Soapbox

Down by the Banks

    In today’s paper there was a column by  Joe Blundo. He lamented the publics lack of interest in really preserving the wild nature of the Big Darby Creek and the creeping development that threatens its future. It made me terribly sad to read this.

    When I was a child my grandparents had a summer cabin on the big Darby Creek not too far off Route 104. The best times of my life were spent there with my siblings and my cousins, forging a family bond that time and our political and philosophical differences cannot ever completely erase.

    It was no resort home, but a simple cabin with a tin roof, a concrete floor that could be hosed down after the inevitable spring floods and an outhouse in back. Water came from a pump into the kitchen sink and heat came from a wood-burning stove in the main room. Kids slept in a loft room whose floor was covered with old mattresses, accessible only by a ladder with the bottom rungs removed, to insure that the littlest ones could not climb up and, perhaps, fall down. And when the full panoply of family was in attendance, our tents and camping trailers were set up out front to accomodate us all.

    There were electric lights, but no TV, and the only thing we ever heard on the radio were the baseball games my Grandfather listened to. Can you imagine kids today condemned to this nintendo-less existence? But for us, there was enough to do there to use up an entire summer. There was a wonderful swing hung from a high branch of a towering walnut tree, a shuffleboard court, sandbox and a huge front yard, suitable for croquet, badminton, touch football and endless hours of just running around making noise because you were a kid and it was summertime at the cabin. What else did we need?
     We had rainy-day games of cards up in the loft and quiet places to read in the bole of a sycamore, and usually an uncle around willing to help with wild gymnastic flips out in the yard. My grandparents would throw a big picnic every year and invite all their friends from the McDowell Senior Center and the old time band Grandmother played with. We feasted on sweet corn that had been in the field just that morning, ate hand-cranked ice cream and sang along with the band.
       Will the circle be unbroken?
       By and by, Lord, by and by.

     But despite all these other forms of recreation available, the cabin was really all about the Big Darby. From the smell of the sun on the muddy rocks in the morning to its quiet susurrations that could lull a mosquito-bitten child to sleep at night, the Darby was what made the cabin such a magical place. It was the source of all things. We swam in it, fished in it, ate dinner from its bounty, canoed up and down its length, and spent endless hours playing "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers", our name for re-arranging the rocks. We came to know the birds and flowers that inhabited its banks and got angry when we found trash trapped in a back-eddy. None of us knew or cared how many unique varieties of minnows, mussels or hellgrammites lived there, but seining the creek for them on a hot afternoon was better than any "Reality" TV show.

     I learned many important lessons about life along the Big Darby. I learned responsibility when my Grandpa taught me that if you want to be a fisherman, you must be prepared to bait your own hook. If you can’t bear to spear a night crawler through its guts then you have no business feeding it to the fishes!  I learned respect for small living things when I was taught to knock before entering the outhouse, so as not to surprise the wrens that insisted on building a nest there every year. I learned to think ahead and empty my pockets out at night, because the treasures of the Darby were not often the sort of thing improved upon by a night in a 6 year old�s shorts pocket.

    I also learned that, no matter how much we thought we were in charge of things out there, the Darby always had the last word. Every spring it would work its will upon the land, flooding the plain on which the cabin sat, re-arranging our carefully built rock docks, obliterating sandy minnow pools and occasionally loosening a favorite leaning sycamore and carrying it away. But that was OK: the mud could be scraped away and there would be new pools to be found and new reading trees to take the place of those that were lost.

    But life is change, and when I was 13 my grandfather died and my grandmother gave up the cabin. Summers were just never the same after that. My father bought a tract of land in Athens county which we dubbed "the farm"  and we had picnics and rock-climbing expeditions up the hill. We love the place to this day and take our children there… but without the Darby, the magic just isn’t the same.

    A few years ago my sister and I made a pilgrimage of sorts with our Uncle David, back to the site of the old cabin. My grandmother had not been able to keep it after my Grandpa died, so none of us had been there in at least a quarter century. We walked down the old road and almost missed the cabin completely. Little but the chimney showed above the towering weeds and saplings that had taken root in what was once the front yard. We fought our way through to the building and shook our heads at what time and neglect had wrought.

  The cabin was only a shell filled with trash and weeds, crouching in the deep shade of almost jungle growth. The air was rank with vegetation and rot.  We made our way inside and sighed as we surveyed the interior: that used to be the sleeping porch… over there stood the table where we all ate the pancakes grandmother made in her cast-iron skillet on summer mornings. I knew this was the case, but it was hard to imagine myself ever laughing and playing there. It was like visiting a ghost, but the ghostly echoes of my childhood were drowned out by the shriek of the cicadas.

    When we made our way down to the river, though, I felt I was coming home. Looking at the Big Darby, it was strange to think that this rocky, unassuming stretch of winding water had been such an important part of our lives, but seeing it brought it all back. I could almost see my sisters catching minnows in the shallows. It was a little different, of course. The banks were more enclosed by trees than they had been when the cabins in the area had regular summer inhabitants. Nothing was left of the rock dock my family had so carefully built years before, or of the sandy bank where Grandpa beached his canoe.

    The smell of the mud and the fish was the same though, and watching the sun flash off the water was like seeing an old friend. Its voice was the same soothing whisper I remembered from the best days of my childhood. Another lesson learned: the things of man do not last, but the voice of the river remains.

    The mosquitoes and ticks had remained, too. Slapping in annoyance we waded for a bit, picked up a few shells for souvenirs and then began the trek back to our car. As we turned to give the place a final look, I heard a bird call from a tree along the bank.

    "Goodbye Julie-bird" I said, using my grandpa’s name for the Carolina Wren.

    I will never again visit that old cabin along the Big Darby. By now I expect that the land has been bought up by some developers and a row of cookie-cutter houses now stand where we used to eat ice cream and listen to Grandmother play the mandolin. Or maybe it has been spared the bulldozer for now, and the cabin has disappeared completely into the woods from which it came. I hope this is the case.

   Years ago, when I heard that the government was interested in protecting the Big Darby, I wrote and told them why I thought it deserved special status. I was so pleased to learn that it was eventually declared a Wild and Scenic River. I thought that perhaps it was safe from development: from run-off pollution and attempts to control its natural ebb and flow with the seasons. Now I hear that this isn’t true.

    I don’t understand why people would chose to build a home along a "wild and scenic river" and then try to change it so that it is neither wild nor scenic any longer! If they need their Walmart and their Taco Bell and emerald lawns drenched chemicals- why not stay in town? I wish I knew how to make people appreciate this beautiful national treasure the way they appreciate a new Walmart. Perhaps they cannot value what they have not experienced.

    Whatever happens to the Big Darby, it will always be in my mind, as it was in my childhood: a force of nature, that which gives and that which washes things away. Rivers are not meant to be controlled by man. When you tame and develop a river, you turn it into nothing more than a  drainage ditch.  I hope the Big Darby can be spared that fate.

When I was 6 years old
My Grandpa took me down to the banks of the Big Darby.
He gave me a cane pole
and taught me how to watch my bobber
and how to bait my own hook.
He called me his fishing partner
which was all I could ever want to be,
after all.

When I was 10 years old
I knew the call of the Carolina Wren
and could cast my line under the willow banks
where the fish hide on sunny afternoons.
And even though I cried
when he cleaned the fish we caught,
he never laughed at me, because we were partners,
after all.

When I was 13 years old
my Grandpa came to visit unexpectedly.
He held each of us for a long moment
before he left.
A week later,
blinking in numb confusion at his funeral,
I was no one’s partner,
Any more.

When I was 18 years old
I started having dreams about fish:
mysterious, silent visitors
who would glide, almost visible
beneath the surface of my dreams.
My sister said they must represent big things
that I was afraid to confront
in life.

When I was 30 years old
Grandpa came to me one night.
He told me that I dream of fish
whenever he visits me
and touches my dreams
to let me know he was there.
So I guess we’re still partners,
after all.