Trees
For a while, I made it a point to climb at least ten trees a day.
There was nothing magical in the number—I just figured it was a reasonable goal I could keep, and maintain my wiry figure while visiting my friends at the same time.
I had a round of usuals, starting with a couple of dogwood trees, whose limbs were slender but tough. I felt like a monkey as I swung around on their branches, skinning the cat as I came lithely off the last one. Next, a couple of tulip poplars with trunks straight and smooth, and no limbs for a long way up. I wrapped my arms and legs around their bodies, having taken off my shoes and spit on my hands, and I shinnied up like a fireman till I reached the first limb and I could pull myself up to the easy part. Coming down was fun—a sudden whoosh, and I slid to the ground.
The huge old corner pine, with its barrel stave lookout, was another mandatory visit. It was one of the ancient masters, and its trunk reached up forever into the sky. It was a good ten-minute climb to the top, even on my best days. The distance between some of the whorls of limbs was almost more than I could reach and kept me constantly stretched out and on edge. I didn’t consider the danger, but it’s lucky my mother didn’t know about that one, especially since it was way out on the edge of our property.
But my favorite pilgrimage was into the arms of a modestly sized hemlock, on the back side of the hill that sheltered our outhouse. The limbs of this one were so close together that I had to weave myself in and out of them like a snake in order to make any headway towards the top. The bottom branches were somewhat treacherous, as we had a flock of chickens which preferred them to the hen house at night, so they were always speckled and cushioned with droppings, in their many delicate shades of white, grey, and green.
Once past this obstacle course, the rest was pleasant, and I would often pause on a trio of branches which formed a comfortable seat. If I had a book in my pocket I could sit here and read indefinitely, and I loved to disappear into this dark haven until I felt guilty pangs arise, from knowing it was past time to feed the chickens and get in stove wood for the supper fire.
During my daily climbing rounds, I must always touch the tippy-top of each tree before coming down. With the hemlock, this was delicate because the last stretch was so spindly it would start to waver and bend before I reached my goal. So eventually I decided that it would be okay if I only perched on the last reasonably solid limb and pulled the tip down into my hand for a shake before slithering back to the ground.
This particular tree was my protection in times of turmoil. Close enough to the house so that I could escape instantly, yet still return if need be—for all the world as if I had been nowhere—its spicy needles were so thick that I would not be discovered by parents seeking me out for punishment, or a brother who wanted me to play his games. From its top limbs, I could see all that was going on at the house yet remain apart, a princess in her bower. On stormy days when the wind was blowing exceptionally strong, I would climb up to sit on the last reasonable limb where I would be tossed back and forth like a sailor in a crow’s nest. It was thrilling to share the tempest with the tree. If the wind was not too much for her, why should it be too much for me? I enjoyed my wild rides and would come down at last only when the storm lulled, hair flying and cheeks glowing.
Joyce Kilmer knew how I felt about trees. There is a piece of virgin forest on the edge of the Smokies which is named after him. At the entrance of the forest, his poem is carved out in wood:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Toilet Training
I was initiated in the rigors of mountain living early on in life. My mother went to the hospital (located 50 miles away) when I was born, only to ensure herself a two-days’ break from homesteading. Working full-time in the fields, she hadn’t even known she was carrying a child until, at five months, she looked down at her feet where she was hoeing, and noticed a little bulge beginning.
“That’s funny,” she hummed, “I must be getting fat!”
She didn’t let up her work during the remaining months, but helped Daddy lift building logs and chop and carry wood, and persisted in the never-ending gardening and canning.
I was born in September, just after the hot summer months came to a close, and the one-room shack my parents were still renting was made from a single layer of rough-sawn lumber, uninsulated. It was a cold winter, and snow blew in constantly through the cracks. Often the bed was snowdrifted in the morning, and my parents had to climb gingerly out from under the quilts and shake the snow outside.
I slept in a large basket that Mother had woven out of white oak splits, and the cats helped keep me warm. Somehow, I never caught cold, although I was forced to wear my snowsuit both inside and out.
My toilet training was rapid, as my changing table was the icy stream that ran down from the mountain. When I was old enough to stand, I was set in the middle of it until I was clean and my cheeks—all four of them—were tingling. Meanwhile, my diapers had been washed out and hung to dry, and a clean one taken from the line to put on after I had sun- (or wind-) dried.
I learned to walk by tracing the distance between the second shack my parents rented and the new house they were building. It was a mile and a half of woods, trail, and sled road, crossing a few creeks and fences. I would start out in the morning with my parents and, when they stepped on ahead to start working, I would continue at my own pace.
Sometimes it would take me all day to arrive, there were so many things to examine along the way: patches of ferns, mossy stones, salamanders, snakes, spider webs, orchids hiding behind a field stone, tree stumps inviting me to sit, swirling pools below the waterfall, a bird’s egg fallen from its nest…Then, if it wasn’t already time to start back when I reached the house site, there were fresh wood chips to play with, chalk lines to snap, cement to mix and scrape out of the trough (I even had my own little hoe and trowel).
When Tim was born, two and a half years after me, I was delegated the job of swinging him back and forth in a burlap sack to keep him from crying, as he was a colicky baby.
Tim had arrived early one morning in the dead of winter. When Mother was at term, the doctor had told her she wasn’t due for another month, intending to keep her from worrying. So when their little VW bug stopped working and went in for repairs, my parents were unconcerned.
In the midst of a rousing snowstorm at four o’clock in the morning, the contractions woke Mother up, already spaced a few minutes apart. Daddy had to run out into the dark whiteness down to a neighbor’s to borrow a car, then drop me off at another neighbor’s, and navigate the curvy mountain roads that led maddeningly slowly to Asheville. Tim was born less than half an hour after they arrived. “And he’s been in a hurry ever since,” Mother has always chuckled.
We moved into our new log house just before the next winter struck, when I was three-and-a-half. There were still no doors or windows—only tarps and blankets, hung up in front of the gaping holes. And the logs were as yet unchinked because they needed another season to settle. Here, too, we wore our snowsuits in the house, and double pairs of socks and mittens. I rode my tricycle (which, for some unknown reason, I called a “ragara”) around on the wooden pre-flooring to keep myself warm.
We carried our water, breaking the ice in the spring before we could dip it out, and our lamps were oil, and we had candles on our Christmas tree. But primitive though it may have been, we were cozy as we sat around our wood heater stove (temporary until the fireplace wo
uld be built), wrapped in blankets and singing “The First Noël.” We were a family.
Wolford’s Fields
It was a warm spring day, and Tim and I were equipped with a luncheon knapsack and two heavy walking sticks, picked with care from the woods at the edge of the house. We set off up the garden road, intending to go till we reached the very top of the mountain—which, to us, meant Wolford’s fields.
First, we followed the steep grassy road that led past the garden, past our climbing rocks, past the Sassafras Holler where grew Christmas trees and roots for making sassafras tea, past the two rock-lined springs which fed our reservoir of house water (now that we were upclass and had a sink and spigots), up to the fence line where the road petered out and we had a view, at least until the leaves got too thick, of Cutshall Town Road.
The next step was to follow the fence line through the woods, at a grade so steep that our noses almost touched the ground when we were standing straight. There was an enticing grapevine swing that Daddy had cut along this stretch, and we dropped our knapsack and flexed our arm muscles, spit on our hands and flew out between the trees, keeping tabs on the ground way down below. When we reached the top of our property, we climbed over a huge chestnut log and crossed the barbed wire fence, then waded the cow-pie glen across to the ridge that led to Hic’s cabin.
From there, although it already looked like we were on top of the world, we followed the fence line again, up and up through the woods, crossing a couple of saddles until we came out in open fields for the second time. Here the road led left to the Tater Gap and the long-abandoned Ellen house, now used for storing hay and fertilizer. And to the right, it led to Wolford’s fields.
The sled road had turned into a gullied rut riddled with rocks, and we were glad for our sticks. Tawny, our collie-shepherd who had followed us faithfully all this distance, picked her way daintily around the obstacles and panted with the heat. Far down in a field below us was an old log cabin where one of our elder neighbors had grown up. It had been abandoned perhaps half a century before, as there was practically no access and the family was ready to leave the laborious work of living self-sufficiently for some of the conveniences of modern times.
The rut continued to climb upward. Hidden in the woods were tremendous boulders, balanced precariously, left over from a giant’s game of hopscotch. Dutchman’s pipe wrapped around some of the older trees, giving them a twisted look like a drill bit, and the young poplars were putting out baby tulip-shaped leaves, translucent pea-green where the sun shone through them.
Up further still, we broke out into pasture land. We were on the top of a high ridge, where one side looked down into the community of Spillcorn, while the other looked across at Max Patch—always snow-streaked in winter—and beyond to the Great Smokies.
We crossed this field and another fence, hidden behind an ancient apple tree hanging heavy with blossoms, and entered our own field at last. Nobody would find us here in a million years, for we were at the edge of the world. Hidden by blackberry brambles or woods on all sides, our meadow was completely wild. A tall grandfather pine that had withstood many storms watched over us as we spread our picnic out on a granite rock.
Mother had packed deviled eggs wrapped up in waxed paper (which had already half disintegrated from the moisture), a tin of sardines (which Tawny appreciated, as she was allowed to lick out the oil that was left in the bottom), honey-butter sandwiches on homemade molasses rolls, and a pint jar of milk. The milk had little flecks of butter floating on the top of it, as its creamy contents had been considerably shaken during the long trek. Tawny licked off the lid, leaked a few teaspoonfuls of sardine saliva on our laps, and settled down with a hrumph to watch over and wait for us while we went to climb the old grandfather tree.
We each found a cozy branch to settle into, and then, as was often our habit, decided to give each other a concert. We took turns being audience and performer, applauding each other enthusiastically as we traded off roles. My favorite songs were “Diamond Joe” and “Little Sadie” and “Georgie,” all variations on the theme of love and murder. Tim’s were “Samuel Wilder” and “Monongahela Sal,” also murderous topics but a degree more light-hearted. He also had his own composition which he half sang, half chanted:
Oh, the O-Do Man was an O-Do Man,
He had a wife and he poked his wife his eyes out,
He sat on a chair,
Watchin’ the doctor fix him.
God knows where he came up with that one, but it wasn’t much more far-fetched than some of the ballads we were singing. And I was proud of him for being so inventive.
When our young stomachs began to feel pangs of hunger again, we descended from our perch, shouldered our knapsack, and with Tawny running in circles of glee around us, headed back down the mountain, over the fence and through the field, down the old wagon rut, along the woodsy fence line and through Oliver’s field with a furtive glance back at Hic’s cabin, down the next fence line, at last traversing the Sassafras Holler, our cliffs, and the garden, then looking down through the remaining stretch of woods to our own house with smoke curling deliciously out of the chimney.
Mother was pulling cookies out of the oven as we tumbled onto the doorstep and we exchanged our empty knapsack for tall, cool glasses of milk and the cookies that melted in our mouths. Tawny lapped up some water and then hrumphed down onto the doormat to get a good sleep before the next day’s long adventure.
Susie Shelton
Susie Shelton was a tall, slender lady with a short cap of grayish-white hair, a prominent chin, and a face rich with wrinkles from a lifetime of smiling and squinting into the sun. She usually wore unlaced tennis shoes and slacks, and an old men’s work shirt. She had long fingers, gnarled from work and arthritis, and her hands were most often covered with garden dirt.
Susie was the daughter of “Maw,” the generous old landlady who’d given my parents their first lessons in mountain living. After my family at last succumbed to a world linked by telephone and got our own hooked up, Susie Shelton would call regularly just to say, in her soft, cracked voice, “Howdy, honey, I jest thought I’d call y’uns up to make shore y’uns is gettin’ on all right.” And, once assured that we were, she’d say, “All right, then, honey, I love y’uns,” and hang up. And we’d feel fine for the rest of the day.
My parents named me after her. It made me laugh when I grew older and people would tell me they had a hard time calling me “Susie” because it was a name they associated with a little girl. For me, the association was with a strong, gentle, white-haired lady, one of my main role models. Eventually I dropped the “e” off my name and nobody gave me a hard time about “Susi.” Besides, it seemed more French, and I had already fallen in love with that land, the place where I would end up making my first married home. But the name always holds for me the simple grace of that mountain woman, and I hope that some of that grace might one day be my inheritance.
“Shelton” is the most prevalent family name in the area, which has been known as Shelton Laurel ever since the first settler came in and lived in a hollow tree with his only two possessions: a cast iron skillet and a shotgun. The scene of a Civil War massacre in 1863, Shelton Laurel has been dubbed by outsiders “Bloody Shelton Laurel,” and it has lived up to its name ever since, due to its self-law (the police have historically stayed as far away from that sector as possible) and the large number of shoot-outs, which together have given the county as a whole the name of “Bloody Madison.”
Despite their grim side, the Sheltons are some of the truest people to walk the face of this earth. Love and loyalty are as strong as hate and revenge. Life is not meant to be spent passively, and the mountain people stand up without a tremor for what they believe.
So it was with Susie, who worked hard, yet was one of the sunniest spirits I have ever known. I believe her biggest secret was that she laughed every day of her life, even when delivering a sermon to her offspring. And she would chuckle again in relating it to
us: “I tell my grandbabies, ‘Keep your pants up and your skirts down!’”
The last year of her life was the first year she didn’t keep a garden. It must have weighed on her not to be checking on her long rows of string-beans and sweet potatoes and tomatoes. She wasn’t one to complain, though. “I tell my doctor ever’ time I see him, ‘You jest wait—I’m a-gonna live to be a hundred just te aggervate ye!’”
Susie didn’t quite make it to a hundred, but her eighty-five years weren’t wasted in twiddling her thumbs. When she died, the church was so stuffed with flowers that there was hardly room for the tremendous crowd of people that wanted to pay their respects. Mother was the only one of us near enough at the time to go to the funeral. Susie’s son, Jimmy-Joe, had Mother walk in with them, saying she was family, and whispering in her ear that they’d had to leave most of the flowers at home.
Mother didn’t file up with everyone else to look in the open casket. Instead, she sat holding Susie’s great-grandbaby in her lap, staring at the fine profile of the lady that had been her second mother, and for whom she had named her daughter. Death didn’t mar the determination in her jaw or the high Indian cheekbones. She was a proud beauty to the end. I don’t think anyone would have been surprised if she had snapped open her fiery eyes and hollered out, “Now y’uns all git on home where y’uns belong, and don’t ye be a-botherin’ me none!”
Maybe she did, and nobody heard her. I can hear her laughter now, warm and crackling and hearty. It fills my stomach and makes my face break out in wrinkles. And a faint, crinkled voice whispers in my ear, “Hit’s all right, honey, I love ye!”
Child of the Woods Page 8
