reading, and a generous and loving heart; and my fellow student and close friend, Vicki Fanoele,
without whose sense of humor, honest advice, and true friendship I could not easily have survived
these long hours and late nights spent writing alone at home.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge Dr. Jeffrey Brodd for his dedicated support and unfailing advice
throughout the process of writing this project; Dr. Douglas Rice for his enthusiastic and critical
support of my writing, both of which were essential elements in my decision to finish writing my
stories; Dr. Erin Stiles for believing in me; Professor Tom Miner for first making me realize that
writing these tales could be more than a mere dream; and Professor Troy Meyers for his
encouragement and support of my efforts to continue along my academic path.
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PREFACE
“Sowing Seeds of the Pomegranate: A Garden of Memoir” is a work of creative
nonfiction. The inspiration for this project goes back more than thirty years to the late
1970s and early 1980s, a time when I lived in the backwoods hills of Middle Tennessee.
It has been nurtured along the way by several professors, as well as friends and family,
who have all encouraged me to bring this work to fruition in its final form.
The metaphorical theme expressed in the title—the sowing of seeds (in this case,
of the pomegranate) and the subsequent growth of one’s life as a garden— is carried
thematically throughout by titling various sections of the piece in a symbolic sense of that
journey: Prologue: Gathering Seeds, Part I: Sowing Seeds, Part II: Nurturing Seedlings,
Part III: Growing the Garden, and Epilogue: Harvesting Fruit. Each section is intended to
encompass a particular part of my life as a part of this metaphorical journey.
This work is composed in three aspects. First is the story itself. Second are
snippets of myth, folklore, and sacred literature woven throughout the story. Third is the
journey of the woman telling the tale—myself—as she moves from youthful womanhood
to become a mother.
The story begins with a group of people—myself and my friends— who, in the
mid-1970s, decide to join the growing “back-to-the-earth” movement. For them, this
means leaving the northern city life they’ve always known to become part of a
community of people following a different way of life in the southern hills of Tennessee.
Their journey forms the core of this story, and my personal involvement and recollections
the lens through which we glimpse them.
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The idea to incorporate myth, folklore, and sacred literature into the story came
about through my studies at the university, and from my firm personal belief that the
peoples who told these stories are not so different from ourselves. Their stories are
relevant still, if only we take the time look for the connections to our own lives.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell once put it this way:
It used to be that these stories were in the minds of people. When the story is in
your mind, then you see its relevance to something in your own life. It gives you
perspective on what’s happening to you.1
The mysteries they pondered perplex us still. The search for meaning still stirs our
imaginations and informs our lives, just as it did for other peoples in times and places far
removed from our own. These threads of story are woven throughout human history.
The final piece to tie these threads together is the story of Persephone and
Demeter. This myth is used to illustrate my personal journey in this tale from the young
woman to the mother: I embody Persephone at the start, and become Demeter by the end.
The backbone of this work grows from memories I’ve carried with me for almost
thirty-five years, since the time of my involvement in the “back-to-the-land” movement,
which was a legitimate social phenomenon of the late 1960s and 1970s. Jeffrey Jacobs,
author of New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a
Sustainable Future, writes:
[T]he back-to-the-land movement … began as an integral, though relatively
unspectacular, part of the 1960s search for counter-cultural alternatives to the
corporatism of mainstream America. While it did not capture the media’s
attention—as did psychedelic hippies, dropping out and turning on, or the
vagabonds who temporarily escaped to free-form communes—the back-to-theland movement was, in its own quiet way, a broad-based protest against what the
spirit of the sixties saw as the irrational materialism of urban life. Starting in the
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mid-1960s and on through the 1970s, each year thousands of urban émigrés found
their way to the countryside to set up individual homesteads on a few acres of
land. One student of the movement estimated that by the end of the 1970s, at the
height of the urban-to-rural migration flows, there were over one million back-tothe-landers in rural North America, almost all on small acreages rather than living
in communes or on large farms.2
The point that we “back-to-the-landers” were not a part of the more well-known
“commune movement” that also grew out of sixties counterculture is an important
distinction. With one notable exception (that being The Farm in Summertown,
Tennessee) most of the communal living experiments I knew of at the time were
unsuccessful, for one reason or another. The idea of forming a community in a general
sense—so that resources could willingly be shared when needed, and so that there was
some sort of social structure among friends—proved to be far more workable than the
idea of a commune, where resources were necessarily pooled into a common pot, and the
need for social structure resulted in unworkable rules and a pitiful lack of individual
freedom and privacy as well.
The fact that I no longer live on Dry Creek should not be taken as an indication
that the community I write about no longer exists. It undoubtedly does. The community
has changed and evolved over the years, as people and ideas came and went, but many of
the people about whom I write are still there, still living in the same hollows and still
dedicated to working together with friends toward a better life for each of them. The idea
of community living proved to be sustainable, whereas the idea of communal living, for
the most part, proved far too difficult to incorporate into our modern American way of
life.
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The reasons why we back-to-the-landers left the cities lives in droves are many.
One reason was likely the advent of the first Earth Day in 1970, and with it, the growth of
environmental and ecological consciousness that became popular in the counterculture
(and continues today, even having moved beyond the confines of counterculture and into
the mainstream). Other reasons include rising inflation of the 1970s and costs of city life,
soaring crime rates, lack of meaningful work, a desire to grow our own pesticide-free
food, and a general mistrust of government (especially for those who had been involved
in the anti-war protests). Simply put, there was a sense of general dissatisfaction with
modern life and values, including a spiritual malaise that permeated to the very roots of
our lives.
On top of this lay a cultural heritage that revered a simple agrarian life and
painted it in the most romantic of terms. In her 2004 book, Back from the Land: How
Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s and Why They Came Back, Eleanor
Agnew notes:
The universal mystique of the country, shared by city and suburban idealists, only
added magic to the escalating back-to-the-land movement. Our culture’s
glorification of the pastoral, through song, poetry, literature, and myth, fed our
growing desire for the land. The term “country” conjured up appealing images of
ripe corn swaying in an autumn breeze, fireflies glowing at dusk, the smell of
maple logs burning in the wood stove, the raging snowstorm pounding on the side
of a cozy house. We believers, of course, had never in our lives cleaned out a barn
or spent long hours under the broiling sun.3
Agnew is correct that most of us truly had no idea what we were getting ourselves
into. For some, the hardships outweighed the benefits, and this newfound (yet actually
very old) way of life proved to be more than they had bargained for. For others, however,
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this was not so. Some of us were as enthralled as we’d hoped to be. I no longer live in the
country, but my decision to leave my life in the hollows behind was predicated not on my
own wants and needs, but on those of my young daughter. I came to feel that it would be
unfair of me to impose the hardships of my own chosen way of life upon her, thereby
limiting her personal choices in the future. Were it not for that, I would be there still. Of
that, I have no doubt. I should note, however, that my daughter (now grown) does
remember her early years lived “on the creek,” and tells me she is grateful for that
experience, as it has given her a unique perspective, among her peers, of the world.
In thinking of how to tell these tales, I asked several questions of myself: Why did
we leave the city to live this simple life in the country? What were we searching for?
(And did we find it?) The answer to the first question is more or less outlined above. I
initially thought the answer to the second question (and third as well) would lie
somewhere in the vicinity of the idea of a utopian paradise.
Had you asked any of us at the time, we might have described what we sought as
some lofty utopian dream. I now understand, however, that this would not have been
quite accurate, as the idea of utopia—a word brought to us by way of a sixteenth century
work of that same name written by the Englishman, Sir Thomas More—doesn’t fit with
what we were seeking. The vision More describes in his Utopia is a paradise of human
origin: a perfect society, an ideal civilization.
The Utopian way of life provides not only the happiest basis for a civilized
community, but also one which, in all human probability, will last forever.
They’ve eliminated the root-causes of ambition, political conflict, and everything
like that. There’s therefore no danger of internal dissension, the one thing that has
destroyed so many impregnable towns. And as long as there’s unity and sound
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administration at home, no matter how envious neighboring kings may feel,
they’ll never be able to shake, let alone to shatter, the power of Utopia.4
No, that does not describe what we were trying to find—not at all. Utopia embraces
urban life and the polite society it engenders, even as it attempts to restructure it to
something more agreeable. We were running away from cities and towns, eschewing the
bonds of civilization, tossing off the constraints of polite society.
What we sought was as far from civilization as we could get in twentieth century
America. We hoped to live in a place as uncorrupted by human hands as possible, a place
of quiet beauty where we could commune with the forest or work in the fields, whichever
we chose, whenever we chose. If not Utopia, then what? Did the way of life we sought
have a name? Was it something others had also dreamed of long before us? As I
pondered these questions, I considered—and rejected—several possibilities. Was the
fabled Shangri-la more akin? Or the infamous Garden of Eden? What about Avalon? Or
Tir na nÓg? None of these ideas quite fit, either.
Then, I happened across description of a mythical place that seemed to more
closely embody the spirit of that which we sought, a place written about by the Roman
poet Virgil, and his predecessor, the Greek Theocritus. In Virgil’s Eclogues and in
Theocritus’ Idylls, my search for a word to describe the place we dreamt of came to an
end. Arcadia, a magical place written about thousands of years ago by Virgil and
Theocritus—primal, pastoral, fruitful, abundant—this was what we wanted to find, where
we wanted to work and play. It wasn’t Utopia at all—it was Arcadia we dreamt of.
Here you will seek and find the cool of shade
Beside your hallowed springs and streams you know;
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Often beside the hedge of willows that marks
This edge of what you own, the humming of bees
That visit the willow flowers will make you sleepy;
And over there, at the other edge of your land,
Under the ledge of high outcropping of rock,
The song of a woodman pruning the trees can be heard;
And always you can hear your pigeons throating
And the moaning of the doves high in the elm tree.5
The more I read of the works of Virgil and Theocritus on this theme, the more convinced
I became that their idea of Arcadia best exemplified what we were trying to do with our
lives, what we so eagerly sought, and found for a time in those deeply forested hills.
A friend of mine who lived on Dry Creek (and who lives there still) is quoted, in
James T. Sears’ Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones, as saying:
I was amazed of the fact that we lived in the middle of nowhere but there was this
intense countercultural thing happening. … We wondered, Is it going on
everywhere? Is this madness happening in every little nook and cranny or are we
sort of this special place?6
Yes, it was, indeed, a special place, a magical place: our Arcadia.
At this point, I realized I would somehow need to incorporate the words of Virgil
and Theocritus into my story. As I went about finding an appropriate way to do this, the
idea to include fragments, slivers, portions of other myths, folktales, and sacred literature
into my own tale came about. To claim that myths and folktales can be relevant to our
own lives is easily done, but finding a way to show this by illustration and example is
more difficult, and far more compelling when accomplished. Along these lines, writer
Ursula K. Le Guin notes:
The writer who draws not upon the works and thoughts of others, but upon his
own thoughts and own deep being, will invariably hit upon common material. …
The characters, figures, images, motifs, plots, events of the story may be obvious
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parallels, even seemingly reproductions, of the material of myth and legend. …
But this is no loss: rather a gain. It means that we can communicate, that
alienation isn’t the final human condition, since there is a vast common ground on
which we can meet, not only rationally, but aesthetically, intuitively,
emotionally.7
It is the emotional common ground spoken of by Le Guin that stirs me. These are
my memoirs, my memories, but many of the things I’ve felt, much of what I’ve
experienced in my own life, are things not unique only to myself. They are uniquely
human across a wide spectrum of time and place. It is this sense of a shared human
connection that I have endeavored to show throughout this piece.
I have sought excerpts from myths, folktales, and sacred texts from around the
world to help illuminate various scenes and/or people in the stories I’ve told. I have tried
to be inclusive, choosing from a wide variety of cultures, spiritual disciplines, and
historical eras. Peppered throughout are words from stories told by the peoples of ancient
Greece and Rome, Native America and Meso-America, China, India, Africa, Northern
Europe, Celtic Ireland, ancient Egypt and Sumeria, as well as material from sacred texts
of Buddhist, Taoist, Judaeo-Christian, and Islamic Sufi traditions.
I have sprinkled quotes from the above-mentioned works by Virgil and Theocritus
throughout the entire work, and have used other quotes for specific purposes as will be
detailed below. It is my intention to show that many of the thoughts and ideas expressed
in my own words are universal to human experience. Small details may change, or there
may be various cultural differences, but the underlying idea or emotion expressed is not
different. It doesn’t matter whether the writer lived in fifth century BCE Greece, was a
thirteenth century Sufi, an eighteenth century Sioux, or is a twenty-first century
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American. Some things are enduring. Love is love. Beauty is beauty. Sorrow is sorrow.
These concepts are a shared experience across time and despite cultural barriers.
The first quotation and the final quotation I’ve used in my story are both
excerpted from The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I have noted above my intention in
including these quotes, so will not go into further detail here, except to say that these
pieces are intended to form bookends, so to speak, for the period of my life portrayed
here. Other selected pieces will be discussed below.
From Virgil’s Eclogues, I chose five quotations. The first, on page 15, is used as
an example of how Virgil’s poetry helps to illustrate the similarity to Arcadia of the way
of life I feel we were ultimately seeking. Another, on page 94, characterizes the feeling of
watching the beauty of spring unfold after a cold winter, something people living in cold
climates around the world must surely understand. On pages 118-119, Virgil’s words are
drawn upon to exemplify the sense of the reassurance and security one feels in a place of
natural abundance and cozy human comforts, another common human experience. The
excerpt quoted on page 129 is used in conjunction with the story of my daughter’s birth,
and is intended to show that the sentiments accompanying the birth of a child are not
unique to any one person, or even time or place, but are an enduring part of humanity’s
collective journey. The fifth and final quotation from Virgil, found on page 140, is
chosen as an aid, once more, in portraying the idea of home as a safe and comfortable
refuge, this time against the ravages of winter.
There are three quotations from Theocritus’ Idylls. On page 38, words are chosen
to honor the passing of a dear friend in a manner which I hope will show that the ancient
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Greeks grieved for their fallen friends in much the same way as we in the modern world.
(Sorrow is sorrow.) The quotation on page 55 is intended to, again, illustrate the idyllic
nature of the land where we lived, and the Arcadian quality of our lives. The excerpt on
page 71, from a conversation between Greek women preparing to attend a festival,
reveals that the nature of women’s relationships with one another may differ in small
ways throughout time and across cultures, but some things, such as complimenting one
another on a stunning appearance, are more or less the same regardless of when or where.
Two other sources of Greek origin are utilized. One is a sliver of poetry from the
work of the female poet, Sappho, used on page 34 in conjunction with an observation
about experiencing the beauty of moonlight, something we humans never seem to tire of
doing. The second, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is an excerpt from a flood myth, and
will be dealt with separately below.
I’ve endeavored to represent other European peoples as well. A quotation
extracted from the Norse Eddas serves, on page 41, to show that how we humans tend to
think of winter in all its icy glory is not that different from place to place, nor from time
to time. On pages 90-91, an excerpt from the Irish epic, The Táin, demonstrates the
importance (and sometimes even deification or near-deification) of cattle among the
peoples of many cultures throughout history and around the world, and serves to provide
a basis for understanding my own experience with a powerful bull in a mythic sense. On
page 72, a selection from a folktale of Germanic origin, “The Red Shoes,” serves as a
companion piece to a story about a woman and a red dress she once wore that had an
oddly similar effect on her.
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Two biblical quotations are used in this work. The reason for the choice of the
first, on page 33, a portion of the story of Jezebel as recounted in 2 Kings, should be
apparent when taken in context with the incident I mention above it. The second, on
page112, from The Song of Solomon, is chosen for its relationship to the love and
attraction felt by the people in my own story. (Love is love.)
In addition to the Hebrew biblical sources, two other Middle Eastern cultures are
included, those of ancient Egypt and ancient Sumeria. Accompanying a story about the
death of a cat is a quotation, on page 65, from “The Narrative of Isis” about a cat in a
similar condition, which is addressed to the cat goddess, Bast. Two quotations from a
Sumerian mythic tale called “The Courtship of Innana and Dumuzi” are used on pages
104 and 107 to compliment a tale of my own about love and courtship.
I have chosen several other passages from sacred texts or other sources that are
religious or spiritual in nature. On page 34, an excerpt from the Chinese Tao te Ching
helps to explain the contemplative, meditative state of my friend in the passage it follows.
Likewise, an excerpt from the Buddist text, The Dammapadha, on page 37, works well to
show the reasoning behind my friend’s choice to live in such an austere manner. These
choices are particularly relevant in light of my knowledge that he was actively studying
both of these works at the time of the incidents described in the story.
On page 97, I’ve quoted a poem written in the fifth century BCE by
Sumangalamata, the first woman ever ordained as a Buddhist, in order to illustrate the
simple truth that when a woman of almost any culture or historical era suddenly finds
herself in a state of independent and solitary existence, freed from societal constraints and
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expectations, the experience can be a liberating and exhilarating one.
Lines from India’s epic tale of Krishna and Arjuna told in The Bhagavad Gita,
found on page 121, are intended to show a personal connection to the concept regarding
death expressed therein. A selection from the work of the Islamic Sufi poet, Rumi, quoted
on page 140, is included simply for its beauty in describing a similar phenomenon
involving “small dancing particles” experienced by both myself and Rumi.
Also included are quotations from five tales of Native American origin, and one
of African origin. On page 76, a Yoruban trickster tale from Nigeria about a thief,
“Àjàpá, Ajá the Dog, and the Yams,” ties into a story of a thief with trickster aspects. The
Native American stories chosen for this piece are from several tribes: Brule Sioux, CreekNatchez, Zia, Algonquin, and Penobscot.
The Algonquin story excerpted on page 35, a Coyote (trickster) tale called
“Coyote Man and Saucy Duckfeather,” is used to illuminate the trickster nature of a man
described in the passage it follows. On pages 39-40, a Creek-Natchez account of a dog,
his owner, and a flood, is meant to illuminate my own experience regarding a beloved
dog and a flood. (It should be noted that this story could also have served well in another
section in which I utilized a collection of flood stories and myths, but I felt that it was a
better fit at this point in the overall story.)
A snippet of a Zia yarn called “Men and Women Try Living Apart” is
incorporated on page 81 as a way of showing that the seemingly monumental task of
peaceful coexistence between men and women is not specific to any one culture, and that
the sometimes silly arguments which result from our attempts to do so are as universal as
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love and passion. This theme, of course, relates to a similar section of my own story.
Extracted on page 138 is a piece from a cosmogonic Penobscot story called “Corn
Mother.” This story describes the importance of a basic food—in the case, corn—to the
peoples it nourishes, much as the corn grown in my own garden was a primary source of
sustenance for my own family.
A lengthy piece from a Brule Sioux cosmogonic narrative, “Stone Boy,” used on
pages 47-48, is specifically chosen to accompany a story about a sweat lodge primarily
because the description of the sweat lodge contained therein was very similar in nature. It
is interesting that my original story had been written prior to finding the Brule Sioux
account, yet the details of the lodge are similar. By including the excerpt from “Stone
Boy,” I intend to convey a sense of the history and cultural importance of the sweat lodge
in Native American culture in a way that pays honor to the tradition.
It is my hope that readers will not feel that our use of a sweat lodge, and a
ceremony conducted in our own way, was in any sense exploitative of Native culture, as
this was not our intention. We may not have understood the ceremony in its fullness (in
fact, I am certain that we did not), but at the same time, we were not attempting to
recreate a sacred ceremony belonging to others, but rather, to experience something
similar in our own way. If any readers are offended by this, I extend my apologies in
advance, but note that the story is an interesting part of my own story, and in my
estimation as the storyteller, warranted inclusion here for that reason.
The longest section of quotations is a thematic group of myths and stories from
around the world about what is most commonly referred to as the “Great Flood.” These
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stories can be found in various cultures around the planet, and I have chosen a
representative sample of such tales from several cultures. This is not meant to indicate
that all such tales reference one particular catastrophic flood in the dim recesses of human
existence, but rather, that flooding itself was a common experience among people
everywhere.
Since water is a necessary element of human existence, the first human
communities would necessarily have been located near sources of water, such as lakes,
rivers, and seas. Flooding would, therefore, have been an experience common to humans
wherever they existed, and it should come as no surprise that there are stories of great
floods in many, if not most, cultures of the world.
The fact that there are similarities between some of these stories can easily be
explained through the idea of cultural drift, wherein as people move between cultures, the
stories they tell are shared, along with other aspects of their culture (similar to the way in
which actual physical genetic material is shared, a concept called genetic drift), and
eventually become ingrained in, and a part of, the receiving culture.
I have included portions of four such tales on pages 133-134: 1) the abovementioned excerpt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which a great flood is described; 2) a
selection from a sacred text of India, the Shatapatha-Brāhmana, which tells of a ship
built (on the advice of a wise fish) to withstand a great flood; 3) a section of the Mayan
Popol Vuh which mentions a flood caused by deities who are apparently displeased with
one iteration of their attempt to create humankind; and 4) a portion of the Sumerian Epic
of Gilgamesh, in which an old man named Utnapishtim tells the young hero, Gilgamesh.
xxi
of a great flood he had once experienced.
I did not include the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood from Genesis,
since it is assumed most readers will already be familiar with this story. However, it is
also my hope that such readers will also be able to readily identify the parts of the
Sumerian account (such as a boat built to hold animals, foodstuff, and people, as well as
the birds sent to find land when the rains finally end) that are much the same as the
biblical account of the Great Flood in Genesis. That these two stories contain similar
elements could be seen as evidence of cultural drift as mentioned above, especially
considering the close proximity of the geographical origins of these tales. I will leave it to
the reader to determine which culture influenced the other.
Academically, there have been numerous influences which have contributed to
this work as the culmination of my many years of study. My first formal instruction in
writing memoir came about in course taught by Professor Tom Miner at Sacramento City
College called “Autobiography Writing Workshop.” Professor Miner was instrumental in
first convincing me that I should write my memoirs, and more importantly, that he
thought I could write them. This was only the beginning, however.
When I became a student at California State University, Sacramento, my previous
experience in Professor Miner’s class led me to enroll in an undergraduate course taught
by Dr. Douglas Rice called “The Art of Autobiography.” Dr. Rice’s carefully considered
critiques of my work, as well as the advice of other students in workshopping sessions,
were invaluable to me, both as encouragement to continue my writing, and as tools for
honing my skills as a writer. Upon completion of that course, Dr. Rice encouraged me to
xxii
attend his graduate level course called “Writing and Theorizing Memoir,” which I did in
the spring of 2008. There, I was able to further develop my skills in writing memoir, and
learned to delve deeper into the stories I wanted to tell. Dr. Rice also served as Second
Reader on this project.
There are more influences in the overall scope of this piece than the writing itself,
however. The solid background I obtained as a Humanities student in classics, world
mythology, and world religions was an important part of the academic development of
my work. My interest in mythology and religion led me to become a Humanities major,
first at Sacramento City College, where I obtained an A.A. in Humanities, and then at
Sacramento State, where I graduated with a B.A. in Humanities with a specialization in
Religious Studies in the fall of 2007.
Dr. Jeffrey Brodd, who served as Committee Chair on this project, has
contributed greatly to my knowledge of classical civilizations and culture, that of Rome
in particular. Courses he has taught, such as “The Culture of Rome” and “Paganism in the
Roman World,” have given me the advantage of his unique perspective on the world of
ancient Rome. His courses were influential in leading me to the works of Virgil, whose
Eclogues, along with Theocritus’ Idylls, have provided a theme that runs throughout this
piece. Dr. Brodd has given me a deeper understanding and appreciation of Roman culture
and history, as well as an underpinning of knowledge from which to work in regard to
classical Roman literature, all of which contributed to my ability to complete this project
with confidence.
xxiii
My first course in world mythology was taken through the English Department at
Sacramento City College. This course, “Mythologies of the World,” was taught by
Professor Troy Meyers. Another course at Sacramento City College that helped shape my
path was a Philosophy class called “The Philosophy of World Religions,” taught by
Professor Jesse Womack, in which I was first introduced to great sacred literature of the
world, such as The Bhagavad Gita. Both courses were not only illuminating, but also
helped to fuel my interest in these subjects.
Once I transferred into the Humanities and Religious Studies Department at
Sacramento State in the spring of 2005, I found a plethora of professors and courses
available to me, each of which helped to provide a firm foundation from which to draw
academically in my writing.
A course taught by Dr. Erin Stiles, called “World Mythology,” provided me with
a deeper base from which to work when drawing on various mythologies of the world as
a part of my work on this project. I worked with Dr. Stiles in the fall of 2007 as a
graduate Teaching Assistant in that same course, an experience which was beneficial to
me in several aspects. I found that while enriching the depth of my knowledge in the
subject, this experience also gave me a greater confidence in the depth and breadth of that
knowledge academically. Both the knowledge and the confidence have been useful to me
as I’ve worked on this project.
Dr. Richard Shek’s course, “Chinese Philosophy and Religion,” helped me to
become well-versed in the finer points of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, from
which I have also drawn in my work. “Classical Mythology,” taught by Dr. Thomas
xxiv
Strasser, allowed me my first deep dive into that subject. It was there that I first
encountered The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, passages from which have been used as
front and end pieces in this work. A core course of the Humanities Program called
“Exploring World Religions,” taught by Professor Judith Poxon, helped to expand the
depth of my knowledge of world religions, providing me with yet another firm
foundation from which I’ve drawn when composing this piece.
Other professors and courses of note would be Dr. Bradley Nystrom’s “The
Culture of Ancient Greece,” and Dr. Maria Jaoudi’s “Great Mystics of the World.” Dr.
Nystrom’s class, along with a course taught by Dr. Loretta Reed of the History
Department, called “History of Ancient Greece,” helped to give me a deeper
understanding of ancient Greek civilization and a solid foundation in the Greek classics.
Dr. Jaoudi’s class first introduced me to the sublime beauty contained in the words of the
Sufi poet Rumi, as well as further studies into other mystical works, such as the
Upanishads of India, the Taoist writings of Lao Tzu and Chaung Tzu, and the works of
Hildegard of Bingen in the Middle Ages. A core course of the Liberal Arts Graduate
Program taught by Dr. Candace Gregory of the History Department, called “Culture and
Expression: Middle Ages and Renaissance,” first introduced me to Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia, which was previously mentioned in this introduction as a part of my personal
considerations and musings when beginning work on this project.
My studies at the graduate level have enhanced and deepened my knowledge in
all these areas. My continued work with Dr. Brodd as a graduate student has been critical
to increasing the depth and breadth of my understanding of the classical world. My
xxv
continued work with Dr. Rice in writing memoir as a graduate student has contributed
greatly to my ability to complete this project as well.
Each of the numerous research papers I’ve written during my academic career, as
well as each endeavor in the realm of creative nonfiction, have given me a deeper
perspective on the subjects I’ve studied, both as an undergraduate and as a graduate
student. A sampling of a few academic research papers I’ve written which were helpful to
this project are as follows (in the chronological order in which they were written): “A
Commentary on the Teachings of the Bhagavad Gita,” written for Professor Jesse
Womack; “The Trickster as Coyote: A Peek Beneath Coyote’s Masks,” written for
Professor Troy Meyers; “The Dao and the Unseen Worlds of Chinese Religions,” written
for Dr. Richard Shek; “Defining the Sacred: Dancing the Dharma Dance,” written for Dr.
Maria Jaoudi; “The Arahat and Bodhisattva Ideals of Theravada and Mahayana
Buddhism,” written for Professor Judith Poxon; “A Philosophical Theory of Religion:
Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return,” written for Dr. Erin Stiles; “Humanism
in Classical Greek Culture,” written for Dr. Bradley Nystrom; “Philosophy and Mystery
Cults in the Roman World,” written for Dr. Jeffrey Brodd; “From Radical Rebels to
Spiritual Seekers: The Convergence of Spirit and Politics in the Late Twentieth Century,”
written for Dr. Erin Stiles; “Of Folly’s Praise and Utopian Dreams,” written for Dr.
Candace Gregory; “Collision of Cultures: A Comparison of the Women of Rome and the
Women of the Lands of the Celts,” written for Dr. Jeffrey Brodd; “Culture and
Conversion: Women in Early Christianity,” written for Dr. Bradley Nystrom; and “An
Annotated Bibliography of Sources of Information Regarding World Mythology,” written
xxvi
for Dr. Jeffrey Brodd.
My work in the area of creative nonfiction cannot be listed in such a manner as
my academic research, but suffice it to say that within the numerous stories I’ve written
for each of the courses, and the professors who taught them, lay the seeds of what would
eventually become this project. It is the combination of that cumulative body of work,
expanded and revised, with the depth and breadth of my academic work, which breathed
life into this project. Each portion of myth, folktale, or sacred literature used in this work
has been carefully chosen for its ability to convey something more to the reader about the
underlying story being told. The result is a tapestry of stories woven within stories.
As a storyteller who comes from a long line of storytellers, I feel that our stories
are important—each and every one of them. Some are more compelling than others, and
as storytellers, it is our job to decide which to tell and which to leave out. There are
stories I have not told, and stories I have yet to tell, but each story I have told is there for
a reason: I wanted to tell it, to allow it to become a part of our shared heritage, mixed into
the cauldron of story of which it is now a part.
The art of storytelling is as ancient as spoken language. We humans have always
been tellers of tales. According to writer and storyteller Jane Yolen, Maori storytellers of
New Zealand have a saying:
The breath of life,
The spirit of life,
The word of life,
It flies to you and you and you,
Always the word.8
Our stories are vital. They are, as the saying above tells us, the breath, the spirit,
xxvii
the word of life. Our lives are our stories. They form a living thread connecting us with
our ancestors and with future generations. Yolen writes:
Stories are powerful. They are a journey and a joining. In a tale we meet new
places, new people, new ideas. And they become our places, our people, our
ideas.9
This is the universal invitation extended by the storyteller: to come into their world, to
see their people as your people, to understand your life through the lens of their own. It is
that invitation I, the storyteller, extend to you, the reader.
Why We Tell Stories
For Linda Nemec Foster
1
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground
and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers
and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened
and learned to speak
2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would only open for us
xxviii
and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees
3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life
Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently
and none of us tells it
the same way twice
Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them
And though we listen only
haphazardly with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and
—Lisel Mueller10
xxix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Dedication ................................................................................................................................ vi
Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................. vii
Preface .................................................................................................................................. viii
Prologue – GATHERING SEEDS............................................................................................ 1
Part I – SOWING SEEDS
Chapter
1. AUTUMN EXODUS ........................................................................................................... 4
2. DISMAL WINTER INTO SPRING .................................................................................. 16
3. SUMMER AT BELLY ACRES ........................................................................................ 25
4. WINTER DREAMING ..................................................................................................... 41
5. ARCADIAN REVERIE..................................................................................................... 49
6. A-FRAME BLUES ............................................................................................................ 56
Part II – NURTURING SEEDLINGS
Chapter
7. FLORIDIAN AUTUMN ................................................................................................... 73
8. WINTER IN WILDER HOLLER ..................................................................................... 83
9. SPRING AND SUMMER SOLITUDE ............................................................................. 92
10. SPARKING AUTUMN ................................................................................................. 102
11. WHIPPOORWILL HOLLOW WINTER ...................................................................... 108
Part III – GROWING THE GARDEN
Chapter
12. DRY CREEK CHRONICLES I..................................................................................... 114
13. DRY CREEK CHRONICLES II ................................................................................... 130
Epilogue – HARVESTING FRUIT ...................................................................................... 142
Notes ..................................................................................................................................... 145
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 148
xxx
1
Prologue – GATHERING SEEDS
She took the fruit offered her. It had been split open. Nestled within the white pulp
of the fruit were round, red seeds that tempted her with a promise of juicy delight. She bit
into the fruit, tasted the bitterness of the white pulp, and spat it out. But within her mouth
remained a single red seed that dripped a tangy sweetness onto her tongue. She sucked
the seed between her teeth and bit into it. So, that was the secret, the promise, the lure, of
the pomegranate. She sighed, knowing in that moment she was never to be the same.
She’d tasted the fruit, and in it found a craving not to be denied. She knew her mother
would never understand, and would grieve for her. She understood that she would be
giving up something she loved with all her heart for something new she could not resist.
Persephone sank her teeth deep into the pomegranate’s flesh once more.
~*~***~*~
Across the dirt road from Glenn’s house, where the four of us sat on the porch in
the late afternoon sun, the creek gurgled on its way down the hollow. Songbirds flitted
from branch to branch in the trees that lined its banks. Leaves shimmered in a faint
breeze as the sun’s rays played among them. Off in the distance a bob-white called to its
mate, and in some sun-drenched meadow down the creek, cows began to lumber slowly
toward the barn, their soft lows echoing up the steep valley.
We’d spent a long, lazy afternoon there, eating fruit and sipping wine, while
sharing the latest news and gossip about our friends on the creek. Snow Bear wanted a
few people to come early to help prepare for the sweat on the full moon. Michael and
Laura had a bumper crop of squash to share. Nora had fresh milk for sale again, and
2
Debbie had eggs for trade.
Wind Song and Billy had gotten into a horrible fight. Chip had ended up kicking
them out, and now Wind Song was desperately looking for someone to take her in.
The other Billy, Merril’s cousin, was going to Nashville tomorrow and was
offering a ride for anyone who wanted to tag along. Merril and John were having another
potluck on Saturday. What would we wear? Maybe we should go with Billy tomorrow
and hit the Goodwill for new duds. We could go by Sunshine Grocery to replenish our
cupboards, and maybe pick up some of that nice coconut lotion, too.
Bonnie took a spoonful of pomegranate seeds from the dish on the low table
between us and carefully slurped them into her mouth, wiping away dribbles of juice
from her chin with red-stained fingertips. Tucking a dark curl behind her ear, she
wrinkled her nose and laughed. “You know… one of us has to write about this someday.”
“Seriously.” Laura nodded and grinned, lips stained red with pomegranate juice,
gold wire rims catching a glint of light from the sinking sun.
Katheylynn leaned forward to dip her spoon into the bowl of pomegranate seeds,
then slid the juicy morsels onto her tongue. She tucked her skirt around her legs, arched
back against the porch rail, and closed her eyes as she savored the tart sweetness of the
fruit. “Mmm… how cool would that be?”
Taking another spoonful of pomegranate seeds, I smiled at the thought of what
Bonnie had suggested. “What should we call it? The book, I mean.”
“How about Dry Creek Blues?”
“Days of Our Lives. Ha!”
3
“Dry Creek Chronicles!”
“Oh! I know! How about As the Creek Flows?” Bonnie’s arms made a dramatic
sweeping gesture.
“Oh, that’s good, I like that!” (I really did.)
We considered the possibilities of what the story would be like, each of us tossing
out various scenarios we felt would have to be included, some serious, some so ludicrous
that we sailed into fits of giggles. None of us considered it even a remote a possibility
that anyone would actually write it all down, but it was fun to think about.
Along with the juicy red pomegranate seeds we devoured that afternoon, another
seed was sown. A seed that slowly ripened in my mind as the years went by, sprouted a
few leaves here and there, and eventually grew to become this tale. These words. These
pages.
~*~***~*~
And Persephone said to her mother, Demeter:
…Then I leapt for joy, but he stealthily
put in my mouth a food honey-sweet, a pomegranate seed…11
- Excerpt from The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
~*~***~*~
4
Part I – SOWING SEEDS
Chapter 1 – AUTUMN EXODUS
All during the year of 1975, I was gearing up, mentally and emotionally, for some
kind of BIG change. I wasn't sure what, exactly, but there was a distinct feeling of
restless anticipation. David and I had moved from our apartment on Catherine Street in
downtown Kalamazoo to a two-story house next door to Bob and Jennifer on DeHaan
Street in the suburb of Portage.
We had a large yard, and were close to a water reservoir where we could take
long walks, swim, and play with the dogs. David and I had two dogs, both of them jet
black and male. Nikki was the oldest, a lab/border collie mix we’d rescued as a puppy
from the pound several years ago, and Erik, a black Irish Setter we’d rescued from certain
death for the crime of being born black instead of red. While most of our friends wanted
kids, David and I had decided not to have children. Our “kids” were our dogs, and our
two female cats, a calico named Sadie, and one of her offspring, a tortie named Bo.
Glad to be outside the inner city, with more space in the large yard for our
animals, we began to understand the feel of open space around us instead of house
stacked upon house. Harvesting vegetables from our own garden was a new experience
for us, too. We shared a large organic garden with Bob and Jennifer at the DeHaan Street
houses. David and I both remembered our grandparents’ gardens from childhood, but this
was our first taste of eating food we’d tended with our own hands. We also experimented
with some aspects of collective living that summer and fall, sharing meals and the garden
chores with Bob and Jennifer.
5
I’d known Bob since junior high school. We’d met during a game of spin-the
bottle in the basement of Ginny’s house. As teenagers, David and I had double-dated with
Bob and his girlfriend, Judy (who was my best friend at the time). Bob was tall and
gawky, with a thick shock of wavy dark hair and solemn black horn-rim glasses. His new
wife, Jennifer, was also tall, but not thin like her husband. She was softly curved instead,
and soft-spoken, with long, strawberry blonde hair, and bright, blue eyes.
Bob worked from home as an artist. Sitting at his workbench in the basement,
goggles covering his face, sparks spitting, he created metal sculptures using discarded
scrap from local factories, which he hawked at art fairs around southwest Michigan.
Jennifer was a social worker with the Department of Human Services in Kalamazoo.
David worked in the housekeeping department at Bronson Hospital. Like Bob, I worked
from home. But I wasn’t an artist. I worked as a freelance seamstress, doing a bit of
custom sewing and a lot of alterations (which I hated then, and to this day detest). On
weekends, we often traveled to art shows with Bob.
The first time I met Laura Mae, Michael Duane, Katheylynn, and Michael Peter
was on a drizzly day in the late spring of 1975 at an art fair held inside a big warehouse
somewhere in Grand Rapids. Jennifer and I had decided, at Bob’s urging, to try running a
food booth, so we’d prepared a menu for sandwiches and juices. We carried in loaves of
whole wheat bread, blocks of cheeses, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, cream cheese, lettuce,
alfalfa sprouts, and of course, mayo and mustard, and were busy setting out our booth
when the Allegan four arrived.
Michael Duane walked in first, carrying some of the wooden parts of Laura’s
6
booth, which he set down near us. He was a robust, muscular fellow with wispy blonde
hair, a full, brushy beard, and a booming laugh. His entrance was followed by Laura Mae
herself, a bundle of deerskin halter tops slung across her arm. She was a slim, pretty
woman with dark braids and sapphire-blue eyes. Her only flaw, one I later learned she
was very self-conscious about, was a small space between her front teeth. She was a
leather-worker who sold hand-tooled leather belts, purses, wallets, and deerskin vests and
halter tops. When she wasn’t tooling leather, she was riding horses. Laura Mae and
Michael Duane were expectant parents (although her pregnancy had not yet begun to
show), and walked about all day in a giddy, giggly daze.
They were followed by Michael Peter, who carried a table, and Katheylynn,
whose arms were lined with wicker baskets filled with jewelry. Katheylynn was a
graceful waif of a girl with long, honey-colored hair framing sultry, greenish-gold eyes.
She made jewelry using African trade beads, Dutch glass beads, Indian bells, and
macramé. (I still have some of her pieces.) Her companion, Michael Peter, wore an
impish grin surrounded by a big, fuzzy beard and a great frizz of red curls above heavylidded pale blue eyes. I’d later learn they were often accompanied by a mutual friend,
John Eddy, another redhead, whose dry, cynical wit made him the clown of the group.
John wasn’t with them on this day, though. I didn’t meet him for several more weeks.
Katheylynn, Michael Peter, and John lived with Laura Mae and Michael Duane in
a big farmhouse near Allegan. Although I didn’t realize it at the time—we exchanged
pleasantries, laughed, joked, and made small talk that day—this small group of artists and
friends was to become a close and intimate part of my life in the years to come.
7
~*~***~*~
Being the work-at-home spouses of the DeHann Street gang, Bob and I became
close friends during the final months of our time in Kalamazoo. During high school, he
had been an atheist, but was now beginning to explore various forms of spirituality. I was
somewhat of a spectator in his meanderings, but I was the one with whom he bounced
ideas around. When we weren’t working, we spent our days experimenting with
meditation and yoga, listening to a lot of Moody Blues and Shawn Phillips, and working
in the garden. For a while, Bob leaned toward Buddhism, but eventually rejected it. He
finally settled on the “Jesus Freak” movement as where he belonged. I went to one
meeting of these charismatic Christians with him, and tried to be open to it (my copy of
Good News for Modern Man, their Bible, still sits on my bookshelves), but the intensity
of speaking-in-tongues and dancing with the holy ghost was too close to home for me,
something I’d rejected long ago.
As a child, I’d been sent to church with my paternal grandparents who attended an
evangelical Pentecostal church so ‘radical’ that the national organization of Pentecostals
had rejected them. Mom and Dad didn’t realize how bizarre it was for me to go to a
matinee at the movie theater with my brothers on Saturday, then, on Sunday morning, be
thrust among people who told me, in all earnestness, that I would go to hell for watching
that Tarzan movie yesterday. Unless, of course, I repented and allowed them to baptize
me ‘in Jesus’ name’ in the big scary vat of water behind the pulpit, something Mom and
Dad had forbidden, since they weren’t, and did not intend to become, members of that
church. Bob was disappointed that I didn't want to commune with him at this level, even
8
though he knew about my childhood experiences, but he knew I wasn’t going to change
my mind, and didn’t press the issue. Not at that time, anyhow.
Shortly after, Michael Peter moved in with David and me. His relationship with
Katheylynn had fallen apart. They remained friends, but, needing to distance themselves
from the hurt, Katheylynn stayed at the Allegan farm, while Michael Peter moved to the
city to live with David and me. We figured we could use some help with the rent anyhow,
and were glad to help a friend. Michael Peter was living on money he'd saved, so, like
Bob and me, he was home most of the time. He had decided to use this time in his life for
reflection, and retreated into a spiritual sabbatical, spending most of each day in his room
with the door closed, reading and meditating. At first, I left him alone, but, intrigued by
the Buddhist/Taoist direction Michael Peter was exploring, I eventually knocked on his
door. We spent long hours deep in esoteric conversation in the days to follow. He became
a spiritual mentor to me, and was important in my life for many years thereafter. Religion
and spirituality have been recurring themes throughout my life, and later fueled my
decision to study religion academically. Michael Peter opened a door for me into a
direction that took me away from the frenzy of the charismatic Christianity I’d cast off,
and into the serenity of Eastern spirituality, yoga, and meditation.
~*~***~*~
The magazine Mother Earth News played a large part in the next chapter of our
lives. Bob brought home a copy one day, and we pored through it eagerly, finding the
way of life it seemed to offer ultimately more interesting and attractive than city life. The
four of us shared our ideas with the Allegan farm crew, who had already begun to lean in
9
this direction, and found a synthesis of thought that bloomed into action. As we saw it,
life in modern America was getting crazier and crazier, and more and more violent.
Kalamazoo had just landed somewhere around twentieth in the nation on a list of cities
with the highest crime rates, and we found that alarming. We yearned for a simpler
existence, closer to how we felt things were intended to be. During a potluck dinner at the
Allegan farm that summer, we tossed ideas around. By the time we parted that night, we
had decided to form a collective, move out of the city, and buy a large farm together.
We first explored the idea of doing this in Michigan. We visited a guy we’d read
about in Mother Earth News, who had built a house of polyurethane foam sprayed over a
domed framework of wooden beams and chickenwire. The home looked like a big
lumpy hill from the outside, and was dim and cave-like on the inside. He was happy to
show it to us, and said he could heat it in the Michigan winter with a light bulb. We
almost purchased a rolling plot of land in southwestern Michigan, but after mulling over
the pros and cons, decided it was a tad too expensive. Patience and prudence were in
order, we thought, so we set about looking for someplace a bit more economical. We
were all budding organic gardeners, and wanted to grow most of our own food, so a
longer, warmer growing season would be another definite mark in the plus column.
David and I had spent the winter of ’73 in Cocoa Beach, and the trip was still
fresh in our minds. The route from Michigan to Florida leads through middle Tennessee,
a place we’d found delightfully beautiful, so we tossed it out as a suggestion. Florida is a
popular vacation spot for Michiganders, and we’d all been through there on road trips at
one time or another in our lives. Everyone agreed that Tennessee was definitely
10
beautiful, and much warmer. With a little investigation, we learned that land prices were
considerably less in Tennessee than in Michigan. With all this in mind, we decided upon
Tennessee as our destination.
In late October, David and I drove Michael Peter to Chattanooga in the black Ford
pick-up with a camper top we’d just bought. We started out before dawn and drove
straight through until we reached Tennessee. The sun had long set by then, so we pulled
off onto a side road, and after several turns, ended up on a dirt road where we pulled the
truck into the edges of a hayfield. We piled out of the cab of the truck to stretch, noisily
laughing and talking. But our voices trailed off into silence as we began to take in our
surroundings. A mist rose from the hayfield, drifting slowly in the moonlight. A breeze
rustled softly through leaves above my head. From the depths of the forest on the other
side of the field, an owl called out. I shivered and pulled my sweater closer around me.
For many minutes, no one spoke. When we finally did speak again, it was in soft, hushed
whispers, as if our harsh voices were out-of-place here, an unwelcome disturbance to the
serenity of this place we’d found.
We climbed into the camper, talked quietly for a while, then fell into a dreamless
sleep. Awakening at daybreak to the sound of roosters crowing, we shook ourselves off
and headed south for the campus of UT at Chattanooga, where we dropped off Michael
Peter to begin a task he’d volunteered to do for the group. He approached this, on the one
hand, as part of his sabbatical, and on the other, as an investigative journey for the rest of
us. David and I hugged him good-bye, and drove back to Michigan. Michael Peter spent
the next several weeks hitchhiking around middle Tennessee, exploring to see what he
11
could find.
His journey led him to “The Farm,” a commune in Summertown founded by
Stephen and Ina Mae Gaskin, who’d traveled from San Francisco in 1967 with a group of
friends in a psychedelic-painted bus. They told him he might want to check out a
commune on Short Mountain, near Woodbury, which was a bit further north, on his way
back home to Michigan. The Short Mountain folks proved to be friendly and welcoming.
They told him that cheap land could be found nearby in a rich valley known as Dry
Creek, where lots of other hip folks were starting to gather.
The phone rang one day in mid-November as I sat at upstairs working at my
sewing machine. I ran downstairs, picked it up, and heard Michael Peter’s voice.
“Hey, Julie! Miss you, sweetie!”
“Oh, man, miss you, too! Damn! Good to hear your voice. So, how are you? What’s
goin’ on? You find anything?”
“Oh, you won’t believe it, man. I think I found the perfect place for us.” Excited
chuckle. “I’m at a place called Dry Creek. I’m sittin’ here by the fire at Rob and Nora’s.
Debbie and Jon are here, and Billy’s headed over. Man, you’re gonna love it. It’s
beautiful, and there’s so many cool people here. I can hardly wait to tell ya all about it.”
“Oh wow… that’s so cool. Oooo, I’m excited. So, when are you coming back
home?”
“I’m gonna hang here for a few more days, then I’ll head back. I figure I should
be there by Thanksgiving, so let’s plan on gettin’ everybody together then. OK?”
“Alright. Fantastic, man. See ya then! Love you…”
12
“Love you, too. Smoochies!” Click.
Jennifer and I decided we’d host a Thanksgiving feast at her house, and spent the
next several days planning and shopping for the meal—vegetarian, no turkeys for us.
Michael Peter returned the night before, and slept into the afternoon on Thanksgiving day
while the rest of the tribe piled in from Allegan. We cooked, guzzled wine, and danced to
our excitement. I called home to wake Michael Peter when we were ready to sit down to
eat. A few minutes later, he joined us, armed with his journals and a ton of photos. Our
Thanksgiving was an excited reunion and a celebration of the future we hoped to create
for ourselves. After dinner, we lit candles and poured more wine. We sat at the table,
passing around the photos Michael Peter had brought back, while listening to his
descriptions and impressions of what he’d learned in middle Tennessee, dreaming and
imagining.
On a hundred acre (or more) plot of land atop Short Mountain was a real
commune. An old log house served as the main house, where some people lived. Various
other structures had been built, where other people lived—a teepee, a yurt, a treehouse.
There were about a dozen people altogether. The community on Dry Creek was more of a
collective, rather than a commune.
Out in the main valley along Dry Creek Road, the local people lived and worked
on family farms, but up in the nooks and crannies of the hills, called “hollers” (a localism
for “hollow”), young people from various parts of the country had moved in, occupying
old, abandoned houses, many of which had sat vacant since the Depression, and
renovating them. A community of what he described as “transplanted hippies” had
13
formed on the edges of the local farming community, as an almost-but not-quite-separate
entity. There was acceptance and good will between the local farmers and the new
people, who sometimes pitched in to help harvest crops for the farmers in exchange for a
share of the produce (or cash, in the case of tobacco, hay, or some other inedible crop).
Michael Peter explained that, since everyone lived in separate dwellings, Dry
Creek wasn’t a commune like the community at Short Mountain. It was more of a
collective of people who came together often to share potluck dinners, hold monthly
meetings of a food-buying club, and help each other with building projects, gardening,
and collecting firewood. He’d also found people there who gathered every full moon to
share a sweat lodge ceremony, which lit a spark of deeper interest in me.
Michael Peter told us about some of the people he’d met, both on Dry Creek and
at Short Mountain—Rob and Nora, Debbie and Jon, Billy, Snow Bear and Tina, Bill and
Judy, Kate, Joshua, and Milo—all of whom had welcomed him into their lives during his
short stay. He explained that there were still a lot of unoccupied old houses in the Dry
Creek area, and that the “Dry Creek hippies” had let him know they hoped we’d come
down to Tennessee and join them.
Snow had begun to pile up while we talked, so the Allegan crew decided to stay
the night rather than risk driving back to the farm. We spread out around the floor of Bob
and Jennifer’s living room and talked most of the night. By the time we were all nodding,
we had unanimously agreed that Dry Creek was to be our new home. All that remained
was to plan how to execute our decision. And to do it. As my Dad always said, “Make a
plan, and work the plan.”
14
Over the next few weeks, it was decided that Bob and Jennifer, and David and I,
would move first and pave the way for the rest to follow. Michael Duane and Laura
wanted to wait until after their baby was born in the spring before moving. Michael Peter
and Katheylynn (still separated, but friends nonetheless) would find their way to join us
in late spring or early summer. Bob and Jennifer volunteered to make the next
exploratory trip to Tennessee over the Christmas holidays with the intention of locating
housing for the four of us.
They found two houses situated near each other on the same farm that we could
rent for what seemed to us a very cheap rate. These houses weren’t on Dry Creek, but
were nearby. We figured this would make as good a place as any to start out. So, Bob,
Jennifer, David, and I rented two large U-Hauls and moved our entire households—
furniture, stereos, cats, dogs, plants, literally everything we owned—to a farm on Dismal
Road in middle Tennessee. We arrived in a snowstorm on David’s birthday, January 17,
1976, sliding down the hill to our new homes, which backed up to steep forest and looked
out onto rolling pastures.
We had no jobs lined up, and no prospect of jobs—just a bit of savings, a lot of
hope, and a dream of a better life. It felt, at the time, like we were a part of some grand
cosmic scheme, that what we were doing was somehow going to be important, like we
were a part of a great wave that was going to help save mother earth, and humanity.
“Imagine,” the man had said. We did.
~*~***~*~
15
O, come live with me in the countryside,
Among the humble farms. Together we
Will hunt the deer, and tend the little goats,
Compelling them along with willow wands.
Together singing we will mimic Pan...12
- Excerpt from “Eclogue II,” The Eclogues by Virgil
~*~***~*~
16
Chapter 2 – DISMAL WINTER INTO SPRING
A sound intruded on the morning peacefulness. I struggled to open my eyes. What
the hell IS that noise?
I listened, unable to picture what could be making such a horrid noise in the early
morning darkness. I poked David, and said, “Would you please go peek out the window
and see what the hell’s making all that noise? It’s creepy.” He grumbled sleepily, but
slowly peeled back the warm blankets, shuffled over to the window, pushed a strand of
dark blonde hair out of his eyes with one hand, and drew the heavy curtain aside with the
other. He stood there staring for a moment before he spoke.
“It’s a COW.”
“A COW?”
“Yeah. A damn cow. Right outside the window.”
“Oh.”
OK. So there was a cow in my yard. I guess when you live across the road from a
cow pasture, a cow in your front yard isn’t so strange.
I rolled over to go back to sleep. David crawled back into bed, his thin body
shivering from the frigid air in the room. Damn. Did the fire go out, too? We had only
just dozed off when another loud noise punctuated the morning gloom.
What now? A car horn? It’s still dark. I glanced at the clock next to the bed, and
read “5:30” in the dim light. Poking David again, I asked him to please get up once more
and see who was now honking insanely in our driveway. He peered out the window, and
reported back.
17
“It’s freakin’ Bobby Colvert.”
“WHAT?”
“You heard me. It’s Bobby.”
“Aw, man. What does he think he’s doing honking in the driveway like that?”
“Hell if I know, but we’d better get dressed and go find out.”
And so began the third morning of my new life out in the country in Tennessee. A
cow was out. In fact, several cows had gotten out. We learned that morning that paying
our landlord $50 a month for an old farmhouse wasn’t the only “rent” he expected of us.
Evidently, Bobby considered us his farm hands. For free, of course. If the cows got out,
we were expected to round them up and get them back into the pasture. Then, we were to
mend the fence.
We’d just moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Dowelltown, Tennessee. Neither
of us knew much about cows or fence-mending. But Bobby figured everyone ought to
know about such things, and expected it without question. If we wanted to stay, we had to
learn. Fast.
~*~***~*~
That first winter on Dismal Road was mercifully short. We were learning how to
heat our homes with wood stoves, a feat accomplished through much trial and error. I lost
every one of the huge collection of house plants I had so carefully moved with me. First,
I burned them, then I froze them. On the first night, I wanted them to be warm, so I put
them in the kitchen near the wood stove that occupied its center. We really didn’t know
much about flues and dampers. In the middle of the night, we awoke drenched in sweat to
18
find the stovepipe glowing cherry red in the darkness. My poor plants. Some were
completely crisped. So, the next night, we didn’t put quite so much wood in the stove,
and woke up the next morning to find the ones that hadn’t burned to death the night
before crunchy with ice. My poor plants. Again. We eventually got the hang of it, but for
a while, we alternately sweltered or shivered through the long, winter nights.
Our first visitors from Dry Creek arrived in late morning on a sunny Sunday in
late April. A battered old pickup pulled into the driveway. We watched as three people
stepped out and crossed the yard to the front steps: a tall, thin man with reddish-blonde
hair tied back in a ponytail, a small, round woman with a long blonde braid wearing
layers of flouncy skirts over longjohns and work boots, and a small man with loose black
hair that gleamed to his waist. The woman knocked on the door. When David opened it,
she smiled. “Hi! I’m Debbie. This is Jon.” She indicated the tall, thin man. “We’re from
Dry Creek.” She gestured toward the small man with the black mane. “And this is Milo.
He’s from Short Mountain. We heard some hippies had moved in at Bobby Colvert’s old
place on Dismal, and thought we’d come over to say ‘Hey’ and welcome you.”
David opened the door wider and invited them in. They spent the afternoon with
us. Jon went through our record collection, and asked if he could play a few. Sure. Our
stereo system was the one thing we owned that was worth some bucks, and we were
happy when we could share it with other folks. Debbie went to the kitchen and asked if
she could poke around. Sure. They hadn’t eaten yet, she said, and wondered if it would be
OK to whip something up for a brunch. Sure. She found whole wheat flour, milk, oil,
eggs, butter, and the jug of maple syrup I’d bought at the food co-op in Kalamazoo before
19
we left, then showed me how to make pancakes in an iron skillet on the wood stove.
Milo hovered around the stove quietly warming his hands as Debbie and I flipped
pancakes and chattered about what had brought us each here to Tennessee.
As we sat round the living room floor and ate our pancakes, we learned that
Debbie was from Virginia where she’d worked as a farm hand. She was a horsewoman,
and knew about cows, too. Jon was a musician and carpenter from Connecticut. He’d
moved down with a friend named Kate who was living alone in a cabin over on Dry
Creek. Jon and Debbie lived “up Wilder Holler” on the Creek. To reach their house, they
said it was necessary to drive across and through Wilder Creek nine times. Remote, but
they liked it that way. Their house had no electricity, but had spring water piped into the
kitchen by gravity-feed from uphill. Like us, they heated with wood, but unlike us, they
used kerosene lamps and candles for light in the evening.
Milo was from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was one of the original owners of
the commune atop Short Mountain. We got the impression that “Milo” wasn’t his real
name, that he’d maybe been involved in some student protests against the war a few years
back, and had disappeared into the hills with a new name for some unknown reason. We
didn’t ask.
The Mountain wasn’t a part of Dry Creek, they explained, but was near enough
that the people there were closely-knit with the people of the Dry Creek collective.
Joshua, a wooly young mountain man from Utah, lived in a yurt up at the Mountain.
Crowder Pea, one of Milo’s friends from North Carolina, lived in a teepee. Milo shared
the main house, the old log cabin, with Michelle, Arliss, and several other friends. Like
20
Wilder Holler, there was no power at Short Mountain. Their water came from a well with
an old-fashioned well-bucket, and several springs from which they carried water in
plastic five-gallon buckets.
Debbie did most of the talking. Milo didn’t say much. Neither did Jon. We
learned that there were lots of other “transplants,” as we came to call ourselves, over on
Dry Creek. Rob and Nora, also from Connecticut like Jon and Kate, owned an organic
dairy farm near Possum Hollow Road. They sold milk to their friends on the cheap.
Further up the Creek, George and Margie, farmers from Massachusetts, lived at the
mouth of Cubbins Hollow with their six kids and a passel of dogs and cats. They raised
dairy goats.
John and Merril lived on a 200-acre farm up Cathcart Hollow. They called it
Belly Acres after the discontented crew who’d bought into the place with them, but had
subsequently decided rural life wasn’t as idyllic as they’d imagined, and left in a huff.
Originally from Miami, but most recently from New York City, they lived in Knoxville
during the week and in the winter, working to pay off the shares of those who had left.
But they were on the farm every weekend during the summer months with their two
adopted sons, J’aime and David. Merril’s cousin, Billy, also from Miami via New York,
lived at Belly Acres, too, in a three-room cabin near the head of the hollow. And Jon’s
friend, Kate, lived further up the hollow in a hundred-year-old log cabin with her dog,
EmmyLou.
Snow Bear and Tina were also from North Carolina. They, along with their young
daughter, Jodi, lived in Whippoorwill Hollow at the head of Dry Creek on a 125-acre
21
farm. The farm was owned by Bill and Judy, retired professors from New Jersey, who
spent winters in the Caribbean islands, and summers at their house in the hollow. Snow
Bear and Tina lived in another house at the end of the road as caretakers. Debbie told us
that Snow Bear had built a sweat lodge in the woods out behind his house. He held
sweats every full moon and we were all invited. I remembered Michael Peter had
mentioned the sweat lodge when he’d told us about Dry Creek over Thanksgiving dinner
last November. We’d have to come on over next full moon, she said.
By late spring, we found ourselves wishing we lived on Dry Creek, not Dismal
Road, and especially not with Bobby Colvert as our landlord. Bobby, we were learning,
was an old-time, hellfire-and-brimstone country preacher, a big bear of a man with a
thundering voice and a boorish manner. Try as we might, it seemed that we city-folk
Yankees were always at odds with him, trying our best to appease him one way or
another so he wouldn’t kick us out.
~*~***~*~
It was a Saturday afternoon in early June, a day not quite up to the intense, humid
heat of full summer in middle Tennessee, but still a rather hot day for folks like us, whose
Michigan blood hadn’t quite become acclimated yet. We’d been hard at work in the
garden all day, and it felt good to take a break on the front porch of the house where
David and I lived. Michael Peter had found his way down from Michigan to Tennessee
again, and was helping us work in the garden that day. Katheylynn and John Eddy (now
her new fella) had recently arrived from Michigan and were staying with Bob and
Jennifer. They’d been helping in the garden, too.
22
Debbie and Jon dropped by in their beat-up old pickup truck, waving as they
turned into the gravel driveway. Debbie held up the hem of her frilly skirt as she stepped
onto the sideboard of the truck, exposing ragged, cut-off longjohns above the mud-caked
work boots laced onto her feet. Jon came around to her side of the truck, guitar slung
across his lanky frame, and helped her down. They wandered on over to join us on the
porch.
A late afternoon breeze flowed down the hillside and onto the porch, stirring the
muggy air. In the woods behind the house, a small stream gurgled across a tumble of
rocks. A lone bob-white called out from the grassy meadow across the road. We took
turns swinging in the new porch swing David had recently built, while Jon and Michael
Peter sat on the edge of the porch, guitars in hand, picking out tunes together. We all
talked quietly while enjoying a few cold beers with friends after a good day of work in
the warm sun. It was a perfectly wonderful lazy Saturday afternoon in the country.
It was, that is, until Bobby Colvert suddenly flew over the hill and wheeled into
the driveway. He was prone to showing up unannounced any time he felt like it, which
was often. We all froze in place as Bobby swung open the door of his pickup, clambered
out, and began to head for the porch at full throttle. I wondered what he wanted this time.
Scowling angrily, he flung himself up the porch steps two at a time. When he
reached the porch, he shouted, “What do y’all think yer doin’?!” He reached over and
neatly snatched the beer out of John Eddy’s hand. The rest of us quickly hid our beers
while John just stood there, mouth gaping open. Bobby ran down the steps and proceeded
to dance around the perimeter of the front yard, pouring out John’s beer in drips and
23
drabs as he went.
It began with a low grumbling mutter of sound. Now and then, we could make out
the word “Beer!” in his mumblings, punctuated by occasional louder mutterings that
sounded like “Praise the Lord!” His passion for his task grew as we watched. The
mumble became a rumbling roar as he danced, stomped, sputtered, turned red in the face,
and began to preach at the top of his lungs about the “evils of Satan’s alcohol,” all the
while still pouring out what was left of poor, confused John’s beer all around the front
yard.
We all stood still and silent, watching this spectacle in stunned amazement. We
knew that DeKalb County was a “dry” county, but we also knew that beer was legal (beer
only—no wine or liquor), provided it wasn’t sold on Sunday or within 100 yards of a
church or a school. Knowing that, it hadn’t occurred to us that anyone might think
drinking beer on the front porch of our house on Saturday afternoon was such a “bad”
thing.
When he had finally emptied John’s beer (it took about five minutes, but seemed
like an eternity), Bobby tossed the empty bottle into the back of his pickup truck where it
landed with a crash, breaking and sending jagged brown shards flying out onto the yard.
Satisfied with that, Bobby then stormed back up onto the porch. He swaggered up to
David, wagged a finger in his face, and began to shout. “You will NOT EVER drink beer
on my property again! Is – That – Understood?”
David stood quietly for a moment, trying to size up the situation with some sort of
rationality. Failing in that, he glared back at Bobby. “Whadda you mean? I oughtta be
24
able to drink a beer with my friends if I want to. I pay rent. I live here.”
Bobby drew himself up, took a deep, ragged breath, towered over David, and
began to bellow in full preacher-mode. “Alcohol is the tool of the Devil! You. Will. NOT
drink alcohol on my property!” With that, he turned, still sputtering and steaming,
climbed into his pickup, and spun gravel as he backed out of the driveway. A final “Get
thee away from me, Satan!” trailed back on the wind as he drove off.
I looked around slowly at my friends. Damn. Was that for real? Did we actually
see someone go completely raving bonkers over a bottle of beer? No one spoke for a
moment, then Debbie blinked her eyes and shook her head. Brown eyes crinkled, and
blonde cowgirl braids flopped over her shoulders as she turned to face me with her usual
wide, sunny grin.
“Wow. Well hey, one of the reasons Jon and I stopped by this afternoon was to
tell you guys that John and Merril are lookin’ for somebody to live in the big white house
at Belly Acres while they’re workin’ in Knoxville. I figure you and David might be
interested?”
~*~***~*~
25
Chapter 3 – SUMMER AT BELLY ACRES
Debbie had left us with directions to Belly Acres, telling us to come on over to
meet John and Merril next Saturday and talk with them about caretaking their house.
They were having a party, one of their famous dessert potlucks, this one being the annual
“Ice Cream Social,” she said. Bring ice cream. I decided I’d make my special homemade
ice cream, a concoction full of real cream, honey, pineapple chunks, shredded coconut,
and buttered pecans that I called “Pineapple Coconut Ambrosia.” It was always a hit.
According to Debbie’s directions, we were to take Dismal Road into Dowelltown,
then get on Highway 70 going toward Smithville. At the first crossroads before Snow’s
Hill, turn right onto Dry Creek Road, she wrote. Follow it a ways, go past the turn-off for
Vandegriff Hollow, then look for a big, red barn on the right. Turn left on the next road,
follow it as far as we could go, and park by the barn when the road became impassable.
The party would be at the big, white house on the side of the hill above the barn.
Debbie had suggested we go to the party a little early, so we could meet John and
Merril before the rest of the guests arrived and talk to them about the house. She’d tell
them to expect us. The party was to begin at seven, so at around six, we set off in the
rumbly old black pickup we’d bought before leaving Kalamazoo. Following Debbie’s
instructions, we eventually turned off Dry Creek Road onto a gravel road that fit her
description. It wound first between two hay fields, then a stop-gap appeared across a
small, dry streambed. We rumbled across the stop-gap, aimed up the quickly narrowing
track into the woods, then came upon a creek that crossed the road in front of us. We
plunged on through, emerging on the other side to find the road spongy with loose, wet
26
gravel that spun our tires. We made it out onto dry land and surged ahead into the
darkness of the forest for a short time before we came upon an old, grey, weathered house
that leaned to one side. This must be what Debbie called “The Spookhouse.” It sure
looked like one. Just past it was a spring-house built into the side of the hill, with cement
walls and a wooden door, below which ran a spring that formed a watercress-filled pool
beside the road. The road turned sharply uphill from that point and quickly became a
jumble of bedrock we had to navigate carefully. Just ahead loomed an old barn, also grey
and weathered. At the barn was a level, cleared spot. This must be where Debbie had
indicated we should park. There were two other vehicles parked there, an old blue and
white VW van, and a dark green International Scout.
The “big, white house” Debbie had mentioned was barely visible on the hillside
above. We honked the horn to announce our arrival, got out of the truck, doors banging
shut, and began to walk up the road toward the house. Between the road and the house
was a deep, dry gulch filled with brush. To get to the house it was necessary to cross a
rope-and-board bridge that hung suspended bank to bank across the gully. In the yard was
a huge willow and a wild pink briar rose that climbed on a half-rotten old post-and-rail
fence. We walked up steep wooden steps to the creaky wrap-around porch of the house
and knocked on the door. No one answered. The door was unlocked so we pushed it open
to peek inside. “Hello?” Still no answer.
Inside the front door we found a big room with a hardwood floor. A stone
fireplace was at the far end, and a wood stove. The walls were “papered” with
photographs up high and lined with a wainscoting of barnwood below. Beyond this room
27
was a dining room, and a kitchen with colorful curtains containing a gas stove,
refrigerator (we were pleased to note the house had electricity—some on Dry Creek
didn’t, we’d heard), and a sink we discovered was fed with spring water piped in by
gravity-feed from a spring uphill. On the other side of the dining room was a room in
which sat an old claw-foot bathtub with no plumbing attached to it except for a drain. We
walked back through the dining room, passed through the kitchen where I managed to
cram the metal tub of homemade ice cream I’d brought into the freezer of the refrigerator,
and out the back door onto the porch. We noticed an outhouse on this side of the house,
and much further on, a root cellar built into the side of the hill.
David cupped his hands and hollered up toward the top of the hills. “Hoo! Hoo!”
A call came back, “Hoo! Hoo! Up here!”
We noticed a plank bridge wide enough for a vehicle to drive across at this end of
the yard. We hadn’t seen this from the road. We climbed down the back porch steps and
crossed the bridge out onto the bedrock road again. As high up into the hills as we were,
soil becomes thin. Bedrock outcroppings poked up like ancient grey monoliths among the
trees of the forest alongside the road. The air was alive with the sound of buzzing insects
and birdsong, and the scent of roses and wild honeysuckle gently tickled our nostrils. We
walked quietly uphill as the path became less like a road and more like a rocky trail.
We came upon a clearing to the left where a small cabin covered in weathered
grey clapboard perched on stilts against the steep grade of the hillside. On its porch stood
a tall young man with a halo of dark curls and a spiky black beard. He shouted out to us,
“Hey! I’m Billy! Merril and John are in the garden.” He pointed a bit further up the path.
28
We continued on until the road—which was now merely a grassy, rocky
footpath—stopped in a circular clearing. Ahead stretched a long meadow that reached to
the top of the hills at the head of the hollow, and in its midst sat an old log cabin, its
porch lined with what looked like bundles of herbs or flowers hung to dry. That must be
Kate’s house. To our left was a tree line, and beyond there, what appeared to be a garden.
Figures were crouched there, apparently working. We walked up to the tree line, and as
we did, one of the figures rose to greet us, a tall woman with short, very dark hair. She
wore sandals with red pants and a brightly colored shirt. She waved to us. “You must be
David and Julie! I’m Merril. Come on over!” We walked into the garden and she held out
her hand. “Look, tomatillos. Yum.” She popped one into her mouth. “Here. Take one.”
We dutifully did so.
Her companion stood up and turned around, an equally tall but considerably
thinner man, his skinny legs poking out from beneath baggy shorts. “Hi! I’m John.” He
grinned through a bushy, graying beard. “Debbie says you might want to watch the house
for us. That would be great. We could use someone to stay here when we’re in
Knoxville.”
“Of course, that doesn’t mean you’d have to move out when we’re here, though,”
Merril added. “We’ll be in and out, probably here on weekends.” They began to speak
rapidly, one right after the other.
“We heard you’re staying at Bobby Colvert’s place on Dismal.” John rolled his
eyes.
“So, we can help you out and you can help us out.”
29
“Just so long as you don’t mind if we come out on the weekends.”
“Of course, there’ll be lots of parties all summer. You won’t mind parties, will
you?”
“Yes, there’ll probably be a lot of people coming out with us from Knoxville for
parties. They’ll just pitch tents or sleep on the porch. That’ll be OK, too, won’t it?”
“You can have the house to yourselves all week. Do whatever you like.”
“And in the winter, we’ll just stay in Knoxville, so it’s all yours then.”
David looked over at me and raised his eyebrows to let me know this sounded OK
to him. I had but one question, “What would we owe you for rent?”
“Oh! Nothing!” John and Merril nodded and laughed together as if we were silly
to ask.
“Nothing? OK? Cool! Deal.”
Merril nodded. “Go on down and check the place out before the party starts.”
“We already did on the way up. Thought maybe you were inside.”
“Cool. I know you met Cousin Billy on the way up. Sound carries up in the holler,
you know. And that’s Kate’s cabin on up there.” Merril pointed toward the old log cabin.
“So, it’s not so lonesome up here. You’ve got good neighbors to get to know.”
“Well, we’re going back tomorrow night, so feel free to start bringing your stuff
over on Monday. We’ll clear out some room for you before we go. Glad we could help
each other out.” John smiled and offered a hand to seal the deal.
David and I helped them put away the garden tools in a small shed at the edge of
the garden spot, then helped carry baskets full of strawberries back down to the house.
30
Some of the guests from Knoxville were starting to arrive by the time we got there.
Merril and John dropped their baskets at the plank bridge to share hugs and squeals with
their friends, then began to introduce us. Most of them were women, so far, friends of
Merril evidently, but men who were friends of John were starting to pour in as we
chatted. Before the night was done, we felt like we must have met most of the alternative
lifestyle community from Knoxville, and the entire Dry Creek and Short Mountain crews
had turned out for the party as well.
Some of our friends from Michigan came, too. Laura Mae and Michael Duane
came with baby Jesse, who’d been born at the Allegan farmhouse in March. They’d
waited for his birth and for him to get a little bigger before packing up to move, and had
arrived in May. They’d bought a 40-acre farm up Fraser Hollow behind the cave spring
there, and had been busy working on the old farmhouse on their land for the past several
weeks.
Michael Peter, Katheylynn, and John Eddy came to the party, too. Michael Peter
had moved down in March. Katheylynn and John Eddy had followed in April. Michael
Peter was living with Bob and Jennifer while trying to a find place of his own.
Katheylynn had moved, with John (for now), to what became known as her “little red
house on the hill.” Friends of hers from Gainesville, Florida—Carol and Albert and
kids— had come to visit, decided they loved the area, too, and bought a big farm at the
head of Vandegriff Hollow. The little red house was on their property. To reach it
involved climbing straight up the hillside from the gravel road below on a zig-zagging
path so steep that footholds were tenuous, and clinging to roots and vines was necessary
31
to make it to the top. Once on top, the terrain leveled off into a wide meadow, and there
sat Katheylynn’s little red house—she was always adamant that it was her house. It had
no electricity and no plumbing. She carried water from a nearby spring. The house was
heated by an old cast-iron woodstove in the main room that served as living room and
bedroom, and a wood-fired cookstove sat in the kitchen that ran the length of the back of
the house. Lighting was by kerosene lamps and candles. Both she and John were
enthralled with the solitude they’d found at the little red house in the meadow on the hill.
At the party that night, Michael Peter inquired about the old house down the road,
the “Spookhouse,” wondering if he might live there. It was pretty much dilapidated, but
he’d checked it out on the way up, and thought he could make himself a one-room home
in the upper story, which was still relatively intact. Merril and John told him to contact
Jimmy Colvert about it. He was Bobby’s brother, but was nothing like Bobby. He was
pretty cool, they said, and would probably be willing to let Michael Peter stay there.
The Ice Cream Social at Belly Acres was one of the best parties I’ve ever
attended. The idea of a dessert potluck was a great concept. Eat a light dinner before you
come, and be prepared to pig out. Kids loved it, and we all relaxed for the evening,
allowing ourselves to indulge our senses. There was wine and beer, and watermelon, iced
down in tubs outside, too. And the people who came, probably around a hundred in all,
were from all over America, and were of all sizes, shapes, colors, genders, ages, and
persuasions. By the time the party ended around dawn, we were fully indoctrinated into
Dry Creek culture and could hardly wait to gather our things and get away from Dismal
Road and Bobby Colvert.
32
Bob and Jennifer were conspicuously absent from the party, although they’d also
been invited. Jennifer was pregnant and due any day, so I figured that probably had
something to do with their absence, but I also knew that she and Bob hadn’t been getting
along very well, and wondered if that might be a factor, too. Bob had begun to attend
Bobby’s church. He’d already become involved with evangelical Christians before we
left Michigan, but none of us had expected him to fall in with Bobby in quite the way he
did, and we all refused, at the time, to see it for what it was.
He’d verbally attacked me recently, calling me “Jezebel,” which seemed odd to
me, but, offensive as it was, I took his outburst as indicative merely of his anger with me
for my personal rejection of his newfound religion, and with that, to his eyes, our
friendship. This was partially true, but not entirely so. Bobby’s conservative attitude had
filtered into Bob’s own outlook, but I was oblivious to the change and found his new
ways simply confusing. I knew he resented my friendship with Michael Peter and felt he
had somehow corrupted me (one of many reasons why Michael Peter was hot to move
from there, even if it meant living in the old Spookhouse). The fact that I was more
attracted to Michael Peter’s Buddhist leanings than Bob’s holy roller Christianity was
something for which, I would later learn, Bob never really forgave me.
Jennifer tried to live with his changes as best she could. She was desperately
trying to keep her budding family intact. She told me years later that, during that period,
Bob had forbidden her to have anything to do with David or me. I’d wondered why I
never saw them any more. He also decided one night that rock and roll was a “tool of the
devil,” and in a religious fit, had taken all her record albums and smashed them to bits.
33
She was becoming afraid of him, but hung on for the sake of the family she hoped for.
~*~***~*~
When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; she painted her eyes, and
adorned her head, and looked out of the window. As Jehu entered the gate, she
said, “Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of your master?” He looked up to the window
and said, “Who is on my side? Who?” Two or three eunuchs looked out at him.
He said, “Throw her down.” So they threw her down; some of her blood spattered
on the wall and on the horses, which trampled on her.13
- 2 Kings, 9.30-33
~*~***~*~
David and I knew that moving to Belly Acres was the right thing to do. The
situation at Dismal Road had simply become untenable for us. Preacher Bobby had
proved to be an overbearing landlord, and the situation with Bob and Jennifer was
becoming more and more uncomfortable with each passing day.
So, in June of 1976, we loaded our few belongings into the back of our rusty
black pickup truck and moved to Belly Acres, with Nikki, Eric, Sadie and Bo-Bo in tow.
We stayed there that summer and fall, and through the winter of 1977. My memories of
that time come in a swift jumble of images, sounds, scents.
~*~***~*~
Michael Peter sitting cross-legged with eyes closed on a blanket in the sun beside
the spring at the Spookhouse, beside him a small glass filled with lemon-juice, honey,
and water. He’s at the end of a ten-day fast, deep in meditation, breathing slow, steady
and deliberate, and is completely oblivious to me as I quietly gather watercress from the
spring to be used in a salad with my own evening dinner.
~*~***~*~
34
Attain utmost emptiness,
Maintain utter stillness.14
- Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching
~*~***~*~
Spending the day with Kate at her cabin. We string up herbs to hang for drying,
shell peas from the garden, lay in the meadow and watch the clouds float by, go up to the
spring with a ladle and pour icy water over our heads to cool off, drag out some cloth and
cut a new dress for Kate to sew on her old treadle machine. Later, we sit on her front
porch in the swing David had built for her, and gaze down the holler to watch as the sun
sinks into clouds painted purple and gold, crimson and deep blue. As the moon rises and
climbs in the darkening sky, the landscape below takes on tones of sepia and grey,
punctuated by dark shadows and spots of brightness where the moon reflects off water.
It’s as if the land becomes a different world in the moonlight, full of mystery, beckoning
with promises of ethereal beauty and cold, dark enigma. I walked home that night bathed
in moonshine and slept ‘til dawn.
~*~***~*~
Stars around the beautiful moon
conceal their luminous form
when in her fullness she shines
on the earth
in silver15
- Fragment of poetry by Sappho
~*~***~*~
Billy standing on his porch and tossing the contents of his kitchen compost bucket
to the ground far below, calling out in a thunderous tone, “To Ishtar!” or “For Isis!” Billy
35
barging into my living room in the white house, slapping Stevie Wonder’s new album on
my turntable while carefully picking the track he wanted from memory, turning the
volume up full blast, then grabbing my hand to whirl me across the floor singing, “Music
is a world within itself, With a language we all understand…” Billy cooking dinner for us
in his little three-room cabin: bean tacos with deep-fried flour shells, sliced avocado, and
fresh alfalfa sprouts he’d grown himself.
Katheylynn and I, standing on warm stones across the road from the white house,
pouring sun-warmed water over our bodies to bathe, startled by a booming voice that
shatters the quiet of the moment. “Good afternoon, ladies.” We giggle, realizing that it’s
only Billy who’s walking by on the way up the road to his house. He grins, but just nods,
and walks on. Big, brash, boisterous Billy, a Leo through and through, all male, a lover of
women and flirtatious as hell, but generous with, and protective of, those he loved. Last I
saw him, in 1997, he was managing a Nashville strip-joint, the Kit-Kat Club, and had
married one of the strippers. Go figure. That’s Billy.
~*~***~*~
No, it had to be, she had to call in that crazy Coyote Man, so full of tricks
and mischief all the time and never content to only gamble with the men, but had
to be out in the brush chasing after all those young women. And now Magpie
Woman sighed, and then giggled in remembering her youth. Yes, yes, there
always seemed to be eager young women, way out there, pretending to gather
wood or dig for food, the better to be caught by Coyote Man or any other like
himself. For of course there are many kinds of coyote, among all men, not to
mention certain kinds of women, too, who glory in mischief and hidden games,
among the bushes of the forest. But that’s always been so, sighed Magpie Woman
and giggled again in remembrance.16
- Excerpt from “Coyote Man and Saucy Duckfeather,” told by Peter Blue Cloud
~*~***~*~
36
The social worker who drove all the way up the hollow to visit Michael Peter at
the Spookhouse. At Jennifer’s suggestion, he’d applied for food stamps (until he could
find carpentry work), and it was the social worker’s job to verify his address. He’d
truthfully described to her where he lived. She knew the house, but was dubious, unable
to believe anyone actually lived there. We waited with him for her arrival, wanting to see
the shock on her face as she inspected his ascetic quarters in the top story of the old
house. We weren’t disappointed.
The house leaned to the left, and the front porch slanted along with it. Entering
through the front door, there was a hallway that led to a narrow, rickety staircase behind a
door at the back of the house. The rooms to either side of the hallway, once a living room
with a red brick fireplace on the right and a bedroom on the left, had no floors. They’d
rotted away long ago. The windows were all broken and the forest had begun to reclaim
the house. In the darkness inside its walls crept tendrils of vines that wandered in and out
through the broken windows seeking light. Strips of tattered wallpaper, once bright with
yellows and reds, hung from the walls amidst moss and lichens. It smelled damp and
musty.
But at the top of the stairs was a clean and brightly lit space. Windows (with
glass) lined the long front wall of the narrow room. The wooden floor was intact, swept
clean of dust and mopped, with small rugs neatly laid down. The walls were lined with
hand-made bookshelves filled with Michael Peter’s esoteric collection of books, titles
like The Dhammapada, The Third Eye, and A Treatise on the Seven Rays. On one end
was a bed, built in against the wall, topped with a single mattress and blankets tidily
37
folded. A desk sat in front of one of the windows. It held a single kerosene lamp, a small
bronze Buddha, a white candle, an incense burner, a colorful package of sandalwood
incense imported from India, and a pad of paper with a pen beside it. A woodstove used
for cooking and heating was vented through a windowpane, which had been replaced
with metal sheeting to hold the stovepipe safely, and from the tongue-and-groove ceiling
hung pots and pans on hooks. A porcelain lined metal basin sat atop a small table. A
bucket of water drawn from the spring with a ladle hanging from its edge sat next to the
table.
This was a hermit’s home. Austere and functional, but beautiful in its simplicity.
The social worker, out of place in her lipstick and heels, was obviously shocked. What
she saw lay outside her small town, conservative world. But she had to agree that he had
created a home, and did live there, so had no choice but to approve his application in the
end. I can only imagine what she must have told her co-workers.
~*~***~*~
If, by giving up lesser comforts,
A greater happiness is to be found,
The wise should give up the lesser comforts
In view of the greater happiness.17
- Excerpt from The Dhammapada
~*~***~*~
Pearlie from Short Mountain at John and Merril’s Hallowe’en Ball in the fall of
1976. What a gorgeous man Pearlie was, with long, almost white, platinum-blonde hair, a
matching goatee, and striking blue eyes. He came to the party dressed as “Nursie FallOut” that night, and was absolutely perfect in his role, prancing about in a short, sexy
38
nurse’s uniform, checking pulses and listening to heartbeats with the stethoscope he’d
slung around his neck. I am glad to have known him, and wish I could have known him
better. Pearlie is gone now. He passed away in the 1980s during the AIDS epidemic.
~*~***~*~
Farewell you wolves and jackals, farewell you bears that lurk
In the mountains. No more will Daphnis the cowherd
Haunt your thickets, woods and groves. Farewell, Arethusa,
And you streams whose bright waters pour down Thybris’ side.18
- Excerpt from “Idyll 1: Thrysis’ Lament for Daphnis,” Idylls by Theocritus
~*~***~*~
Losing Nikki. We let him run loose in the hills at Belly Acres. There were no
cows to chase and we figured he was safe enough. He loved the freedom and roamed far,
but was always within earshot and usually came when called. But one summer afternoon,
a sudden fierce thunderstorm blew up while Nikki was out in the woods. Water gushed
down the dry gulch between the house and the road in a flash flood, and the creek that
crossed the road below the Spookhouse swelled to become impassable. When it stopped
raining, we called and called, but Nikki didn’t come home. We feared he was trapped on
the other side of the swollen creek and might try to cross it. Even if that were not the
case, all his scent markers were washed away, which we knew could further complicate
things for him. Nonetheless, we knew that, if he could come home, he would. He’d done
this once before when we lived in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo on Catherine Street.
We’d lost him one afternoon while visiting Rich and Mary miles away out in the
country near Grand Junction. Unable to find him after hours of calling and searching, we
returned home that night in tears. But at about 3 a.m., we were awakened by the sound of
39
scratching at the front door. Nikki had found his way home through country roads and
city streets he’d never walked. Nikki was a very intelligent animal, so much so that David
had even trained him to look both ways for cars before crossing the street, a skill we
figured probably saved his life and brought him back to us that night in Kalamazoo. So,
we knew that if he could come home to us in Belly Acres, he would. But he never did.
We lost our Nikki in that storm at Belly Acres.
David found him many years later. While driving past a house at the top of
Snow’s Hill near the head of Possum Hollow, he saw a long-haired black dog outside in
the yard. He was sure it was Nikki. When he stopped to ask the elderly couple who lived
there about him, they said they’d found him several years ago near Dry Creek Road.
There’d been a heavy rainstorm and flooding. He had a broken leg. They took him to the
vet, got him patched up, and he’d lived with them ever since. David just smiled and told
them he was a beautiful dog. Nikki seemed happy, and the old couple who had taken him
in so kindly obviously loved him very much and treated him well. No reason to say
anything. He knelt down to pet Nikki, and peer into his eyes to be certain. Finding a
glimmer of recognition there, he left knowing he’d found our lost boy. Even though the
loss was still deeply felt, we knew he had survived, and were grateful for that knowledge.
After all the years, we could ask no more than that.
~*~***~*~
The dog warned his master to build a raft because all things were about to
be destroyed by a flood. The waters rose, lifting man and dog above the clouds
into a wonderful land of trees. The dog told the man that the only way he could
ever return to his homeland was if he, the dog, were thrown into the water. The
man was loyal to his friend and was reluctant to do this. The dog also told the
40
man not to leave the raft for seven days after the waters had subsided. With pain
in his heart, the man threw the dog overboard.
As the dog had predicted, the waters did subside and the man waited seven
days as he was instructed. At the end of the seven days, multitudes of people
approached the raft, some wet and dressed in rags, and others were dressed in
finery. When they arrived at the raft, it was clear that they were not humans, but
spirits of the many killed in the flood.19
- Story told by the Creek-Natchez tribe
~*~***~*~
41
Chapter 4 – WINTER DREAMING
Early one morning in January of 1977, I found that a glass of water had frozen
solid on the nightstand beside my bed. A fierce winter storm had blown in during the
night. The fire was out, and the house wasn’t much warmer than the outdoors. The winter
of 1977 set records for cold temperatures throughout the east and midwest. I have no idea
how cold it was that morning, since I had no thermometer, but the glass of ice next to my
head told me all I needed to know.
~*~***~*~
So it went until all the northern part of Ginnungagap was heavy with layers of ice
and hoar frost, a desolate place haunted by gusts and skuthers of wind.20
- Excerpt from The Eddas
~*~***~*~
Another heavy rock chunked off the pitchfork into the carefully arranged pile of
stones and logs that was to become a bonfire later in the afternoon. Snow Bear stuck the
pitchfork into the ground and leaned on the handle to rest for a few moments. He wore a
dark blue bandana tied into a headband to help keep the sweat out of his eyes, but even in
the chill air, he wiped stray rivulets of sweat from his forehead. Building the fire for the
sweat lodge was not an easy task.
He looked over at David, who was carrying another stone out of the creekbed to
add to the pile. “Wait! No, I’m sorry. We can’t use that one, David. It’s granite. Granite
can burst when it’s heated and someone might get hurt if that happens in the lodge.” His
tone was gentle, not reprimanding, that of a teacher, not a taskmaster.
“Oh, OK. Well, how do I tell the difference between granite and other rocks?”
42
Snow Bear traced a finger across the surface of the rock on David’s pitchfork.
“Look. See how it’s all speckled and mottled? Dark and light specks? Just don’t pick any
that look like that.” He smiled at David. “Thanks. I really appreciate your help.”
“No problem. Thank YOU for the sweats, man.” David dropped the chunk of
granite near the trees and went on into the forest and further down the creek to find a
more suitable stone for the lodge fire.
I saw this through the open flap of the sweat lodge where I was laying a bed of
soft straw around the pit in the center to make a soft place for us to sit later in the
evening. It was a full moon in February, and a Friday as well. There would be good
attendance at the sweat lodge tonight, even though a thin layer of snow covered the
ground and thick ice rimmed the edges of the creek. Snow Bear held sweat lodge on
every full moon, year-round, but a sweat in winter was extra-special because of the
contrast between the heat of the lodge and the frozen land outside.
My task finished, I crawled through the opening and stood by the soon-to-be
bonfire. Snow Bear had turned to follow David into the woods. I watched as his lanky
form disappeared into the trees, pitchfork in hand. He was such a cool guy, I thought. He
and Tina had come to the creek from Chapel Hill, North Carolina by way of Short
Mountain, where they used to live in the teepee. They had a little flaxen-haired daughter
named Jody who was the center of their lives, and had decided to move into the little
clapboard house that sat at the head of Whippoorwill Hollow so her life could be a little
easier.
In the woods next to the creek, just a short hike from the house, Snow Bear had
43
built a sweat lodge. It was constructed of green saplings cut and stuck into the ground in a
circle about ten feet in diameter, the tops of which had then been bent and tied to form a
dome-like structure. This frame was covered with old blankets, rugs, tarps, anything that
might help hold the heat and moisture within the lodge. The opening flap faced east. In
the center of the lodge was a shallow pit dug into the earth, which would later hold the
red-hot stones heated in the bonfire. Next to the pit was a pail of water and a small,
broom-shaped fan made of dried meadowsweet, with which water would be dripped onto
the hot stones to create steam.
I remembered I had forgotten to bring the pail out with me so I could take it to the
spring and fill it with fresh water for tonight. I crawled back in and came out with the
metal pail. Swinging the pail, I set off toward the house and the nearby spring. I could see
smoke from Tina’s wood cookstove rising above the treetops. It was too cold for little
girls to play outside today, so Tina and Jody were inside cooking up yummies for the
feast we would enjoy later after the sweat. On the day of the sweat, we would fast—water
only, and lots if it—but afterward, we would share a meal together.
I filled the bucket at the spring, then carried it onto the back porch of the house
and set it down. Opening the door, I walked into the kitchen and was greeted by the
warm, spicy scent of baking gingerbread. “Hi, Tina! Hey, Jody!” Jody squealed and ran
over to wrap little arms around my legs. I patted her head and, gently disengaging myself,
sat down at the wooden kitchen table.
“Tina, could you tell David, when you see him, that I’ll be back later? I think I’m
gonna drive home and make something to add to the potluck. I’ll be back at dark.”
44
“OK. Sure!” Tina’s green eyes smiled. “What are you gonna make?”
“I dunno for sure. I think maybe I’ll bake a pie. I’ve got some apples I need to use
before they spoil.”
“That sounds great! I’ll make sure David knows.”
“Thanks, Tina.” I got up to leave, fished my keys out of my pocket and started to
walk toward the front door. “Oh, hey, let them know I filled the water bucket for the
sweat, too. It’s on the back porch.” Tina nodded as I closed the door.
When I returned at dusk, people were starting to gather as the moon rose full and
bright over the hills. It was going to be a clear starry night, crisp and cold. I took note of
the cars parked by the barn. Kate and Josh were here. Laura and Michael, too. And Jon
and Debbie. Crowder was here, too. That would be a pretty full lodge. If any more people
showed up, we might have to sweat in shifts.
I left my freshly baked apple pie (with a whole wheat crust) with Tina, who would
not be participating in the sweat since Jody was too young. Tina and Jody would wait for
us at the house. Walking out to the sweat lodge, I could hear my friends talking as they
stood around the fire. By the time I arrived, hot stones had been removed from the fire
and placed inside the lodge in the center pit. I was just in time. We were ready to begin.
It was dark inside the lodge. A warm red glow from the heated stones in the
center pit illuminated our faces. Snow Bear lit a white candle placed inside a jar that
would help to protect the flame from the moisture, and sat it beside his crossed legs. He
reached for the straw fan and dipped it into the pail of water, then held it over the stones.
Drip. Ssssss. Drip. Ssssss. Drip. Ssssss. Steam slowly began to fill the space.
45
We remained silent for a while, adjusting our senses to the dim, hot, wetness of
the interior of the lodge. Eventually, Snow Bear closed his eyes and began to hum softly,
then to sing, gently rocking his body as he sang.
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
The Earth is our mother, She will take care of us.
The Earth is our mother, She will take care of us.
Drip. Ssssss. Drip. Ssssss.
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
The Earth is our mother, we must take care of Her.
The Earth is our mother, we must take care of Her.
Drip. Ssssss.
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
Her sacred ground we walk upon, with every step we take.
Her sacred ground we walk upon, with every step we take.
Drip. Ssssss. Drip. Ssssss.
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
He-ey Yana, Ho Yana, Hey Yan Yan!
Whenever he began a new song, we listened for a round, then joined in. As the
heat began to build, so did the intensity of our songs.
When the stones began to cool, two of the men stepped outside to bring in more
hot stones from the fire, which blazed outside the lodge. It was hard to tell in the darkness
which men performed this task, but always, whoever sat nearest the door to the lodge
held this job.
Drip. Ssssss. Drip. Ssssss.
46
More stones.
After a while, we became silent, each lost in our own thoughts as we sat together
in the lodge. From time to time, someone leaned down to raise the bottom edge of the
lodge for fresh air. This was done to prolong the time we could spend within the lodge
without succumbing to the heat, and for the safety of those who felt they couldn’t handle
the heat.
Drip. Ssssss. Snow Bear continued to slowly drip water onto the stones.
At some point, never a previously determined nor set point, people spontaneously
began to leave. Snow Bear was always the first to enter the lodge and the last to leave. It
was his sacred space, and he held the responsibility for opening and closing the lodge.
I crawled on my hands and knees across the straw on the floor of the lodge toward
the flap. Kate was in front of me and David was behind me. We stepped from the lodge
into firelight and moonlight.
I heard a splash and a shout, then raucous laughter, from the direction of the
creek. I looked at Kate and giggled softly. From her bare skin arose plumes of steam.
“You’re steaming,” I told her.
She laughed. “So are you!”
We made our way carefully in the dark down to the creek. The lodge was built
near a small spring-fed pool in the creek. Tonight, there was ice at the edges. We had to
break the ice to get into the water. Josh was already there, floating serenely on his back,
grinning at the moon.
47
I plunged my steaming body into the icy water. What an incredible rush! Soon,
we were all there, splashing and laughing. We didn’t stay long, just long enough to
cleanse ourselves.
Then we gathered around the bonfire, skin still steaming, amidst quiet oohs and
aahs. It wasn’t necessary to speak. We each understood what the other was feeling. We
just stood there steaming together, silent and smiling , at peace in that pure and rarefied
moment. There is nothing in my experience to compare with the purification one feels in
mind, body, and spirit after a sweat lodge.
We slowly began to get dressed as our bodies dried and cooled in the fire’s
waning glow, and each began to make our way back through the woods in the
shimmering moonlight to the house where Tina and Jody awaited with the feast.
As I started to leave, Jon turned to me and whispered, “Don’t you just love the
hills at night on a full moon? It’s like a different world, a whole different universe.”
I smiled and nodded. He continued, “Nothing looks or feels like it does in the
daylight. It’s like magic, man.”
And it was. Like magic.
~*~***~*~
Outside the ugly tipi was a heap of rocks, round gray stones, He found
that they were talking and that he could understand them. “Iyan Hokshi, Stone
Boy, you are one of us, you come from us, you come from Tunka, you come from
Iyan. Listen; pay attention.”
Following their instructions, he built a dome-like hut out of bent willow
sticks. He covered it with the old woman’s buffalo robes… Out in the open he
built a big fire. He set the rocks right in the flames…
After the rocks glowed red-hot, Stone Boy found a deer antler and used it
to carry them one by one into the little hut he had made. He picked up the old
48
woman’s water bag, a buffalo bladder decorated with quillwork, and filled it with
water. He drew its rawhide tight and took it inside too. …
Iyan Hokshi closed the entrance of his little lodge with a flap of buffalo
rove, so that no air could escape or enter. Pouring water from the bag over them,
he thanked the rocks, saying, “You brought me here.” Four times he poured the
water; four times he opened the flap and closed it. Always he spoke to the rocks
and they to him. As he poured, the little lodge filled with steam so that he could
see nothing but the white mist in the darkness. When he poured the third time, he
began to sing. …
He opened the flap for the last time, watching the steam flow out and rise
into the sky as a feathery cloud. The bonfire and the moonlight both shone into the
little sweat lodge…
“Iyan, Tunka—rock—Tunka, Iyan. Tunkashila, the Grandfather Spirit, we
will learn to worship. This little lodge, these rocks, the water, the fire—these are
sacred, for we will use them from now on as we have done here for the first time:
for purification, for life, for wichosani, for health. All this has been given to us so
that we may live. We shall be a tribe.”21
- Excerpt from “Stone Boy,” a Brule Sioux tale, as told by Henry Crow Dog
~*~***~*~
49
Chapter 5 – ARCADIAN REVERIE
By spring, we were looking to move from Belly Acres. Not that we didn’t enjoy
living there, but Merril and John were getting ready to leave Knoxville and move to the
Creek for good. We began driving around to look for empty houses, and found one
literally right around the corner from Belly Acres in Hunt Hollow. It was owned by a
sweet older couple in Nashville, who were delighted to accept our offer of working on
their old house in the country in exchange for rent. We moved there in May of 1977.
~*~***~*~
Excerpt from a letter to my family dated May 30th, 1977:
Dear Mom & Dad, and Joal & Keith,
I went up to Short Mtn. yesterday and picked peas with Kate & Joshua. We
picked 9 lbs. of snow peas, and 7 lbs., shelled, of sweet peas…took us 5 hours to
pick ‘em and shell ‘em. Then, I took ‘em all home & froze ‘em, and Kate & Josh get
half. They have a surplus of peas this year – planted ‘em before anybody else I know
of…in mid-February.
We went to Katheylynn’s house for dinner tonight – had an excellent fresh
vegetable salad with some pickled beets in it, and some sweet potatoes fried with
cabbage & onions, and a dish made with some beans, rice, onions, garlic, and some
sauce…was real good! We had a sorghum cake for dessert, too. Sure was worth
climbin’ that ridge for! (You have to climb a ridge to get to Katheylynn’s house.)
Sure is nice out tonight – the moon is almost full…the last full moon before
the summer solstice…spring’s almost gone. Mmmm…the bugs are all singin’, heard
an owl hootin’ a while ago. It’s so light out I can see the cows out in the pasture
across the road…and there’s a mist rising up off the creek. Sure is pretty.
…Saw a hummingbird, and a red-headed woodpecker day before yesterday.
…See lots of bunny rabbits every day. And lizards – blue lizards. I saw a 6 ft. black
snake down by my garden, and we’ve seen quite a few water snakes, but nothing
poisonous.
…The wind just kicked up – I hear it comin’ in the trees…now it’s here – feels
like rain…cool night wind…feels mighty good after this long, hot day… been puttin’ in
some long hard hours lately – I’m workin’ harder than David is right now! Ha! So
much to do…seems like there’s not even enough time to do it all in.
Well, I’m awful tired, and it’s getting’ late, so I guess I’ll go to bed. I love you
all. Joal – write me sometime; OK? I miss you. Miss all of you…
LOVE,
Julie
50
~*~***~*~
I awoke in that quiet time just before dawn, when everything seems hushed in
expectation. Slowly coming to my senses, I pulled the blankets up around my shoulders
and rolled over to watch through the window as the sky lightened from deep indigo to
pale blue streaked with pinks and golds. A lone bird suddenly called out to its flock, and
was answered by one, then another. Soon, the morning air filled with the sounds of
birdsong, cows lowing in the pasture across the road, and a breeze gently rustling the
trees outside my window. Sunlight streamed slantwise through the sheer lace curtains,
highlighting plants arranged on a metal plant stand in front of the window, and an antique
velvet dress that hung on a hook beside my bed.
I slid from under the covers into the early-morning chill, stretched, then walked
outside to make my way to the outhouse. On the way, I stopped for a moment to peer
through the trees as wisps of grey mist rose across the hollow against a grassy hillside
dotted with grazing cattle. A black and yellow garden spider crouched in a dew-jeweled
web strung between two saplings, and a metallic turquoise dragonfly fitted past my head
on some errand into the woods. Nothing disturbed the peace of this morning—not the
swish of traffic, not the hum of electric wires, not even the drone of a distant airplane. I
took a deep breath and slowly let it out, as my thoughts echoed lazily inside my head.
Nothing could be better than this, I thought to myself.
Walking back into the house, I lit the antique gas stove (a Detroit Jewel in perfect
condition) and put water on for coffee. When it boiled, I poured it into the Melita and
waited as it dripped, then poured a cup, carried it to the opening of the living room door,
51
and sat dangling a leg down past the sill of the house, where the porch that David and I
planned to build soon would be. A soft whisper of fur brushed past me and settled near
my knee. Nathan, my long-haired, silver-point tabby, had come to share the stillness of
morning with me and his contented purr now punctuated the cool quiet.
David awoke as the smell of freshly-made coffee drifted into the bedroom. He
soon joined me, coffee in hand, and we began to discuss our plans for the day. There was
much to be done. We were renovating an old house that sat nestled in the trees on a
forested hillside high up in a remote hollow in middle Tennessee. The house was owned
by a sweet, shy, elderly couple in Nashville who were delighted that we wanted to repair
their old house, and in exchange, had agreed to let us live there for free as caretakers.
(Old, abandoned houses in rural Tennessee soon gain the interest of vandals, and
sometimes, arsonists, so our agreement was to mutual advantage.)
When we first moved in, the house could only be entered from the back door into
the kitchen, where it sat level with the hillside. The front porch had been torn away, and
the doors there sat high above the ground, inaccessible. Two rooms shared the front of
the house—a bedroom, and a living room with a red brick fireplace—and two rooms
spanned the back—the kitchen, and a long room we hoped to split into a study or guest
room and a small bathroom that would also be accessible from the front bedroom.
We had to park Becky, the Rambler, down the hill in a small cleared spot where
the creek crossed the road, and walk up to the house from there, because there was no
room to park nearer the house. There was no room for a garden near the house, either, but
T. Buck, an old hermit farmer (the owner of the cows) who lived up at the head of the
52
hollow, let us plant a garden down the hill near the spring, in a fenced off area he said his
momma had used for a garden many years ago. It was grown up with weeds, but we
borrowed Snow Bear’s tiller and turned them under, then added manure and tilled that
into the soil. We had to share the garden with the rabbits and the deer, but we’d planted
plenty, and didn’t mind sharing it.
The house had few amenities by modern standards, but it did have character, and
it was free. It had no running water, so we carried water for drinking and cooking from a
spring down the hill, and a big metal cistern caught rainwater for washing, but we
planned to eventually pipe water in by gravity-feed from a spring we’d found on the
hillside above. There was no phone, but T. Buck had a phone, and told us if we ever
needed to use his phone, feel free to come on up. The house had no electricity, either, but
we liked it that way. We had no need for television, and if we wanted music, we had our
own voices, and now and then, friends would drop by with guitars and drums in tow. We
lit the night by kerosene lamp and candlelight, and an Ashley wood stove was waiting to
be stoked with oak, ash, and cedar when the winter winds began to blow. We wanted
nothing more.
As we talked about the porch we wanted to build, David dragged out graph paper
and a pencil and began to make sketches of what he had in mind for the porch. “Look, we
can make different levels, like this… we can put a swing here, and down there at the end,
outside the bedroom door, let’s build a platform bed so we can sleep outside sometimes.”
I loved it—a multi-level porch with a swing and a sleeping nook. It would be awesome, I
knew. The porch would come first, since we looked forward to spending summer
53
evenings hanging out on the porch with our friends while we worked on the rest of the
house during the day.
Tomorrow, Michael Peter and John Eddy were coming, along with a few other
friends, to help us build the porch. So, to get ready, we pulled on leather-palmed work
gloves and spent the day sorting through the truckload of rough-cut lumber we’d bought
(cheap) a few days ago at a local sawmill. We’d traded Michael Duane some of the wood
for helping us get it and haul it up to the house with his truck, but there was still plenty
left for our projects. We picked out the straightest and smoothest boards for the porch
project and began to stack them near the front of the house. Eric, our black Irish Setter,
pranced along with us on each board-laden trip we made, sure in the knowledge of dogs
that he was somehow helping.
Around midday, we decided to take a break. We took turns pouring buckets of
cold water from the cistern over our heads to cool off, grabbed a quick lunch of bread and
cheese, then went back to work sorting and stacking lumber. By afternoon, David figured
we had stacked about enough for the porch he had in mind to build. “I think that’ll do it.”
He took off his gloves and wiped the seat from his brow with an old, blue bandana.
I pulled off my gloves and grinned. It was starting to get hot, and I was glad to be
done. David winked back at me. I knew we were both looking forward to the porchbuilding party. By tomorrow evening, we’d have a porch and friends to sit on it and relax
with after a hard day of working together. I was already planning the dinner I’d cook as a
reward for everyone, and we had beer stashed in the root cellar that we’d ice down in an
old tin washtub. What could be better than this?
54
We splashed off with cistern water again, then retired to the house as the
afternoon heat built up. David sat in the open living room doorway where there was light
enough to work on his sketches for the house, while I sat in the bedroom doorway and
worked on an embroidery for a dress I was making for Katheylynn in exchange for a
necklace she’d made me. Eric and Nathan curled up along with Sadie and Bo-Bo for
afternoon naps in the cool of the house. In the meadow across the hollow, a lonely
bobwhite called out for a mate, and down by the spring, a bullfrog boomed a similar
request.
When shadows began to creep down the hillside, I put away my embroidery.
“Hey, David… it’s getting late. Maybe we should head down to the garden before it gets
too dark to see.” I grabbed a wicker basket, walked down the dirt road, and across the
creek to the garden. David picked up a dented tin water bucket and joined me. As I
picked yellow squash, mustard greens, and tomatoes, he filled the bucket from the spring
near the garden, and then, we trudged back up to the house. We lit the lamps in the
kitchen, and prepared a simple supper of brown rice and the veggies from the garden.
As the whippoorwills began to call in the purple twilight, I blew out the kitchen
lamps, and then lit the lamps on either side of the bed. We each picked up a book, and
snuggled under the covers to read. When we had grown too drowsy to read, we each blew
out our lamps and cuddled up. I wondered how I could ever want anything more than
this. I drifted off to sleep, with Nathan purring between us and Eric at our feet, while a
lonely screech owl called eerily from deep in the woods, tree frogs began their nightly
trill, and the raspy songs of crickets and katydids filled the night air.
55
~*~***~*~
Eucritus and I and pretty Amyntas turned aside
To the farm of Phrasidamus, where we sank down
With pleasure on deep-piled couches of sweet rushes,
And vine leaves freshly stripped from the bush.
Above us was the constant movement of elm
And poplar, and from the cave of the Nymphs nearby
The sacred water ran with a bubbling sound as it fell.
Soot-black cicadas chattered relentlessly on
Shady branches, and the muttering of tree-frogs
Rose far off from the impenetrable thorn bush.
Larks and finches were singling, the turtle-dove moaned,
And bees hummed and darted about the springs.
Everything smelt of the rich harvest, smelt of the fruit-crop.
Apples and pears rolled around us, enclosing
Our bodies with plenty; branches reached to the ground,
Bent with the weight of plums.22
- Excerpt from “Idyll 7: The Harvest Festival,” Idylls by Theocritus
~*~***~*~
56
Chapter 6 – A-FRAME BLUES
In the fall of 1977, running out of time and funds, thus having been unable to
complete the wintering work on the house at Hunt Hollow, David and I decided to look
for another place to live. We thought we might want to return to Hunt Hollow in the
spring to complete the work, but staying the winter there would be rough. After thinking
it over, Michael Peter told us that, if we moved, he would like to stay there for the winter.
He thought he might be able to do some of the work, and that it might prove a warmer
place for him than the upper story of the Spookhouse. Winter there had been as brutal for
him as it had been for us in the big white house at Belly Acres.
We learned that there might be a house for rent (could we afford to pay rent?)
over on Indian Creek Road, which wasn’t on Dry Creek, but was nearby. Indian Creek
Road branched sharply downhill to the right at the start of Dale Ridge Road, which
turned off Highway 70 about midway up Snow’s Hill and ran to Center Hill Dam and
beyond. Center Hill Lake was close by at the bottom of Indian Creek Road, where it
intersected with Toad Road then curved back uphill to make a loop back to the highway
at the top of Snow’s Hill. Across the way, on the other side of Snow’s Hill, was a steep
but open valley, and on the ridge beyond that, lay the home of friends of ours, Mike and
Liz Antoniak. Behind that ridge lay Hunt Hollow. It wasn’t all that far as the crow flies,
but by road, it was a bit of a distance. Nonetheless, we decided to investigate.
The house was a small A-frame, owned by Ann Evins, wife of recently retired
Democratic U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins. (Representative Evins’ seat was secured in
November of that year by an up and coming young politician, the son of a former
57
Tennessee Senator, named Al Gore, Jr.) The rent was fifty dollars a month, we learned.
We could afford to pay the first couple months of rent, and if one of us could secure
employment for the winter, we could manage just fine. We called Ms. Evins and she
agreed to meet with us to discuss renting the house.
Ann Evins, who was known around town as “Miss Ann,” was a small, thin
woman, prim and proper, but fiery-eyed. She invited us in and graciously offered us
coffee or tea (our choice). Her home was lovely—a big white colonial-style home, bright
and sunny with gleaming hardwood floors covered by brightly patterned oriental rugs.
Elegant and tasteful. When she learned we would be looking for work, she had an idea.
“Well, if you wouldn’t care to work for me, I could offer you some work. I could
use an extra housekeeper around here for a couple of days a week. I’d be happy to let you
work off your rent and pay you for anything extra. Would you be interested, Julie?”
“What sort of things would you need me to do?”
“Oh, nothing much. Probably just light housework, some dusting, maybe cleaning
bathrooms, and such like.”
“That sounds fine, Miss Ann. How kind of you. Thank you. When would you like
me to start?”
“Why don’t you go ahead and get yourselves moved in, then give me a call and
we’ll set something up?”
“That sounds fine. Thank you so very much.” I smiled. Miss Ann smiled in return.
We gave her the first month’s rent in cash, which left us a little buffer, then shook
hands to seal the deal. We left with the key to the little A-frame, happy and excited at this
58
turn of fortune.
We’d gone by to peek in the windows of the A-frame on our way up the hill to
meet with Miss Ann, and thought it would suit our needs nicely. Before returning home
that day, we went back to inspect the house further. At the bottom of the steep grade of
Indian Creek Road, a meadow opened to the right. Miss Ann had told us we could grow a
garden there in the spring, if we liked. Alongside the meadow ran the driveway to the
house, a dirt road. At the edge of the meadow, the driveway turned sharply uphill and
continued to a cleared level spot about halfway up the ridge, where the A-frame sat
facing into the woods.
It was a small, rustic home, open-raftered with hardwood floors. To the right of
the entryway was a wall, beyond which lay a tiny bathroom, complete with hot and cold
running water and—joy of joys!—a shower stall. The kitchen was situated to the left of
the entryway, and was equipped with a small gas stove and a refrigerator. Unlike the
bathroom, it was open to the rest of the great room that lay beyond the kitchen and
bathroom. Positioned at the far end of the great room was a massive stone fireplace with
a raised hearth. We could put our wood stove there and run the stovepipe up the chimney.
Above the fireplace was a loft, reached by a narrow staircase to the right of the fireplace.
The loft would make a great sewing room for me, and an art studio for David. The house
had electricity, too, which was something we hadn’t had in a while. (That would be good.
We could hook up the stereo again.) A big picture window in the great room looked out
over the meadow below, and a small window in the kitchen faced into the woods of the
hillside that loomed above the house.
59
Returning to Hunt Hollow, we began to pack our things. A couple of days and a
few truckloads later, we had moved into the A-frame. Within a few more days, Michael
Peter had moved into the house in Hunt Hollow, with plans to hold it for us until spring.
Michael Peter closed off all but one room in the small house, putting up thick sheets of
clear plastic for insulation, and lived there through that winter and the following spring.
We enjoyed a steady stream of visitors from Dry Creek while at the A-frame—we
had hot running water (and a shower!) and a very nice stereo. We placed a small brass
bowl with a green enamel lining next to the bathroom door for donations to help us pay
for the hot water, and extended an invitation to all our friends to come take advantage of
the amenities. The little A-frame on Indian Creek became an oasis in winter that year.
Michael Peter was often a guest for dinner, and sometimes stayed the night,
sleeping on the sofa. He loved my cooking and would often show up in the afternoon
unannounced, offering to help me prepare dinner (and then partake, of course). He and I
were close friends, and remained so for many years.
David and I got along fairly well during this time, but cracks had started to run
through our relationship. Michael Peter was my shoulder to cry on. He and David were
close as well, but the bond Michael Peter and I shared ran much deeper. Soul-deep.
I was cutting up vegetables for a soup one afternoon in early October when tears
began to slide down my cheeks, plopping onto the cutting board below. David and I had
fought again, and he’d gone for a walk to cool off. I put down the knife and leaned over
onto the counter, head resting on my arms. I began to visualize the way to Hunt Hollow,
down the driveway, up Indian Ridge Road to the highway, across Snow’s Hill and the
60
valley below, up to the ridge where Mike and Liz lived, then down into Hunt Hollow
beyond, across the cow pasture, then across the dirt road and up to the little closed-off
room in our old house where I knew Michael Peter would be. In my mind, I saw him
sitting there cross-legged in meditation, and reached out with a call, “I need you!” I
maintained this image in my mind for a few moments, then raised my head, dried my
tears, and went back to cutting vegetables for the soup.
About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. Thinking I must have
inadvertently locked David out, I ran to open the door. Standing there was not David, but
Michael Peter, out of breath and puffing, with a backpack on his back. “What?” he said
breathlessly. “Did you need me?” He seemed a bit confused, and concerned.
“Huh? Well, yes. But how did you know?”
“I don’t know… I just all of a sudden got this feeling that you were upset and then
a strong urge to come see if you were OK.” Then, he smiled and held out his arms for a
hug. “Are you OK?”
I briefly fell into his arms with relief, then invited him in. We sat on the sofa and I
told him what had happened, about the fight with David, and then how I’d reached out to
him while cutting veggies for the soup that was now steaming away.
“How weird. I heard you call me. I just felt so strongly that I should come check
on you, so I grabbed my backpack and trekked on over the hills.”
“I didn’t mean for you to go to so much trouble. I have no idea how this
happened. It’s so bizarre!”
“No, that’s OK. Hey, you needed me, you ‘called,’ and here I am. Strange things
61
happen sometimes, and we don’t know why.” He let out a chuckle, and shrugged.
“Besides, that soup smells great. I could help you make some of that fabulous cornbread
of yours to go with it.” He gave me a wink and a grin.
By the time David returned, the cornbread was in the oven, Linda Ronstadt was
belting out “Looking forward to happier times… on Bluuuue Baaaayou…” on the stereo,
and Michael Peter and I were singing along (Michael Peter dearly loved Roy Orbison).
David’s mood was lightened by Michael Peter’s presence as well, and I knew we
wouldn’t fight again with him there, so I suggested he stay the night rather than trudge
back over the hills in the cold after dark. Three friends eating soup and cornbread, talking
and listening to favorite tunes, helped each other through that dark night, and morning
dawned a little brighter. Not bright enough, but a little brighter. For a time.
~*~***~*~
We had acquired a couple more dogs just before moving to the A-frame, a black
dog who greatly resembled our much beloved Nikki, whom we named Shane, and one of
his offspring, a female pup from a mating with Chip’s Irish Setter, whom we named
Sweet Annie (taken from the local name for a wildflower otherwise known as Queen
Anne’s Lace). She had the build of an Irish Setter, but was black with red feathers. Annie
was gentle with a sweet disposition, and Shane was an active and exuberant dog, much as
Nikki had been. We still had Erik, the black Irish Setter we’d brought with us from
Kalamazoo, along with the cats, Sadie and Bo-Bo. We’d added another cat to the family
as well, a kitten we’d gotten from a litter that was born to Jennifer’s cat in the early
spring during the time we lived at Dismal Road. Nathan was beautiful—a pure white
62
longhair with silver tabby-striped points (like a Siamese), and ice blue eyes. He’d grown
to adulthood now and was the love of my life, in cat form.
Nathan was sleeping in the little basket he’d claimed for a bed. I’d placed a folded
towel in the basket for him and he was snuggled in comfortably. Or so I thought. He
didn’t move from that spot all day, but it was cold and I thought maybe he just wanted to
stay warm in his bed.
Michael Peter had come for an impromptu visit again that afternoon, and we’d
invited him to stay for dinner. I mentioned Nathan’s inactivity to David and Michael
Peter and they both agreed maybe he was just trying to stay warm. But Nathan refused to
eat when mealtime came, so my worry grew a bit stronger.
A storm blew in that afternoon, with biting winds and ice. Michael Peter decided
maybe he should stay the night rather than try to walk back home in the storm, which we
readily agreed to. Michael Peter always came to visit us on foot, and this was no night for
walking the hills. We awoke the next morning to a frozen world. The trees dripped with
ice and the ground was covered in several inches of snow over a layer of ice beneath.
Nathan still had not moved, and grew more and more listless. We didn’t have a
phone, and couldn’t drive out because of the ice and snow—we’d never make it up the
hill on Indian Creek Road—but we thought Nathan needed to see a vet. After discussing
the options, David agreed to stay with Nathan while Michael Peter and I bundled up and
tried to walk up the hill and down Dale Ridge Road a mile or so to Candi Rogers’ house.
She had a phone, and hopefully, the ice wouldn’t have knocked it out. We could call a vet
from there and try to figure out how to get Nathan to the vet’s office in town, provided
63
there was anyone in the office during this storm.
It was brutally cold, still snowing and windy, but Michael Peter and I trudged our
way to down the deserted road to Candi’s house. Candi was a tall, strong-boned woman
with soft brown eyes and sandy-brown hair to that fell thickly to her waist. She welcomed
us warmly us into her home, and listened intently as we explained the problem. She told
us to feel free to use her phone, so I called the only vet in town. The doctor wasn’t in. His
assistant, who answered the phone, told us the doctor was snowed in and hadn’t been able
to get to the clinic. The assistant, feeling sorry for us, agreed to see Nathan in lieu of the
doctor and do what he could, if we could get him there before closing time.
Candi offered to drive Michael Peter and me to the top of Indian Ridge Road in
her truck, and wait while we went to get Nathan and David. She would then be happy to
drive us to the vet’s office. It was late in the day by the time we arrived. The vet’s
assistant looked Nathan over and decided he thought he had a virus. “Like a cold,” he
said, and gave us antibiotics. He explained that the clinic would be closed over the
weekend (this was Friday), but told us to call back on Monday if Nathan wasn’t better.
Much relieved, we set out for home again. Michael Peter got out of Candi’s truck
at the top of Snow’s Hill to return to his home in Hunt Hollow. Candi dropped David and
I at the top of Indian Creek Road, and we walked the rest of the way home, down, then up
the hill. I carried Nathan, wrapped in a blanket in my arms. Once inside, I placed Nathan
gently in his basket bed and gave him a dose of the antibiotic.
We left him alone the rest of that day and night, but he only crouched in his little
bed, becoming more and more listless. By morning, he had begun to throw up dark,
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bloody vomit. There was little I could do but hold him and try to comfort him, clean him
up as needed, and love him. I still held hope he would recover, but it was a futile hope. I
sat with him through the day, and by nightfall, he was gone. He died in my arms. We
later learned, according to the symptoms, that he had probably died of poison—likely rat
poison he’d found in a barn somewhere—and there was little we could have done, even
had the initial diagnosis been correct.
The next morning, we walked up into the forest to look for what we thought
would be a suitable burial place for our sweet Nathan. Tears dripped from my face,
freezing onto the icy snow-covered the ground. David remembered a place he’d seen
while out walking that was especially beautiful, a sinkhole surrounded by a ring of trees.
He led me there and I agreed it was a good place. We returned to the house for Nathan.
We wrapped Nathan’s little body in clean cloth and carried him solemnly to his
resting place in the forest. We had no way to dig a grave in ground frozen so hard, so we
did the best we could. Gathering stones, we built a small tomb for Nathan, a cairn of
rocks placed gently over him deep at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Bitter cold remained with us for several days, and the snow did not melt. We
grieved alone in our cabin. A few days after we’d left him there, David and I decided to
pay a visit to Nathan’s little tomb. Together, we made our way through the snowy forest
and down into the sinkhole. The stones were just as we had left them. Untouched. But
beside them, in the snow, was a faint trail of fresh footprints. Tiny little cat-like footprints
that led away from the cairn and into the forest. I do not know what made those tiny
footprints, nor how it was they started at the stones and only led away. But I like to think
65
they were Nathan’s ghostly little footprints, that perhaps he was somehow trying to tell us
he was not gone but with us still in spirit.
~*~***~*~
Fear not, fear not, O Bast, the strong of heart, at the head of the holy field,
the mighty one among all the gods, nothing shall gain the mastery over thee.
Come thou outside, following my speech, O evil poison which is in all the
members of the cat...23
- Excerpt from “The Narrative of Isis”
~*~***~*~
David and I lived at the A-frame on Indian Creek through the following spring
and summer and into the fall. Even though we had initially planned to return to Hunt
Hollow, Michael Peter seemed comfortable there and we didn’t want to ask him to move.
We tried to grow a garden in the meadow below the house that summer, but it was hot
and dry there, and we had no way of getting water to it. It died. We puttered around the
A-frame that summer doing not much of anything, except fighting on the sidelines.
David had started working with Chip, who had formed a business as a
subcontractor laying block. Chip employed a lot of the Dry Creek guys as his crew, and
taught them the craft of masonry, a skill which would become David’s mainstay
throughout his life.
As I’d planned, I made the loft of the A-frame into a sewing room, and it was
there that I began my first sewing business. I named it Silver Thread Studio, after a song
by Linda Ronstadt (“Silver Thread and Golden Needles”) that I loved to sing. I created
dresses and blouses of my own design and sold them on consignment at a little boutique
in an upscale part of Nashville. The money was good—when it came—but it was nothing
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regular enough to plan a budget on.
To supplement my earnings from my home business, I took a job at one of the
local shirt factories. That didn’t work out very well. I was placed as a buttonholer, and
because I was new (and young and different), I was given piles of shirts made of slippery
hard-to-handle polyester with six buttonholes to be sewn in each, while the other women
around me were sewing five buttonholes each in shirts made of crisp, easy-to-handle
cotton. We were paid by production, and this was gauged per shirt. On top of that,
whenever anyone managed to reach the production quota, they’d just raise it again, so it
wasn’t possible to ever actually reach production and stay there for more than a day.
Needless to say, I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t realize why, and was becoming increasingly
discouraged when, one day, while sitting alone eating my lunch, one of the other women,
an older woman with brown curls and kind eyes, sat down beside me. She watched me
curiously for a moment, then laid her hand on my arm. “Honey, I just wanted to say they
ain’t treatin’ you right.” I gave her a puzzled look. She went on to explain about the
slippery fabric and the six buttonholes as opposed to the crisp cotton with only five
buttonholes. She frowned and shook her brown curls. “You ain’t never gonna make
production.” I realized she was right. Complaining got nowhere, though. No union. I
lasted there a few weeks before quitting in disgust.
My relationship with David continued to slide downhill. We fought ferociously at
times. One of the main points of contention for me was that I was starting to think
favorably about having a child. We’d always thought we’d never have children, which
was a decision based in not wanting to add to the world’s overpopulation problem, but I
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was rethinking that position in personal terms, and was beginning to change my mind. He
remained adamantly opposed, however, even telling me should I conceive a child, he’d
leave me unless I aborted. That shocked me. We’d always had our disagreements, but
now they were becoming more bitter, and the effect of the inevitable lull that came after
each fight was starting to linger longer. We weren’t the only couple to experience
problems that summer, though. There seemed to be a rash of discontent in relationships.
~*~***~*~
“Oh, Laura! Perfect! That dress is you!”
Laura twirled in front of the mirror, the red dress swirling around her. She
vamped to the mirror while Katheylynn and I watched. Katheylynn spoke up again,
“How much is it? Can you afford it?”
Laura bent her head to examine the tag attached to the side of the dress. “Looks
like maybe five bucks. Can you read this?” She looked up at me, since I was closer.
I leaned over to inspect the tag. “Yep, looks like five dollars to me. That’s not a
lot for this dress, Laura. Katheylynn’s right, this dress looks great on you!”
It did look great. It was a 1950s halter-style sundress with sweetheart neckline, a
slim fitting bodice, and a full skirt that fell to mid-calf. The fabric was chintz or polished
cotton (it had a dull sheen) printed in a floral pattern of blues, yellows and greens on a
deep red background. It fit her perfectly, as if it had been custom-made, and was very
flattering to her curvy figure. She twirled again, smiling flirtatiously at the image before
her in the mirror.
“OK! You guys talked me into it. Michael will kill me if he thinks I spent five
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bucks on this, though. He might be OK with a couple of bucks, but not five. Don’t tell
him, OK?”
Katheylynn grinned and shook her head. “Aw, Laura, you’re worth it. You know
that. But yeah, your secret’s safe with us.”
“My lips are sealed.” I nodded conspiratorially.
Laura went back into the fitting room to change into her jeans and emerged with
the red dress on her arm. Katheylynn stood and picked up the things she’d picked out to
try on. It was her turn next. I’d already taken my turn.
We were at one of our favorite shopping spots in Nashville, a little out-of-the way
place, called The Vintage Warehouse, that specialized in vintage clothing, primarily from
the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. The shop really was housed in an old warehouse, and the
owners always had quite a selection of vintage merchandise on hand, some incredibly
expensive, some quite affordable. Five dollars may not sound like much, but it was a lot
of money for us at the time. For this particular dress, it seemed reasonable, though.
I’d found a dress to my liking as well, another 1950s dress. Mine was shiny black
taffeta with a small diamond texture woven into the cloth. It had a scalloped neckline and
a full circle skirt that flowed to a hemline ending a few inches below my knees. I knew
that the taffeta, when washed and not starched to make it stiff, as was the custom in the
50s, would be soft and supple and would drape nicely. Katheylynn had found a similarly
flattering dress in shades of blue (her favorite color). But Laura’s red dress was the star.
We were shopping for new things to wear to a summer barn dance to be held on
Saturday night up at Crowder’s place at the head of Cubbins Hollow. He had a big barn
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(that housed a few horses), and being a trained electrician, had wired it so that there was
power there. The barn loft made the perfect spot for the Dry Creek Band to practice.
The Dry Creek Band featured Billy Segal on bass, Billy Meyers on lead, Albert
on rhythm, and Michael Peter on drums. We thought they were fantastic—our own band!
Their first performance was to be a barn dance for their friends on the creek. My lady
friends and I were going to be there, and we were going to dance. No doubt about it.
The day of the barn dance was warm and breezy, hot, but not too hot. The night
would be balmy, perfect weather for a dance. David and I arrived a bit late and climbed
the ladder to the loft. The band was playing a Kansas tune, “Dust In the Wind,” as we
walked onto the floor of the loft. I had just slipped off my shoes (who dances with shoes
on?) when Katheylynn grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the cleared area where
people were dancing. She and Laura were already there, dancing together. We ladies
always danced together, since the men who shared our lives didn’t care to dance. The
three of us could dance together and not arouse any jealousies, so dance together we did.
Dancing together had gotten us kicked out of a bar in Nashville one night, though.
We’d already turned down several men who’d asked us to dance that night, but couldn’t
help but take to the floor when we heard Sister Sledge belting out “We are family! I got
all my sisters and me!” We felt like sisters and family. We were having a great time
dancing, but the bar owner got the wrong idea, and us tossed out on the street afterward,
saying, “Your kind ain’t welcome here.” We were a bit shocked. No one on the creek
ever thought such things, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
At the barn dance that night, we danced to rock, blues, whatever the band tossed
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at us. One of the highlights was Michael Peter’s solo. He took the mike to sing an old
Roy Orbison tune (he had the perfect voice for this), “Pretty Woman.” I was certain at the
time that he was singing to me alone, but then, I am sure every woman on that dance
floor felt the same, and I am also certain he intended exactly that.
Shortly after that, Crowder began asking various women to dance with him. He
was always a flirt, but most of us didn’t care for his ways, and had rejected his advances.
But that night, he soon honed in on Laura. She and he had been hanging out together
lately. Laura, being a horsewoman (and excellent horse trainer as well), and he, being a
horseman (and a farrier who shoed horses), had found something in common in their love
for horses and had become riding partners. Their friendship translated onto the dance
floor that night as perhaps something more. Perhaps it already was more, perhaps not.
Katheylynn and I danced together, watching curiously as the red dress whirled
around our friend and her dance partner. Michael Duane, her non-dancing partner,
watched from the sidelines with their young son, Jesse, beside him. His face showed
something more akin to anger and jealousy than curiosity. At one point, her took her arm
between songs and pressed her to leave with him.
“Come on. Let’s go home, Laura.” She pulled her arm from him and jerked away.
“No! I’m having fun! I don’t want to go home now! Let me be.”
“I’ll be at home, then.” Michael Duane scowled, picked up Jesse and climbed
down the ladder from the loft. We heard his truck leave, and stop again down the hollow.
Then the music started up again, and no one thought any further about the incident.
Sometime during the last hour of the party, Laura disappeared. Katheylynn and I
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couldn’t find her anywhere, even though we searched and called for her many times. We
eventually decided she must have gone on with Michael Duane after all. Maybe he’d
stopped and come back for her, and she’d agreed to go on home with him after all.
It wasn’t until the party ended late that night, when we were driving out the
hollow, that we realized what had actually happened. David was driving, Katheylynn sat
next to me in the cab of out truck. She was going home with us to the A-frame that
evening, rather than try to climb the steep hillside to her little red cabin so late at night.
Suddenly, she grabbed my arm. “Oh, Julie! Look!” She gasped.
I glanced up as we neared the stop-gap. My mouth dropped open, matching the
astonishment I saw mirrored on Katheylynn’s face. “Oh noooooo…” There, floating on a
gatepost beside the stop-gap, waiting to catch the headlights of every vehicle leaving the
party, flapping like a bright signal flag in the night breeze, was the red dress.
Michael Duane hadn’t gone home after all. He’d parked his truck beside the road,
left Jesse in the cab, and walked back up to the barn. Maybe he had hoped to find Laura
and convince her to return home with him. But he didn’t find her. He found the red dress.
Without Laura in it. And he’d placed it there on that gatepost for all to see. No one
doubted what it meant. Laura’s beautiful red dress had become her scarlet letter that
night. Her relationship with Michael Duane would never again be whole.
~*~***~*~
GORGO That pleated dress really suits you, Praxinoa. Tell me,
How much did the cloth cost you off the loom?
PRAXINOA Don’t remind me. More than two hundred drachmas
In hard cash, I put my heart and soul into the embroidery.
GORGO Well, it’s turned out well on you, you must agree.24
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- Excerpt from “Idyll 15: The Women at the Festival,” Idylls by Theocritus
~*~***~*~
Again everyone looked askance at the girl’s red shoes. But she so loved
the shoes that were bright like crimson, bright like raspberries, bright like
pomegranates, that she could hardly think of anything else. … So busy was she
turning her feet this way and that, admiring her red shoes, that she forgot to sing.
…
And so out the door she danced, and then down the steps, first in a
gavotte, then a csárdás, then in big daring waltz turns in rapid succession. The
girl was in her glory and did not realize that she was in trouble until she wanted
to dance to the left and the shoes insisted in dancing to the right. When she
wanted to dance round, the shoes insisted on dancing straight ahead. And as the
shoes danced the girl, rather than the other way around, they danced her right
down the road, through the muddy fields, and out into the dark and gloomy
forest.25
- Excerpt from “The Red Shoes,” a Germanic folktale
~*~***~*~
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Part II – NURTURING SEEDLINGS
Chapter 7 – FLORIDIAN AUTUMN
Fall of ’78 was the season of break-ups. Debbie and Jon had split for unknown
reasons. He had returned to Connecticut, and she had gone back to Virginia for a time,
then returned to the Creek.
Michael Duane was living alone at the farm he owned in Fraser Hollow (we
called it Cave Hollow because of the big cave at the mouth of the hollow), and had put it
up for sale. Laura had taken Jesse with her to stay with Skip (Crowder had decided to
drop his fake name) at his farm in Cubbins Hollow.
Katheylynn and John Eddy were no longer together. They’d lived for a while in
the little red house on the hill, seemingly happy, harmonious, even blissful at times, but
sadly for the both them, he had come to the conclusion that country life wasn’t for him.
He left Dry Creek early that autumn to return to his home in Florida.
Before leaving, John had extended an invitation to any and all to visit him in
Gainesville. He sent a letter in early October suggesting that we come down for the
Hallowe’en Ball, an event to be held the Saturday before Hallowe’en at the campus of
University of Florida in Gainesville. He said it would be blast. Playboy had just named
Gainesville “Party Town U.S.A.,” and they were expecting ten thousand people in
costumes this year. There would be lots of free music, and it was rumored Joe Cocker
would be there (also free).
David and I were still fighting, but were more or less together. A chance to get
away might be good for us both. We talked it over with friends, and a small group
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decided to make the journey: David and I, Michael Peter, Kate, and Joshua (Kate’s beau).
On the Thursday before the date of the Ball, we all piled in to my recently acquired ’67
Rambler (named Rebecca Rambler, Becky for short), and took turns driving through the
night to reach Gainesville. We stayed with John and his new girlfriend at their apartment
on the outskirts of town.
The Hallowe’en Ball was as wild as John had promised. The music was free, as
he’d said it would be. There was beer aplenty and lots of food. The on-campus park
where the Ball was held, called The Plaza, was packed with thousands of people who’d
come from all over the country, every one in costume. Especially memorable was a
fellow dressed as a peacock. He wore bright blue, shiny body paint and strutted along,
prancing and preening, with a full tail of real peacock feathers flouncing upright behind
him. Also notable were a group of people who walked about claiming they were “New
York City.” Some were costumed in boxes painted as skyscrapers (the Empire State
Building being one), while others appeared to be taxis or garbage cans. There were even
a few human-sized rats in the group. Very well done. What a crazy event! I’d never seen
anything like it (nor have I since).
On the Sunday afternoon following the Ball, another free concert was held on
campus, and it was still rumored that Joe Cocker would be there. No one seemed to know
for sure. Deciding to check it out, we grabbed a blanket to sit on, filled a cooler with beer,
and headed back to the campus. We found a spot fairly close to the stage and spread our
blanket. We women piled our purses and jackets into the center of the blanket near the
cooler, and everyone plopped down to wait for the music to start. As the first strains of
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“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” sounded, we stood and craned our necks
to see if it might be Joe Cocker coming onstage.
Right at that moment, a tall lanky fellow with long frizzy hair came careening
right through the middle of our group. He seemed drunk or stoned out of his mind (or
both). He stumbled and fell into the center of our blanket, then shakily got up and ran off.
I looked down and realized that my purse was missing. Acting purely on impulse, I yelled
“Hey!” and took off running after him.
He was quite tall and I could see his fuzzy, frizzy hair above the heads of people
as he lurched through the crowd. Then, he suddenly disappeared. I came to an abrupt stop
in a small clearing amid the mass of people, where I found him sitting on the ground
shaking out the contents of my purse. Hands on hips, I confronted him.
“Hey, man, that’s my purse!”
“No, it’s not.” He was mumbling to himself. “It’s mine!”
“Excuse me? No, it’s MINE!”
I reached for my purse, and grabbed my wallet from his grubby hands. It was then
that he decided to become indignant about the whole thing, and began to yell.
“Thief! Thief!”
What a nut, I thought. He didn’t seem dangerous at all, just stoned and drunk
crazy. I gathered up my things and began to put them back into my purse while he
repeatedly tried to grab them away from me, all the while continuing to shout at the top
of his lungs.
“Thief! Thief!”
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People were looking at us curiously, but I figured most of them could discern the
truth of the matter. When I’d finally collected my things, I shook my head with disbelief,
slung my purse over my shoulder, and began to make my way back through the throng.
David and Michael Peter met me about halfway back to our blanket. They’d come
searching for me. Seeing that I was unharmed and had gotten my purse back, Michael
Peter took me by the arm and, with a grin on his face, turned me toward the stage. I’d
been so busy rescuing my purse that I hadn’t even noticed whose creaky voice I heard.
“And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal but she could not rob…”
So, Joe Cocker really had shown up. For free. Wow! Cool! The three of us made
our way back through the crowd. Well, I danced my way back. They guys walked. When
we reached our blanket, I crashed onto it in a fit of giggles as I told the rest of my friends
about the thief who’d cried “Thief!”
~*~***~*~
…Àjàpá’s greed had indeed caught up with him. Unable to make
any real progress under his oppressive load and unwilling to let go of any
part of it, he inevitably attracted the suspicion of those who came upon
him on the road. So well known was he in the surrounding communities
that there was only one explanation for his sudden access to so many
yams. Every farmer who had suffered some theft on his farm in recent
times claimed that the habitual thief was finally cornered. Following
custom, people gathered and taunted him with derisive chants:
Behold the face of a thief,
THIEF!
Behold the face of a thief,
THIEF!26
- Excerpt from “Àjàpá, Ajá the Dog, and the Yams,” a Nigerian folktale
~*~***~*~
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Over the next few days, John showed us around his hometown. He took us out to
a few of his favorite vegetarian restaurants, introduced us to some of his friends, and took
us to a place called the Blue Hole for swimming. The Blue Hole was a spring (it really
was blue) that lay in the midst of a cypress forest. Knobby cypress knees stuck up above
the waterline at its edges. John told us it was illegal to cut the knees from a cypress tree
because doing so could kill the tree. I’d never seen anything like it, and was intrigued.
By the time we were ready to leave Gainesville, David and I had decided we
really loved it there, and were thinking it might be a nice place to stay for the winter. We
figured, as large as the town was, surely we could find work there, and it would be far
more pleasant than chopping wood all winter again. We’d traveled from Michigan in ’73
to spend the winter living in Cocoa Beach, so the idea of a winter in Florida wasn’t
something new to us. Maybe a bit of city life would be good for a change. We talked it
over in the car on the way back to Tennessee. Michael Peter liked the idea, too, and
hoped it would be OK to tag along. Of course, it was. Kate and Josh thought they might
come for a month or so once we were settled in.
It took us a couple of weeks to get ready to go. We stowed our furniture and other
belongings in the loft of Bill and Judy’s barn up in Whippoorwill Hollow, told Miss Ann
we were moving out (she was sad to see us go), and took Sadie and Bo-Bo to stay with
Katheylynn while we were away. We then loaded up Becky the Rambler with our
clothes, the dogs, a few essentials we couldn’t do without (like food and toiletries), and
took off for Gainesville. David, Michael Peter, and I sat in the front seat and took turns
driving, giving Shane, Annie, and Eric the back seat. About ten hours later, we arrived on
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a cold drizzly night and made our way, per John Eddy’s directions, to the home of a guy
called “Strawberry” (because of his flaming-red, curly hair), who had said he could put us
up for a few days while we looked for a more permanent place to stay.
Strawberry lived in a concrete block house (no insulation), and we quickly
learned that his idea of putting us up for a few days amounted to throwing a few blankets
on the cold hard floor of the big main room of his house. We weren’t the only ones being
“put up.” It was crowded, smoky, noisy, and cold. The temperature dropped into the 30s
that night and the floor was miserably damp and chilly. People talked and played music
into the wee hours. I managed to catch a few hours of sleep toward morning, and woke
freezing and grumpy. This wasn’t my idea of a good time.
After several days of looking, we managed, at last, to find a two-bedroom mobile
home for rent where the landlord said he’d allow our dogs. We thought we could handle
paying the modest rent with the three of us working together, so we plopped down the
money we’d come with, and paid for two months rent in advance. That would take us
through December into early January. By then, we’d all be working, and could easily stay
until late March or early April when the weather would be warming up back home.
But things didn’t work out exactly as we’d planned. David and Michael Peter both
thought they’d have little trouble finding good-paying work with their construction skills,
while I figured the best I might be able to find was waitressing or maybe clerking in a
store as Christmas help. But the opposite proved true.
I was browsing in a women’s bookstore when I spied a notice pinned to a bulletin
board that read: “SEAMSTRESSES WANTED! Work for local designer. Will pay well.
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Contact Patric.” It gave a phone number. A woman answered the phone, who told me
where to come, and to bring samples of my work. Patric turned out to be an energetic
woman in her early 30s with short blonde hair and a chirpy attitude. She had set up a
sewing shop in an older home in downtown Gainesville. When I walked in, she handed
me a beer, and told me to have a seat while she examined my work. She looked it over
carefully, examining construction details such as stitch length and straightness of seams,
then looked up at me, smiled brightly, and said, “When can you start?”
“Any time.”
“How about now?” She led me into a spacious sunny room with around a dozen
sewing machines set up. “Beer’s in the ‘fridge. Help yourself. I’ll pay you five bucks an
hour. That sound fair?”
It sounded more than fair to me. Minimum wage was $2.65 an hour. This sounded
almost too good to be true. I’d found good pay and a fun job I would enjoy. I was one of
a half dozen or so seamstresses working for Patric. We were sewing lingerie (camisoles,
tap pants, nightgowns), fitting each garment to models, for a show in early December.
This was a pre-Christmas show for wealthy patrons, at which orders would be taken, and
after that, we’d be sewing these custom orders in time for Christmas. My skills were such
that Patric ended up calling me her “ace seamstress.” If things went well, we’d be
working on Patric’s spring line after the holidays. Things were looking bright for me.
But unfortunately, neither David nor Michael Peter were able to find work. It
became more apparent with each new day that we would have to leave, which meant I
would be forced to leave behind my dream job. I was angry that I would have to give up
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this job—the best I’d ever found—because of these two men, sell my dream short due to
their misfortune. But I could see no other alternative. I could have stayed behind alone
while they returned home, but I’d never lived by myself and was afraid to try. So, as I
saw things at the time, I had no real choice but to go with them when they left.
David and I were increasingly growing apart as well. Our fights became more
bitter and long lasting. Not even Michael Peter’s presence helped, and he seemed to have
grown weary of always being in the midst of our constant bickering.
Finally, in early January, knowing we wouldn’t be able to come up with another
month’s rent, we decided it was time to return to Tennessee. We didn’t know where we’d
go, since we didn’t have a home to return to there. The only place we could think of was
the house in Hunt Hollow, but that would be far too difficult to try in mid-winter. We’d
find something, we figured. Someone would take us in, if nothing else.
Patric was saddened when I broke the news to her of my leaving, but told me if I
should ever change my mind, I’d have a job in Gainesville—just look her up. I told her I
wouldn’t forget, then walked out the door and cried.
David refused to go back with Michael Peter and me in the car. He said he wanted
to hitchhike back to Tennessee. He’d always been an enthusiastic hitchhiker from the
earliest I’d known him, and I’d even accompanied him on a few hitchhiking journeys
(we’d hitchhiked from Kalamazoo to Mackinaw Island and back on our honeymoon), so
this didn’t seem odd to me. He said he needed time alone to think. I felt glum about it, but
didn’t know how to dissuade him.
Michael Peter and I loaded everything we’d brought with us into the car, leaving
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David only what he could fit into his backpack. We agreed to take Eric and Annie with us
and leave Shane with David. He liked hitchhiking with a dog—he said it helped get rides.
The afternoon we’d planned to leave turned into another major fight, and I was
still upset and crying when it came time to leave. It was raining sideways as we left the
mobile home at dusk that evening. I somehow managed to step half on and half off the
low cement platform outside the front door, which had become slick from the rain. I
stumbled and fell, twisting my ankle badly. Michael Peter drove straight through the
night in the pouring rain. I propped my throbbing ankle up on the dashboard and covered
it with an ice-pack that I replenished from an ice chest on the floor every now and then.
Eric and Annie slept fitfully in the back seat while golden oldies played on the radio.
~*~***~*~
And the fight grew angrier and angrier. The men cried: “Were it ten days,
twenty days, thirty days that we remained apart from you, we’d never be
unhappy.” The women replied: “We think not, but we women would be very
contented to remain away from you men for sixty days.” And the men said: “We
men would be happy to remain apart from you women for five moons.” The
women, growing more and more excited, cried: “You do not speak the truth; we
women would be contented to be separated from you ten moons.” The men
retorted: “We men could remain away from you women twenty moons and be
very happy.” “You do not speak the truth,” said the women,” for you wish to be
with us all the time, day and night.”27
- Excerpt from “Men and Women Try Living Apart,” a story told by the Zia tribe
~*~***~*~
The winter in Florida had been a bust all around. Our experiment with reinserting
ourselves into city life had utterly failed. Finding myself alone and homeless when
arriving in Tennessee, I drifted for a few weeks, staying with friends.
Michael Peter settled into a small cabin that sat nestled into the trees near the
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mouth of Whippoorwill Hollow. He offered to let me to stay with him until I found
something else, but it was only a two-room cabin. I didn’t want to cramp his style, since I
knew he wanted, and likely needed, some solitude after those disastrous weeks he’d spent
cooped up with David and me in Gainesville, so I politely declined his offer.
Laura Mae and Skip took me in for a few days, which didn’t work out especially
well, as Skip and I were at odds the entire time. From there, I went to stay with Debbie in
an old log house at the mouth of Hunt Hollow for another few days. She and Michael
Duane had been seeing each other on and off, so it was a bit cramped whenever he came
to visit. Debbie suggested I check into renting the old house she and Jon used to live in
up in Wilder Holler. It was currently empty.
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Chapter 8 – WINTER IN WILDER HOLLER
Wilder Holler. Even the name conjures up visions of an untamed kind of place,
and that’s how I remember Wilder Holler. After drifting from friend to friend and relying
on their hospitality for a while, I finally settled, in early January of 1978, into the house
Jon and Debbie used to occupy in Wilder Holler. A local farmer named Zeb Caldwell
owned the house. I paid Zeb $30 for three month’s rent in advance, and moved in.
The house was an old two-story farmhouse. Like many old farmhouses in the
area, it had been abandoned since the Depression (until Jon and Debbie had moved in).
Years ago, it had probably been filled with children’s laughter and bare feet making
muddy footprints on the dusty wooden floors in the summertime. Now it leaned to one
side, and some of its windows were broken. It was a sad relic of the not-too-distant past.
Jon and Debbie had made a few repairs while they lived there, and they’d put in a
pipeline from an uphill spring into the kitchen sink. There was running water when the
weather was not cold enough to freeze the water in the small pipe, but there was no
electricity—no TV, no radio, no stereo (no sitcoms, no news, no music… except for my
own singing). There were no phone lines in Wilder Holler, so I had no phone, either.
There was an outhouse beyond the root cellar near the garden (traipsing out there in midwinter was probably the thing I dreaded most). I lived in only two rooms of the house—
the large living room and the kitchen. I heated these two rooms with a wood stove, and
had candles and a kerosene lamp for light. I had no thermometer, so I have no idea how
cold it got that winter, but it was cold enough that the piped water was frozen most of the
time. This meant I had to walk to the old springhouse down the road and carry a 5-gallon
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bucket of water back with me almost daily.
David and I had agreed to separate for the time being—things weren’t going well
for us. He’d hitchhiked back from Florida with Shane and sought me out after he arrived
in Tennessee, but he stayed only long enough to tell me he was taking Eric off with him,
too. I didn’t want to let Eric go with him, but reluctantly agreed. Then he had taken off
hitchhiking again. I didn’t even know where he was. Somewhere in Florida or Michigan,
I assumed.
So, up in Wilder Holler that winter, there was just me, Annie, an old rusty wood
stove, a big bucket of water, a kerosene lamp and some candles, a bed (doggie-warmed
with lots of blankets piled high), a dusty old sofa, a rocking chair, a few pots and pans
and kitchen utensils, some paper, pens and paints, my books… and my thoughts. Most of
my days were spent either in the simple tasks of survival, or in contemplation. This was
my own version of Walden Pond, although I didn’t see that at the time. I read a lot. I
meditated. I wrote. I drew and painted. And I chopped wood and carried water. I learned
a great deal about myself that winter—lessons I still carry with me. I learned I could take
care of myself—that I was a strong woman. I could lift an axe high and split firewood for
the wood stove. I could stack it, and carry it into the house armload after armload all by
myself. I could build a fire and keep it going. I could carry water from the spring without
stopping to rest. I could keep myself company without going crazy (I think?). Sometimes
I talked to Annie, but she didn’t have much to say in return except for an occasional
“woof.” She kept me warm at night, though. And she always licked my tears if I got too
lonely and cried.
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“Hmmm… Annie, I think we’ve got a problem here.” I poured her bowl full and
gave it to her. “We don’t have much food left. I think I need to make a trip to town
today.” Annie looked up at me quizzically with soulful brown eyes, but kept munching
and didn’t reply. Annie generally didn’t say much. She had a fairly good command of
vowels, but was terrible with consonants. I suppose that’s because Annie was a dog. She
was part Labrador and part Irish Setter, sweet-natured and frisky, with a glossy black coat
tipped in red feathers. She was my faithful, and only, companion that winter. And we
were both woefully low on food.
I looked out the window and knew that a trip to town for groceries was going to
be an adventure. It had snowed the night before, a deep snow that was not to melt away
for many weeks, although I didn’t know that at the time. I knew that I shouldn’t even
attempt to drive out that day. In need of cash, I’d sold Becky, the Rambler, and had
replaced her with an old, beat-up Ford Falcon, and I didn’t quite trust it yet. Driving out
meant driving down the creek bed for about a quarter mile, and then crossing the creek
six more times (about a mile in all) before arriving at Fox Murphy’s farm, where the road
was solid once more. It was easy to get stuck in the creek gravel when the creek was
flowing deep (and the creek was usually high in the winter). Being a woman alone with a
car stuck in the creek in the middle of winter would not be fun, I reckoned. But I still
needed to get to town to buy food. This meant I had to walk out of Wilder Holler—either
that or Annie and I were going to get awfully hungry before the snow melted enough to
allow me to drive out.
I was Annie’s friend and keeper, and I knew she depended on me as much as I
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depended on her. If I didn’t get out to the store, I would have nothing to feed her. As I
looked out the window at the snow-covered fields again, I realized I had no choice but to
walk out of the hollow. Walking out to Fox’s house meant I’d have to walk down through
the cow pastures owned by Zeb and Fox. That would be faster and far less difficult than
trying to go by road. Zeb’s cows were on the other side of the hill during the winter,
pastured near his barns there, so his fields were empty and would be easy to traverse.
Fox’s cows, on the other hand, were pastured in the fields I had to cross to get out of the
hollow. I was a little afraid of walking through the cows (they’re BIG), but I really didn’t
see any alternative.
So, I bundled myself up in damn near every piece of clothing I owned, damped
down the wood stove, turned to Annie and said, “Guard the house, girl. Momma will be
back soon as she can.” I gave her a snuggle, closed the door and walked away with Annie
watching me from the window.
I crossed the road, walked over the stop-gap that led into Zeb’s land, and set out at
as brisk a pace as I could manage in the snow-covered pasture. As I walked, I wondered
how I was going to manage to walk back up the hollow in all this snow while carrying
groceries, but I knew I had to do it somehow. I decided that, once again, I simply needed
to trust in providence that I’d manage one way or another. I was trudging along through
the snowdrifts when I finally came to the fences surrounding Fox Murphy’s cow pasture.
I climbed the box wire fence, carefully avoided getting my clothing caught on the barbed
wire spanning the top, and jumped down into the pasture. I saw several cows nuzzling
through the snow for bits of frozen grass nearby. They looked up at me, lazily chewing,
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and then returned to eating. Satisfied that there was no challenge coming from these
cows, I began to walk across the pasture, struggling through the shin-deep snow.
About halfway across, I noticed that one of these seemingly peaceful cows had
begun to eye me. Out of the corner of my eye, I’d seen this “cow” begin to paw the
ground. Uh-oh. I hurriedly glanced in that direction, and quickly realized that I’d
underestimated this group of cattle. This was a bull. He was big—probably weighed at
least 600 pounds—and was not too happy to see me in his pasture. You know that clichéd
old image of the bull pawing the ground and then charging? Well, that’s what was about
to happen.
About the same time I realized that this was no peaceful cow, he began to charge.
So, I ran. And he ran. I glanced behind me and saw that he had lowered his head, which
was topped with long, curved horns. I figured he fully intended to use those horns. So I
ran faster. And he ran faster. I ran until I thought my heart would burst, not looking back.
The snow flew as I furrowed my way toward the fence at the far side of the pasture. I
could hear him bellow behind me as his feet thundered through the snow. I could hear his
breath coming in snorts and my own breath felt sharp and hot in my chest.
Finally, the fence was close enough to leap for, so I gathered the last of my
strength and leapt. I scrambled up the fence, snagging myself on the barbed wire at the
top, and fell to the other side, tearing my jacket. The bull slammed to a halt on the other
side as I landed. He stared at me, snorted, bellowed triumphantly, then turned and trotted
away with a few more self-satisfied snorts.
I got up and dusted the snow off my clothes. I was still terrified. My heart was
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pounding, I was sweating underneath the layers and layers of clothing I wore, and could
barely catch my breath in the frigid air. I struggled slowly through the trees on the edge
of the forest outside the pasture. I didn’t dare try crossing via the cleared pasture again. I
finally emerged, half-frozen and almost in tears, at the far side of the woods, walked up
to Fox’s front porch, and knocked on the door.
Fox’s wife, Wille Mae, answered the door. She took one look at me and said, “Oh
dear. Come on in and git warm by the far, hon’.” Fox and Willie Mae Murphy were
good-hearted, simple, country folks who loved me like one of their own. I knew they
didn’t fully understand why I wanted to live the way I did, but they respected my right to
do so, and did their best to help me however they could. I was always welcome in their
home—to use the phone, to get warm, even to take a shower if I wanted to. They
somehow knew and accepted without question that, for whatever reason, I was merely
doing what I had to do at that time in my life, and in their gentle way, offered me their
help, their friendship, their support, and their love. They may have been simple country
folks, but they were wise and wonderful. If it were not for Fox and Willie Mae, I don’t
know how I could ever have made it through those long, cold months I spent alone in
Wilder Holler that year.
Fox was a tall, wiry old fellow who told me he was “haf Arsh n haf Cherkee”
(which I interpreted to mean half Irish and half Cherokee). His bald head had once
sprouted a thick shock of bright red hair (or so Willie Mae told me) that had earned him
the moniker “Fox.” I never knew his real name. Willie Mae was a tiny dumpling of a
woman with grey hair knotted into a bun and a wide, warm smile.
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Willie Mae sat me down next to the wood stove and brought me a cup of hot
coffee. She soothed my ragged nerves, and laughed at my account of the bull chase,
saying, “That ol’ bull. He ain’t got no good sense. He thainks he’s tougher’n he is. But
I’ll tell Fox ta put ‘im up.”
I used their phone to call Laura Mae up in Cubbins Hollow, where she now lived
with Skip, to ask if she could spare the time to come get me and drive me to town and
back, so I could get a few groceries. She could, and we did. When I returned to Fox and
Willie Mae’s house, ready to somehow trudge back up to my house in the hollow with
my arms full of grocery bags, Fox was waiting for me out by the barn. He waved me
over, and said, “I put that ol’ bull up in the barn. But I still ain’t gonna let you try walkin’
back up thar by ye’self. Ain’t no sense in that. It’s cold and it’s gonna git dark purty
soon. Git in the truck. I’ll drive ye back.”
I knew he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, so I didn’t even try to object. I put
my grocery bags in the bed of Fox’s battered old pickup truck and climbed into the cab,
grateful for his kindness to me, and thanked him. He just said, “S’awright.” He didn’t say
much as we rattled and rolled up the creek bed to my house, but he didn’t need to. There
was comfort in the silence between us. When we reached my house, the sun had just sunk
behind the hills. The sky was gold and red and purple, the snow-covered fields were
aglow in the dim light, and the iced branches of the woods behind the house glistened. As
usual, my trust in providence had not let me down. I was home in time to appreciate the
grace and beauty of the winter sunset that day.
I opened the truck door, thanked Fox again, then jumped down onto the road and
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retrieved my groceries from the truck bed. I waved at Fox as I walked toward the house.
He cracked the truck window and called out, “You take keer now,” then turned around,
waved, and drove back down out of the hollow. I walked into the house and was greeted
with a waggy-tail and lots of sloppy kisses.
I put down the sacks of groceries, and knelt to hug Annie. “Hey, girl! Told ya I’d
be back. Look! I got doggie biscuits!” As usual, she didn’t reply, but her eyes told me she
was glad I was home, and was especially appreciative of the doggie biscuits. I stoked the
fire, lit the kerosene lamp, chopped some veggies and made a pot of soup on top of the
wood stove. I settled into the rocking chair next to the stove with a book in my lap and a
contented Annie at my feet while the soup and the stove worked their magic together. I
sighed to myself and relaxed, knowing that we were set for another few weeks in the
house in Wilder Holler.
~*~***~*~
The Donn Cúailnge was brought to Connacht. When he saw this strange
and beautiful new land he let three great bellows out of him. Finnbennach, the
White-horned Bull, heard him. On account of Finnbennach no male beast on the
Plain of Aí dared raise a sound louder than a moo. He threw up his head and
proceeded to Crúachan to seek out the Brown Bull. Everyone who had escaped
the battle now had nothing better to do than watch the two bulls fighting.
The men of Ireland debated as to who should referee the contest of the two
bulls. They agreed it should be Bricriu Mac Carbada the Venom-tongued. … They
chose Bricriu because he did not discriminate between friend and foe. They
brought him to the gap between the bulls to referee the contest.
When the two bulls saw each other they pawed the ground and hurled the
earth over their shoulders, Their eyes blazed in their heads like great fiery orbs
and their cheeks and their nostrils swelled like forge bellows. The charged
towards each other and Bricriu got caught in between. He was flattened, trampled
and killed. Such was the death of Bricriu.
The Brown Bull got his hoof stuck on his opponent’s horn. For a day and
a night he made no attempt to withdraw the hoof, until Fergus gave off to him and
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took a stick to his hide.
‘It would be a poor show,’ said Fergus, ‘for this feisty old calf to be
brought all this way only to disgrace his fine breeding. Especially since so many
died on his account.’
When the Brown Bull heard this he pulled away his hoof and broke his
leg. The other bull’s horn flew off and stuck in the side of a nearby mountain.
Hence the name Sliab nAdarca, Horn Mountain.
The bulls fought for a long time. Night fell upon the men of Ireland and
they could do nothing but listen to the bulls roaring and bellowing in the
darkness. All next day the Donn Cúailnge drove Finnbennach before him and at
nightfall they plunged into the lake at Crúachan. He emerged with Finnbennach’s
loins and shoulderblade and liver on his horns. The army went to kill him but
Fergus stopped them, saying he should be let roam. So the bull headed for his
homeland. He stopped on the way to drink at Finnleithe, where he left
Finnbennach’s shoulderblade, hence the name Finnleithe, White Shoulder. He
drank again at Áth Luain, and left Finnbennach’s loins there. Hence the name Áth
Luain, the Ford of the Loins. At Iraird Cuillenn he let a great bellow out of him
that was heard all over the province. He drank again at Tromma, where
Finnbennach’s liver fell from his horns. Hence the name Tromma, Liver. He went
then to Éten Tairb, where he rested his brow against the hill. Hence the name
Éten Tairb, the Bull’s Brow, in Muirthemne Plain. Then he went by the
Midluachair Riad to Cuib, where he used to dwell with the dry cows of Dáire, and
he tore up the ground there. Hence the name Gort mBúraig, Trench Field. Then
he went on and fell dead at the ridge between Ulster and Uí Echach. That place is
now called Druim Tairb, Bull Ridge.
Ailill and Medb made a peace with the Ulstermen and Cu Chulainn. For
seven years after than no one was killed in battle between them. The men of
Connacht went back to their own country, and the men of Ulster returned in
triumph to Emain Macha.28
- Excerpt from the Táin Bó Cúailnge, an epic Irish tale
~*~***~*~
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Chapter 9 – SPRING AND SUMMER SOLITUDE
The first sign of spring is always the “fuzziness” of trees. When looking at bare
branches from a distance, they suddenly start to look less starkly defined, and more
blurred, or “fuzzy,” especially at the tips. I first noticed this when gazing from the
window of my home in Wilder Holler at the trees on the hillside across the winterbrowned meadow that spring in 1979. I soon realized this was because the branches were
starting to form buds that would open into sweet-scented blossoms and tiny new leaves.
The first to bloom were the redbuds. They bloomed along the edge of the woods
at the bottom of the hill near the meadow, gracing the outline of the forest with dabs of
soft lavender amongst the barrenness. Soon to follow were the dogwoods, adding a white
laciness to the effect. Then, the willows began to sprout pale green, new leaves. Soon
after that, the meadow began to turn a bright, verdant green. In the cleared pastures that
sprinkled the hillside above, I began to see fuzzy white dots that moved slowly, and soon
realized that these dots were sheep and new lambs grazing here and there in the pastures.
My thoughts soon turned to gardening. From my grandmothers, I’d learned that
there’s nothing more enjoyable on a balmy spring day than sinking my hands in among
fat worms and pale, new roots in the mucky dirt of my garden.
Out behind the root cellar was a garden, fenced against the encroaching
wilderness. The ground there was just waiting to be turned and have tiny seeds pressed
into its soft loam. I thought I might have seen a shovel in the small tin-roofed shed out by
the garden. Sure enough, there was an old rusty shovel, and an equally rusty rake and
hoe. They were fairly new, despite the rust, so I figured they were probably left there by
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Jon and Debbie.
The ground proved easy enough to work, since it was creek-bottom, and not as
rocky as hillside or ridgetop. The tangle of weeds and vines that had begun to grow made
it more difficult to turn with the shovel, but I was working on it slowly. I’d been digging
a little at a time for several weeks. One bright morning, as I turned a shovelful of dirt, I
thought I heard the whine of a motor and splashing from down the creek. I stopped,
cocking my head to listen. Sure enough, someone was driving up the creek.
I knew Candi was home, so it wasn’t her. Candi had moved, along with her infant
son, Woods, into the house at the head of the hollow. She and her husband hadn’t made it
through the fall and winter with their relationship intact, either. She and I had become a
bit closer through the early spring, often sharing coffee in her bright kitchen in the
mornings. Her warm kitchen always smelled of spices and vanilla—she kept a vanilla
bean in her sugar bowl to add flavor to the sugar. I’d been to her house for coffee that
morning, and hadn’t seen or heard her drive by, so I knew she was still at home.
I laid the shovel aside and walked to the front yard to wait, wondering if company
was coming up the creek. In the front yard of the house, a tiny spring-fed stream choked
with mints and watercress flowed. It ran through the yard then mysteriously sank
underground again before reaching the fence. My new cat, a yellow tabby named Jacob
(Michael Peter had held the tiny kitten to his ear, and whispered to me that he said his
name was Jacob), was sitting with his rear end plopped in the stream’s trickle, patiently
fishing for the tiny crawdads that lived there. I’ve never known another cat who would sit
in cold water for any reason whatsoever, but Jacob was one of a kind.
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As the vehicle approached, I could tell from the sound of an engine that it was a
truck splashing up the creekbed. A rusty white pickup soon came into view, and I
realized, with delight, who was to be my visitor. The truck clanked to a stop in front of
the house, and a voice called out, “Hey, how are you?! I thought I’d come see if you need
any help. Do you maybe need your garden turned? I brought the tiller with me.”
Snow Bear opened the door of the truck and walked toward the front yard gate. I
opened the gate and went out to meet him. “How did you guess?” I teased as I laughed
and hugged him. “I definitely could use some help!”
Snow Bear spent the day with me at Wilder Holler. We tilled the garden, talked,
drank lemonade, and visited til almost sundown, when he left to return to Tina and Jody
in Whippoorwill Hollow. He told me that there was to be a giveway of garden seeds to
low-income people by the County Extension Agency on Friday. He said they’d be giving
out seed for sweet corn, purple hull peas, okra, and seed potatoes, maybe more. Be there
at 10:00 on the square in Smithville.
I hadn’t worked since Gainesville, and was running low on cash. If nothing else,
in the solitude of that summer in Wilder Holler, I could find solace in my garden.
~*~***~*~
Now we are seated here on the soft grass,
Begin the singing. The fields have begun to flower;
The trees are budding and the woods are green;
The year is at its nicest moment now.29
- Excerpt from “Eclogue III,” The Eclogues by Virgil
~*~***~*~
David breezed through my life several times that spring, always acting like he
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thought he was still a part of my life, but never really connecting well enough before
something else blew up between us and he was off on some hitchhiking jaunt again. I saw
less and less of him as the weeks wore on.
I thought of the house in Wilder Holler as my home, not our home. David had
little to do with anything there, and seemed to me to be using my home more as a crash
pad when he wanted to be in Tennessee than as anything else. As far as I was concerned,
our marriage was over. There was little left to hold onto but memories, and most of those
only made me grieve for what had once been but I knew would never be again.
I busied myself with the garden (it wasn’t easy maintaining it alone, but I was
managing), with pursuing my solitary pastimes (reading, drawing and painting,
meditating), and with maintaining friendships with my women friends (visits up the
holler with Candi, driving out to spend a day with Katheylynn up in her little red house,
or with Laura in Cubbins Hollow). There was another aspect of my friendships with the
women in my life that became increasingly important that summer, and that was what we
called the “Women’s Group.”
We had begun these meetings some time ago, and I had been attending as often as
possible for many months. They were once weekly meetings hosted at the homes of
various women, all of us members of the alternative community, around the Creek and
the surrounding area. We ranged in age from early twenties to early fifties. I suppose, in
retrospect, our Women’s Group had a lot in common with what has come to be known as
“consciousness-raising groups,” but we never used that term, and I’m unsure if any of us
were even aware of the connection at the time. It served the same purpose, though. We
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met to form bonds of trust, to share our lives, give and receive counsel, and support one
another through good and bad. Some of the things said during these meetings have
remained with me throughout my life.
One such was uttered by an older woman who was new to the group, at a meeting
held at the home of Marianne on Hogsfoot Road (seriously, that was the name of the
road). We were talking about relationships that night. Several of the women, myself
included, had been or were currently experiencing troubles in that area of our lives. She
was probably in her late forties or early fifties. Her dark hair was tied back in a long braid
sprinkled with silver, and she wore boots, jeans, and a t-shirt that made me think of her as
a “biker chick.” She listened to us share our woes without saying much. She’d smile
gently, or frown and shake her head from time to time. Finally, she drew a deep breath,
sighed, shook her head again, and looked directly at the woman who’d just spoken.
“Honey, I ain’t got much to add, but there’s one thing I know. If yer old man ain’t
yer best friend, you might as well hang it up. Cuz it ain’t gonna work.”
Her voice was as rough as her appearance, but her eyes shone brightly with inner
strength and conviction. Her comment caught us all off-guard that night. No one had
expected such a wise-old-woman remark from her. I’ve never forgotten it.
I began to think about what she’d said in terms of my own life. Was David really
my best friend? He once had been. That was certain. But we’d grown so far apart and had
such different interests now. He hardly seemed like a best friend any more. He was
distant and rarely even around these days. More and more, I came to realize that a turning
point had been reached in our relationship, and that there would be no going back. As the
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days of summer wore on, and the fields began to glow with the golden yellow and deep
purple of late summer wildflowers, I began to let go, becoming more and more secure in
the knowledge that my marriage to David was over.
~*~***~*~
Free! At last free!
No longer tied to the kitchen,
Bound to my pots and pans!
No longer bound to a husband
who never looked at me.
Free of anger! Free of despair!
How glad I am
To sit at the foot of a tree,
Focusing my mind.
I am peaceful. I am free.30
- Sumangalamata, one of the first ordained Buddhist women, fifth century BCE
~*~***~*~
I lost Eric that summer, too. Bo-Bo was still with me, but we’d already lost our
Sadie that winter. She’d disappeared while we were in Florida. Katheylynn said she’d
just gone off into the woods one day, and hadn’t come back. I hoped she was with some
kind couple somewhere, as I knew Nikki was, but I never knew for sure what happened.
The forest may have taken her.
I also never knew for sure what happened to Eric. David had decided having two
dogs while on the road hitchhiking was too much trouble, and had returned him to me in
late spring. During that summer in Wilder Holler, Eric had taken to running the ridgetops
at dusk. I’d hear him barking, running a somewhat circular path that I felt must have
marked out his territory. He’d come home after dark, panting and heaving from the trek,
but seeming somehow satisfied that he’d accomplished some doggie-important mission.
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During the late summer, I began to hear something else prowling the ridgetops in
the night that struck fear into me—the scream of a bobcat. And one night, Eric just didn’t
come home, never again. I always wondered if the bobcat had gotten him. The scream of
a big cat in the woods was something I’d heard before, and dredged up memories I
carried with me from childhood, of stories told in my family. I call them Panther Stories.
~*~***~*~
When I was a girl, my whole family used to go camping together—grandmas and
grandpas from both sides, mom and dad, and we three kids. My Grandpa Roberts had an
old school bus that was converted into a camper, and we’d all ride in that out to some
spot in the country where we’d spend the weekend. We usually did this at least once
during the summer while I was growing up.
This particular time—I was around eight years old, maybe nine, at the time—
we’d gone out to a place in the woods out by Mountain Pine and Lake Catherine. Lake
Catherine is one of those dammed-up, man-made lakes in Arkansas made by the Army
Corps of Engineers for the purpose of making hydro-electric power. It was huge, and the
mountains rose right up out of the lake. Nearby Mountain Pine was a lumbermill town, a
company town owned by the mill. Like Tennessee Ernie Ford singing, “I owe my soul to
the company store.” That sort of town. My dad had worked at that lumbermill when I was
a little girl, but we’d never lived in the town.
We were all sitting out around the campfire right at dusk toasting marshmallows
when we heard a scream up on the mountainside that loomed up from the lakeshore
across a small bay. Grandma Sutton sat straight up and said, “Ooooo… that’s a panther!”
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Well, that scared me right there. I knew what a panther was. My mom had this statuette
of a black panther all stretched out stalking and with its mouth open screaming, and it
was my job to dust that thing every week. I didn’t much like it. Now, I’m sure this
wasn’t a black panther like that one. It was probably a cougar, a mountain lion, or maybe
even a bobcat. But to my mind, it was a big, black, sleek cat with huge fangs.
Grandma, who was the big storyteller of the family, began to tell a panther story.
This one was about my grandpa, her husband, when he was a baby.
“When yer gran’pa was a teeny li’l baby, his daddy, Benjamin, was a’buildin’ a
log cabin up in the woods near Mt. Ida. It wasn’t near done yet, an’ it jist had holes cut in
it fer winders. Now, it weren’t very big, and the head o’ the’ bed was pushed up aginst
one o’ them winder holes. Yer great gran’pa, an’ his wife, that’d be Essie, had laid down
t’ sleep with baby Frank next t’ Essie. Well, ol’ Ben woke up in the middle o’ the night
hearin’ somethin’ breathin’ real loud right next to ‘em. He could see in the moonlight
a’streamin’ through that open winder hole a big ol’ panther a’standin’ on the windersill
with its paws next to little Frank a’fixin’ to slam them jaws shut on that poor li’l baby.
Well, the shotgun was plum on th’ other side o’ th’ room, an’ ain’t no way he coulda got
to it, so whut he done was t’ double up his fist (here grandma doubled up her fist and
acted this out) and WHAM! He gathered up all his strength in that arm, and hit that ol’
panther right in th’ side as hard as he could. That ol’ panther fell down, BOOM, on the
floor deader’n a doornail. If it t’weren’t fer what yer great-gran’pa done that night, you
wouldn’t even be a’sittin’ here t’ hear me tell this cuz it woulda et up yer gran’pa right
then an’ there.”
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Lest you think grandma was telling us a tall tale, grandpa interjected at this point,
to tell us that his daddy turned the panther’s body over to the local country doctor to
examine because folks thought he was just telling a tale. The doctor dissected it carefully,
looking for a bullet hole, but what he found instead was that one of the cat’s ribs had
broken and pierced its heart.
Grandma wasn’t the only one to get in on the story-telling that night. Grandpa
Roberts told a panther story of his own about his daddy, who was an old country doctor
up in the Missouri Ozarks. That was Elijah, or Lij, as grandpa called him. He was
walking home one night from his last visit of the day to a patient’s house. It was starting
to get dark, and the road to his home wound through the woods. He heard something
walking along the road behind him. When he turned around to see what it was, he could
barely make out the shape of a panther slinking along behind him. So, he slowly took out
the torch he always carried with him to light the way if he was coming home after dark,
and a box of matches, and he lit that torch. He walked backwards the rest of the way
home, about a mile, holding that torch out in front of him, to keep the panther at bay.
We kids were scared to our toes by now. By the time these stories were finished
the stars had come out, and we’d heard the cat scream up on the mountain a few more
times, too. Then, my dad told a story he’d heard about a panther while working at the
lumber mill in Mountain Pine just over the mountain from where we were. He said that a
panther came down from the mountain one day and strolled right down the main street of
the town in broad daylight. The men were all off at work in the mill, and the women were
in a panic getting their kids inside the houses. The panther walked all the way down to
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the highway, looked around, then turned around and ambled right back up the road, just
as slow as you please, and went right back into the woods and up onto the mountain
where they often could hear it screaming at night, just like this panther.
Well, that did it for me. Dad had managed to bring the stories home, right there to
where we were that night, near Mountain Pine, where maybe this very panther I was
hearing had walked down the street. As we slept in the camper-bus that night, my fears
came out in my dreams.
I dreamed that we’d gone to the zoo in Little Rock, which we often did. While we
were there, I’d seen a panther in a cage. He had looked me in the eye and bared his teeth
at me. On the way home, I kept seeing something running the fields alongside the
highway (I’m dreaming, remember). I thought it looked an awful lot like that panther in
the zoo, but decided, “Naw, it couldn’t be!” But then, a news announcement came on the
radio saying that a panther had escaped from the zoo and to be on the look-out for it. I
tried to tell my parents that it was following us, but of course, they told me I was
imagining things. Now, the headboard of my bed at the time was up against a window,
just like the one in grandma’s story, so in my dream, I awoke with that panther leaning in
the window with its paws on either side of me, its drooling mouth wide open about to
chomp off my head. I woke up screaming—not in the dream, but for real.
~*~***~*~
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Chapter 10 – SPARKING AUTUMN
I was out hoeing the garden in mid-summer when I heard a truck coming up the
creek. Hearing a vehicle was a big deal, since visitors were rare up in Wilder Holler. It
usually meant company was coming. The road came to a dead end just past Candi’s so
there was no other reason for anyone to drive up the road.
Beyond that point, in a teepee in the woods, lived a man who went by the name of
Whispering Leaf, his wife, Sunshine, their young daughter, Butterfly, and their teenage
son, Two Hawks. They were loners—friendly, but not sociable. They rarely had visitors,
so I doubted the approaching sound had anything to do with them.
I stopped to listen, wondering who it might be. It could be someone coming to see
me or it might be a visitor for Candi. Either way, I figured I’d know whoever it was. I
went to the shed to put the hoe away, then opened the front gate to wait by the flowers I’d
planted along the fence, bright zinnias and marigolds with morning glories twining on the
old whitewashed fence rails.
As I peered down the creek, the vehicle making all the noise rounded the bend
and came into my field of vision. It was a big, blue pickup. A new truck, not old and beat
up like the trucks most of my friends drove. I didn’t recognize it at all. As it pulled over
and came to a stop in front of my house, a hand flew out the window in greeting, then the
man inside the truck flashed a big smile and began to get out. I then realized I did know
this man, and wondered why on earth he was coming to visit me. It was Michael Duane.
“Hey, how are ya? I’ve been thinking about you lately, all by yourself up here,
and thought I’d come check on you.”
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It had been a year or so since Michael Duane and Laura Mae had split up. I hadn’t
seen much of him, but Laura was my friend. I was a little wary, but welcomed him.
“I’m good. Wow. Where’d you get that truck?”
“I finally sold the farm, and used some of the money to buy this truck. It’s a fourwheel drive, too! Thought that might come in handy around here.” He slapped the fender
of his new truck as he flashed another big grin.
“Well, that’s cool. I’m happy for ya. Hey, it’s good to see ya. Company’s always
nice to get up here, and actually, I could probably use some help with a few things.”
I invited him in and offered him some herb tea. He spent the day with me and
helped me with the weeds in the garden, which was much appreciated.
Oddly, I’d never really liked him when he was with Laura. Although I’d always
thought he was a very handsome, attractive man, there was something about him that had
made me think he was arrogant, or a braggart. But as the summer wore on, he began to
visit me more often, and as I got to know him better, I realized I may have misjudged
him, and thought I should at least give him a chance. It wasn’t so much that he was
arrogant. He was just very self-confidant and could be brutally honest—he said what he
thought—and he was a cheerful man who liked to laugh. This was quite a contrast to how
David had been acting lately—either silent and moping, keeping his thoughts to himself,
or else scornful and full of bitter insults that sometimes angered or frightened me. Having
someone around who actually enjoyed being with me in an easy way felt nice.
Michael Duane’s visits became more frequent. Once a week became every few
days, then almost every day. It became apparent to me that this was becoming more than
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just friendly visits to help me out, but was a courtship. He did help. He helped me carry
water. He helped me chop firewood for the coming winter and stack it near the house. He
helped me tend the garden and pick the harvest as it began to come in later in the
summer. He also helped me to feel more confidant about myself and my own self worth
(David’s insults had worn me down). As time went on, his general friendliness and
helpfulness began to be tinged with flirtatiousness. We grew closer and closer, and more
and more fond of each other. I hadn’t seen David in many months, and even when I had
seen him, there was no romance left—just anger and sadness. I slowly let down my
barriers and allowed my heart to open to new possibilities late that summer.
~*~***~*~
Inanna spoke: “No brother! The man of my heart works the hoe. The
farmer! He is the man of my heart! He gathers the grain into great heaps. He
brings the grain regularly into my storehouses.”31
- Excerpt from “The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi,” a Sumerian myth
~*~***~*~
There was a nip of autumn in the air. The trees were turning gold and red on the
hillside across from my house in Wilder Holler. The garden was long harvested, and
either eaten or canned for the winter. Michael Duane had helped with that, and I had
welcomed his help. I hadn’t seen David since late spring. I’d heard he was traveling back
and forth between Michigan and Florida, and had stopped to see a few folks now and
then in Tennessee. I hadn’t been one of them.
David was on the Creek again, or so I’d heard, and I didn’t want to be home, just
in case he decided to pay me a visit – which I doubted he’d do, but all the same, I didn’t
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feel like taking the chance. So, I set out to pay a visit to Katheylynn at the little red house.
She was living alone now, too, but had recently begun to spend time with a handsome
young newcomer to the Creek, also named Michael, from Baltimore. She and I had spent
the day baking bread in her wood cookstove while comparing stories about the new loves
in our lives. When I realized how much time had slipped by, darkness was creeping in.
Rather than try to make it back down the treacherous hillside in the dark to reach my car
parked on the dirt road far below, I decided to stay the night. It was a wise choice, I
figured, given that, even after going down that steep hillside in the dark, I’d still have to
make the trek up Wilder Holler, and drive across and through that creek seven times.
I’d left Annie at home in Wilder Holler, rather than take her with me that day. She
had mated with Chip’s dog (totally unplanned) a couple of months ago, and was heavy
with pups. I didn’t think climbing steep hillsides would be in her best interest.
I left Katheylynn’s early the next morning to return home. I drove up Wilder
Creek and parked in front of the house. As I opened the car door, I heard unfamiliar
sounds coming from the open door of the entryway. Soft snuffling noises. I crept up onto
the porch and peered in to find Annie snuggled up on a pile of old blankets I’d left there
for her, and nestled close against her were soft furry shapes in shades of red and black.
“Oh, Annie! They’re beautiful!”
I knelt beside her and put a hand out to touch their tiny wriggling bodies. She
wagged her tail, and gave a contented sigh as she watched me carefully. She would be a
good momma, I thought, and smiled.
I spent the day puttering around the house, mostly just admiring Annie’s babies.
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As the shadows lengthened toward late afternoon, I heard a truck coming up the creek. It
sounded like Michael Duane’s truck. I was familiar with its particular whine by now. I
met him at the gate with an excited hug.
“Annie had her babies!”
He got out of the truck, came into the house and knelt as I had done earlier. He
picked up one of the tiny pups and cradled it gently. “Aw… so soft and sweet.”
He held the puppy a few more moments, then carefully tucked it back in among
its littermates. We stood, then went into the bigger room, and sat down, facing each other,
on the dusty old sculptured velvet sofa just inside the door.
“I’ve heard David’s back again.” I told him the news with a sigh.
“Does that worry you?”
“Maybe a little. I’m not comfortable being around him any more. It’s sad, but I
just don’t want to see him.”
Michael was silent for a moment, then took my hand in his. “Well, I came by
because I wanted to tell you something.”
“What?” I looked up at him curiously.
“I’m moving.” Ever since he’d sold the farm earlier in the summer, he’d been
staying with Glenn up at the head of Dry Creek. Glenn and Bonnie had split up, too, and
she had moved to Nashville, so he and Glenn had been hanging out as bachelors that
summer.
“Oh. Where to?” I was afraid he might be going back to Michigan.
“Up at Bill and Judy’s. They offered to let me stay at their house while they’re
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gone for the winter. They just left yesterday. I spent today packing up my stuff. I’m
gonna move in tomorrow. Why don’t you come stay with me?”
I was caught off-guard by his suggestion, and just sat there, unable to find words
to reply. He took that opportunity to continue.
“Look, it would be so much easier for you than staying here all by yourself for the
winter. I can help you.”
Tears welled up. “I don’t know… David’s back. What if…” I trailed off, not
finishing my thoughts. Michael knew I was planning to file papers for divorce from
David. I just hadn’t done it yet because I was going to do it in Nashville and had been
putting it off because of the long drive. But David didn’t know this. I hadn’t seen him.
“So what if he is? Is that what you want? Why stay with someone who doesn’t
want you, who doesn’t even care enough about you to stick around or help you? Why not
go where you’re wanted?” At that, the tears began to flow. I knew he was right.
“What about Annie and her puppies?”
“They can come, too.” He ran a finger under my eye to gently wipe away my
tears, then held me and rocked me as I let go the pain.
~*~***~*~
Inanna opened the door for him. Inside the house she shone before him
like the light of the moon. Dumuzi looked at her joyously. He pressed his neck
close against here. He kissed her.32
- Excerpt from “The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi,” a Sumerian myth
~*~***~*~
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Chapter 11 – WHIPPOORWILL HOLLOW WINTER
Bill and Judy’s house was a small white clapboard farmhouse with red trim. It sat
mid-way up the road into Whippoorwill Hollow, and back toward the small creek that
flowed out the hollow. At the mouth of the hollow, where the road branched off from Dry
Creek Road at the bridge by the old mill, it passed first a small house to the left. An
elderly woman lived alone there. I never knew her name. She was one of the local people,
a quiet woman who nodded her head as we passed by if she happened to be outside, but
too shy to carry on much of a conversation should we stop and try to engage her. We
decided to leave her to her solitude. I thought she must have been a widow living in the
home she’d once shared with her husband. A sad thought, but probably true.
The rocky road wound into the woods from there, and went for about a mile
before it encountered another home. This was Michael Peter’s small cabin. It sat close to
the road on the right. There was a small front yard where I’d planted flowers for Michael
Peter last spring. Their blossoms were long since spent, but the happy memories
remained. A short, rock-lined path led up to a rickety front porch. A kerosene lamp
blazed on a table near the window, and a plume of grey smoke rose from the metal flue
that jutted through the tin roof.
As the road turned a bend past the cabin, a rocky hillside came into view. In that
rocky hillside was a small dark hole, the mouth of a cave. I’d never been into it, but
Michael Peter had visited it. He said it seemed to be a lair for some woodland creature,
and that he often heard what he called “spooky” sounds from up that way during the
night. I’d heard the sound once, too, after dark when visiting Michael Peter. It was a
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mournful sound, not a howl nor a hoot, but something strange and uncommon. We never
knew what it might have been, but liked to think it was Big Foot hanging out up there.
The next house, another half mile or so up the hollow, was Bill and Judy’s house.
Beyond there, maybe a quarter of a mile further, was the house where Snow Bear lived
with Tina and Jody. That house sat at the end of the road. It was impossible to drive past
there. The only way further up the hollow was either on horseback or on foot.
Whippoorwill Hollow was a good place to be that winter. Bill and Judy’s house
was warm and comfy. They had renovated it and had added insulation to the attic in the
process. There was one big room that served as both living room and kitchen, and off to
the side, two small bedrooms. The floors were hardwood and the walls were paneled with
weathered barnwood. It had electricity and spring-fed running water into the kitchen sink
and a small bathroom. By Dry Creek standards, it was luxurious.
We stayed in the big room that winter, where the wood stove was located, leaving
the two bedrooms closed off. The big room was large enough to hold Michael Duane’s
antique high-headboard bed, as well as an old sofa, a wooden rocking chair, a dining
table and chairs, kitchen appliances, and an antique, pot-bellied woodstove. Much of my
furniture (what had been mine and David’s) and other belongings were still stored in the
loft of Bill and Judy’s barn, and I spent much of that winter going through my things,
dividing out what was to be David’s (I had filed for divorce) and leaving it in the barn,
while taking what was to be mine into the house and unpacking it.
David had not been happy with the divorce papers being served on him, and had
tracked me down to pay an angry visit. It was painful to see David so angry and hurt. I
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understood that he was angry, but wondered what he had expected me to do, since he
had, for all practical purposes, abandoned me and our relationship many long moons ago.
I knew, for my own well-being, I had to let it go. As my dear friend Bonnie had said, it
was time to think of my own self-preservation. My time alone in Wilder Holler had been
a time of healing and strengthening myself, and now I had to allow myself permission to
explore the new relationship that had unexpectedly found its way into my life.
The budding relationship between Michael and I was not without its trying times.
We had a few fights along the way, but for the most part, he and I felt at peace with one
another. When my divorce from David became final, we formally tied the knot in our
own relationship. Katheylynn was my maid of honor, and one of Michael’s old friends
from Michigan drove down to act as best man. We held the ceremony at a place called
Evins Mill outside of Smithville, in the nearby woods atop a thundering waterfall.
That winter was one of sudden growth for me, both spiritually and mentally. I felt
released from past woes and free to explore the boundaries of a new life I was creating
for myself, but this time, with a partner who cared for me in a different way, and was fast
becoming my new best friend (I thought often, and still do, of those words spoken at that
women’s group meeting). We did yoga together in the mornings, listened to music on the
stereo in the evenings, and talked. There was lots of talking, getting to know one another.
Michael Peter continued to be a part of my life as well, and seeing as how he lived
within easy walking distance, was often a guest in our home that winter, fitting in as
easily with Michael Duane as he had with David and me. He had a new twinkle in his eye
those days, though. A lovely dark-haired lady from Texas had come to stay on the Creek,
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and she had turned his head. He had a new love in his life, too. Her name was Patti, and
she and I were also becoming close.
I continued to go to meetings of the women’s group. Tina and I would drive there
together, since she also lived nearby, and she and I would talk about what was going on
in our respective lives on the way. She and Snow Bear were not getting along, and it
looked like they might not make it ‘til spring. That saddened me, but it seemed that
everyone was going through something similar.
One evening, I told her as we rode along the bumpy road that one of the things
David and I had come to differ about was whether or not we wanted children. I was
starting to think I wanted a child, but David had never come to share that feeling with me.
Michael, on the other hand, was already a father, and a good one. He was, of course, open
to the idea. Still, I was unsure. I remembered why David and I had first decided not to
have children. It was a political decision, based on what we knew of overpopulation and
what was called “Zero Population Growth.” We hadn’t wanted to burden the Earth.
Tina listened to me as she drove, and sighed. “I know what you mean, Julie. I
used to feel that way, too, before I had Jody. Then, I came to realize that what we have to
offer to the world through a child is something worthwhile. Think of how you would
raise that child, the values you’d instill as it grew, and how much those values are needed
in the world. I’ve come to think it’s important for people like you and me to contribute in
a different way. It’s not enough to not have more children. Some of us have to leave the
world children who will carry on our values, so that what we’re trying to do isn’t lost.”
I listened carefully to her words. She made sense to me. Especially since I was
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looking for some moral justification for my recently growing desire to have a child.
“Well, I guess that makes sense, Tina. I’ve been trying to looking at the pros and
cons. Lately, the pros are winning. I’ve been thinking about having a baby a lot lately.”
Tina shot me a wide-grinned glance. “Uh-oh! You do know that’s the first step.
Right?” She laughed. “If you’ve decided you want to be pregnant, you will be, very soon.
That’s how it goes, you know.”
~*~***~*~
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.33
- Excerpt from The Song of Solomon, 8.6-7
~*~***~*~
I awoke to the sound of men’s voices buzzing in the background. Raising my
head sleepily, I spied Michael Peter and Michael Duane sitting together near the wood
stove, drinking coffee and talking quietly so as not to wake me. Michael Peter must have
walked up for a visit this morning. Nice. I sat up and peeled back the warm blankets to
hop quickly over to the wood stove and join them.
“Here, let me get you some coffee.” Michael Duane poured a cup for me.
I sat down in the rocking chair and began to rock as I sipped my coffee. They
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continued talking, something about a project Michael Peter wanted help with down at his
cabin. It was early March, and we were all beginning to make plans for spring.
As I drank the coffee, I felt a warm sensation flood through my body. It didn’t
feel like just the warmth of the coffee, nor the warmth of the fire. It was something
different. Something I’d never felt before, something wholly new. A sudden freshness, a
change. A small but distinct flutter that permeated me, body and soul. My eyes widened
as I pondered this feeling, and suddenly, I realized what it must mean. I sat bolt upright in
the rocking chair with a sense of excitement. “Oh!”
The men stopped talking to stare at me quizzically. Michael Peter lifted his
eyebrows. “What?”
Michael Duane reached over and touched my arm. “What is it?”
“I’m pregnant.” I smiled. “I felt it just now. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”
Both men smiled. Then, they each began to laugh. Neither doubted me. And that
was that. I was pregnant. As Tina had warned me, I had wanted it enough.
Before he left that day, Michael Peter confided something to us as well. He said
Patti would want me to know. She was with child, too—four months or so along. I would
have a woman friend close by to share stories with. Several months later, I’d learn that
Laura Mae and Skip were also expecting a child. The time of break-ups and sadness had
finally passed, and was being replaced by new joys and delights.
~*~***~*~
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Part III – GROWING THE GARDEN
Chapter 12 – DRY CREEK CHRONICLES I
I drove slowly along the narrow, vine-covered road above and behind the house,
and down the last steep curve that ended in a flat spot near the house. Here, I parked the
car, but we didn’t get out. Brenna reached over and took my hand in hers. I glanced at
her and saw that her cheeks were as wet as my own.
We had come to pay a final visit, before moving to California, to “the old house”
where we’d lived until Brenna turned six. The barn and the shed were still there, but all
that remained of the house itself were ashes and charred wood, twisted pieces of metal,
broken glass, and three cement steps that led up to nowhere.
~*~***~*~
It was only a shell of a house when I first saw it. Michael and I had driven up and
parked in the flat spot near the house. The outer walls were covered with weather-beaten
wooden siding, streaked and speckled here and there with once-white paint, and were
capped by a rusty tin roof. We opened the truck doors. “Hey, there’s a well over here,”
Michael called. It was a shaft driven into the ground with a metal well-bucket that
emptied with a lever and pulley. Michael dropped the bucket down and we heard a
splash. The bucket came back up with water that smelled like the creek. A tiny, pale
crawdad wriggled out, but at least we knew the well held water.
We walked past a rickety old shed and climbed up crumbling cement steps onto a
wrap-around porch with rotting posts. The doors—it had three—were padlocked, but
most of the downstairs windows held just shards of broken glass. Michael pulled the
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jagged glass from the nearest window and stepped over the sill. I hiked up my skirts and
poked a boot in to follow him. Once inside, we could see that there were no interior
walls, just bare studs. No wiring. That was obvious. And no plumbing. But then, we
hadn’t expected to find either. There were three rooms downstairs, a living room, a
kitchen, and a small bedroom. No bathroom. But we hadn’t expected a bathroom.
On the inside walls were patches of peeling wallpaper patterned in a swirling
design of faded reds and yellows that reminded me of the 40s, or maybe the 30s. It
smelled musty and moldy, and there were rat droppings in the corners. The dusty wooden
floor was littered with trash, and daylight could be glimpsed between the boards. A pile
of damp, black soot lay on the floor beneath the flue in the kitchen ceiling, and vines
curled in through the back windows that bumped up against the side of the hill.
A ladder propped in the living room led up to a hole in the ceiling. The staircase
that was supposed to be there was long gone. We climbed up carefully, brushing aside
cobwebs as we went. Upstairs, we found one long room with a row of windows that faced
the creek, and single windows on either end. It was bright and dry up there. Out the east
window, we saw a large garden area that we knew would be filled with rich, creekbottom dirt. To the west was the tilted shed we’d passed, and an equally lopsided barn
beyond the parking area.
To the south, we saw the creek, with Roscoe Frazier’s tobacco field on the far
side, then Dry Creek Road, and across the road, Roscoe and Pauline’s house where a
crew of rangy hound dogs scrounged around. Above their house loomed a hill that
formed the other side of the valley, dotted with little white puffs we knew were Roscoe’s
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“wild” goats. He’d once had a herd of tame goats, but they’d long since out-bred his
capacity to care for them, and now they roamed the hillsides belonging to no one but
themselves. Other than the Frazier’s, there were no neighbors within eyeshot, and they
were far enough away that you’d have to be yelling pretty loud for them to hear you. I
liked that.
I stood in the middle of that long, bright room and closed my eyes. Birdsong
filtered in along with the gurgle of the creek, and a breeze rustled the leaves of the two
huge cottonwoods that stood in the front yard on the banks of the creek. I opened my
eyes, and turned to Michael. “Well what do ya think? It’d be a lotta work, but it’s got
potential.”
He snaked an arm around my waist as he snuggled up behind me, brushed my
long dark hair to one side, and leaned down to whisper, “We can do it.” I looked up into
those crinkly blue eyes and I knew he was right. We could.
That last steep downturn of the road would be a bitch to drive up when there was
snow and ice, and I didn’t know if the water was drinkable. We’d have to have the health
department test it. But Bill and Judy were returning from the islands soon, and we were
going to have to leave the house in Whippoorwill Hollow we’d been caring for in their
absence. We were in need of a place to live—fast—and this house was empty. It was
early May. I was two months pregnant, but figured I still had the whole summer and into
the fall to work before I’d become too big with baby to be of much help.
~*~***~*~
“Mom… let’s get out.” I nodded. We opened the car doors, stepped out and
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walked past the shed toward the ruins of our old home. When we reached the edge of
what had been the outer walls, Brenna bent to lift something from among the ashes.
“Oh, look, Mom…it’s from my old room.” Brenna smiled as she held up a small
piece of paper charred at the edges. It was covered in plastic that had melted to goo at
the edges, but the faint images of jungle animals could still be seen under the plastic.
~*~***~*~
In the small bedroom downstairs, I put a green and gold rug. We paneled the
walls half-way up with cedar, and in the upper half of each wall, to serve as wallpaper, I
placed sections of wrapping paper with a whimsical jungle-animal print I’d covered with
clear Contac paper. This would be the baby’s room. No pink or blue for this baby. This
baby would see elephants, lions, and giraffes peering out of green jungles.
At the Goodwill in Nashville, I’d found a set of huge cotton drapes in a floral
pattern of blue and green, red and soft rose, that turned out to be the perfect size to
become “wallpaper” panels in my new living room. I tacked them up with a staple gun
and we covered the edges with cedar boards. In the kitchen, above a wainscoting of ash
and cedar, a swath of blue and brown checked, flannel-backed oilcloth became my
wallcovering. On the floor, we laid blue and brown tile-patterned linoleum we’d found at
the Dollar Store at twenty bucks for a ten by twelve foot roll.
Most of the wood we used was from Pete’s sawmill. Old Pete would sell a flatbed
truckload of rough-cut lumber for ten bucks. We’d borrowed a flatbed truck from George
Clayton, picked up Michael Peter and Snow Bear to help us, and made a run to the mill.
For our ten bucks, we piled it high with cedar and ash and a bit of oak. Placed vertically,
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horizontally, or sometimes diagonally (for interest), this wood became our interior walls.
We scavenged other materials from an old house up in Smithville that Larry
Puckett (the only dentist in town) had hired Michael to tear down. Larry told us to take
whatever we wanted, since it would save him having to haul it off. From there, we scored
kitchen and bathroom counters, sinks, an old claw-foot bathtub, a lot of structural beams
and other sorts of boards, carpeting, and several nice windows. Some of that wood was
used to build a staircase, and in the upstairs bedroom, we built cedar closets and covered
the walls with ash and oak from Pete’s sawmill.
The biggest job was adding a bathroom. We decided to enclose the east side of the
wrap-around porch to create a bathroom. It was long and narrow, but had two doors—one
into the living room, and one into the baby’s room. The windows we’d saved from the
old house in Smithville were used to create a bank of windows that looked out onto the
garden on the long side, and we placed the claw-foot bathtub across the narrow end
toward the front of the house. Water for the tub would still need to be heated on the
woodstove in the kitchen and carried in, but hey, it was better than no bathroom at all.
Out near the barn, Michael built a fancy two-seater outhouse with little windows. I put
carpet and curtains in it, and it suited our needs for many years. We never finished the
plumbing, but we had running water in the bathroom and kitchen sinks by winter.
Crowder Pea, our electrician friend, helped us to wire the house, and I convinced Michael
that (since I was pregnant) we should put in a phone. We might need it.
~*~***~*~
And rest yourself awhile on these green fronds;
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The apples are ripe, the chestnuts are plump and mealy,
There’s plenty of good pressed cheese you’re welcome to.
Already there’s smoke you can see from the neighbors’ chimneys
And the shadows of the hills are lengthening as they fall.34
- Excerpt from “Eclogue I,” The Eclogues by Virgil
~*~***~*~
I left the ashes and soot and wandered past the scorched grass out into what had
once been my garden. As I gazed out toward the line of trees marking the fence line
between the garden and the hayfield beyond, I thought of Annie. She’d spent that lonely,
cold winter with me up in Wilder Hollow, and we’d shared a bond that went beyond mere
pets and owners.
~*~***~*~
I was brushing cockle burrs from Annie’s fur when my hand ran over a lump. I
put the brush down to inspect it. Hidden under the long, feathery fur of her rear leg, it
distorted the shape of her leg. This was no small lump. Her eyes pleaded with me to stop
probing it. It must hurt.
“Michael, come feel this. Annie has a big lump on her leg. What IS that?”
“I dunno. Maybe we’d better take her to see Dr. Tate?”
“Damn.” I grimaced. “Yeah. I guess we’d best call him.”
I was in my fourth month of pregnancy in early June. A few days ago, I’d stepped
on an old, rusty nail in some of the rubble lying around in the yard. It had pierced through
the sole of my flip-flop to puncture my foot. Almost hysterical, I convinced myself I was
going to come down with tetanus, and that my baby and I both would die. At my
insistence, Michael rushed me to see Dr. Rodney in Woodbury. (Well, actually, he was
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Dr. Bryant, but there were three Bryant doctors, a father and two sons, so everyone called
them by their first names.) Dr. Rodney informed us that he couldn’t give me a tetanus
booster (because I was pregnant) and did his best to assure me that my last booster, about
ten years ago, was most likely still active—I wouldn’t die. But I wasn’t sure I believed
him. I was still in a highly emotional state (being pregnant didn’t help matters), was in a
lot of pain, and wasn’t able to walk very well, either. Gayle Tate’s veterinary clinic was
in Woodbury, too, and I wasn’t really ready to make a forty-mile trip (eighty, round-trip)
again so soon. We decided it was best that Michael take Annie to Woodbury, while I
stayed home.
I tried to occupy my mind with other things while Michael was gone, but I was
worried and anxious, and it didn’t work very well. I put on Heart Like a Wheel, and tried
to sing along with Linda—that usually lifted my mood—but I just wasn’t into it. The
songs were all so sad. Maybe some Loggins and Messina would be better. Or Stevie
Wonder. But, no. Nothing worked.
I expected Michael to be gone about two hours, and when it stretched into three,
my concern grew. At last, I heard the truck coming down the road, but the sound didn’t
come on down to the house. I realized the truck had stopped back by the end of the
garden. I limped out onto the porch and looked out into the garden to see Michael headed
toward the tools.
I wasn’t sure why he said that until I saw him pick up a shovel. Oh no. No. Surely
not? Annie was barely two years old. This can’t be. But then, I heard the sound of the
shovel scraping into soil and rocks, and I knew.
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I turned away and crumpled into a heap at the edge of the porch. I didn’t hear any
more. I didn’t see any more. My thoughts jumbled and swirled.
“Baby…” Arms went around me, held me, and rocked me. “There was nothing
Gayle could do. Nothing I could do. It was cancer. Bone cancer. Her leg was riddled with
it, and it had gone into her uterus and her bladder. She was eaten up with it, hon’. He said
she had to have been born with it for it to be so advanced and her so young. She was
hurting bad. I guess we’ve just been so busy with the house, we didn’t notice. I’m sorry,
baby. She’s gone.”
We sat and rocked together on the porch for a long time while the news sank in.
My Annie now lay deep under the soil at the back of the garden under the trees. I didn’t
even get to say goodbye.
After a while, a cool breeze slid across my wet face, and the murmur of the creek
filtered through to my ears. Michael lifted me, carried me into the house, and gently
placed me on the bed. He curled up beside me and held me. Darkness fell, and we drifted
off into dreams.
~*~***~*~
Death is certain for anyone born,
and birth is certain for the dead;
since the cycle is inevitable,
you have no cause to grieve!
Creatures are unmanifest in origin,
manifest in the midst of life,
and unmanifest again at the end.
Since this is so, why do you lament?35
- Excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita
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~*~***~*~
Standing there in the garden, I watched as Brenna made her way through the
rubble of what had been our living room. She’s grown so tall, I thought. She has my
green-gold eyes, and golden-brown hair, like her daddy’s, falls in long, loose curls about
her shoulders. As I closed my eyes, my thoughts ran back, almost eighteen years, to
December of 1980.
~*~***~*~
We were listening to the radio while lying in bed, trying to get to sleep. At around
10:00, a shaky voice broke in: “We have an unconfirmed report—repeat, unconfirmed—
that John Lennon has been shot outside his apartment building in New York. We’ll
update you as we hear more.”
“Oh my God! Michael? Did you hear that? John Lennon’s been shot!”
I sat up in bed and poked him. He rolled over and grunted. “Huh? What about
John Lennon?”
“They just said someone shot him. In New York. Oh God…”
We were both wide awake now. And stunned. As we listened to the reports
filtering in on the radio that night, we learned it was true. Some nutjob shot him five
times, then sat there calmly reading Catcher in the Rye while John’s life flowed out in a
pool of blood in the lobby of the Dakota. John was dead. This man who sang to us of
peace, who urged us to imagine. Dead.
I groaned and rubbed the taut skin of my belly as the baby stretched out sideways.
Its head distorted one side of my tummy, and tiny feet poked and prodded me on the
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other. I groaned. This had been happening every night for the past few weeks. Whenever
I was tired and still, the baby woke up and began to frolic, turning somersaults and
cartwheels in its watery little cave. On top of everything else, I was scheduled for an
ultrasound the next day, and would have to get up early. Ultrasound was a new thing, and
the hospital in Woodbury had offered to give me a free one as a part of testing their new
equipment. I wished the baby would calm down, but I knew this night would be no
exception.
At this late stage of my pregnancy the long trip to Woodbury over bumpy, dirt
and gravel back roads was difficult for me, and having as little sleep as I’d had the night
before only added to my discomfort. By the time we got there, the baby and I were both
pretty well churned, and I was grumpy. The nurses smeared icy, wet goo over my belly,
and poked and prodded me again and again with a cold, hard, metal probe. I grumbled
and griped, but they cheerily ignored my complaints. As I’d expected, the ultrasound
didn’t tell us much—they couldn’t even tell the sex, because its back was turned to my
front, and it was curled up head down. Head down. We did learn that. Engaged. It
wouldn’t be much longer. Marilyn and I were right.
Dr. Rodney had estimated my due date to be around December 20th, but Marilyn
and I disagreed. We thought it would be any day now. Marilyn was my midwife. She’d
trained with Ida Mae down at The Farm in Summertown (my tattered copy of Ida Mae’s
book Spiritual Midwifery is still a prized possession), and after about ten years of
delivering babies, had become well-known as a top-notch midwife.
Many women I knew had used her services. She’d worked with Candi when she
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was carrying her son, Woods, had delivered all five (so far) of Liz Antoniak’s children,
and had even gone to the cabin in the woods last August to deliver Michael Peter and
Patti’s daughter, Adia. Across the street from the hospital in Woodbury, Marilyn had
recently set up a birthing center in an old house. She worked in conjunction with Dr.
Rodney, who could be at the hospital in minutes, if needed, so it was a great arrangement.
Both Marilyn and Rodney were willing to barter, and since we weren’t exactly
flush with cash, this worked out well for us. Michael had felled an old cherry tree (it was
about to come down anyway, he said) and an ash, and had taken the logs to Pete’s
sawmill, where they were milled and planed in trade for work Michael did around the
mill. The cherry was traded to Dr. Rodney in exchange for my prenatal care, and he
eventually used it to build a fancy new reception desk in his clinic. From the silvery ash,
Michael built a bed for Marilyn’s birthing center, which we’d delivered to her a few days
ago. As things turned out, our baby was to be the first born on the new bed.
As we left Woodbury that day, Michael and I heard on the truck’s radio that
people had gathered late last night outside the Dakota to light candles and mourn for
John. We decided we wanted to join them, in our own way.
I made dinner that evening, but neither of us felt much like eating. We picked at
our food. We finally pushed our plates aside and went into the living room. Michael set
out a few white candles around the room, and lit them. He sat beside me on the sofa and
took my hand in his. We sat there in silence. Tears welled, but I blinked them back. I was
exhausted. It all seemed so unreal, poised between sorrow over John’s senseless death,
and the day’s happy news that the baby would soon come.
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The baby was quiet tonight, but I knew that was probably because it was already
in the birthing position. I shrugged it off, took advantage of the respite from the nightly
pummeling of tiny hands and feet, and went to sleep. I awoke suddenly as the sky began
to grow light, and, still groggy, wondered why the bed felt wet beneath me. Then my eyes
shot open in realization. I leapt from the bed, and danced around in the chill air.
“Michael! Wake up! My water just broke!”
He threw back the blankets, got out of bed and gave me a quick kiss, then calmly
walked across the room to call Marilyn. After speaking with her briefly, he handed the
phone to me. She told me wait at home until the contractions were about five or six
minutes apart, then call her back. She’d alert Dr. Rodney, and meet us at the birthing
center. The first thing I did was call my mom and dad—they lived six hundred miles
away, in Arkansas—to let them know the baby was coming. Then, I called Laura to tell
her the news—Laura was also pregnant now, about five months along—and ask her to
get word to Katheylynn up at the little red house. She said she’d have Skip drive over and
let her know. I’d promised Katheylynn she could be with me at the birth. She was unable
to have children, and was trying to adopt. The least I could do was share my experience.
A few hours later, a truck rocked and bumped around the bend at the end of the
garden. It lurched to a stop down by the house, and doors creaked open. I waddled out
onto the porch as quickly as I could, and stood waiting at the top of the steps.
“Oh, Julie, sweetie. I’m so excited!” Katheylynn’s gentle hands slid across my
tummy into a soft embrace as strong fingers rubbed my shoulders from behind. Michael
Gold had come with her. He leaned in to wrap muscular arms around me. I was
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enveloped in a halo of coal-black hair that tumbled down to mix with my sweet friend’s
light-brown tresses. We swayed together for a few moments, then, went inside.
We spent the day sharing thoughts about John’s death while listening to the nonstop flood of Beatle music on the radio, and excitedly timing my contractions. Day wore
on into evening, and still the contractions weren’t close enough. Katheylynn made a pot
of veggie soup—her specialty with hijiki seaweed (it was good! really it was!)—but I
could only manage a few swallows. After dinner, I called Marilyn again. She advised me
to head on over to the birthing center anyhow, so she could assess the situation.
In the truck, I leaned against the door and stretched my legs across the cab as we
bounced along. I could see the lights of our friends’ truck bobbing behind us. Lulled by
the rocking motion of the truck, I closed my eyes and managed to drift off to sleep. When
we arrived at the center, we were greeted at the door by a slim, sleepy-eyed woman with
long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Marilyn. I introduced her to Katheylynn and
Michael Gold. She led us to a room at the back of the house and motioned for Michael to
help me onto the bed (the one he’d made) while she fiddled with her stethoscope.
Marilyn soon determined that nothing was amiss. “This baby’s just taking its
time. Nothing to worry about. Just settle in and get comfy. At this point, all we can do is
wait.”
I fuzzily tried to focus on a bright yellow, red, and blue Hindu mandala taped on
the wall as I breathed the short puff, puff, puff breaths that were supposed to make things
easier during the contractions. I’m not sure they helped all that much, but I dutifully did
as I’d learned in Lamaze class, while Michael sat behind me and massaged my shoulders.
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Katheylynn sat by the bed, alternately holding my hand and rubbing my tummy in
soothing circular motions. Michael Gold wandered around, seeming a bit lost. Marilyn
was in and out of the room checking on me and consulting with the other midwife she
was training to assist her.
Hours passed, then, with a sudden jolt, my contractions suddenly sped up. I could
sense a flurry of activity surrounding me. My awareness blurred and grew distant as my
focus turned inward. Marilyn was a constant reassuring presence at the foot of the bed.
My thoughts began to run in a disjointed staccato rhythm, here and there, in and
out. Sharp, hot bursts of pain, and brief, cool moments of relief. I floated in a detached
world of tactile sensation and vivid imagery. Words flew into my consciousness on fiery
wings, and touch brought soothing blue waves that flowed over me. Time meant nothing.
Reality and unreality embraced and writhed together in my consciousness.
God. I can’t stand this any more. I sat up in the bed, waving my arms to the side
in a swift pushing motion. “Everyone just get away and leave me the hell ALONE!”
Katheylynn quickly stepped back, confusion flashing across her face, and Michael
withdrew his hands from my back. But Marilyn just chuckled. “Don’t worry. This is
normal, folks.” She explained that my sudden grumpiness meant I was entering what she
called transition, the final stage of labor.
Marilyn urged me to get up and walk around to let gravity help, while she drew a
warm bath for me to sit in. Maybe that would help move things along. It must have
worked. After soaking in the bath, the contractions were coming hard and fast.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe. Now, PUSH!”
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Marilyn chanted, and I did my best to comply. I was so tired. “Don’t know if I can
do this…”
“Yes, you can. You’re almost there. Now, breathe, breathe, breathe. Hold… and
PUSH!”
Almost there? That was good to hear. So tired. Want to be done. Can’t do this.
“Once more… PUSH. … Give it all you’ve got… and HOLD. Come on… you
can do this. That’s it. Here we go…”
I felt as if the world was breaking open. Maybe, for me, it did. Abruptly thrust
into mental reconnection, I watched, in a moment of profound and utterly calm silence, as
my baby girl turned, opened her milky eyes, and gazed straight up at me. I smiled softly
and greeted her. “Hello, Brenna!”
Noticing the clock on the wall for the first time, I realized it was now two and a
half hours past midnight on the morning of December 11th. Eighteen hours had passed
since I’d been awakened the previous morning.
Marilyn checked the baby thoroughly, decided she was healthy, then went
upstairs to sleep. She’d already delivered two babies before I’d arrived that night, and by
now, was barely standing. She told us to holler if we needed her.
Early the next morning, she came back to check on us, and told us to feel free to
stay as long as we wanted. We didn’t stay long. The crisp winter air was bright with
morning sunlight as we rode home. I held my new baby girl close to my heart as we
bumped along that old gravel road, dreaming and dozing. Lennon’s death and the birth of
my daughter swirled together as I processed the events of the past few days. Deep sorrow
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juxtaposed with intense joy. Yin and yang. From death comes life.
~*~***~*~
O you dear child of the gods, increase of Jove,
The time has come at last for you
To take upon you those great honors foretold;
Behold how the vaulted universe trembles in awe—
Earth and range of sea and the depth of sky—
Glorying in the new age coming in.
Oh, if I have long life and at the end
Have breath enough and spirit enough to be
The teller of the story of your deeds,
Then neither Linus nor Thracian Orpheus could
Defeat me in the singing contest, though
Orpheus’ mother, Calliope, were there,
And Linus’ father, Apollo the beautiful;
And Pan himself, Arcadia the judge,
Judged by Arcadia, would admit defeat.
So, little baby, may your first smile be
When you first recognize your mother, whose
Long nine-months travail brought you into the world.36
- Excerpt from “Eclogue IV,” The Eclogues by Virgil
~*~***~*~
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Chapter 13 – DRY CREEK CHRONICLES II
I opened my eyes and turned back toward the house. Scanning the ruins for more
scraps of memory, my eyes halted at the still-crumbling cement steps—four steps that had
once led up to a front porch framed by strong cedar logs, but now ended in limbo, midair to nowhere.
We’d learned from our neighbor, an old farmer named Roscoe, that, many years
ago, this had been the local schoolteacher’s house. He told us the schoolhouse itself had
been in the hayfield out past our garden, and sure enough, when we explored there, we
found old concrete steps that might have been those of the schoolhouse, but only a few
charred remains of the building itself. I’d liked the idea that the house had been built and
lived in by a schoolteacher and his family. The steps leading to the porch held a name
and date that had been scrawled into the wet cement. I could never read the name, but
the date looked like 1922. I closed my eyes once more as the memories began to flood in.
~*~***~*~
Black water swirled around the top of the three steps and lapped at the edges of
the porch as I shone the beam of the flashlight out into the night. It had been raining all
day and into the night without a break, and the ground was already saturated from
unusually heavy January rains. I’d tried to sleep, but the roaring of the creek was
worrying me, and I kept getting up to creep out to the porch and peer out with a flashlight
to see if the creek was spilling its banks. I went back in, ran up the steps to the bedroom,
and shook Michael’s arm.
“Michael, wake up. We’ve got to go. The creek’s about to get into the house.”
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“Huh? Wha…?”
“Get up. It’s flooding. We’ve got to get out of here. The water’s rising fast.”
Awake now, and comprehending the urgency in my voice, he sat up and began to
pull on his jeans. I threw on jeans, boots, and a sweater, slammed a hat on my head to
keep the rain out of my eyes, and went to get Brenna. She had just turned a year old last
month, and was asleep in her crib across the room. We’d given up on keeping her in her
downstairs room for the time being. She’d figured out how to climb out of her crib, and
we’d found her crawling around the living room one night. I picked her up and wrapped
her in a blanket. I turned to Michael before running down the stairs, “Let’s go!”
By the time we made it to the steps, they were almost completely covered in
churning water. I could hear crashing sounds in the dark, which I figured was flotsam
from upstream slamming into the two big cottonwoods that stood in the front yard on the
edge of the high creek bank. I took a deep breath and stepped out into that cold, dark
water. It was up to my hips. I held Brenna close to my chest and struggled against the
current toward the truck. I opened the door just as Michael opened the door on his side,
tossed in a terrified Tillie cat, and slammed the door. The water was seeping into the cab
of the four-wheel drive. I placed Brenna on the seat and hauled myself up out of the water
into the truck. Michael came back with a soggy dog under each arm and tossed them into
the back of the truck. He went back twice more to get puppies, while I waited and
watched as the water slowly continued to rise.
Finally, we were ready to go. I held my breath as Michael turned the key. The
truck sputtered a couple of times, but the engine finally caught. We began to back up
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slowly, then went forward in a crawl up the steep slippery slope that led up to the road
out of the creek bottom. We continued up to Pea Ridge, and woke Tina O’Brien in the
middle of the night, but she didn’t mind. We sat by her warm fire drinking tea as we dried
out our jeans and boots.
When we went back the next day, we expected to find our house downstream
somewhere, but we were lucky. The creek was still high, but the waters had receded. We
could tell that the flood had reached just to the top of the old cement steps, and had not
gotten into the house at all.
~*~***~*~
Excerpt from a letter to my mother dated January 6th, 1982:
Dear Mom ~
…When we came back the next day after the flood, we found that it hadn’t
gotten into the house, but had completely covered our porch steps before it went
down. It came within just a few inches of the floor. Whew!
It took a lot of stuff out of the barn – building materials – and deposited it in
our garden, and there are piles of debris wrapped around trees and fence posts.
We’d built a sturdy trellis for growing pole beans last year – 2x4s nailed together –
and it’s just GONE – nowhere to be found, except for one board still stuck in the
ground. And yet it didn’t touch other things, like Jesse’s toy trucks he’d left under the
house. It completely washed all the old trash out from under the house – swept it
clean – but those trucks were right where he’d left them! Isn’t that strange?
I’ve decided the best way to look at the whole affair was to think of it as a
cleansing. No real damage was done – everything was just washed clean – kind of a
symbolic fresh start for the New Year. When I opened my little prayer book (called
“Daily Word”) this morning, the thought for the day was: “Today, I Make a New Start.”
That just clinched it in my mind. The words that went along with it were so
inspirational, too. It seemed to tie in with my feelings so well, and really helped me to
find a bright side to the whole event.
Well, enough said about the “Great Flood” – we’re all OK, unharmed! I’ve
never seen anything like it before. It’s something I’ll never forget.
I’ve got to go make my lunch before Brenna wakes up from her nap. My love
to all of you! I miss you dearly! I’ll call on the 23rd or 24th – OK? Write to me!
LOVE,
Julie
~*~***~*~
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Neptune himself struck the earth with his trident; it trembled and by its
movement threw open channels for the waters. Across the wide plains the rivers
raced, overflowing their banks, sweeping away in one torrential flood crops and
orchards, cattle and men, houses and temples, sacred images and all. Any
building which did manage to survive this terrible disaster unshaken and remain
standing, was in the end submerged when some wave yet higher than the rest
covered its roof, and its gables lay drowned beneath the waters. Now sea and
earth could longer be distinguished: all was sea, and a sea that had no shores.37
- Excerpt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
It [the fish] then said, ‘I have saved thee. Fasten the ship to a tree; but let
not the water cut thee off whilst thou art on the mountain. As the water subsides,
thou mayest gradually descend!’ Accordingly he gradually descended and hence
that (slope) of the northern mountain is called ‘Manu’s descent.’ The flood then
swept away all these creatures, and Manu alone remained here.38
- Excerpt from the Shatapatha-Brāhmana, a sacred text from India
Again there comes a humiliation, destruction, and demolition. The
manikins, woodcarvings were killed when the Heart of Sky devised a flood for
them. A great flood was made; it came down on the heads of the manikins,
woodcarvings.
…They were not competent, nor did they speak before the builder and
sculptor who made them and brought them forth, and so they were killed, done in
by a flood.
There came a rain of resin from the sky.
…Their faces were smashed because they were incompetent before their
mother and their father, the Heart of Sky, named Hurricane. The earth was
blackened because of this; the black rainstorm began, rain all day and rain all
night.
…The mouths and faces of all of them were destroyed and crushed. And it
ysed to be said that the monkeys in the forests today are a sign of this. They were
left as a sign because wood alone was used for their flesh by the builder and
sculptor.
So this is why monkeys look like people: they are a sign of a previous
human work, human design—mere manikins, mere woodcarvings.39
- Excerpt from the Mayan Popol Vuh
There was a city called Shurrupak / On the bank of the Euphrates / It was very old
and so many were the gods / Within it. They converged in their complex hearts /
On the idea of creating a great flood. / … Ea, who was present / At their council,
came to my house / And, frightened by the violent winds that filled the air, /
Echoed all that they were planning and had said /. Man of Shurrupak, he said,
tear down your house / And build a ship. Abandon your possessions / And the
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works that you find beautiful and crave / And save your life instead. Into the ship /
Bring the seed of all living creatures. / …
The boat was cube in shape, and sound; it held / The food and wine and precious
minerals / And the seed of living animals we put / In it. My family moved inside /
And all who wanted to be with us… / …And then Ea ordered me to close / The
door. The time of the great rains had come /. O there was ample warning, yes, my
friend, / But it was terrifying still. Buildings / Blown by the winds for miles like
desert brush /. People clung to branches of trees until / Roots gave way. New
possessions, now debris /, Floated on the water with their special / Sterile
vacancy. The riverbanks failed / To hold the water back. … / …When the seventh
day / Came, the flood subsided from its slaughter / Like hair drawn slowly back /
From a tormented face. / I looked at the earth and all was silence. / …
O the dove, the swallow and the raven / Found their land. The people left the ship.
/ But I for a long time could only stay inside. / I could not face the deaths I knew
were there. / …40
- Excerpt from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh
~*~***~*~
Opening my eyes, I turned back toward the ruins of the house. Broken glass lay in
a jagged line where the bathroom windows had looked out onto this garden. The old
claw-footed tub still stood upright, but the porcelain sink was cast on its side, blackened
and cracked from the intensity of the fire.
~*~***~*~
“Brenna! Come with mommy! Tillie wants to show you something!”
“OK, momma,” came the chirpy little voice in reply, and she followed me into
the bathroom.
I knelt in front of the sink, and pulling aside the curtains underneath, pointed into
the dim recess at a cardboard box positioned there. Tillie’s black and white head poked
over the top edge, scrutinizing us. “Shhhhhh!” I cautioned, “Look!”
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Brenna got down on her knees and scrabbled up closer to peer inside. She
squeaked, “Tiwwie in dere!” Then, a quiet little voice breathed, “Ohhhhh …. What dat?”
“It’s a baby kitty.”
“A widdle-bitty baby kitty?” Brenna measured something very small with her
own tiny hands.
Tillie eyed us again, but apparently satisfied that we were no threat, quickly
settled back into grooming her new baby.
“What she do, momma? Why she taste dat baby kitty?”
I laughed. “She’s not gonna eat it, honey. She’s giving the baby a bath. There’ll
be another one soon. Sit down with me, and let’s wait.”
Wide-eyed and wondering, Brenna sat down next to me. She was three years old,
a bundle of corkscrew curls and mischief. My daughter was rarely at a loss for words.
She’d begun talking at ten months (three months before she walked) and now, an almost
constant chatter fell from her lips. But this event had silenced her.
We waited. Every now and then, a giggle bubbled up from my wiggly, little
companion. Each time, I’d grin and put my finger to my lips, “Shhhh!” She’d make the
gesture back to me, nodding solemnly. But then, another giggle would pop out.
As we watched, another tiny, dark, wet lump slid into the shredded newspaper
that lined the box, and in a moment, we heard a loud “Mew! Mew! Mew!”
Brenna’s delighted squeal echoed through the house. “OH! Baby kitty! ‘Nother
baby kitty!” She reached for it, but I quickly grabbed her hand.
“No, we can’t pick them up. Not yet, honey. They’re too little. We might hurt
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them, and Tillie would be sad. Let’s go now and leave Tillie alone. OK?” I took her hand,
leading her out into the kitchen. “Stay here with me. Help mommy make dinner.”
I rummaged under the counter for potatoes, counting out about seven. That would
probably be enough. As I stood up, I heard a loud “MOW!” behind my back. I turned to
see Tillie standing there. “MOOOOOW!” she cried again, her mouth open as wide as it
could go.
Tillie turned and trotted back toward the bathroom, turning to see if I was
following her. “MOW!” she demanded. Annoyed green eyes glared at me.
I knelt again and peered under the sink. The kittens were mewing softly and
wriggling among the scraps of paper as Tillie stepped back into the box and settled down.
Well, everything looks just fine to me. I stood and headed back toward the kitchen, but
Tillie immediately leapt from the box to follow me. “MOW!”
Then, I realized she wanted was me to be there at her side. I called out to Brenna,
who was still in the kitchen, now absorbed in play. “Brenna… Come back in here with
mommy. I think Tillie wants us to stay with her.”
Brenna and I were still sitting there, cuddled up together against the bathroom
wall, when Michael came home from work at dusk. He poked his head around the door.
“What’s up? What’re y’all doing in here in the dark?”
“Well, Tillie’s having babies. Apparently, she’s decided I’m her midwife. Every
time I leave the room, she comes and hollers at me to get back in here.”
“Uh, I guess it’s fend for yourself for dinner, eh?”
“Um, yeah, it’s kinda late to cook something now.”
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Setting aside his tool belt, he knelt to peer into the box. “Aw… little mewers…”
Brenna crept up beside him, eagerly explaining how she’d watched the babies
come out. “An’ now,” she announced, “dey dwinkin’ milk fwom Tiwwie’s titties!”
He grinned and tugged on her curls. “Is that right? Wow… cool.”
The three of us sat with Tillie for a while, admiring her tiny babies while she
purred contentedly, then we slowly ambled out to the kitchen to forage for dinner. This
time, Tillie stayed with her babies.
~*~***~*~
Brenna came up behind me and threw her arms around my shoulders. “I
remember when you used to bring me out here while you worked, and I’d eat snow peas
right off the vine.” Brenna was seventeen now. I was amazed she could recall those days
so clearly. She must’ve only been three, maybe four, at the time.
~*~***~*~
That had been my dream garden. It was huge, somewhere between a quarter and a
half acre, and the soil was creek-bottom dirt, rich and dark. We fed it lots of manure and
straw. Anything would grow there. It got morning sun, and by late afternoon, was
partially shaded by the house and trees. Even in the driest of weather, the mist that rose
from the creek every night fed moisture to the soil as it settled in the morning. Perfect.
In early spring, we planted peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes, kale, broccoli, beets,
onions, and mustard greens. In mid-May, we’d put in tomatoes, pole beans, red and white
potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, okra, peppers, cukes, and sweet corn.
Five fifteen-foot long patches of corn planted in two week rotations. The corn was
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always Michael’s project, and his reputed green thumb showed itself in the corn patch.
We had corn six feet tall and bursting with ears full of kernels. A hive of honeybees sat at
the far end of the garden, and at the peak of the corn season, from all the way inside the
house, we could hear the bees humming as they pollinated the corn.
~*~***~*~
When the husband and his children and his children’s children came back
to that place after seven moons had passed, they found the earth covered with tall,
green, tasseled plants. The plants’ fruit—corn—was First Mother’s flesh, given so
that the people might live and flourish. And they partook of First Mother’s flesh
and found it sweet beyond words. Following her instructions, they did not eat all,
but put many kernels back into the earth. In this way her flesh and spirit renewed
themselves every seven months, generation after generation.41
- Excerpt from “Corn Mother,” a creation myth of the Penobscot tribe
~*~***~*~
Michael had put on his bee suit and gone out to take the honey from the hive. Not
long after, I heard buzzing and yelling and when I looked out, there was Michael running
back toward the house in a whirring cloud of bees. He was shouting at us to get inside
and shut all the windows and doors. The dog, Cabie, began yowling and streaked for the
creek, where he immersed himself up to his ears, which I figured was a pretty good idea
under the circumstances, so I left him there, grabbed Brenna, and ran into the house.
Michael came barreling in, fumbling with the fasteners on his bee suit. I could
hear bees buzzing under the veil. “Help me get this off! They’re in my beard!” By the
time we finally got him out of that contraption, and had either killed or shushed all the
bees outside, he’d been stung in at least a dozen places on his throat and face. Poor old
Cabie was pretty well covered with stings, too. They’d gotten in his fur just like they’d
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gotten in Michael’s beard. We picked drowned bees off him for days.
Those bees stayed angry, and for weeks afterward, we couldn’t go outside without
being chased. Needless to say, we soon sold them to a fellow who knew more about bees
than we did and said he could bring the hive back to normal. He told us they’d taken a
wild queen and turned mean. I was glad to know that’s what had happened, but I still
didn’t think I wanted to fool with bees ever again.
~*~***~*~
We returned to the pile of cinders that had once been our home, and as I picked
my way through the rubble, my foot struck a square piece of metal with a circular hole in
the middle. “Hey, look… here’s the old flue where the pipe from the woodstove went up
into the ceiling.”
~*~***~*~
As I stepped off the porch on my way to the outhouse that morning, the air
glittered with tiny points of silvery golden light. It was bitterly cold and I assumed that
teeny drops of moisture must have frozen in mid-air, but I’d never seen the very air
sparkle before. I stood there for a few seconds completely entranced, watching motes of
light dancing in the sunlight against a backdrop of dark tree trunks on the hillside.
That afternoon, it began to snow. By the next morning, it had snowed almost two
feet. The temperature had dropped overnight to twenty-two degrees below zero—unheard
of in Middle Tennessee—and only rose to a high of minus eleven that day. In the kitchen,
a five-gallon bucket of water had frozen solid, and there were spidery patches of frost on
the floor. I strapped Brenna in a sling next to my body under my bundle of clothes, and
140
hovered near the woodstove all that day. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t get
down and crawl around on the floor as usual, and squirmed and cried until she finally fell
asleep. Michael spent most of the day carrying in wood and stoking the voracious fire in
the woodstove. Several times, the stovepipe glowed cherry-red to the point we thought
the house might catch fire, yet still, standing as close to the stove as we could possibly
get without catching fire ourselves, we could still see the white puffs of our breath
crystallizing in the icy air. Such cold I’d never known, and hope never to know again.
~*~***~*~
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?42
- Rumi, thirteenth century Sufi poet
“We have a hearth with a fire that’s always going.
Fed with resiny pinelogs from the woods;
Doorposts black with soot; we’re bothered by
The winter cold no more than wolves by sheep
Or torrents by the banks that try to hold them.”43
- Excerpt from “Eclogue VII,” The Eclogues by Virgil
~*~***~*~
The day was growing toward evening, and we wanted to make our way down to
the swimming hole before we left. The swimming hole had always provided us with relief
from the heat, and was secluded enough to serve as a place to bathe when the weather
was warm enough. We turned from the house, went past the shed and the car, and on
toward the barn. The creek banks were high and cliff-like up near the house. The trail to
the creek was beside the barn, where the slope was gentler. We picked our way down the
141
path through the jewel-weed and mint that grew there and came to the flat rocky bed of
the creek. The swimming hole was just a little further down the creek, beneath the roots
of an enormous old willow tree.
“Brenna, I remember you sitting here at the edge of the water in the sunshine
banging rocks on that old upside-down metal wash pan. Do you remember that? You
couldn’t have been more than two and a half, or three.” She did. She also remembered
the first time she swam right there in that cold, spring-fed pool. And I remembered
floating there to escape the sweltering heat during the drought that summer I was
pregnant with her. The frogs began to chant as the light grew dimmer, and the crickets
and katydids struck a chorus up in the trees.
By the time we returned to the car, it was twilight. We stood there a few moments
more to drink it in. We each knew we would likely never see this place again. The house
was gone forever, but despite that, its ruins and the lands around it had refreshed many
memories for each of us. We would carry those with us to California in our hearts, and
someday, on into our separate lives. As we climbed into the car, the fireflies were coming
out and we could see them flitting about in the mist beginning to rise from the creek.
~*~***~*~
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Epilogue – HARVESTING FRUIT
I am a soil worker, a lover of the earth. My passion for this work runs deep,
through the blood of ancestry, and through years of hands kept busy planting and tending
to green growing things. I have turned a plot of bare land that was nothing but sand,
prickly burrs, and crabgrass into my own green haven in the midst of this California city.
A redbud tree, a pink dogwood, and a white dogwood, each beloved in my
memory, grace the front median of my home, where they will grow to shield and shelter
us from the sights and sounds of the city streets. A bright yellow forsythia blooms in
spring, along with daffodils and tulips, lilacs and daylilies. I miss the twinkle of fireflies
and the soft calls of whippoorwills at twilight, but I still grow corn and sweet melons,
okra, plump tomatoes, and green beans that drip from slender bamboo poles.
There are apples, peaches, and cherries here, strawberries and blackberries, sweetscented jasmines and roses, hollyhocks and honeysuckle, and, new to me, citrus and
avocadoes, each carefully picked and placed here by my own hands. Elderberries grow to
provide food for birds, who come to visit me and inspect my work each day. A pond
filled with fat, sleek fish offers the soothing trickle of running water, and crickets have
come to serenade me below my bedroom window on summer nights. A lone old possum
traverses my back fence nightly on her way to and from my neighbor’s persimmon tree,
and on moonlit nights, coyotes can sometimes be heard yipping down by the river.
In a back corner of my garden, I’ve planted a pomegranate tree. Along the fence
behind it trail grapevines, their frilly heart-shaped leaves hiding tiny buds that will soon
become clusters of rich red and pale green fruits. Nearby, a silvery-leaved young olive
143
tree stretches and reaches for the sun. Fitting mates for a pomegranate tree, whose
heritage, like that of her companions, is firmly rooted in ancient Mediterranean soils.
My tree will one day bear round, red fruits with bitter pulp and sweet flame-red
seeds. When they ripen, I will pluck them and split them open to find the juicy seeds
within. When my daughter lifts them to her lips to taste, I will not fear. I have tasted the
seeds, and have sown them along my path. And I am no worse for having done so, or at
least that is what I believe.
~*~***~*~
“…Now make the grain grow fertile for humankind.”
So Rheia spoke, and rich-crowned Demeter did not disobey.
At once she sent forth fruit from the fertile fields
and the whole earth burgeoned with leaves
and flowers.44
- Excerpt from The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
~*~***~*~
She knelt and pushed a seed into the dark, moist earth with a fingertip. The seed
would soon sprout in the sun-warmed loam, and would send up a tiny green shoot to seek
the light. It would grow straight and tall with red-tipped leaves on graceful branches that
would droop in late summer, bearing the weight of rich, juicy, red fruits. Satisfied with
that image, she stood and sighed. Her daughter had seemed well. She looked older, or
perhaps wiser, but did not seem to have suffered greatly from her ordeal. Her own
sorrow and wrath over her daughter’s disappearance had probably caused far more
harm. But what was to be expected? A mother loves her daughter and wants the best for
her. Letting go can be difficult, especially when such change comes as an unexpected
144
shock. But all would be well. Demeter knew that now. She smiled and pushed another
seed into the fertile ground.
~*~***~*~
145
NOTES
1. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers (New York: Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), 4.
2. Jeffrey Jacob, New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a
Sustainable Future (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1997), 3.
3. Eleanor Agnew, Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the
1970s and Why They Came Back (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2004), 9.
4. Sir Thomas More, Utopia (New York: Penguin Books, 1995, 2003), 112-113.
5. Virgil, The Eclogues of Virgil, trans. David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1999), 7.
6. James T. Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones (New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 2001), 144.
7. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science
Fiction, ed. Susan Wood (New York: Perigree Books by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980), 79.
8. Jane Yolen, ed., Favorite Folktales from Around the World (New York: Random
House, Inc., 1986), 10.
9. Ibid., 8.
10. Lisel Mueller, “Why We Tell Stories” in Alive Together: New and Selected Poems
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 150-151.
11. “Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” trans. Helene P. Foley quoted in Stephen L. Harris and
Gloria Platzner, Classical Mythology: Images and Insights, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2004), 173.
12. Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. David Ferry, 13.
13. 2 Kings, 9.30-33 (New Revised Standard Version).
14. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way, trans. Victor M.
Mair (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), 34.
15. Sappho, Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, trans. Willis Barnstone (Boston:
Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2006), 29.
146
16. Peter Blue Cloud, “Coyote Man and Saucy Duckfeather” quoted in Myth and
Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology, ed. Scott Leonard and Michael McClure (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 269.
17. The Dhammapada: The Path of Truth, trans. Ananda Maitreya (Berkeley: Parallax
Press, 1995), 79.
18. Theocritus, Idylls, trans. Anthony Verity (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.,
2002), 5.
19. J. F. Bierlein, Parallel Myths (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 129.
20. Kevin Crossley-Holland, “The Creation,” The Norse Myths quoted in Myth and
Knowing, ed. Leonard and McClure, 60.
21. Henry Crow Dog, “Stone Boy,” quoted in American Indian Myths and Legends, ed.
Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 18-19.
22. Theocritus, Idylls, trans. Anthony Verity, 28-29.
23. E. A. Wallis Budge, Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, edited with
Translations (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1912), 179.
24. Theocritus, Idylls, trans. Anthony Verity, 45.
25. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories
of the Wild Woman Archetype (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 217-218.
26. Oyekan Owomoyela, “Àjàpá, Ajá the Dog, and the Yams,” Yoruba Trickster Tales
quoted in Myth and Knowing, ed. Leonard and McClure, 262.
27. “Men and Women Try Living Apart” in American Indian Myths and Legends, ed.
Erdoes and Ortiz, 324-325.
28. The Táin: A New Translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, trans. Ciarn Carson (New
York: Viking Penguin, 2008), 206-208.
29. Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. David Ferry, 21-23.
30. Sumangalamata, quoted in Sacred Voices: Essential Women’s Wisdom Through the
Ages, ed. Mary Ford-Grabowsky (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 19.
31. Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth:
Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1983), 32.
32. Ibid., 36.
147
33. The Song of Solomon, 8.6-7 (New Revised Standard Version).
34. Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. David Ferry, 9.
35. The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller
(New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), 33.
36. Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. David Ferry, 33.
37. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes (New York: Penguin Classics, 1955),
36-37.
38. Shatapatha-Brāhmana, trans. Julius Eggeling in Sacred Books of the East, XII
(Oxford, 1882), 216-218, quoted in Mircea Eliade, Gods, Goddesses and Myths of Creation: A
Source Book of the History of Religions, Part 1 of From Primitives to Zen (New York: Harper &
Row Publishers, Inc., 1974), 151.
39. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, trans. Dennis Tedlock (New York:
Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1985), 71-73.
40. Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative, trans. Herbert Mason (New York: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1970), 76-80.
41. “Corn Mother” in American Indian Myths and Legends, ed. Erdoes and Ortiz, 13.
42. Rumi, The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Banks (New York: Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1998), 37.
43. Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. David Ferry, 57.
44. “Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” trans. Helene P. Foley quoted in Harris and Platzner,
Classical Mythology: Images and Insights, 4th ed., 174.
148
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New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1998.
Bierlein, J. F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
Budge, E. A. Wallis. Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1912.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell
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The Dhammapada: The Path of Truth. Translated by Ananda Maitreya. Berkeley: Parallax Press,
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