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The Artist’s
Almanac
January 2005
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No day’s remembrance shall the
good regret,
Nor wish one bitter moment to forget;
They stretch the limits of this narrow span,
And, by enjoying, live past life again.
- F. Lewis
At last - the quiet
month.
The cleaning, cooking,
feasting, mailings, and parties past, the frenzy of shopping,
wrapping and unwrapping ended, the house guests finally gone, it is,
at last, a time for quiet. And long walks.
Summer is the worst
time for walking. Ticks, chiggers and snakes infest the woods, and
the verdant trees hide their trunks and block all seeing amongst
them. Morbid humidity settles in, brambles block paths, and the
merest stroll is a drenching effort.
In January the trees
stand like ranks of heroes atop distant ridges, their purple trunks
silhouetted against an orange sunset. Gulls wheel in white swirls
above the lake shrieking their wild, dulcet cries of fish and of the
sheer joy of flying on a bright winter’s day. A three miler is no
sweat.
We usually have a
midwinter thaw in January, and then is when, good wife and I, we
walk the place. We begin at the old log carriage barn where Andy
Jackson probably stabled when he came upriver to visit the Wyllie
Plantation and to breeze his mares on the track in the river bottom.
We descend the rocky road to Hidden Valley. This old way is lined by
cedars so ancient you may flatten your back against them and,
looking up, feel the wind and imagine yourself in a redwood forest,
where even the largest of trunks dances to nature’s music.
We cross the spring
branch, deep here near the river, on a log footbridge and strike the
lakeshore, heavily wooded with old growth forest of oaks and maples.
We follow the footpath as it ascends past the Indian graves and
squamash patch to the hill field. Here, from the highest point, we
can look upriver twenty miles on a clear day to see the White
Elephant – the cooling tower of the abandoned Hartsville nuclear
plant.
We cross the dividing
ridge, taking to the thickets to avoid picking up the dogs at our
son’s house, where we can hear the grandchildren at play. We follow
the rutted Buffalo trial to circle back to the river bluff, where we
look once more into the rock reinforced machine gun nest where some
of General Patton’s soldiers defended itself others practicing their
Rhine crossing here. The artillery piece it defended would shake our
school in town sixty years ago, and we could hear the steamboat
whistles as well, as they plied the river with cargo.
We trace the Corps
boundary line along the bluff, replacing fallen markers, until we
reach the wet weather spring above the cove and the stump of the old
slave-built stone fence marking the back line. This we follow
through the oak woods until we reach the boundary oak at the corner,
where we turn and cross the rocky branch, which descends to Station
Camp Creek. We skirt the thorny Black Forest until we hit the farm
road, which we follow back to the nursery field. There we look for
arrowheads and stone awls as we cross the old Indian Village site.
To the north the houses march out from town. We descend the farm
road to house, home and a cup of tea.
At twilight before a
blazing hearth we reflect on our life here and the life of the many
others who inhabited or traversed this land, including:
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The nameless
prehistoric tribes, who left only their stone box graves and the
shells of the river mussels they once roasted and consumed.
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The followers of
Dragon Canoe, or Hanging Maw, who came seeking blood.
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The slaves with
first names only who lived in the primitive cabins marked only by
stone foundation stumps.
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George Wyllie and
his family who lived in the large plantation house on the hill,
who found himself surrounded by an encampment of East Tennessee
Union Troops who ate his cattle, stole his horses and burned his
fences for firewood, leaving him with only one old peafowl.
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The young Union
soldier, dying here of dysentery, whom George Wyllie took into his
own house and nursed, even as his own sons were away in the
Confederate Army, and of his letters back home saying he could be
cured by just one drink of cold spring water from his mountain
homeplace.
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The boys from New
York and Chicago who camped here in the summers of the 40s,
startled by the night sounds of the katydids and bullbats. Many of
these young men lost their lives at Normandy or in the Bulge.
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Los amigos who come
from south of El Rio Grande and now till these fields.
We reflect as well on
our lives here, of the coming of brides and grandchildren, of summer
lawns with horseshoes and catching fireflies, of riding schools,
anniversary dances, Halloween parties with scary walks through dark
woods and fortune tellers, of harvest and bluegrass festivals,
sightings of deer, turkey, and bald eagles, of gardens past, with
fresh vegetables and flowers three quarters of the year, of quiet
small dinner parties and good talk, of fishing below the bluff with
granddad, of the sounds of children playing and laughing.
Janus was an ancient
Roman god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in
opposite directions, whose festival month was January. We honor his
month with resolutions for the future, some forsaken and all
ultimately forgotten. Then future becomes past and, as we live out
our lives, we all of us grow finally to have more of memories than
we have of future here.
Dr. Johnson makes
sense of all these wandering thoughts in his Rambler, number 41, On
Memory.
…Almost all that
we can be said to enjoy is past or future; the present is in
perpetual motion, leaves us as soon as it arrives…and is only
known to have existed by the effects which it leaves behind. The
greatest part of our ideas arises, therefore, from the view before
or behind us, and we are happy or miserable, according as we are
affected by the survey of our life, or our prospect of future
existence.
It is therefore,
I believe, much more common for the solitary and thoughtful to
amuse themselves with schemes of the future, than reviews of the
past. For the future is pliant and ductile, and will be easily
moulded by a strong fancy into any form. But the images which
memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the
objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their
signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all
attempts of erasure, or of change.
As the
satisfactions, therefore, arising from memory are less arbitrary,
they are more solid, and are indeed, the only joys which we can
call our own. Whatever we have once deposited…in the sacred
treasure of the past is out of reach of accident, or violence, nor
can be lost either by our own violence, nor can be lost either by
our own weakness, or by another’s malice.
Be fair or foul or rain or
shine,
The joys I have possess’d in spite of fate are mine,
Not heav’n itself upon the past has pow’r,
But what has been, and I have had my hour
- Dryden
…There is
certainly no greater happiness than to look back on a life
usefully and virtuously employed….Life, in which nothing has been
done …to distinguish one day from another, is to him that has
passed it, as if it had never been, except that he is conscious
how ill he has husbanded the great deposit of his Creator. Life,
made memorable by crimes, and diversified thro’ its several
periods by wickedness, is indeed easily reviewed, but reviewed
only with horror and remorse.
The great
consideration which ought to influence us in the use of the
present moment, is to arise from the present effect, which, as
well or ill applied, it must have upon the time to come; for
though its actual existence be inconceivably short, yet its
effects are unlimited, and there is not the smallest period of
time but may extend its consequences, either to our hurt or our
advantage, through all eternity, and give us reason to remember it
for ever, with anguish or exultation.
In youth, however
unhappy, we solace ourselves with the hope of better fortune, and
however vicious, appease our consciences with intentions of
repentance; but the time comes at last, in which life has no more
to promise, in which happiness can be drawn from recollection, and
virtue will be all that we can recollect with pleasure.
Let us resolve then,
this January, to make ourselves good memories.
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