Places Along the Way----The Hidey-Hole

Have you ever read The Yearling by Marjorie Kennan Rawlings? Yes I know…it is an ‘Old Yeller’ story that people do not like to revisit. I have enjoyed re-reading this book over the years, not necessarily for the plot, but for the character development and the incredibly descriptive language that Ms. Rawlings used in portraying life in the Florida scrub. Her book Cross Creek is also a gem as it tells of her transition from New York to a 72 acre Florida scrub orange grove. 

The first chapter of The Yearling captured me immediately, as the young protagonist, Jody, built his first ‘fluttermill’ on a clear creek bank: He watched the fluttermill indolently, sunk in the sand and the sunlight. The movement was hypnotic. His eyelids fluttered with the palm-leaf paddles. Drops of silver slipping from the wheel blurred together like the tail of a shooting star. The water made a sound like kittens lapping.  It is the kind of writing that is truly American---full of simple symbolism without trying to impress by going to a thesaurus. 

I had a place like Jody’s creek bank when I was a kid at Ft. Rucker. Below the man-made small reservoir, Lake Tholocco,  Four Mile Creek ran north to south through Ft. Rucker. My buddies and I found it frequently in our explorations through the heavy hardwoods and piney forests of the Army post. Many times I would simply go by myself. Today, parents would demand an Amber Alert for the amount of time I would disappear into the solitude of the gurgling creek. I usually told my mom that I was going ‘to the woods’. That was enough. No cell phones, no GPS, just, ‘I am going to the woods’. It was a different time. I wrote this description many years ago of my little hidey-hole. Hope you enjoy it:

Carved out of the sandy red dirt, hardwoods and pines of Dale Co., Ft Rucker was a young explorer’s dream. I had a secret place, a familiar junction, where I would steal away in the woods near our home.  It was a quiet haunt by Four Mile Creek, a refuge from the summer heat, tranquil with the placidity of an early Sunday morning. The water had worn the sand into and fine, clean, grain, cool to the touch. I loved sitting with my shirtless, tanned back resting on the swollen trunk of an old cypress, listening to the soft gurgling of the eddy pool that provided cool relief for my toes.

The water moved slowly, much like the pace of everything in the Deep South in the summer months. Never the boisterous sound of rushing water, it was more like that beautiful guttural cluck that a turkey-hen makes during the spring ritual of finding her tom.

I spent hours leaning against that old cypress, digging for smooth rocks, examining them and then tossing them in a long lazy arch to produce that perfect ‘kaboomp’ sound as they hit the eddy pool. Looking up, I admired that classic contrast of a thick humidity laced blue sky against the green of the tall pines. Oh sweet memories...let your mind take you to one of those places for a moment..a heartbeat or two away...you can spare the time...I know you had your own hidey-hole. 

In closing, this is not a generational thing. Don’t think that kids can’t have these experiences now. My son is 23 and he knows every nook, crook, creek, and cranny of my folk’s farm in Coffee County, MUCH more than I do. He is making his own memories in his own generation…with his iPhone, and other conveniences that were unknown to me. And that is ok. I am not one to ‘down’ the current generations because they do things different from the way I did it. I suppose my point is, we all need a time and a place to reflect, to meditate, to pray. Ms. Rawlings said it best: “I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.”
 
Given the many environments we live, my creek bed may be your coffee shop. Whatever the setting, I love what my son says, ‘Dad, I can get in a deer stand and just not think about anything’. I truly understand that; it makes me think of cut-offs, Keds, and creeks.