NEWS FROM THE HILLS
The butter-yellow leaves on the mulberry bush are drifting down, one by one. Yesterday the tree was full of the bright leaves; today they are whirling and twirling with the wind.
The woods are past their peak but are still beautiful. The leaves have turned to muted shades of warm brown, tarnished gold and faded reds. The killing frosts of the past two nights have loosened their hold on the trees, and they are drifting down with each gust of wind.
Another October is almost gone, and another season of my life is passing. The seasons seem to come closer together. The days drift by like the falling leaves, dropping faster and faster on the ground. There is a sense of urgency in the restless wind which seems to warn that colder days are ahead.
There is a magical place in my memory that I return to each year at this time. It is a place of my childhood, away from the everyday bustle of life, tucked deep in the woods of Clay County. There were no marks of civilization, other than a dirt road that followed the creek.
Daddy took us there every year during squirrel season. We would pitch a big tent under the shelter of an enormous beech tree beside the creek, which ran clear and clean. There were no houses within miles, except Uncle Homer’s old house around the bend and out of sight.
No other place smells quite like that spot. It was a unique fragrance hard to describe. It was warm sunshine on dry, fallen leaves, rich soil and the spicy scent of pines and rhododendron. The creek was clear and sparkling, and very cold. Silvery minnows darted through the ripples and around rocks. We waded after them in water so cold it made our teeth chatter.
Bordering the creek were enormous rocks just right to climb. Deer berry vines grew thickly over the rocks, and in the rich soil above them. They were ripe in October and we eagerly gathered and ate them. Mountain teaberries were tastier, and we picked them also.
Rhododendron thickets crowded the hillsides and provided shelter and protection for the deer that roamed there. It was wild and isolated, and we loved it. Years before, Grandma O’Dell’s family lived in the Ha’nted Lick area nearby, and she told many hair-raising stories of unusual happenings there.
There were peculiar noises that emanated from the Lick. Daddy told us that there was probably a natural explanation for that, such as possible gas bubbles which erupted in the spring. The Lick was an innocent-looking place, low and swampy, where deer came to get minerals and salt from the water there.
Still, when we sat around the campfire with darkness all around and unfamiliar night noises in the woods behind us, it was eerie to hear the old tales of the past. Daddy told us that one day the family heard a cowbell on the hillside, and they kept waiting and watching for the cow to appear. It never did, and there was no trace of it. Grandma had heard men and women talking as they were walking down the path toward the house. No one ever appeared.
We were deliciously frightened and almost afraid to go to bed, but after we were all settled down in the tent, snuggled up close to one another, we felt safe and secure. Morning brought breakfast cooked over an open fire, bacon and potatoes fried in an iron skillet, and biscuits baked in a Dutch oven. What wonderful days those were, when all the family was together.
These things can never be done again, but each October brings warm and happy memories of those days spent at Hickory Knob.
A VAGABOND SONG
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gipsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill aflame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
By Bliss Carmen
We have had several requests this week for various things. Robbie Withrow of Elkview has a Conservo pressure canner, but needs instructions on how to use it. Is anyone familiar with this brand? Lee Defabio of So. Charleston is looking for a poem which begins, “Father calls me William, Mother calls me Bill . . .”
Hazel Stover of Clay is searching for the words to an old Civil War song. She says the title could be “Just as the Sun Goes Down.” She adds, “My father, Z. T. Whaling, sang this song many times to me when I was a little girl, and I am almost 91. I would love to know it all! The song talks about two young soldiers, lying side by side after a battle had taken place. One wore a coat of blue, the other a coat of gray.”
One verse went like this:
“One thought of Mother at home alone, feeble, old and gray.
One of his sweetheart he’d left in town, happy, young and gay.
One kissed a ringlet of thin gray hair, the other one of brown,
Bleeding and dying upon the field, just as the sun went down.”
She also supplied another verse to the song that appeared in last week’s column, “Did You Ever Go Sailin’?”
There’s a mother old and gray,
Who waits down memory’s way,
And I know she is waiting there for me.
I know that some day she will gladly welcome me,
To that cabin, at the end of, my river of memory.
Bob Craft of Texas writes that there has been an exodus of “snout-nosed” butterflies on their way to Mexico. That is a term unfamiliar to me; it must be a local name. Now the Monarch butterflies are leaving there for a warmer climate, and abundant food.
The constant din of the cicadas and katydids is absent now, and the hills are preparing for cold weather. We also must get ready.
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