Lenten Thoughts #8

Elizabethtown, Illinois water tower

Heritage is like memory, fluid and elusive.  One has to actively maintain the ties to home; else, like memory, they will wither.

It is tempting to wax nostalgic, paint the past with a broad rosy brush, fool yourself into believing that's how it was, the good old days, the days where good guys wore white hats.  Choose your cliche, they're all misleading.

I know that.  Still, I miss home.  My idea of it, I mean.

When I was growing up, the mines were mostly functioning.  People who wanted to work had jobs, although we always had an unemployment rate that staggered my college friends, privileged suburban kids who thought Illinois ended at Kankakee or Springfield.

It was a lovely place--still is.  Nestled between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, most of this rural and hilly country is conserved in the Shawnee National Forest.  Because it was fluorspar mined there, not coal, the land has not been terribly ravaged.  We have cypress swamps, the ancient trees and their knees steeped in algae, with occasional plops from slimy swamp dwellers.  In March and April, daffodils from long-ago homesteads bloom willy-nilly, then dogwood and redbud dot the hills.  A few hardy souls actually farm, although only as supplemental income, not as a full-time profession.  The primary employers now, as in so many rural areas, are the school system and the local hospital.

But the years have changed the place, and the years have changed me.  I will always "look to the hills, from whence cometh my help" without apologizing for my slight punctuation change.  I find God in the hills, first and foremost those of southern Illinois.

Since I can't really find a focus for this blog entry, I thought I'd just blather a little about the beauty from which I grew, then share a few photos that don't come close to the real thing.

May God keep the people and the place.

Hardin County Courthouse, with jail next door

Good ol' Raines school bus

I think this one is from Cave-in-Rock, but not sure--that's my river, though, that I do know.

Happy Hour at the Iron Furnace

Hogthief Creek

The majestic Ohio

Creativity and Cats

In the writing workshops I so love to attend, we often discuss the terms "creative nonfiction" and "memoir."  Generally speaking, as only a bunch of word-nerds could, we make quite a case for interpreting our memories through our imaginations.  This post is like that.  It didn't happen exactly like this, but in some important ways, this story is true.  Here's to memory, creativity, and whoopie cats.  And here's to Hardin County, with its beauty and its blemishes.

Riding alone was one of the joys of my adolescence, an escape from the hell of high school.  I rode Mo, a big, black, smooth-gaited, classy gelding with an old soul.  The land over Whoopie Cat Mountain, so named because legend had it that there were wildcats there (bobcats, Daddy always said, though others claimed to have seen pumas), offered sanctuary, peace, God.  It was also a great place to gallop long and hard, once you got up the hill, reason enough for me to make regular rides there.

On that crispy fall day in 1974, though, the trail offered a spicy side order with my solitude.

Mo stumbled back, maintaining eye contact with the snarling whoopie cat.  Aware of a million sensations—my quick intake of air, the horse's fear, the November leaves and pine needles rustling under our feet, the several miles separating us from the nearest people—I reached out to steady him.  The horse tossed his head and snorted, showing the whites of his eyes, as I instinctively grabbed the rein close to his head and swung up.  We crashed through the woods, adrenalin-fueled, oblivious to the spider webs, low-flung limbs, cockleburs, and still-potent poison ivy, heading for the pasture beyond.  I let Mo rest and graze until we both cooled off, then we headed toward a significantly wider trail with more visibility and little likelihood of a wildcat.

The rain started up, of course—it may never rain in southern California, but it sure does in southern Illinois—and we made for the sweet darkness of that old barn, the one with the hand-hewn feed troughs that as a child I pictured baby Jesus in.  When the rain slowed down, we took off again, this time toward civilization.

Crossing back over the meadow, I could hear it getting closer.  Mo stopped in his tracks, not even finishing his stride, ears pricked forward, head high.  I looked around frantically—could it be the same cat, here, in the field??  Then I saw her, an enormous doe, almost head to head with my 15 hand horse, so close I thought I heard her breathing.

Looking at my 17 year old self through the multifocal lens of memory, I question the whole holding-his-gaze thing, but I know for sure I saw a bobcat that day, and it definitely panicked my horse and me.  And while I might not have really heard the doe breathe, I remember the liquid beauty of her eyes—she was that close.

Another world
is not only possible, she's
on her way. Many of us won't
be here to greet her, but
on a quiet day,
if you listen carefully, you
can hear her breathing.
(Arundhati Roy)