Another self-imposed rule allowed us to hunt the Christmas tree only one week before the hallowed morning so that it would still be fresh and joyful when the day came and would last on till New Year’s Day. So the expedition was made even more special by the knowledge that Christmas was only a week away now.
Sometimes, when the snow was extra heavy, Mother carried a broom along to sweep the snow from limbs that could break from its weight without her rescue. It was fun to see the hemlock boughs snap sprightly back into place when they had been relieved of their burden. And it was fun to stand in the cloud of snow that blew like a small blizzard as each limb gained its freedom.
The snow-covered hemlocks looked like gnomes, with their caps bending over almost to the ground. They would be beautiful, hung with cranberry chains and wooden figures, but we were in search of a white pine which wouldn’t shed its needles when it came into the house to live with us. Often, we cut three white pines and tied them together to form one big bushy tree. No one could have divined that it was a conglomerate, and there were limbs to sport every decoration we had made over the years.
And so our Christmas stretched on, as long as the tree gave forth its gentle woods fragrance which penetrated all the corners of our house, through that last quiet week of December leading up to the New Year. Each day after Christmas, Tim and I would assemble all of our presents and play new games with them. We wore our new mittens, soft grey with a snowflake pattern, and went out to build a little snow hut where we could make believe with our dolls. This year Santa had come with Heidi for me and Peter for Tim, and we relived Johanna Spyri’s Alpen tale, taking our goats (the cats) out to pasture, white with flowers (snow).
We read books to each other by the hearth as we savored the last candy canes, and the fire warmed us from within. And when New Year’s Day came and went, and the decorations were carefully packed away in a box where they would repose in the attic for eleven months, the last item to be relinquished was the collection of carols and stories, with its passage at the end:
Christmas comes but once a year
And when it comes it brings good cheer
And when it goes it leaves us here
And what shall we do for the rest of the year?
The Outhouse
Imagine a throne of handsome altitude, a throne where you can sit in full righteousness, take down your pants, hang down your hair, sigh out your frustrations, let a few tears fall, belch (if you’ve been saving it up for a long time), breathe in the best air the mountains have to offer, return to a sense of the vital elements, and bask in being alone—except perhaps for a shaggy dog who accompanies you down the inviting trail that winds around the hillside and lays his head on your knee, looking up at you with adoring eyes that say he would rather be with you right here than any place else in the world. You feel protected, you feel blessed, you feel that suddenly everything has turned right-side-up, and for this exact moment you are king—or queen—on your throne and the whole world is at your feet.
This is the scene of the family outhouse, and it still exists, frequented as much as ever, a monument to well-being and staying alive. Built halfway up a mountain slope, on the back side of a knoll that extends out beyond our house, it is a wooden podium fashioned from boards that have been carefully sanded smooth. There are no walls, but a shingle roof which overhangs on all sides to keep the rain at bay, and tilts back to give the effect of a lean-to, a little nest tucked reassuringly into the earth.
For a long time we had only one round hole, but in more recent years, taking into account the different physiology of men and women, we have added a second egg-shaped hole so that those who visit may have their choice of comfort. There are wooden lids which hinge over the two holes to protect them from leaves, rain, snow, flies, and powder-post beetle dust, and there is a little wooden box with another lid which hinges up, containing a roll of Scott toilet paper (plain, unscented, gentle, and long-lasting). At various times little messages have been taped to the lid of this box: “We aim to please; you aim too, please” or “Standers please use the woods.”
There is a small home-made broom woven together with red and green threads, which hangs from one of the posts supporting the roof. And on another support hangs a painting of the Smokies, surrounded in swirling mist. But no decorations are necessary in this pulpit, perched among the pines. No magazines or books are kept there for distraction. Instead is a vista so fine that visitors might even fight for the right to linger alone and ponder.
Below, the mountainside falls steeply away from your feet, into a gorge where flows a clear stream, singing out notes as it trickles lazily downhill in the summer, and roaring like a lion when winter gives way to spring. Only in the dead of December is it silent, iced over in strange figurines arching their backs in silver splendor while the water still dances in liveliness, hidden beneath its cool armor. And once in a while, in an August drought, it becomes hushed, and there is sadness hanging in the air until rain comes and the singing begins again.
In the middle of the gorge is a proud hemlock rooted in the rich loam and reaching up far above the regal throne. Who can fathom how long it has stood there and looked out at the view to which you are but a fleeting friend? Its limbs extend their steadfast strength to you, and you feel yourself grow as you look at them long and longingly.
The path which you followed to your pedestal, having marked your private retreat with a red handkerchief flag attached to the end of a weathered wood railing that takes off behind the spice bush, is dotted with many marvels: white trillium, with its three perfect leaves, wake-robin trillium stunning in scarlet red, bloodroot and anemone and hepatica, dog-toothed violet and delicate pepper-root, violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geranium, and—later in the summer—jewel-weed transforming the way into a jungle-path with its comical yellow and tiger-spotted flowers developing into seed pods that pop if you touch them. And the throne itself is surrounded by ferns and small hemlocks, forming a gossamer screen.
In summer, this frequented retreat is blessedly cool with breezes blowing gently through the open walls. During spring and fall rains, you are awakened and refreshed by a spray of mist which the winds also bring to you. And in winter, your skin positively tingles as, after you have swept the seat clean of a couple inches of snow, your panties fill up with the fine frozen dust and your reverie is accelerated as you sprint to finish.
Best of all is the perfectly acceptable escape from visitors, and from the mundane everyday sloshing through housework that the throne affords. When your brain begins to muddle and stagnate from too much time indoors, especially on a rainy or snowy day, an outhouse dash is the most refreshing remedy I can propose.
In addition to this, it is one of the biggest attractions of the romantic life my parents built together. When visitors descend upon them and are shown the inside of the log house with its wooden floors, fieldstone chimney, Hardwicks Bluebelle cookstove, flower-painted bathtub under the kitchen worktable, wooden pegs fastening the doors together; then Daddy’s workshop with its shingle roof and skylights and hundreds of hand tools, and Mother’s studio, still smelling of clay from her days with the potter’s wheel, now strewn with paintings from decades of dedication and application; after all this, when one of the guests exclaims over the bark berry baskets or the woven garden baskets or the idyllic existence that my parents have worked like tarnation to create, another guest brings the reverence to a peak by exclaiming, “And just wait till you see their outhouse!”
Barefoot
Bare feet, morning, noon, and night; why put on shoes? It just takes extra time when you’re in a hurry to be out of doors in the fresh new morning, and you’d only have to pause to take them off when you want to wade in the creek. And it is much easier to climb trees with bare toes to curl around the branches.
What the softness of age and moving about in cities has caused me to forget all too often, I knew indisputably as a child: that a bare foot is one of the most tactile pleasures in life. To fe
el the ground you walk on, to know its textures through your sole—your soul—to absorb the cool of night and the heat of day through the tender arch which keeps you springing forward…This is one of life’s greatest privileges.
In my younger years, from the moment school broke in the spring till the day I must return in the fall, my shoes were tucked somewhere in the back of a closet. In the morning I’d run out into the dewy grass and, if the lawn had just been cut, little plant particles would stick all over my feet till I had green textured stockings. When I wanted to come in the house I ran first down to the stream, where I stepped directly into the cold swirling water and stood on the smooth rocks until my feet became icicles. Then I’d fly up the gravel path, quickly, so that I wouldn’t feel the jagged edges, and step onto the cool granite of the stone porch, and then over the prickly doormat (where a dog or goose or goat was likely to be sleeping), and into the kitchen. There, the floor was smooth waxed oak boards, fit together by tongue and groove, paradise for a crawling baby and just as much-so for the flat of the foot. In front of the wood cookstove and under the sink were braided rag rugs, a cushion of softness when they were freshly shaken, and a catch-all for grit and wood ashes by the end of the day.
But outside, the sensations were more thrilling: the hard-packed earth that lined the outhouse path; the mud that squelched between the toes after a rainy day as I splashed through puddles; the frost on the fields of an early autumn morning that burned as the ice crystals melted under the heat of my heel; the floor of the chicken house, strewn with old hay and dried droppings and fresh juicy ones that sometimes caught me by surprise; the cow stall with its piss pit that I had to wade to get to the other side of the manger; the raspberry patch with its broken bits of briars mixed with pine needles and weeds, a test to ripening toughness; the gravel road which stung even seasoned feet as it slithered up to our neighbors’ farm.
By summer’s end my soles were impervious to pain, and I could run up and down the neighbors’ road without flinching. In fact, the stones felt more like a massage than a malevolence. I enjoyed the chill that crept in as night fell, and the hot sudsy water I poured over my toes before climbing between the sheets. But most of all I loved being unencumbered by any material which could come between me and the earth I trod. Direct contact with my day-to-day environment brought with it an awareness of my world which I would not have missed for the most beautiful shoes on the planet.
In heaven, you will find me skipping gleefully down a grassy star-studded road—barefoot.
Scents
If the tactile sense provides us a carpet of pleasure, the olfactory sense is an even more powerful link to the world around us. Unlike the sensation you get from running around barefoot, which is total immersion in the present, the scents which awaken the strongest feeling in you are those which bring a whiff of the past, a reminder of something you once knew, something familiar, a moment too quickly gone.
Suddenly it is back again: the first time you really smelled the springtime on a rainy day when the flowers were bursting from the bud and dripping with fragrance; your very first day of school, mingling the spice of autumn leaves and the acrid odor of new books; the crinkle of your freshly-ironed shirt and the rattle of unsullied pencils and rulers in your sack, musty erasers and lead—reminders to your nostrils of work ahead; the Christmas at your grandparents’ with jingle bells and fruitcakes and a cedar tree and mince pie and a honey-coated ham and the laughter of cousins, sounds and smells so inseparable in your mind that one brings back the other; your first tentative kiss on a summer’s night with the magnolias in bloom and the tulip trees, and the breeze wafting their sweetness over your lover’s face while the crickets pass your secret from one to another till the whole night world is singing your song. Our association with scents is born in our early years, and ever after we live with the sweet nostalgia that each essence conjures up.
* * *
It is late summer, and the men have been working in the hay field all day long. They are sweaty and the hay sticks to their forearms, nestling in the short wiry hairs that curl around and catch the dirt of the day. They have pieces of straw down their shirts, too, and briars clinging to their heavy work socks. The evening air sweeps over the fields, bringing with it the first coolness they have known since morning. Someone remembers a joke and they all chuckle, then step up their working speed, knowing that they will soon be going in for supper.
The fresh-cut hay lies in neat rows and the machine that rakes it into bales clanks twice as its metal parts cool off where it has been left to doze till morning. There is a soft stench of diesel oil that mingles with the men’s salty sweat. The farm truck has been piled ridiculously high with rectangles of hay held together with baling twine, and it makes one last trip up to the barn, tottering like a pregnant woman on heels, defying aerodynamics like a bumblebee in flight.
The warmth of the earth evaporates into the cool of the coming night, filtering through the sun-sweetened hay and rising to envelop you in its headiness. You feel drunk with the motion of the day, and when the last farm motor stops you are struck with the strange feeling that the world has ceased its turning for the night and rests with its creatures. You slowly turn your steps in the direction of the house and breathe in the stars that come out softly, one by one, and the peeper frogs that begin their vigil till the return of the sun. These things are part of your body now, and they will slumber in you, awakening each time you pass a field of fresh-fallen hay.
Piney Woods
It’s dark in the piney-woods. Dark and cool, and the floor is carpeted with moss and ferns and fallen needles. The scent is rich and tangy, a mixture of tannins and resin yielding a lemon pucker, which you detect when you chew on a round of needles. Five needles in a packet for the white pine, three for the jack, two for their companions.
Mostly our property is blessed with white pines. The kindest trees in the world, I think. Their needles are long and delicate, soft to touch, forming graceful bunches that give a feathered quality to the youngsters of the forest. The grandmother and grandfather trees are majestic monoliths. They point proudly to the sky as if praising God for the splendor of standing straight. And the Great Spirit smiles back at them, and is glad that there are some things he has made to perfection.
The limbs of the white pine grow out in whorls, creating ideal levels for tree houses. Tim and I had one such lookout from a property corner-tree, with a floor made of barrel staves. One of our neighbors had run a still at the bottom of that tree, and when the federals discovered it his companions managed to escape into the thickness of the woods. But his own pants caught on a barbed-wire fence and he was carted off to jail to serve his time for the making of ’shine.
There were still some old containers left around the base of our post—a rusted lard bucket, the hull of a tin washtub, a faded Prince Albert tobacco can. Tim and I would climb to our private heights and look out for imaginary federals, calling warnings to the ghost of our old friend below. Of course, he had long since been set free, and he would have been careful to find a better hiding-place this time, one that even young intrepid explorers like us would not be likely to find.
Rhododendron and hemlock woods, plentiful on the north-facing slopes that descend to a creek or river, are even darker than the piney-woods. They hold mystery and sometimes a taste of something more sinister, twisting and tangling in and out of gnarled branches and low foliage. Here are sublime hiding places for stills, and we often ran across their remains, marveling that anyone would have gone out of their way to haul corn up this far.
The earth here is black and rich, sometimes fed by old chestnut logs which decay at a snail’s pace and have seen all the secrets that have come to pass under their once-protective arms. Humus, the color of red burgundy wine, spills out of their hearts, and if the sun has managed to pierce the dark tangled interior, British soldiers can be seen dancing on the weather-worn sapwood. There is a smell of leaves turning to earth, almost as rapidly as in the tr
opics, due to the high humidity of the mountains. The Appalachian Mountains, the oldest in the world. They cradle their children against their rich breast and no one goes hungry. One glimpse of their quiet strength is food for eons.
The oak forest hides nothing. Its floor is clear except for the twigs that have fallen there and the tenacious young sprouts that will reach the height of their elders only in a hundred years. Most often the oaks favor a southern slope, where the sun can visit them for long hours of daylight. They withstand even the hand of man, which seeks them out for firewood and fence rails, woven baskets and shingles. They are the warriors of the forest, springing from acorns into giants with saintly patience for their fuel.
Here Tim and I are Indians, walking silently, trying not to break a twig. The whole world is watching us as we slip from tree to tree trying to blend into the bark, munching on the greenbrier shoots and sourwood leaves which we find sprouting along fence rows. The smell that greets our nostrils is a dry one, cracklingly clean, lacey and light like the old leaves that have been eaten away by insects until only their veins remain, more delicate than the finest lady’s fan.
We gather acorns, which we use to play marbles, and we whistle into their caps, our shrill notes bouncing off the giant trunks and alerting a pileated woodpecker who has been searching for worms in some loose sapwood of a tree that was once struck by lightning. We are animals of the forest, no different from the red squirrel which runs chittering along a branch above our heads, or the chipmunk which skitters over a fence post. The trees are our companions. And we their shadows.
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