Slim Randles' Home Country
That special place
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[May 26, 2012]
Everyone has his own favorite spot on Lewis Creek, I
guess. Some of us favor the swimming hole below Miller's old place,
with its rope swing and the kids who frolic there on hot summer
days. |
For Doc and Dud, it's the big race below the rocks where the huge
lunker trout lives. All our efforts to catch him have so far gone
unrewarded, and he keeps getting bigger each year. But for me,
there's a little cove downstream from there, shaded by huge
cottonwoods and flanked in by car-sized rocks the color of wet
cement. I found it during a previous lifetime, I imagine. At least I
can't remember the first time I discovered this place. It is walled
off from the world by the rocks, protected from the sun by the
cottonwoods. There is a blackened part of one overhanging rock where
I've built a good many small cooking and "friendly" fires over the
decades.
I've fished from there, swum from there and -- back when the
fires of spring were still crackling -- shared this special spot
with a girl or two.
But mostly it has been a private place. Everyone needs one. It's
been a place to come, alone, for special times.
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When my dog died, back when I was just a youngster, it was a
place to shed private tears and remember the times the two of us had
there. When the scholarship came, it was a place to come and sit by
the small fire at night, a place where the noise of the water
flowing by would drown out about 82 percent of my shouts of
exaltation. Years later, when my grandson's cancer went into
remission, it became a very private, personal church for giving
thanks.
Today, it's a part of my very being ... the home place ... what
Spanish-speakers would call the querencia ... the place of
the heart. If someday my ashes could come to rest here, I wouldn't
complain at all, but just smile at the sound of the creek chuckling
by.
[Text from file received from Slim Randles]
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