Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."  ~ John Muir

When I was about four years old, I was given a Little Golden Book about God written by Jane Werner Watson and Eloise Wilkins did the illustrations. It was my very favorite book and I still have it.

Let me give you a snippet...

"Look at the stars in the evening sky, so many millions of miles away that the light you see shining left its star long, long years before you were born. Yet beyond the farthest star, God knows the way."

And...

"Bend down to touch the smallest flower. Watch the busy ant tugging at his load. See the flash of jewels on the insect's back. This tiny would your two hands could span, like the oceans and mountains and far off stars, God planned."

 

I remember the dark skies above the mountain lit with trillions of pinpoints of light and how tiny they made me feel. I remember crackling bonfires made from dead pine knots and roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. When evening became cold and damp we would snuggle beneath one of my grandmother's quilts. Lying there we would watch the tiny sparks travel skyward as if trying to imitate the stars above. I remember long exploring walks in the woods and my excitement over each little vignette of beautiful natural things. I remember feeling that God designed them each for me. I would love a long walk on the mountain of my childhood, but it is nearly winter and so many lovely things rest beneath the snow and ice till spring's reawakening. The scripture says in Genesis 8:22 As long as the world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”

 

While some things are so small I could easily hold them in my hand, there are other things so far away I can't even wrap my mind around them. Yet God knows and He planned the way.

It was an honor to know him!

This was the last time I saw my father before his passing in 2008. He was 89 years old and used up every once of strength he had and then silently flew away. I visited with him about 5 weeks before he died. What a precious and godly man he was! No daughter could even have had better!


One of my all time favorite movies is "The Silence of the North" from 1981. Ellen Burstyn plays the lead roll. It is hard to find now in anything but VHS but it is the true story of Olive Frederickson, a woman who braved the northern wilds of the beautiful Canadian wilderness in about 1920 with a wandering trapper husband. I won't tell you the whole story but in one part her small son dies of meningitis. She is grieving so deeply when one of her young daughters, breaks through the darkness of her mourning when she said this to her mother, "it was an honor to know him".
I feel that way about my father. It was a honor to know him!

Neil Young wrote the song that is on the movie. It was sung by Lacy J. Dalton. Here are part of the lyrics:

...You and I, we were captured
We took our souls and we flew away
We were right, we were giving
And that's how we kept what we gave away

Oh, this old world keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time

Comes a time...

My daddy loved Nature as well as it's Creator God. And I love reading the writings of John Muir. Here is an appropriate quote that makes me think of my daddy, his life, and his loves.

"Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.   
 ~ "My First Summer in the Sierra", John Muir (1911)

Photo taken by my niece of the mountain where my parents lived and we grew up in Western North Carolina.

Remembrances from long ago...

I can still close my eyes and see my Mamaw working in the huge flour bowl making lard biscuits in the morning. Lard may not be in your experience and if so I will pity you, since it made the most delicious biscuits. Since she had been born before the turn of the century and the world changed so much during her lifetime, you can understand that she held to some of the things familiar to her in her younger life. I suppose the use of lard was one of them. Crisco was the alternative by the time I was born but she didn't go there when it came to biscuits. She would work the dough with her hands and then flour a huge board, use a massive rolling pin that I could hardly lift as a child. I believe that my Papaw had made that rolling pin for her. 


But the most operable item in her kitchen was her big cast iron deep skillet. I loved it best when she made a vanilla pound cake in it! Believe me, the crispy crust of the cake was due to that iron skillet and much appreciated by us all. Some things come and go but cast iron is forever.

I remember in the early mornings when my father wrap me up in a quilt and take me with my sister to my grandparents house. My mother was one of the women who braved a new and changing world and went into factory work during WWII and it's aftermath. She met my father there. As they left for work each morning, we were taken to spend the days with my grandparents. So the result is that I have a childhood memories of life more like those of my mother's than that of most children of the 1950's.

Mamaw made eggs every morning and gravy for the biscuits. I assume there was sausage or bacon but they are less of the memory to me. Breakfast on a farm was no small event because it fueled the mornings work. Even though by the time I can recall these memories my grandparents were already older and doing less heavy farm work, breakfast did not change! The sights in my memory rise up from the recesses my brain like the morning fog rises off the dewy fields.

Wild blackberries grew on the mountain. Believe me there is no comparison in the taste of the wild ones to that of the tame variety. We picked a lot of them in the heat of summer days, filling large tin buckets. We had to wear long sleeves and long pants even on the hottest days but preparation for picking them meant kerosene soaked rag strips tied at your ankles and wrists to help deter chiggers. I won't pity you if you are not experienced with them! For some reason chiggers seemed to like me a lot. And then there were ticks... let's hurry back to the food. We ate lots of berries while picking them but I do remember reaching high for a huge one when you're little meant your feet got closer into the shade of the bottom of the bushes and copperhead snakes liked the shade of the bushes! But for every downside there is an upside and the Blackberry Cobbler she made in that cast iron skillet was a great upside! The aroma of blackberries cooking and the promise of cobblers and jelly. That sounds heavenly and tasted even better!

My Mamaw was a wonderful woman. Every single day she always wore an apron over her dress, and would wrap it over her arms if she were cold but it was good for carrying eggs in from the backyard as well. At a moment's notice it was a good catch all. One of my favorite memories is that she would take me on her lap and pull that apron up around me and snuggle me tight. Oh how loved, she and that apron, and all these memories make me feel!

Old Apple Trees and Twisted Wisteria Vines

I have always loved apples and applesauce but not as much as my Daddy did. I am sure that his love of them was the reason he learned to graft the apple trees for a better harvest, and created a small orchard on the family farm. According to my Mama some of the apple trees still standing were planted originally in the 1940's. Here is a photo of one gnarly old but thankfully quite persistent tree.

Someone once called an apple tree the "Matriarch" of a farm. If so, she is our aging, stately, arthritic Great grandmother. She is decked out once more in her blossoms and the bees buzz about appreciatively attending her. I was always afraid of the bees but my Daddy said to be thankful for them or there would be no fruit to enjoy. And enjoy them he did!

Old fashioned Apple Stack Cake was one of his favorite desserts. Most folks used dried apples for that old recipe. I don't remember ever drying apples but Daddy sulphured apples. His sulphured apples would stay in huge cloth covered crocks. They remained snow white, soft, and never discolored. It is amazing that a little sulphur smoke could preserve apple slices so beautifully.

 

I love the look of old twisted Wisteria vines. Mama's were beginning to bloom this year after a severe but needed pruning. Before long they will twist and trail down over the lattices once more, casting off their beautiful fragrance. Spring is too short for my way of thinking!

This farm held us all in it's arms. It was the lovely paradise of my childhood. So I will sum up this post with these thoughts...

The old apple tree once more has bloomed,

alive and hanging on with determination.

Her aging limbs stretch upward to the grey-blue heavens, 

a breeze plays at her delicate dressing.

Spring is the season of hope and sweetness,

 the promise of fruit in due season.

Again I am thankful to see her still standing,

 aware that passing time will remove her.

I stand remembering the farm as it was years ago,

 as the sun sinks low into the gap of the mountain.

The golden glow and low casted shadows fall

on this my home-place of peace and contentment.

Spring

Western North Carolina simply burst into an early Spring while I was there recently. This year's explosion of blooming may not have been just for me but I felt it was a literal voice speaking to my heart. I heard many things. One thing it said to me was that while we live we can look outward and upward with hope and joy. But to do that sometimes we have to look past some things right in front of us. Perhaps focusing beyond where we are at the moment helps us get through some difficult things.

The poet, William C. Bryant wrote: The little windflower whose just opened eye is as blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.

I want to live like this. I want to focus on what will be a reflection in me that gives hope and happiness. I say this in the middle of feeling such sadness because of the loss of my sister-in-law, but she lived her last days with incredible hope and dignity. She didn't focus on the cancer and modeled such peace to all of us. She was a gardener, and nothing made her happier than to garden. Just days before she passed she happily spoke of expecting the blooming of her pear trees in the back yard. By her front porch steps her lovely Bleeding Hearts spoke appropriately of our feelings at her leaving us far too soon. 

Her home looks up from a lovely fertile valley to the lofty Black Mountains. Just beyond them is the Blue Ridge Parkway. Mount Mitchell was her favorite place to visit. That mountain is as high as you can climb east of the Mississippi. Often the mountain is swathed at it's feet with a blanket of fog and has bright sunny winds at it's summit. If you were down in the valley would you be aware the sun is shining in a place beyond where you were? Now that is a thought! I feel that something of her presence will remain up there. And I won't ever go to visit after this without knowing the memory of her rides those winds.

Going to School

If I am calculating right, I started first grade in 1959. I have some very distinct memories of my first year of elementary school. Each room had a low wall unit of Cubby-holes where we placed our books, book bags, and belongings. I don't remember any stealing going on back then. We did misplace things like mittens or sweaters but no one really worried about stealing. We carried book bags. I wonder when back packs came along? Just so you know what a book bag looked like here is a photo of one from the early 1970's. Ours were not so cute. I remember carrying a similar one to this only it was a red plaid.

We had a Cloak Room where I hung my brown corduroy car coat with the barrel buttons. In that Cloak room I would remove my corduroy pants from under my dress. In winter we were allowed to wear pants on the bus but we had to remove them and be properly dressed little girls for the classroom. I remember the little wooden school desks that would give you splinters if you weren't careful. The reason? We were wearing dresses! So bare little legs would suffer if you slide the wrong way. That would get you a trip to the school nurse! Such were the everyday concerns of school life.

Oh! And our Dick and Jane Readers! Such lovely boring little books! "Come Dick. Come Jane. Come and Go! Let's find Spot."  Oh, but I thought they were great. But maybe the best thing about the 1950's was that it didn't take a lot to keep our attention. Obviously. What other explanation is there for Captain Kangaroo and later on Mr. Rogers. I think I looked alot like Jane here, but the hair color.

I still love the smell of Crayola crayons. There was nothing like a new box of pointy unused smelly crayons! I loved cutting out shapes from construction paper but I remember the blunt little scissors were impossible. Safe but impossible. I am glad that I got to be a part of the 1950's, because things didn't stay the way they were very long. I guess I still long for that kind of sweet and innocent simple living.

Chinkypins

By the time the song "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" was written in 1946 most of the American Chestnut trees were dead and chestnuts were hard to find. My grandmother told me of roasting them when she was young. However, we did had a cousin to the Chestnut who survived, the proper name is Chinquapin. Or as we called it Chinkypins. The nuts were very similar to the chestnut but smaller. When my first daughter was born and her eyes turned from newborn deep blue to dark brown my daddy called them her "chinkypin eyes". Little dark chestnut eyes. And her first child has the same eyes.

The Chestnut blight hit in 1904 and most died by the late 30's. Can you imagine 4 billion dying in the Eastern part of the U.S.? Anyway the remains of that dead one was a most beautiful weathered sliver grey. The rough bark was long gone and it was polished smooth by time's sandpaper. I loved it. At some point I remember seeing a red headed woodpecker nesting in a hollow high up near the broken top. I felt better knowing it was sheltering
her babies.
 

Anyway, because the chinkypin burrs were so prickly my daddy would watch for the burrs to open and do the honors and collect them for me. I can still see his mischievous grin when he would hold out his hand full of the little nuts for me. He is gone now too.

Can I just say that time changes all things, and old things pass away, and we have to look back with love at what we now can only remember. I would hate to find out that the old Chestnut tree is completely gone now. I had rather just remember it as it was.




Here is an amazing photo of HUGE chestnut trees while they were still growing and used for lumber in North Carolina. Ours was not this large!