River of Dreams
By Bill Baker
I had wandered several miles that day. It was
autumn; late in the season ... one of those cool and beautifully bright days
when all haze and humidity had dissipated. With an unhurried stride I tramped
along the edge of a woods and across some old abandoned pasture fields, my
progress unfettered by fence or briar, every other step punctuated by the
cadence of my twisted walking stick poking the ground. The sun stabbed
dazzling shards of radiance at me bayonets of light, which thrust through the
leafless branches of the trees and the lashes of my squenched eyes as I
walked.
Wafting out of the west, a light breeze urged me along.
In its tumbling wake I trod, observing each minute change of its course in the
bowing fronds of golden broom sage. The air was delightfully cool and fresh,
and I breathed it deeply, inhaling the healthy fragrance of cedar and the
musty earthiness of dry leaves and oak bark. Lifting my eyes, I saw the
Appalachian Mountains standing tall and stark against the sky slate blue
against an ethereal turquoise. Hangover Mountain rose majestic above all,
cresting towards the east ... a podium built by the Creator for greeting the
new day.
Lapping at the bottom of the rolling hillside upon
which I stood were the placid waters of a lake man-made, an unnatural
aberration upon an ancient landscape. Stopping for a while, I stood and gazed
out over its surface, pondering, thinking back, remembering the old river
valley ... now entombed in a watery grave. A veil of melancholy fell over me
for, in my youth, I had known it well.
I had known each and every turn of its winding country
roads, of the main paved one that followed the river, and every dirt and
gravel lane that connected to it. I remembered a clattering old school bus
bouncing in and out of chug holes, hauling a noisy load of rowdy "young'uns"
the mail man's car, eternally caked with mud a teenage boy, ripping along the
gravel roads in a '53 Mercury, exhilarated by his first taste of manly
freedom, and the kiss of a freckled faced girl. I remembered dusty coupes and
sedans floating across the river on a ferryboat pushed by a smoking little
outboard motor. And, the steel bridge, rusty and aging, its creaking cross
bucks groaning in protest each time a car crossed over it, while on the muddy
creek bank below, a tousle-headed boy with a cane pole sat watching a float. I
remembered great rumbling log trucks mashed to the earth underneath oversize
loads, driven by wiry men with rosin stiffened overalls and week-old beards.
And, I recalled an old farmer doddling along the river road in a chugging
pickup; never driving any faster than his fat dog could trot the truck's shaky
cattle racks swaying from
side to side.
I had known every humble white frame house along the
way, each with a porch and an assortment of ladder backed chairs, some
rocking, some straight-legged, and always, a swing or a sliding metal lounge.
There on those porches, where the womenfolk pared apples and broke beans in
the summer while the children of the family, their young bodies so full of
energy that they never seemed to tire, swung on skreaking screen doors and let
flies in the house, running in and out, letting the door slap shut, until one
of the women would yell, "Get in or get out!" I remembered the big shade trees
in front of the houses; maple, oak, and box elm, where the men sat after
Sunday dinner, whittling and chewing, talking about crops, coon dogs,
politics, and the old days.
I remembered the tin roofed barns, their plank siding
gray and weathered ... the site of frantic frolicking corncob fights between
cousins and kin. In my mind's eye I could still see the fields, bordered by
locust fence posts strung together with rusty barbwire. And, I recalled the
names of the families that lived along the river. They lay permanently etched
upon my mind, still scrawled there like a name on a mailbox in front of a
lonely house where no one lives anymore. Looking back through the years,
familiar faces I saw once again... in particular, the faces of the old
people...
The old men, with sweat stained Fedoras and patched
overalls of pale blue, fading to white their gaunt faces crinkled from long
days in the sun, long days of hoeing, plowing, and working the river bottom
hay fields vigorously gumming a cud of chewing tobacco leathery brown hands,
knotty and callused with bodies stiff and bent, but spirits yet young, quick
to laugh an easy laugh or tell a big yarn fathers that taught their sons what
their fathers had taught them, and that, whether it be a man or a mule, if it
won't work, it ain't worth much...
The old women, with bosoms low, gingham aprons and
thick beige hose a dip of snuff under the bottom lip a pair of cat-eye glasses
hands gnarled from a long hard lifetime of work, and pruney, from washing
clothes by hand ... but soft and gentle against a crying grandchild's cheek
... their hearts, great wells of human compassion, sustaining three and four
generations of family mothers who taught their daughters what their mothers
had taught them heartbroken mothers, a telegram and a purple heart put away
years ago in an old family Bible, the lives of their beloved sons, freedom's
price, whose last breaths rose heavenward above horrid fields of death,
faraway from this peaceful valley...
Those humble hard-working people... could they have
ever conceived in their youths that the land they were raised upon would one
day be drowned? Would they have ever thought that the very soil they plowed
and hoed and raised their families upon would one day be turned to mud? It
saddened me to think about it.
My thoughts rambled back to the ambitious youth who had
left this old valley decades ago, a teen-age boy who had set out on his own
and who had relentlessly labored the greater part of his life away in a big
city, giving up all that he had known for the wealth and material possessions
which he thought would bring fulfillment. Now, with years grown short 'and
spirit decimated, too late the realization came, true wealth had been
discarded in favor of a slavish, rushing life of debt and worry. For, in
truth, no amount of money can purchase anything more gratifying than the
simple pleasures of a humble life well lived among loving family and faithful
friends, in a God blessed land. But now, now that I had finally came home...
there was nothing to come home to.
As I stood there, leaning on my walking stick,
pondering upon things lost, I heard a bird call out from above. Raising my
head, I pushed back my hat and saw a beautiful red-tailed hawk. With wings
spread wide, it seemed to just be hanging there, effortlessly, floating upon a
current about a hundred feet in the air above where I stood. Oddly, the hawk
was looking directly at me, staring down from above with its head cocked...
showing no sign of fear. It seemed incredible at first that a wild creature
such as a hawk would come so close and do such a thing. As I stared back, I
began to feel an extraordinary current between the bird and myself, a
spiritual linking with a being whose life force I instinctively recognized as
being equal to mine. It was as if the hawk knew what I had been thinking, and
had appeared to share something with me. The experience was surreal... unlike
anything that I had ever felt before. once again the hawk cried out ... an
anguishing note that seemed to carry within it, some emotion ... an emotion of
loss.
Suddenly, out of the blue, I remembered being at my
grandmother's house once when I was a very small child. While I was there, an
elderly Cherokee herb doctor called Walking Stick stopped by to visit her and
peddle some of his remedies. Sitting at the kitchen table with his herbs all
spread out before him, I remembered, he had talked to my grandmother for a
good while concerning the curative properties of each herb and bark, and about
how the Creator had originally provided Man with all that he needed within
nature. But Man wasn't satisfied he had said, and for the want of more, Man
had sought to change the world to suit his own selfish desires, and that in
doing so, in the end he would only bring about his own misery, unhappiness,
and destruction.
I had hardly given this small episode of my life a
second thought in all these years, but now it rushed back to me with an
astounding clarity. I could still see him plainly, old Walking Stick, his long
gray hair falling below his shoulders. With a child's innocent powers of
observation I saw him wistfully looking out my grandmother's kitchen window at
the mountains and river valley. His eyes however, seemed to be focusing upon
something that only he could see. After a moment, he spoke again. He said that
long ago, his people, the Cherokee, had once called this valley their home,
and that when they were forced to leave; all they left behind was the bones of
their ancestors... and the red-tailed hawk to cry over them.
The hawk called out again, an expression of anguish, a
crying out from on high for that which is lost and can never be had again.
Now, all these many, many years later... I truly understood Walking Stick's
words. An overwhelming surge of enlightenment and sorrow filled me, and I
raised a hand towards the hawk. With an easy flap of its wings the majestic
bird then banked on the wind and gracefully sailed away up the lost river
valley, heading towards the east and the far blue mountains. Left behind on
the sage covered hillside, I stood and watched, watching until the hawk became
a tiny speck against the eastern sky, and finally disappeared.
All the time I stood watching, I also stood wishing,
wishing with all of my heart ... that I could be a hawk too.