Morning Comes to Nameless Creek

Nameless Creek and the “New Road”–the old horse-traveled postal road–converge about a quarter mile south of the house. They travel side by side, the road often high above the little stream that plunges and riffles its music audibly below. In this image, the roadbed forms the boundary between light and shadow.

Here, the rocky fingers of old mountains form a ravine of rhododendron and jumbled boulders, a secluded and special place for us. This far corner of this piece of earth is what won my heart, back this time of year in 1999. Yes, I thought when we first found this “fortress of solitude”, this might be the place after all, it whispered to me. Someday, you will come here often in early mornings. Someday, you and Ann will spend an hour late in the evening just watching the day become night. Here, night is becoming day. Morning comes slowly to this deep cleft in the hills.

The pine tree beside the lawn chairs–that we could never bring ourselves to put back in the barn–was only head high when we saw it there on our first walk down this way. Things are different now. And things there are just the way they’ve been since the first settlers found this valley in the early 1800s. The seclusion and peace is unchanged since both Confederate and Union deserters took refuge in this wonderfully-forsaken place. It is the same as yesterday, even on days we don’t go there.

The Christmas ferns grow ever-green along the banks. The squirrels chatter from the tops of White Pines, shedding fragments of their morning meal like crumbs from the table. The creek sings whether we are there to listen or not.

And so this is more to me than just a picture of two chairs lost in the woods. These are my woods, and by the possessive I mean so much more than legal ownership. This place has been ours to become part of. It has grown into us. I feel it most here in this spot, a quarter mile from the house, and in the very heart of home.