LETTERS FROM HOME: PAST AND PRESENT AT THE CABIN ON CIVIL WAR ROAD

March 22, 2001

Dear Pat,

A winter has passed since we were last at DC's family cabin, a winter so cold and unyielding hardly anybody has been out there. The cabin has an ancient furnace that burns wood. Except for the turkey hunters in the family, most of us are fair weather visitors.

DC's brother, Paul, was there when we arrived. DC made a lunch of stew and salad and strawberry shortcake. Paul put on a Charlie Parker CD and spoke of encounters with healthy looking mice. His weekend mission was to fix a sink that fell from the wall when its pipes froze.

After lunch we went for a walk. The Castor River was high but not as high as it must have been in recent weeks. Thatches of dead leaves and mud in the tops of small trees as far as 60 yards from the bank told a story of rushing waters now gone. The collection of logs that usually litter the branch nearest the cabin had washed away.

The end of winter can leave you like these buffeted riverbanks, washed out but washed clean, too. Now is the time to rebuild and restore. Gnawed saplings, fresh signs of beaver, were all about on the river bank.

Here and there, tiny blue bonnets poked out along with the lilies DC planted next to the drive in front of the cabin. The rocky soil on the hillside the cabin sits on won't support much, but the flood plain nearer the river once was farmed. With a metal detector, Paul has found fragments there that might have come from farm implements or storage buildings.

He wants to unearth whatever the land will reveal about its past life.

The gravel road that leads to the cabin is called Civil War Road on the plat. We've heard that troops encamped here along the river. It would be a good hiding place. Usually we see no one else during a weekend at the cabin. Occasionally a canoeist appears on the river, says hello and disappears.

We walked over the hill behind the cabin to the pond. It too was clear and clean, unchoked by the water lilies that will nearly cover the surface by summer. Lucy and even Hank jumped in. We were thankful that no one had bothered the swing DC placed alongside the pond a few years ago. She announced that she wants to create a path around the pond next, a sort of swamp walk through the dense and muddy terrain along the sunset side.

Before leaving, DC and I planted more flowers California poppies, morning glories and forget-me-nots -- symbols of friendship and faithfulness.

Everyone has their own reasons for going to the cabin. It's the only place DC really relaxes and doesn't worry about what she should be doing. Her parents have been going most of their lives. The voices of absent fathers and mothers and children and grandchildren still echo for them there.

In the absence of obligations and telephones and in the palpably spiritual and sensuous presence of river and forest and wildness, simply breathing becomes the pleasure it was meant to be.

Instead of going and getting, you are grateful for whatever life brings.

Love, Sam