The Crow woke me up. He is perched at the top of the old redwood, his raucous cries circling and drifting, jerking me from my dreams. Half of me wants to shake him for waking me; the other half wants to scatter extra birdseed around his redwood for letting me be a part of this dance of dawn. From the sleeping platform, I can see the pale gray sky, marred only by the occasional red-winged blackbird’s flight. Cedars and pines and redwoods fringe the sky. Trees grow taller, here in this magical place called the Cedars. Birds fly slower as if savoring the texture of the wind. The sun is hotter and higher here and I relish it. The Cedars is a haven for the weary birds, for the straggled plants, for the harassed, tired people, so rushed and choked from the city. Beside me, Oma and Opa wake up. “What a beautiful day!” Opa smiles. “The most wonderful day for our hike,” Oma says. “Shall we play the tree game?” she asks, smiling. “Yes.” I squeeze her hand. “What is that tree over there?” “A Jeffrey pine, I think.” “Good! Later, we’ll get some cones,” Oma praised. “If I had to smell one smell all my life, I would smell the vanilla scent of a Jeffrey pine,” I say. “Time for the countdown!” Opa warns. “If I had to smell one smell all my life, I would smell the vanilla scent of a Jeffrey pine” We all stare fixedly at the golden watch on Oma’s wrist, watching the silver hand wheedle seconds away. Soon, the eight o’clock Oh Joe bell will ring. I picture a roustabout, maybe Trevor, maybe Alex, or Justin, or even Kate, walk across the dirt at the low welcoming building we call the Grill. The Grill pulls you in, and holds you before letting you out, I think drowsily. The roustabout will tightly grip the metal rod, recoil at its chill and hold it poised over the huge metal triangle, muscles taut, tense, waiting. Exactly eight o’clock. The rhythm starts, ringing across the valleys and meadows of the Cedars. It echoes off trees, slams into boulders, shivers down streams, and slips into the earth until cabins shake. Bang der-de bang iti bang iti bang, BANG BANG, BANG! I tap the rhythm on my comforter. Nodding, Opa, Oma and I take a deep breath along with the thirty other Cedarites. We yell, “Ohhhhh Joeeeee!” I shiver with the rhythm, the beat, the shout. “Wow. We did it really well that time. I think the old cedar tree shook,” I laugh. “What’ll Jim think of that!” Opa grins. “Let’s go get dressed.” “Uh-huh. We’ve got to hurry” I shiver. “Of course we do! We want to leave by nine o’clock,” Oma says firmly. I leap out of bed. The cold slices through my brisk resolution like a knife. I want to dive back in the covers. “Brrr! It’s chilly! Come on, let’s go down to the outhouse.” Oma smiles. I smile back, and the smile warms me up, soft and buttery. I help Oma down the stairs, then grab my jeans, a torn T-shirt, and a dirty sweater. I pinch together my frayed shoelaces and gather my scattered hair into a high ponytail. I’m dressed. At the Cedars, how you look just fades away. All that remains is your personality. Oma, Opa and I hold hands and jog down the creaking boards and the chilled dirt to the main cabin. A cheery fire crackles in the old, dusty Benjamin Franldin stove, warding out demons of cold. The stove sits like a hunched tiger behind the stained wooden table and chairs. Beside it are the logs that Opa cut and Meggy, Luke, Char, Noah and I stacked behind the lattice, so the bears wouldn’t gnaw on them. The plastic bucket, sloshing, filled to the brim with water, sits lifeguard next to the stove. Today, the table has been pushed aside, and Meggy, Luke, Noah and Char have pulled up chairs, dangling their bug-bitten toes. I join them and play peek-a-boo with Sydney, tickling her frayed bit of blanket. Uncle Nick is talking to Ed. Helene is rocking Ana, with her pale cheeks dimpling. Aunt Ann is standing at the oven, scrambling eggs that sizzle and slide into a creamy paste in the pan. Opa is checking the first-aid kit. “Hot cocoa?” Oma asks. “It’s free for the taking.” “Me! Yes! Yeah! Please?” we clamor. Oma smiles as she stacks cups, and measures powdered milk. Aunt Ann is dishing out the scrambled eggs, and I toss pieces of toast at people. Oma places steaming mugs of cocoa in front of us. We eat our fill. Hot cocoa simmers. A log falls in the stove, crumbled to ashes. I feel full and satisfied. At eight-thirty the cold is swept away as suddenly as it came. The sun peeks from behind a cedar tree. The clear blue sky spreads, untroubled as our minds. I throw open the Dutch doors, and change quickly into my khaki shorts. Soon, all of us are sitting on the porch table, rubbing on sunscreen. Bug spray passes over us, its tart and toxic aroma tickling our noses. The smoke from the chimney piece falters, in the clear blue sky. “So I guess we’ll go up Parkinson’s,” Opa is saying. “Darn, darn, darn it,” I mutter. “What’s so bad about Parkinson’s?” Ed asks. “Parkinson’s,” I explain, “is vertical. Straight up. At least it’s shady. Like the devil, it only has one virtue.” “The devil has a virtue?” Ed questions. “Yeah. He lets us put the blame on him.” I slip a bottle of sunscreen into my backpack. “Oh look, guys! Here comes Carly! Hey girl!” The neighbor’s dog wriggles ecstatically under my hand, then deposits her gift at my feet, a spit-saturated tennis ball! I bend down, get a good grip on the ball, and throw it in a high arc. My neighbor, Mrs. Camerlynck, smiles,
Sense-of-Place
Water All Around
The sun rose as usual that morning, but no one saw it. There was no shortage of watchers; the two fishermen on Bell Island were up mending their nets, watching the horizon for the glow that would tell them it was time to set out, and the beady-eyed gulls were watching in their wary way from nests on shore and seats on the ocean’s broad back, and their favorite vantage point, the sky. The quiet old lady on Middle Island was awake, gazing at the eastern sky and dreaming of sunrises long ago when she bustled about making breakfast for her children, and wondering if any of them ever stopped to watch the sunrise, and the little girl in the little white house next door was just getting out of bed, not because she had to, but because she always woke up with the sun and there was really no reason to stay in bed. It was not the watchers that were missing, it was the sun. The little girl—she was not really so very little, but was more a little girl than anything else—was the only one to think it strange. The fishermen, when they had waited long enough, simply smiled at each other and started the motor of their boat, and the old woman too knew the Nova Scotia fog well. But to the girl, as she stepped out of the door into the misty dawn, it was like waking to a whole new world. The surrounding islands, near enough to swim to the day before, had vanished, replaced by swirling clouds of thick fog that wetted her skin and hair but without the striking feeling of rain. It was like being on a ship miles from anywhere, she thought. All she could see was water. Water and fog. She sat down in the grass then, tousle-haired and dreamy-eyed, hugging her knees and breathing in the mystery. The surrounding islands had vanished, replaced by swirling clouds of thick fog The fog had not lifted when the little girl’s mother called her name. It was their last day on the island and it was time to pack up and leave, to drive to the ferry and return to civilization. And the little girl remembered that she was not really a captain’s daughter on a three-masted schooner off the coast of Scotland, but was a little girl named Miranda who was starting algebra and Latin in the fall and was going to lead the poetry club. So she went inside and drank the hot chocolate her mother had made for her, and put her cup in a suitcase, and then remembered to say good morning, and wrung out her nightgown, which was very wet with sitting on the dew-soaked grass. When the packing, which should only be lived through once, was over, and the suitcases were all piled on the red motor boat, Miranda’s mother went to wake the baby. Miranda slipped out the door and set off on the path around the island to say goodbye to her friends. It was still at most two hours past sunrise, but she knew everyone would be awake, because where there are no electric lights or other such extravagances (as on any proper island), daylight hours are precious and no one wastes them in bed. So she said her goodbyes and returned to a wailing baby and distracted mother, and in time things fell into place, and they clambered into the boat and scrabbled perches amongst the luggage, and Mother pulled the cord on the outboard motor and as it stuttered to life they set off into the fog. Miranda’s mother knew the way from island to shore, and could steer straight despite the fog, but wind and tide conspired against them, and pushed the boat off course, so that a rock came up to starboard that they had not knowingly steered toward, and the trip which had been an adventure turned frightening. All they could see was water and fog. They could have been heading out to sea, or straight at a reef, or anywhere. The fog seemed menacing now, and the excitement was gone. The spray flung at them by the wind had turned cold, not cool, and the wind itself was harsher. Miranda took the tiller while her mother hunted frantically for the compass, but it was packed deep in some unknown bag. One arm around baby and the other hand on the tiller, Miranda could not reach up to brush her wind-tossed hair out of her eyes, so she shook her head, then suddenly released baby and felt her hair with her hand. She stared at the waves for a long moment, then cried over the growl of the motor, “The wind! It was coming from the north, from the mainland! Steer into the wind!” Mother nodded, and said something, but the wind carried away her words. Then Miranda remembered that she was steering, and swung the tiller around so that the little boat faced the wind. It blew her hair back for her but she freed her hand anyway to take off her salt-encrusted spectacles to rake the horizon with her eyes for any sign of land. Baby crept over to Mother, looking for a sheltering arm, and the three huddled down in the boat as the wind and spray hit them, and presently there came a shadow in the fog, and it grew clearer until it became a wooded promontory and a weathered dock, and presently the little girl found herself climbing up the ladder, and that her heart was no longer pounding, and that her cheeks were wet with something more than mist and spray. And she blinked her eyes as she pulled baby up with her cold hands, and she fumbled with her glasses one-handed as she hauled bag after bag up the hill to the car, and she finally had the glasses on when they drove away. And presently she came to
Where Time Forgot
“Sophia, honey, where are you going?” My mother’s voice rises above the creak of the screen door. “Outside,” I call back. The door slams behind me as I step out into the purpling spring evening. I smile. How could “outside” describe where I’m going? Stepping off the edge of lawn, I run through the woods. Moss is thick and damp beneath my feet. Weeds grip onto my legs, friendly greeting hands. Trees rustle, in infinite patience. The sultry air fogs my glasses, and leaves drops of dew dazzling a spider web. I walk across Jordan Creek, hopping from ancient rock to ancient rock. Water sighs its way down the waterfall, and then sings into a small pool, hidden by softly curling ferns. The water shines with a light from beneath its surface, dreamily glowing to an orchestra of crickets. My feet squish on mud. One by one my worries sink into the mud; I grind my heels into their ghoulish faces for revenge. And I smile. The ground shakes as deer leap through the forest. I watch them, their eyes constantly searching for something that never was, ears swiveling in anxious questions, tails held tense, stiffened with warnings and apologies and regrets. They lope out of sight, and I look ahead. I’m almost there. Almost. And then, finally, I’m there! The ground shakes as deer leap through the forest I relax into the constant tide of peace that splashes about my shoulders and sit cross-legged underneath a small maple tree. The clearing is small, surrounded by thick-leafed trees. It maintains seclusion from the world, a secret place that time passes by, but still I can feel waves of energy whistling through. High in the slender, supple branches of a wild apple tree, a squirrel sways in her nest of dead leaves. I close my eyes and suddenly I am that squirrel. I can feel the dead leaves damply frail against my fur; feel the heavily lazy wind raking over the branches, spilling into my nest. I chatter my annoyance at a curious magpie that comes too close, and swell with aching pride over the nestful of innocently pink, squalling babies beneath me. My eyes snap open. And I lose my thread of connection to the gray squirrel. I lie on my back, raise myself up by my elbows and gaze up at the dusk-thick sky. A robin flies ahead and in a moment of looking I am that robin. I can feel a twig roughly grooved in my beak, feel the sultry air straining against my wings. I chirp my joy for all to hear, and fester with impatience for the nest to follow the twig, the eggs to follow the nest, and the chicks to follow the eggs. A blade of grass twitches against my elbow. I become folded into it. I feel my roots soaking up nourishment from the thawing soil; feel crowded by a thousand other grasses. I feel chilled by the lowness and am stretching, stretching, growing, growing to reach the sun. I expand to my human size. Sighing, I stand up, and begin the journey home. Darkness is beginning to slash over the dusk, and Mom will be worried. But I smile, straighten my back; swing my arms in uneven rhythms. I am refreshed, rested, in all senses of those two words. I am ready to stare at the darkly ghoulish eyes of realities, and enter life again. Sophia Stid, 11Potomac, Maryland Melissa Moucka, 13Hinsdale, Illinois
