Child of the Woods

by Susi Gott Séguret

  Sodom

  Sodom Laurel, or Revere, is the next community over from Shelton Laurel. Most people just call it Sodom, the Laurel (meaning rhododendron, as all the rivers in the region are flanked by that green, waxy leaf) being an assumed generic ending, also gracing Big Laurel and Little Laurel, and of course Shelton Laurel. The road laces its slow serpentine way around and between all the Laurels, and what would be a short distance to a crow is long and laborious to a traveler by car. Thus, each community until recent revolutionary years has remained isolated as if it were a million miles apart from the next.

  Sodom has birthed an abundance of musicians and ballad singers over the years. Legendary fiddler Byard Ray came from Sodom. He was a gentleman, and loved the ladies. Ahead of his time, his band of musicians consisted entirely of women, and he looked like a proud rooster surrounded by a flock of biddies whenever he went on stage. He always smelled like the spearmint chewing gum which he graciously employed instead of tobacco (so as not to offend his feminine entourage), and he never used more than two inches of his fiddle bow. But he played a version of “Wild Goose Chase” that would put your heart in your mouth, and when he sang “Fiddlin’ Will” a hush fell for miles around.

  His father, Champ, was the only person I ever heard of in the Baptist Bible Belt to introduce himself as an agnostic. One day, Champ was out chopping wood when the preacher rode by and said, “Hey, Champ, don’t you think it’s about time you got right with the Lord?” Champ looked at the preacher for a long time and finally said, slowly, “Well, me and the Lord ain’t had no fallin’ out, as far as I know.”

  Champ had two milk cows, one named Baptist and the other named Roman. These happy bovines looked out from their steeply-sloped pasture on both the Southern Baptist and the Roman Catholic Church for which they were named. When Champ died, despite the ambivalent feelings of his early years, he received his last rites from Father Graves, his ticket to the Pearly Gates.

  Daddy learned a lot of banjo tunes from a jolly round old fellow named Lee Wallin. Lee’s wife Berzilla, in contrast to her husband, was so strikingly slender her cheekbones stood out from her face, her forehead wrinkled from years of squinting into the sun, and from both smiles and worry. She sang her brother Lloyd’s eerie ballad called “A Conversation with Death” and another equally morbid one called “Rain and Snow,” her raspingly haunting voice carrying out across the porch through the night, blending with the cicadas’ song. Then Lee would pick a tune, slapping his leg with a long cackle of laughter, and saying, “Listen at that damn man pick a banjer!”

  Morris Norton was another of Sodom’s legends. He was known for his tune bow, a supple split of ash or white oak, strung up like a bow-and-arrow with a banjo string. One end of it is placed against the cheek while the string is rhythmically plucked, and the shape of the mouth varies the tone. Morris, unlike Byard, couldn’t content himself with chewing gum as a substitute, and his tune bow was colored with tobacco juice, which didn’t diminish its handsome twang.

  Morris was also a banjo player and, rather than indulge in false modesty, he stated quite simply and matter-of-factly to everyone he met, “I’m the best damn banjer picker there ever was!” He was aged and had his aches and pains like everybody else, but when asked how he was gettin’ along, he’d always reply, “Why, I stay above first class all the time!”

  For several years, Daddy called square dances in a little shack at the entrance to Chandler Cove, owned by Morris’s son. The drive from Shelton Laurel to Sodom was so windy it was hard to hold onto my stomach, but when I rolled down the car window for a breath of air, the captivating scent of honeysuckle filled my lungs and I was saved from further disaster.

  Sodom folks love nothing better than to hear a little music and get out on the floor, and so the weekly events were full of life, with cake walks and Virginia Reels and Texas Star and Chase the Squirrel. Clarence Gunter, otherwise known as “Slick”, would slide around on the floor with the lightness of a ballet dancer, despite his impressive six-foot, two-inch frame. Little girls barely out of diapers would buckdance like champions until they fell asleep on the benches that lined the walls.

  A couple of years later, some brazen brothers from West Virginia came down and started a folk festival in one of Morris’s fields. Its reputation grew quickly and people from California to the New York Island flowed in to hear ballad singers Dellie Norton and Cas Wallin, Berzilla and Lee and their fiddling son Doug, Morris and Byard and Inez Chandler, Ralph Lewis and Randy Davis (who had both played with Bill Monroe), and guests that came from out of town—a young David Holt and John McCutcheon, both of whom had learned banjo tunes from Daddy and eventually been led to the old masters. If you were hungry you could buy hot dogs and Pepsis, but the real mountain dew was not allowed—only in song.

  When, despite precaution, a combination of the real stuff and Scotch-Irish tempers led to a temporary pause in public celebration in Sodom, it was as if a giant tree in the forest had fallen, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. But whatever tragedies they have known, the Sodom people still manage to go on singing and dancing. Their feet may be silenced for a moment, and their voices may falter, but their songs will be even more poignant the next time around, and they will dance with more determination. They are living the ballads they sing.

  The Smokies

  “My home’s across the Smoky Mountains

  My home’s across the Smoky Mountains

  My home’s across the Smoky Mountains

  And I never expect to see you any more.”

  So go the lyrics to one of the many traditional songs I grew up singing.

  The Great Smoky Mountains—the name rings and echoes around my ears, like the mists that roll and rise between its ridges and valleys, its meadows and streams. Trails arise before my eyes—rhododendron-hung paths to Alum Cave Bluffs, Abram’s Falls, Spence Field, Siler’s Bald, Cataloochee, Cades Cove, Mount Sterling, Mount Cammerer, Mount Leconte…

  Every spring from the time I could walk, we made a family trip to the Smokies, camping out for a week in some hidden corner and taking eight- to fourteen-mile hikes during the day. We always carried lemon drops on the trail for instant energy, and cool canteens of water, dripping with moisture. And, of course, a sizeable picnic for the halfway point when, after a long pause, we would turn around and head back for the campground.

  Mountain mornings are crisply fresh, and we wore sweaters which later we slung around our waists or stuffed into the pack along with the picnic, and the ponchos that were a necessity in case of a sudden thunder storm. Sometimes, Tim rode on Daddy’s shoulders, but I, being the eldest, must find the energy—even in my four-year-old legs—to walk all the distance my parents had set out for us that day.

  Often, Tim and I ran on ahead and found hiding places in hollow stumps or logs, from which we could spring out and take our parents unaware. Sometimes in our headlong rush down the path, wild animals caught us unaware—raccoons, skunks, ’possums, foxes, even bears. But they were always on the point of going somewhere rather quickly and, to our disappointment, we never really got to have a visit.

  The woods were deep and damp where the trail followed a stream, and the sound of rushing waters pounded through our brains. Then suddenly, the trodden path would switch back on itself and begin a series of hairpin curves up the side of the heavy mountain. From a soft, leafy underfoot, the trail gradually metamorphosed into a gravelly and then a rocky course, and the woods went from rhododendron and hemlock to beech and poplar, and finally to spruce and balsam—Fraser fir, actually, but we called it by the name of its Adirondack cousin, and the mountain people called it “balsam pine.”

  When the trees began to be sparse, we knew we were nearing our picnic spot, and would soon find ourselves on a rocky outcropping or in a natural bald, where grass grew of its own accord and pink rhododendron or service-berry trees would be in bloom. In the woods near the bald, we would often find traces of wild boars in long, scuffled patches where they had rooted und
er the leaves for insects or grubs. Nobody wanted to run into a wild boar—or a razor-backed hog—as they were called in these parts. Images of fangs and slobber were enough to keep us cautious, but we never saw one in our numerous crossings of their high, lonesome domain.

  A few egg salad and tuna fish and cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwiches later, augmented by wild strawberries if we could find them, we set off on the last half of our journey. The trail always looked different on the way down, and we discovered new hiding spots and new streams in which to take a long, cool drink, our canteens now being empty. When we joined the valley again and followed the last miles of playfully tumbling water, we looked for pools to dip into, quickly pulling off our clothes and getting back into them, still a little damp, before the next hikers should come along. Then we’d feel all tingly and fresh, and ready to start another mountain…only, not until we had our supper. So off we’d go to look for kindling wood while Mother rattled out the camp cook kit, and we rounded up macaroni and cheese and hamburgers and tomatoes, and hot chocolate for later on when the stars should come out.

  Then Daddy would bring out his banjo and we would all sing railroad songs and cowboy songs and settlers’ songs. And, slowly, a crowd of other campers would gather around us, and the merriment would go on into the night. When the last song had been sung and the last camper had faded away, we would sleep, lulled by the roaring brook, wood smoke hanging in the air and the night mist moving in.

  The Adirondacks

  Just south of Quebec lies the Adirondack State Park—six million acres of lakes and woodlands covering an extension of the Canadian Shield. In 1888, my great-great-great grandfather, along with a few fast friends, purchased a tract of land here, once inhabited by an Indian named Sabael. On the wild side of Jessup’s Lake, later named Indian Lake—almost central to what is now the park—he and his friends built rustic cabins where in the summertime they could bring their families to share in a slice of the wilderness.

  Here we made a pilgrimage once a year, leaving momentarily our Southern mountains to sup a cup of the North Woods. The differences between these two spots, both of which I consider home, are subtle but strong. Whereas our southern neighbors are primarily farmers, the natives of the north are hunters and trappers. Instead of pastureland for cattle and other livestock, there are beaver meadows, and the valleys are most often filled with water. The lakes offer relief on hot summer days but also bring the hell of blackflies and mosquitoes. North Woods houses are built with long winters in mind, or like our cottages on the lakeshore, with only summer use intended.

  Our own family cottage is called Idleside, though we were all far from idle whenever we went there. There were mountains to climb, beaver meadows to explore, birds and deer to stalk with binoculars, trout to catch, rivers to canoe, lakes to traverse in the guide boat (with two men at the oars), rocks to jump off into the cold water, campfires to prepare…

  On hikes we collected the fungi that grew on the sides of dying trees—plate-sized prizes, flat and white on one side and brown as bark on the other. The lighter side was like a sheet of blank paper, inviting our drawings while it was fresh and moist. The mantelpiece of each cottage was covered with various pictographic records, etched on these fungi, of all the major adventures from generations of woods explorers.

  We also collected balsam boughs on our wanderings, stripping the needles from the twigs and packing them tightly into little hand-sewn pillows to remind us year-round of the singular charm of the North Woods. The balsam scent is green—a deep green, with bracken mixed in, the undergrowth of a forest floor that never sees the broad light of day except in the rare shafts of sunlight that cut through like a knife. It sings of fur trappers and soft evergreen beds that look up into a starry sky. There are barred owls and bobcats in the wake, and loons that laugh in the night, calling out their answers across the lake.

  I keep a balsam pillow on my desk at all times. One sniff and I am putting my canoe in the water, navigating some rocky shore, alighting in a deep wood to find my heart again and walk with it. It is good to know where to go to ground yourself, good to know where the earth is real. And when the body cannot go there, the scent that awakens the setting is worth more than a lifetime of earnings.

  The Drinking Gourd

  There is a meadow behind the shack my parents were renting when Tim was born, up and beyond the graveyard we used to haunt, where I first learned to recognize the Big Dipper.

  As a two-year-old, I toddled along behind my parents on a summer’s evening after supper, past blackberry vines laden heavily with fruit, gleefully picking a second dessert. My eyes were on a level with the most luscious and juicy of them all, and I stuffed my cheeks chipmunk-fashion and let the juice run down my chin.

  When we came out of the woods into the open pasture, the last embers of sunset were dying in the night sky. As the first stars glittered faintly like lights in a lost town, I made my wish on one of them—a simple wish, nothing cosmic. For a puppy. Something that would make me happy in the here and now.

  We lay on our backs in the soft green alfalfa and watched a tiny crescent moon peek over the top of the mountain. Daddy pointed out the stars that made up the Big Dipper, explaining how to sight along the tip of the lip to find the North Star which marks the handle of the Little Dipper.

  In the South, the Big Dipper is known as the Drinking Gourd, and Daddy told us of the slaves who, not so long ago, had made their way north to freedom by night when they couldn’t be so easily seen. The Drinking Gourd was their compass, pointing their way through valleys of shadow, a friend in the darkness. And my parents sang the song that was theirs, and their voices reached up to the slowly emerging stars:

  Follow, follow, follow, follow the Drinking Gourd,

  Follow the Drinking Gourd,

  For the old man is a-waitin’ for to carry you to freedom

  If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

  I looked up at the Freedom-Marker and felt watched over and comforted. If I should be thirsty, there was water ready to spill from that perfectly poised lip. If I should wonder which way to wander when the sun had gone, I had only to look up for the Dipper who, unlike many other constellations, is present in every season’s sky. If I should wish to know how fast the world is turning, again I could look to my friend, noting its position in the sky as the night advanced. A point of repair in an unsteady world, I would learn to seek it out as my years multiplied and I found myself far away from the hills of home.

  And somehow, in whatever corner of the earth I might glimpse its seven bright stars, I would immediately feel myself home again. The hub of my wagon wheel would still be the same, and I would still be rolling around it, a child of two wrapped somewhere safe inside of me. And God would be holding the Dipper in his hands, and he would stretch it out to me. And I would step eagerly up to the edge and take a long, cool drink.

  And all around me the woods would sing softly, “Follow the Drinking Gourd.”

  Acknowledgements

  To my parents, Peter and Polly Gott, with loving thanks for giving me the happiest childhood imaginable, and for your incomparable sense of adventure and dedication to the piece of earth I call home.

  To my daddy, for his once-fine memory and consistent passion for story-telling, thank you for putting the words in my mouth for many of these anecdotes. To my mother, thank you for your artist’s eye, and for always daring to do!

  To the neighbors mentioned in this book (as well as those whose stories remain untold), and the descendants thereof, I am forever grateful for the large and colorful lives you have lived, which have enriched my own beyond measure.

  To the writers who opened doors for me: Annie Dillard, Madeleine L’Engle, Natalie Goldberg, James Herriot, Robert Fulghum, Robert Frost, Julia Cameron, M.F.K. Fisher, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Thompson Seton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson…Your words go with me at each step.

  To the folks at Hatherlei
gh Press, for taking a chance on these tales so dear to my heart, and for already having taken a leap with Appalachian Appetite, thank you for your faith, and for helping tradition live on.

  To my friends and neighbors who glanced over the manuscript to make sure I didn’t inadvertently say anything out of place, thank you and I hope you were right!