headTalk.

Its wetness permeating my skin
     now wrapped around me as a veil.

Solitude forming the disguise of comfort,
     choking my every breath.

Muting the pigment, slowing the pace,
     where mind controls span and reason.

Alone in woods where no other mortal can be found,
     my solitude.

I’ve been back to my home state many times in the recent past, but it has been quite a long time since I’ve returned to the places I grew up.  To the places I remember as far back as memory began it’s first tings of recognition in the recesses of my mind.  Memories that formed long before emotion or personality came to identify me.

I recall eating raw cucumber for the first time, picked directly from the garden, as a happy, pony-tailed toddler before I can remember the first recognition of my own mother’s face.  The definition of ‘home’, to me, is more important than even family.  Family stays with me no matter where I travel, but home is defined by one single place which can not be compared to any other.  It is defined by the memories I carry with me throughout my life of that place.  A place I am always trying to find my way back to.  It’s a place I recognize myself in and I recognize within my own self.

The things I remember are the fear of snapping turtles in Brushy Fork Creek-turtles legend states could swallow a child whole-and a fear of falling from the narrow stone bridge which crosses that stream.  There was an unspoken understanding that the ‘junk graveyard’ on the ridge opposite our homestead was strictly off limits.  The wild horses still sometimes seen there were not to be ridden.  The hollowed out Model-T’s, Iceboxes and other such decaying rarities found in our woods were not to be recommissioned for use in our adventures, though this is a rule that was broken on many occasions.  The doors to Iceboxes [modern day's equivalent is known as the refrigerator] made fantastic sleds in the winter.  It is lucky such doors could be found in random abundance throughout the countryside because they were too heavy to haul back up the faces of our mountains for another wild and out of control ride dodging trees down and down towards the valley below.

How those junk graveyards made their way into the woods, miles from anything, is still a mystery to me.  Each generation blames the one before for depositing this trash, though at some point the generation at blame becomes older than the inventor of each item and no one has taken credit.   The children only two decades before me would not have hesitated to harness the ancestors of our wild horses to the windshield of an old automobile and “see where we end up.”  It is that sense of adventure which led my generation to follow in their footsteps.

Our mountains were broken by our valleys.  Our valleys gave access to our world.  We traveled on foot, made trails where none existed, poked our heads into fox holes on steep cliff sides that would make experienced mountain climbers think twice before scaling.  In our world there were no limits.  Everything was there for our exploration and there were no boundaries laid out before us.

We learned about natural resources unique to our mountains.  We watched the arm on a gas well pumping methodically away as each member of our gang tried to mount it.  We searched endlessly for the opening to a coal mine, just one ridge away from the gas well.  All we found were rotting picnic tables where coal miners spent their lunch hours several decades before us.

The memories of these things cause excitement to well up inside me to the point I can barely stand it.  I’m going home tomorrow.  I’m excited, anxious and nervous.  I remember our world quite differently than it is now.  I know exactly when to roll down my car windows to be welcomed home by that familiar scent, which means I’m finally there.  That is something which has never changed.  But each stint between visits home grows longer and longer.

It is hard for me now to see how different reality is from my memories, which contributes in part to my hesitancy in planning trips home.  There are boundaries now.  I can no longer take off in one direction for days at a time.  I can barely walk an hour before wondering if the owner of the land beyond a fence line is friendly.  There was a time when a name meant everything in our community.  If found trespassing, upon discovery of what family I belonged to, I was welcomed on any man’s land.  There is no such recognition anylonger.  Neighbors are strangers.  Strangers are not welcome.

I sometimes feel a stranger when I return home, even in the secret places most familiar to me.  The world around me there has changed, but my mountains are still there.  They hold the same memories I do.  They hold the memories of my grandfather before me.  My favorite tree is still there, though the brook which runs beside it has long since dried up.  I am too big to fit through the trap door to my tree house though I will still climb the ladder and open the door to poke my head inside.  There are no more Model-T’s to be found on my ridge.  My fear of gravity, developed as an adult, will keep me from my fox holes.

Though this current stretch between visits home has been the longest ever, I fear the next will be even longer.  I am losing the memories of my childhood to reality.  I do not want to return again so soon as to lose more memories to the changes I am confronted with every time I wonder those woods.

Tomorrow I will travel home to my hillsides.  I will walk them alone since my gang has long since grown and moved away, as have I.   My grandfather is still there, but he is far too old to set foot on those hillsides and must now recall his own memories through my adventures.  I’m excited, anxious and nervous to be returning home tomorrow.

— Others in this series —
Traveling Home, part 1 “Our Woods, Our Adventures and Our Mountains”
Traveling Home, part 2 “My Grandmother”
Traveling Home, part 3 “If These Walls Could Talk”

Yesterday morning was absolutely gorgeous. The sky was bright the sun was warm and everything seemed more alive than usual. I had time to kill so I took a walk down by the pond before heading off to work. I found 8 turtles sun bathing, a dozen or so geese including three goslings being escorted by two very over protective parents, and a Blue Heron wading along the shoreline. The dog chased frogs into the pond and Eastern Cottontails into the brush. I felt a rhythm to all the motion surrounding me. All that nature squashed into the same space fit together so perfectly. Surely, in moments like this I’m seeing a reflection of the face of God.

[originally posted in May 2006]