The title is a couple of lines from an old song I listened to while I was growing up. I spent all of my first twenty years deep in the rural parts of Kentucky. Except for about six years I lived in West Van Lear. It was not really rural but it was not really a town and we were surrounded by plenty of hills and woods. And, of course, we had a good sized garden spot.
When I was young my favorite thing to do as long as the weather was warm enough was to play in the creek that ran in front of my grandparent's house. Of course it was also the county road so whenever I heard a car or truck coming I had to get out and wait for it to go past. I do imaginie it is strange for people who are much younger and have never experienced that to imagine a time and place where the roads spent so much time in the creek beds.
Starting when we lived at Spring Knob Tower I added roaming the forest to my list of interests. Everyone in my family hunted and I could not wait until I was old enough to hunt. I could not carry a gun but I could wander around in the woods around the tower.
One day I spotted a chipmunk and chased it around and over the piles of brush by the road until it disappeared into a hole in a tree. I went and told my Dad about it and he came out and cut down a green briar with his knife and pushed it up the hole in the tree and twisted the briar around until the throrns were entangled in the chipmunk's fur and dragged it out.
He killed it and cleaned it and my mother fried it up for me. I became a little Nimrod, not so much for my prowess as a hunter, but for my love of being out in the woods. I was never a very successful hunter but I loved being out in the forest. I enjoyed it all the time but most especially durning a rain storm. I'd find a good rock cliff to sit under and stay dry. I'd gather wood and build a fire and sit there watching the rain just thinking and dreaming.
That stage of my hunting life lasted until I was about thirty or thirty-one years of age. At that time I got so 'soft hearted' I could no longer kill animals. Now, don't get me wrong, I had zero problems eating animals someone else killed; I just could not do it myself any longer. I don't think I've done away with anything larger than a roach or spider since that time. Still, though, I watch the multitude of squirrels romping and playing around my yard and I can't help but think of them in the way of cooked squirrel with squirrel gravy and home made biscuits.
I guess there is a reason they call a certain period of our lives our formative years. My formative years were spent wandering the woods alone. I never cared much for my parents and I was the happiest when I was not around them and being there was not much else around except forests I spent a l of time in them. Still, to this day, there is no place I'm more comfortable than in a forest. Especially if there is a stream of water close by. It has a 'home' feeling to it like no place else I can find.
I've not wandered the forests in many a year now. Lately, my legs are getting so bad I just can't do it any more and have to love them more in memory than anything else. Now I live in "the big city" and there are no hills or forests around like I grew up with. But, at the Columbia (SC) zoo, if one crosses the bridge over the Saluda river and goes over the hill to the right there is a path up the river that leads to the site of an old, Confederate, mill. It is cool there under the trees and there are benches to sit on and there is a mill trace running right next to the seating area so you can hear the water and feel the cool breeze that blows acroos it.
From there is a path that leads up the hill by a (very small) stream to the botanical gardens. It was always a nice walk. With my leg as it is now I could not make that walk but it is also one I'll enjoy in memory.
Even were my legs fine so many of the places I loved as a kid are no longer there. Strip mining for coal ripped the tops of the hills off and dumped them down in the hollows. Where Spring Know Tower sat the hill is destroyed down to the level where Jim "Crow" Crum lived. I guess that is a couple of hundred feet from where it was when I lived there.
I also grew up with a lot of flowers around. My mother had many flower beds and there were always birds around them. I was especially fascinated by the humming birds. We both loved all the honeysuckle vines that grew wild all over the place.
Then there were the trees. Not just the oaks, poplars etc but trees that you could eat or had nuts or fruit you could eat. Find a good birch and peel off the outer bark and there was a layer of inner bark you could chew and it had a great flavor. There were persimmon trees loaded with fruit that you could eat after the first frost came and ripened them. There were all kinds of nuts around to gather and 'crack' once they had dried out. Black walnuts and hickory nuts were especially plentiful.
People often have big plans if they "win the lottery". Fancy cars, big houses, world travel are just some of them. Were I to win the lottery and become an instant millionaire I'd pay off all my bills, I'd set some aside for all the grandkid's education and I'd buy me a large chunk of land in Kentucky. Not in the Eastern hills where I grew up but out in the flat lands of central or western Kentucky. Somewhere I could still enjoy being out in the woods and watching the birds, bees and animals as they went about their business. Somewhere I could go to bed and fall asleep to the calls of the whip-poor-will and hoot of an owl. I really miss whip-poor-wills living here in the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment