The Hills of Home

by Jory Sherman

  The transition between worlds takes several moments. This is a time to empty the brain of thoughts, to clear the ears of civilized sounds and let them fill with the first stirrings of woodland noises.

  Sounds, like the light of dawn, move slowly, almost imperceptibly on the still air. The woods creak like the floorboards of a house, as if someone was tiptoeing across a room. A twig snaps, either from a footfall or from a change in the temperature, leaves rustle on a branch somewhere, wings flap as an unseen bird flies through the trees.

  `As vision sharpens, so does the hearing. The trees take shape and the shadows of saplings turn a pale green. The light is cold and featureless at this hour, a pewter smear on the horizon. But the sounds in the woods increase and magnify. A squirrel chitters, a bird trills, and a whippoorwill, in another distant wood, gives a last throaty cry, a farewell to night as much as a welcome to the day.

  Now, the woods come alive with sound. Sometimes the noise is almost deafening, at others, you have to listen hard to hear the creatures creep forth, move suspiciously over little pathways toward unknown destinations. But there is a kind of harmony to all of it, with different voices filtering into the main melody, joined by various other fugues until there is but one song made up of many others.

  These are the woodsongs I came to hear: the zephyrs moving the tree branches, coursing through the fallen leaves, the barking of a squirrel, the yelp of a turkey, the far away hum of the spring waters splashing over flat stones, the mockingbirds and the robins, the cawing crows, the trill of the meadowlark, and the whirring purr of a late-staying hummingbird zipping through the trees.

  Insects boil out of the grasses, and a dog barks beyond the woods. A cow bawls somewhere, and a woodpecker screeches before it hammers a tattoo on a hickory trunk. Sounds of morning commerce in the hardwoods. Sounds of life that tell of the spirit that moves through all things.

  Woodsongs.

  The Trees

  IT IS HARD not to think of the trees here in these hills as friends.

  I hear them in the morning as they sing their green songs. I shake hands with them after I have had my half cup of coffee sometime after dawn. They make me smell good after a night's sleep. It must be that their fragrance seeps through the open windows and soaks into my flesh during the night. These are the cedars I'm talking about. They are everywhere on this jungled farmstead, all sizes, shapes and personalities.

  Some are big enough to make you feel small. Some are young and tender, afraid of being turned into fence posts, kindling, chests, walls, Christmas trees. Some of them are gnarled by the wind, homely in their bending.

  On the high ground above our small pond, they get the brunt of the hard weather and heavy snows that flock their branches in winter. Others are confident and smiling, arrogant toward the deciduous oaks and hickories that stand as towering neighbors. Still others are comfortable, like old chairs, happy to have us stroll among them, glad to have us sit sheltered in their shade.

  These cedars are special to me, with their rough, scratchy fingers. Yet their touch is as comforting as any delicate hand. When they are laden with the tiny blueberries, they seem proud and pregnant, radiating a silent reverence for life.

  Some of the old cedars bear scars. These wounds hurt when you touch them because the imagination is more powerful than sight. I have seen the cedars bleed their amber blood, seen the sap eke out, catch the sun until, saturated with light, it shines like a jewel.

  In their soft songs, when their branches are played by the wind, the cedars are green-gowned ladies in a Victorian garden; in their deep-throat bass humming, they are stately gentlemen in chorus, stalwart singers of a time gone by in a faraway land.

  On a spring morning like this, the trees are almost ambulatory in the shift of light. They seem to move like veridian chess pieces in the forest, fragrantly subtle, and with great feeling, a feeling that surges through you when you come close, listen.

  A periwinkle sky and the hills shimmering in the sun conspire to light the cedars up like aquamarine candles. Green fire, like a million emeralds shattered into shards, splinters over the ridges, the slopes, until even the hollows blaze with a dazzling light. Heady scents scrawl invisible tracks down the slopes on vagrant zephyrs that thread through this valley, transform it into a constantly changing tapestry of wildwood.

  I have seen those humble cedars sleeping at night under a full moon as though they were statues of people in a garden. I have felt them whisper against my fences in the darkness, swaying green islets floating anchorless toward shore. It's an affirmation of life to see them stolid in the dark, pewtered to a dull silver by the moon, a shelter for birds and beasts, a haven for life both wild and tame.

  I like the cedars because they are not native to the Ozarks. Because they are considered homely and useless, and because they grow so fast and so thick on these hills, not many people like them. I do. I like them because I can see into their hearts and remember my mother's cedar chest and the soft colors of the wood grain, striated like a western sunset. I like them because they give up their full fragrance only when they are dead. Their aromatic scent lingers for generations.

  Do the cedars pirouette in circles like ballerinas in the dusk? Do they surge up and down the hills, or stand, still as sentinels, for eternity?

  I don't know.

  Light is shadow, color is shadow. Goethe believed, and perhaps he was right. We cannot see all that exists, we can only determine existence through our senses and through intuition. Shadows of things, hidden windows in the fabric of a complicated, tumultuous universe.

  The cedars move for me, in and out of time, deciding memory, captivating thought, stirring desire, roiling up unseen things for the eyes to probe, prodding the deepest instincts of the restless, searching mind. I rub their cocoon-like bark and feel the sting of their needles.

  I breathe of them and breathe of time past.

  I think of the cedar trees here as friends. Newcomers, like me. Yet, here to stay as long as seeds blow in the wind, settle and take root in the soil.

  They produce no edible fruit nor nuts nor berries. Cedars are the weeds of the tree kingdom. They are homely and not suitable to build frame houses. People chop them up and use pieces of them for little souvenir boxes or to line chests with in order to kill moth larvae.

  To hear some people talk, no one would miss them if they were suddenly uprooted, taken from the Ozarks.

  I would miss them.

  A Home in the Ozarks

  AS USUAL, I've been lost all afternoon. Lost in these Ozarks hills, lost in the woods, among the trees. My eye and mind on the clouds floating through the skies, the snow white thunderheads bulging like cotton boles out of a gunnysack, the gray clouds underneath, elephantine with rain. And, I've been listening to the gentle breeze sighing through the leaves like a kind of voiceless song.

  Today, I'm camped down on Bull Shoals Lake, near Cedar Creek, Missouri. This is where I've been working for a time, where I've been walking and fishing and dreaming. But, I could very well be somewhere else, in another valley, another hollow, along the shore of another lake. I feel at home here, as I've felt at home everywhere I've ever been, be it Big Timber, Montana, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, the Rio Grande or the San Isabel wildernesses in Colorado, fishing the Tongue in Wyoming, gazing at the Willamette or the Columbia in Oregon, swimming in the Russian in California, looking down at the Great Salt Lake in Utah, or following the Snake through Idaho.

  But, there is something special about these hills and hollows in Arkansas and Missouri, something that reminds me of my place on this planet and in the universe. I'm drawn to them, lured by them, enticed by their gentle grandeur, their lush green trees, their wildlife. I have seen them through all the seasons for the past few years, become accustomed to the endless woods, the life and death struggle for survival among the denizens that roam the forests.

  The other day two young deer romped past my camper, running from wood to wood across the road, their white tai
ls up and flared like paramecium sails. And, I've seen the gray foxes at night, roaming the campground, ghostly in the moonlight. Two nights ago, coyotes came in their stead and they sang for me. I was the only one here and I think they knew that. They played under the moon for a while and then returned to the fastness of the woods, chasing after each other like a bunch of kids playing hooky.

  It is peaceful here today, as it is most days. The campground is empty and I seldom hear the noise of a car. Such times are precious and present an opportunity to meditate, to sit quietly and just listen to the soundlessness in between the diurnal noises of birds and insects. In the vacuum, you can hear the voices of your heart, feel the yearning for home, not the earthly home, but the promised home, beyond this life. Oh yes, the yearning is there, always. It may be faint at times, but it's a universal longing, a wish to be close to the Creator of all things, the Father.

  The eternal questions form in my mind. And, the answers.

  Who am I? I do not know, for sure. That is why I am here, in this place. To find out who I am.

  Where did I come from? There is no easy reply to this one, for such thoughts are cosmic in nature. I can trace only a small part of the thread, back to the womb. But from where before that? And before that? I can say, at times, that I came from some eternal place. That I was always there and always will be. But such answers are based solely on faith and faith is small and fragile, often tenuous. I have a strong hunch where I came from, but I cannot prove it. Someday, I'm sure I will know.

  And, finally. Where am I going? Again, the answer is difficult. It is enough, during these times of solitude, to know that I am going somewhere. I may have other stops along the way, but I feel sure that I will reach some final destination. And, perhaps, it will be where I've always been, only on a different plane.

  Where am I going? Always, we are always going home.

  Home.

  The most beautiful word in the English language, say some. It is a word that resonates deep in the heart of every human being. Home. It is where we are, it is where we came from. It is where we are going.

  I have a home here, for the moment. I have another home near a city. And, I have a home somewhere, for all eternity.

  So, I'm content to be in this home, for now. A home for a restless, wandering spirit, a place where a gypsy soul can camp and feel free while standing still for a brief moment in eternity.

  Home. It feels good to be home.

  Jory Sherman

  Jory Sherman began his literary career as a poet in San Francisco's famed North Beach during the heyday of the so-called "Beat Generation." His poetry was widely published when he began writing fiction.

  He has won numerous awards for his poetry and prose and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, GRASS KINGDOM. He was a Spur Award winner from Western Writers of America for his novel, THE MEDICINE HORN.

  He now lives on a prime fishing lake in East Texas. Visit Jory's web site at:

  http://www.readwest.com/jorysherman.htm

  Table Of Contents

  Foreword

  The Coming of Spring

  The Butterflies

  Farm in Morning

  The Bottle Shop

  Taking a Walk

  Twilight

  Bull Shoals Camp

  Things of Beauty

  Foxfire Mist

  The Creek at Sunsettle

  Ozarks Critters

  The Summer People

  Comes the Hunter

  Granny: a Love Story

  Guardians

  The Girl down the Road

  July's Fire

  Widow's Lamp

  After Quail

  Nocturne

  In Silent Wood

  The Persistence of Memory

  Once Upon a Farm

  A Bit of Shadow, a Sum of Light

  Cedar Creek Woodsongs

  The Trees

  A Home in the Ozarks

  Jory Sherman

  eBook Info

  Identifier:0759924333

  Title:The Hills of Home

  Creator:Jory Sherman

  Date:09/01/2000

  Copyrights:2000 Jory Sherman; Cvoer art by Mary Z. Wolf

  Publisher:Hard Shell Word Factory

  Subject:Short Stories

  Description:Jory Sherman's portraits of people and places in the Ozarks hills transport the reader to a land of haunting and timeless beauty. His lyrical prose captures the chromatic harmonies of language in his vivid descriptions of a homeland hidden in the heart of America. His words have the taste and feel of a summer breeze riffling through the trees and caressing a quiet lake or stirring the waters of a meandering stream winding through deep hollows and lush green meadows where the deer graze on long grasses. THE HILLS OF HOME is filled with emotions and the eternal singing of the senses, a book that illuminates the human spirit with overtones of joy and undertones of tragedy while opening a window into a world of surprise and wonder. Finally, this is a book of journeys through the human heart to a place called home.