“No, jest a traipsin’ trip. But Miz Christy and I mought go a-berryin’.”
And so we would be off with our picnic food packed in one of Fairlight’s homemade honeysuckle baskets.
I might never have discovered who I really was or have gotten answers to the relentless questions that had driven me to the Cove without those quiet hours spent with Fairlight in the mountains. I do not know why it is that an intimate contact with wild life and a personal observation of nature helps so much in this self-discovery. But that it is so, I have seen in other people’s lives as well as my own. Not that my hometown Asheville was such a large city. Perhaps it is just that even a small city provides artificial distractions which separate us from the roots of our life; even a few bricks and a little macadam are a shield between us and the wisdom that nature has to give.
But there was no macadam in the world of Cutter Gap. And there was Fairlight who had so much to teach me: where the delicate pink lady’s-slippers grew; where the best huckleberry balds were for berries for her juicy pies; that when the jay-birds were “a-hollerin’ and raisin’ a scrapin’-fuss, it was a-clabberin’ up for bad weather,” how to make a superior fishing line out of plaited horse hair—one that would not tangle when caught in branches overhanging the stream; and some spots for brook trout so good that we never failed to bring fish back home.
I reveled in all this. Each time the two of us went out, it became a game with me to find a picnic spot more delightful than the last one. My favorites were always beside one of those clear mountain streams. We would hear the music of the tumbling water in the distance and make our way toward it over a woodland carpet of pine needles inches thick, or down the incline of a narrow, ill-defined path winding between huckleberry bushes, skirting the boulders. If there happened to be a weeping willow overhanging the water, then for me this was a spot out of a dream.
Most of these were shallow streams, but always with the water rushing and rollicking, so clear that every pebble on the bottom was magnified. Baby trout playing tag in and out of the rocks could be seen as plainly as if they were swimming under glass. The sun sifting through moving branches overhead would splinter the light into diamonds on the water, tossing them back into my eyes with such magic that I would want to shout and dance just for the joy of living—and usually did. Fairlight understood. She always understood.
Then like a couple of children we would toss off our shoes to wade, tying our skirts around our waists with a belt or a string, and go squealing into that achingly cold water. Tired and dusty feet would cool off in a hurry; in minutes we would be blue to the ankles. We would dry our toes luxuriously on moss or in a bed of ferns and proceed to the selection of that perfect flat rock for our picnic table. If watercress and mint, sometimes even wild strawberries or raspberries, happened to be growing nearby these could always be worked into our menu. The delicate cress washed clean would be added to our sandwiches. The strawberries or raspberries mounded on large clean galax leaves would be our dessert.
If we found a spring nearby, Fairlight taught me to pick a few sprigs of mint, wash it, chew it thoroughly; then when my taste buds had been refreshed by the mint, take a drink of the spring water. Most mountain water was superb but this mint appetizer surely made it the longest, coolest, most delicious drink of water in the world! I often thought that it should have been served in a silver goblet.
The noon meal over, sometimes we would doze off lying on the moss or the fragrant pine needles, or just lie there looking up at the sky through the trees. Neither of us felt uneasy about not talking.
These days, more often than not, I would lie there thinking about David. Over and over I had relived those moments that night when he had first kissed me. Since then there had been little chance for conversation between us. Wistfully, I wondered if men were always taciturn in romantic situations. In the love stories that I had read the hero always poured out his heart to the maiden and won her with eloquence and passion. Secretly I had hoped that the man of my dreams would approach me like that. Well, romance in books and in real life was obviously not the same.
So far David had acted more like the boys at home than the men in the stories: quick to demonstrate feelings and slow to commit anything to words. I remembered how my friends and I in high school and junior college had puzzled about this masculine trait.
We girls wanted to talk, wanted to know what the boy was thinking too. We felt cheated when males suddenly became uncommunicative just because they were feeling romantic, as if the effort to kiss you took all their concentration.
David was falling in love with me, I could tell. He reached for my hand whenever we were alone—which was not very often. Recent developments had put all of us under abnormal pressure, so there were but fleeting moments for a whispered conversation. After kissing me, I knew David would look for ways to take more walks.
If only he would tell me more about himself! He liked to joke and tease, but he was so reluctant to discuss serious matters. I enjoyed the light banter, but love needed more than that to grow and flourish.
As I lay there on the pine needles, a fluffy white cloud bank floated into view. The top of it looked almost like a man’s head. Why was I thinking about men so much these days?
Then I became aware of the forest sounds: the rustling of the tree tops swaying in a gentle breeze; the tinkle of a cowbell somewhere in the distance; the antiphonal trilling melodies of the tiny brown winter wrens; the nesting purple martins making a peculiar gravelly noise deep in their throats; and always, always the background music of the water.
I turned over and lay on my stomach and looked at Fairlight. She was not sleeping, but she was so silent. I had learned by now that stillness was a part of these mountain people. I lay there studying Fairlight’s face in repose. She looked tranquil enough. Little did I realize at the time what depths there were underneath the tranquility, or that it was not altogether a reposeful peace, nor in what particular way Fairlight needed my help, though she did not know how to reveal all this.
Increasingly I glimpsed facets of this woman for which I had no adequate explanation. How is it that sometimes out of some slag-heap of an environment there emerges a boy or girl who demonstrates almost aristocratic refinement? From my junior college literature course I remembered that one such had been immortalized by William Wordsworth when as a young man of thirty-three on a walking tour into Scotland with his sister Dorothy and Coleridge, he had spied a peasant princess:
Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower! . . .
Thou wearest upon thy forehead clear
The freedom of a Mountaineer: . . .
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays; . . .
That gives thy gestures grace and life! . . .
“The freedom of a Mountaineer . . .” Fairlight was teaching me. But even in those pleasant valleys, I hungered for the heights. Upwards, upwards my eyes would rove to the necklace of deep blue-green near the top of each summit. I wondered why the mountains were clothed with successive bands of varying shades of green, not clearly outlined, but serrated and undulating, with one shade of green licking in long narrow tongues into the next shade. And was that black-green belt a tall forest of spruce-firs? And what would it be like to walk those emerald aisles? I had to know.
The first time I expressed this to Fairlight, she protested even as she made ready to humor me, “But Miz Christy, that knob, it’s a fern’ist piece, more’n four good looks and a right smart walk.” But we struck out anyway across country seeking the base of the mountain, through scrub woods—she-holly and he-holly, sweet-gum, redbud, and persimmon trees.
From there, I was surprised that the trail wound upwards so slowly, conservatively following the contour of the land. Would it not have been more like real mountain-climbing to go straight up over the face of the mountain? That showed how ignorant I was. For we still had several thousand feet to climb, and eve
n on this easy contour path, pebbles were sliding out from under our feet, and I found myself reaching for the edge of an outcropping rock or for a rhododendron or laurel bush to hang onto.
Here there were some buckeyes and black locust trees, some second-stand tulip trees, magnolias, and pines—what Fairlight called “spruce-pines.” Blackberry bushes and thorns and briers slashed at our faces as we stumbled over roots in the path. And though I was in better physical condition than ever in my life, the calves of my legs were soon aching.
At that point, Fairlight said, “Time to lay off and rest yerself.” Much of the mountain still towered over us; we had achieved little more than its shank. Then why all this effort? For what? For my pride, I guess it was, at least that first time. I was not going to let any mountain defeat me.
Even on that first climb I discovered the truth of the race knowledge about a “second wind.” When I thought that my panting lungs and my aching legs were finished for that day, suddenly I was handed new strength. It was like turning in my old self and being handed a fresh self. Or like boring through unproductive rock and striking suddenly a freshet of water. I had read about this second wind in the case of athletes, especially runners, but to experience it for myself was a wondrous thing.
So, revived, we plunged on through the belt of hardwood trees—the sugar maples and beeches, yellow birches, lindens, and horse chestnuts. From there we made the final push into the blue-green cathedral that we had seen from a distance, the fragrant groves of balsam and red cedar. It was a sylvan, fairy place as entrancing as I had pictured it. Cloud mist drifted overhead. Only an occasional shaft of light struck through the tall trees. Underfoot there was a clean carpet of bracken with delicate lichens and mosses everywhere. At any moment I expected to see a troupe of elves holding a conclave.
Then suddenly, we left the fairy wood behind to cross a tiny sub-alpine meadow. From far away, this had looked smooth and pale green; but now, we could see, it was not smooth at all, but full of tangled growth, hard to get through, with Queen Anne’s Lace and a red flower that I did not know among the bushes.
And then—at last—the top, and that feeling of achievement at having the world at one’s feet. I lay flat on my stomach, inching as close as I dared to the edge of the rock shelf, letting my eyes drink in the thundering wave upon wave of verdant green and smoky blue spread out below. The primordial splendor would tolerate no pettiness; majesty and power spoke their own language.
Fairlight was somewhere behind me, sitting hugging her knees, silent, not wanting to interrupt my thoughts.
I might have felt unimportant pitted against the awesome might of the mountains. I did not. Rather, on that mountain top I found something important that I had never known before: an awareness of a vital connection between me and the Authority behind all this beauty.
I remembered my conversation with Dr. MacNeill that afternoon in my schoolroom. He had said that he believed in some “starter-force” but that he could not credit a loving God with concern for individuals. But the “starter-force” behind the magnificence displayed before my wondering eyes had an authority behind it that could be no abstraction, for it had immediacy—known and felt. Now I knew how to answer the doctor’s question. Call this what you might—“starter-force,” “God,” “Father”—it was personal all right. It thrust deep into me. It pulled. And it insisted that life was precious—all of life—Fairlight and I, and every bird and every squirrel and every tree reaching through its forest cover for the light. It cried that all effort was worthwhile; that doubt and fear and discouragement were a desecration of beauty, that hope was always right. It insisted that small achievement was not enough; that hopes and dreams must be large enough to stand up beside those soaring summits and not once bow their heads in shame.
I knew that the lessons learned on the mountaintop had to be lived out in the valley. One day as Fairlight and I were on our way home an idea came to me. On our rambles Fairlight was forever pointing out to me an amazing variety of edible wild plants—fruits, nuts, and berries. My idea had to do with experimenting with these wild products for more nutritious and imaginative cooking. Fairlight obviously had a longing for better homemaking skills. She already had an herb garden but she used the herbs more for doctoring than for cooking.
Not that I knew enough about cooking or any kindred subject to teach it. My mother would have hooted at the idea! But until the mission got that other full-time worker to set up a program of adult education, perhaps Fairlight and I could make a start in her kitchen and thus interest some of the other women.
My friend was immediately enthusiastic about the idea, and our first product “that didn’t cost no cash-money” turned out to be no farther away than the Spencer backyard—honey from Jeb Spencer’s bee-gums. There were thirty or so of the bee-gums, some of them set back under the cherry and plum trees, but most out in the sunlight near the tall double yellow hollyhocks along the rustic fence.
The bee-gums were odd-looking objects, simply constructed out of two sections of hollow basswood logs set on end with a flat board over the top. Basswood was used because it did not crack under weathering like other woods.
Many of the mountain cabins had one or two gums in the yard for honey for the family’s use, but only Jeb had so many. Rather by accident he had discovered some years previously that sourwood honey was not only “choice eatin’ ” to the mountain man, but also prized by epicures all over the world. Connoisseurs of honey ranked it with the rare wild thyme honey of Greece or the heather honey of Scotland. Like those other rare honeys, there was never enough supply for the demand so they were willing to pay dearly for it. Jeb had been clever enough to see in sourwood honey a source of income for his family, so each year he had added a few more gums.
It was in this month, July, that the sourwood tree bloomed, holding up proud candelabra of cream-colored blossoms, delicately fragrant. I learned that bees too have connoisseur tastes. So long as there is a sourwood in bloom, they will scarcely notice anything else—leaving strictly alone the locust and doghobble blossoms around which they ordinarily would have been swarming—and work tirelessly until their gums are filled with this finest of honeys. By the end of July, Jeb could usually market two hundred pounds of sourwood honey which he carried out of the Cove in huge lard cans.
All of us enjoyed watching Jeb gather the honey. His first preparation was always a hot soapy bath and clean clothes. “Bees are the cleanest critters there is,” Jeb explained to me. “They’ll sting you to kingdom-come if’n ye be sweaty and dirty. A man can learn a heap from bees, learn from ’em all his life long.”
Once dressed in clean clothes, Jeb covered his face with a meal sieve sewed to his hat, his hands with homemade gauntlet gloves. Each pants leg was tied by a string around his ankles.
The “smoker” was an old bellows in which Jeb put rags which he set on fire. Thus he would smoke the bees into the bottom of the hive and take the honey from the top combs.
Fairlight and I experimented with the honey Jeb left to us until we could use it for her two favorite desserts—stack cake and sweet-potato pie—without any of the sugar which had to be bought with cash. Soon the Spencer children were also smacking their lips over baked acorn squash, the centers filled with honey and spices.
As we went further afield, Fairlight would tell me about the edible plants. Then I would set my imagination to work as to how they might be used in dishes already known and loved—or in new ones. The woods gradually yielded secrets: that the young shoots of bellwort in May and June were as good as asparagus; that if the fronds of ferns were gathered before the leaves had uncurled or before there was any down, and were boiled gently in salted water, they were as tasty as any garden vegetable; that juniper berries—holding in themselves an essence of the aroma of the woods—could give spectacular flavor to meats; that crabapple yielded a different and refreshing cider; that the sour fruit of mountain ash or sumac berries made a summer drink; that hazelnut cake was an oh, so wo
nderful dessert.
It was Fairlight who, inspired by all that we were doing, worked out an improvement on cooking the possum that Jeb and John were forever bringing home: she stuffed the possum with chestnuts. And then she thought up a cream of chestnut soup made with a pinch of thyme in it, so delightful that it could have graced the finest Paris restaurant. We found that lentils should always be cooked with a bit of marjoram, and that both wild mushrooms and young green sorrel made savory soups.
To green salads (important because the mountain diet was short on fresh greens) the woods lent delightful taste surprises: watercress and American brooklime, English smartweed, saxifrage lettuce, and slender pigweed—what Fairlight called “Keerless.”
The Spencer children, like all children, were at first wary of new dishes. Perhaps it was my delight in some of their favorite foods that helped them to begin thinking of food as an adventure. It was at the Spencers’ that I did my first churning in Fairlight’s old wooden dash churn, and cultivated a taste for clabber sprinkled with sugar.
There was no need to cultivate a taste for gritted bread made from freshly grated corn; it was love at first meeting. And what could equal the fun of picking wild gooseberries, blackberries, and huckleberries, making them into ambrosial jams and jellies, and watching the glass jars fill up kitchen shelves? But what I liked best of all was also the simplest: homemade bread broken into pieces in a glass, covered with cold milk, and eaten with a spoon.
Making apple butter in the big black pot in the yard over a hickory-fed fire was a family project. The bubbling and popping mixture fragrant with the goodness of red apples combined with sugar and spices, had literally to be stirred all day, for apple butter burns quickly. So we would take turns at the long wooden paddle while Jeb brought out his dulcimer and the rest of us sang ballads:
As I went a-walkin’ to breathe the pleasant air,
Rolly-trudum, trudum, trudum-rolly-day,
Christy Page 39