LETTERS from CRICKET SONG

Missive the Ninth:

The Sharp Arrow

Flies Past Its Zenith.

Just Enough Time to Beat Dark Home.

Dateline: Friday, August 18, 2000, at 2300 hours CDT.

Conway, Arkansas, USA

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles

CornDancer & Company

Cricket Song is quiet, subdued. A long journey has ended. Rest is absolutely essential. I am very weary.

The trip took longer than expected. I left Mountain Town, heading west, but twenty-three years had to pass before I could turn back to the east and drive home.

I've never cared too much for the river basin and the valley, but my journeys always seem to end at a domicile in one or the other. Cricket Song is a cannon volley's flight distant from another river. Now that I think about it, other than my sojourns in Mountain Town and some years of duty as a soldier, I've lived close by a river -- the Arkansas, the Mississippi, the Danube -- for all of my life.

Circumstance and the Demands of True Love.

"You're a river man, you just won't admit it," my Mate said.

Maybe. I'd rather think I'm a mountain man, displaced from the hills by circumstance and the demands of true love.

Mountain Town is where I attended University. Twice. The first time I failed dismally and ended up in the United States Army. The second time I mixed a few triumphs into the familiar pattern of failure, but fail I did. I left without a degree, but with a strong habit for drink, smoke, and wild situations.

That was in 1977. When summer arrived I needed seven more hours to complete my degree studies, but the job wouldn't wait. It was the job I wanted. I wanted the money, the excitement. Why take four more hours of freshman biology and one more class of German language when the alternative was so seductive. I drove my black MGB to the wild west and became a Big City reporter. To this day I remain the unfully educated man.

On Wednesday I returned to Mountain Town. It wasn't the first trip back, but the first one that mattered. Number One Son needed a ride to his freshman dormitory. I was willing to provide it.

The Heady Elixir of Freedom.

He handled the move with a stoic calm. The dorm was well nigh empty. The mass arrival of freshmen was scheduled for Sunday, but his place in the marching band required an early arrival for auditions and practices. As I watched him unpack and arrange things, I could tell he was quickly warming to the new situation. Freedom can be a heady elixir, inspiring and fortifying. He was ready.

My boy gave me a strong hug and sent me on my way. I was satisfied. I was glad he would march in the band, and not to battle. I had just enough time to beat dark home.

I chose a different path from that of the morning drive. Instead of the fast four-lane interstate, I opted for familiar two-lane backroads, old roads, spartan and very lightly travelled. The pavement is a hard, tight mix of gravel embedded in concrete. Twenty-some years ago the MGB held tight to the sharp, banked curves and flew like an arrow through the narrow, rising straightaways.

The lane I traveled on Wednesday meanders along ridge tops on the south slopes for about seventy miles to a dead-end at the junction. The forest crowds the pavement for cozy stretches of miles, raising a leafy canopy over the passing few vehicles -- but not like it once did. Now the canopy is broken in places by new meadows, or by stands of young woods. Thousands of old growth hickories, oaks, sycamores, cedars, and maples have fallen. The earnest saplings standing in their places cannot grow fast enough in my lifetime to restore the scene I remember. The axes have been too hungry, the years too swift.

Late summer foliage hid the grand vistas to the north and south, but I knew it, knew what was hidden. I knew the veiled beauty, knew what glorious scenes would be presented to any eye that might open in the high spaces just beyond the roadway treeline. I remembered it from wintry drives to trailheads in the protected watershed, from hikes into the uninhabited headwaters of three rivers. It is my favourite place on Earth.

Something Is Falling into an Ill-Defined Cycle.

The air rushed through the windows of my son's fine old truck. I hadn't passed another wayfarer for dozens of miles. A stray rain shower had wetted the pavement, but it was drying quickly. The air was pregnant with aromas of natural life, with pollens and springwaters and mosses, with cobwebs and furs, thick carpets of the fallen leaves of uncounted autumns, and unknown smells from the mysterious hollows.

I rued certain lost dreams, but only a little. The sharp arrow had been flying to its fullness for an appointed time, it was well past its zenith, it was falling into an ill-defined cycle. It seemed natural to be passing this way again, differently.

At the junction where the eastward path ended, I turned south. To the north was mountainous wilderness, but I wasn't properly outfitted. There wasn't enough time to pitch a tent, if I'd had one, and I couldn't have made camp before dark fell. To the south was the descending slope, a road to the river, the path home to my Mate. The turn was easy to make.

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