Few places in the state of Pennsylvania were as naturally beautiful as the place, the home, in which I grew up. Some 4 miles from Greensburg, PA, this area as “wild” to a boy of ten. Streams, swamps, woods and ponds provided years of adventure and unparalleled enjoyment that even today as I summon the warm, golden memories, fill me with wonder, some 52 years later…
The old homestead stands but only as a monument to how the world used to be for much of the “wildness” of the area has been devoured by progress. Some of my childhood friends still reside in the area, and some have passed on to the “other side.” Take my camping and hideout companion, a friend for life, who died at the wheel of his truck late one evening as he returned from work. Hit head-on by a drunken driver, leaving two children and a wife without their beloved provider, and me, without one of the dearest friends a human being could ask for. This one, then, is for Buddy Kunkle; and sure, his wife and children…
I miss the old wilderness and Buddy so very much.
A Lesson in Time
As I write this, in the northern mountains of Pennsylvania, the night sky is crystal clear. The moon, is a full, silvery satellite which is just off my right shoulder, at approximately the two-o’clock position. And, sadly enough, it reminds me of progress, for I know that upon its gray, powdery, pocked surface, our beloved Old Glory flies to prove progress rules and to prove that the Americans were there first… As though that’s so all-fired important? I liked the ancient character of it all before the lunar landing, personally.
But time, as they say, cannot be saved in a bottle. And how often do we seriously think of how purely precious it is? How we utilize our time, spend it, is so vitally important insofar as fully enjoying our lives on planet Earth.
It’s frightening to think that in six short years, I’ll turn sixty years old, which on the dark side, is ten years beyond a half-century old. I say “short” years because if your days are anything like mine, the years seemingly last but six months, at least as I grow older.
As life consumes its allotted time, I find myself wanting very badly, things that are old, a clinging perhaps, to those yesterdays we may never again visit, those yesterdays I’m uncertain about. That is, whether I made the best use of them. The element of time. A commodity even the wealthy cannot “buy” back…
I love the simple, old-time flavor of those yesterdays. Those days of simplicity; thick, fast-growing hair, devoid of graying strands, and a russet face minus the lines from countless days exposed to weather and worry and sure, wonderment – all, good or otherwise, take their toll. But then, I love today nearly as well, for even though today is Time’s way of telling us tomorrow is near, within close reach, it allows us the opportunity to plan and dream before tomorrow dawns. And so Time goes, another twenty-four hours passes like the windswept fluffs of a dandelion gone to seed. Time has no regard, for our wanting to hold on, if just for a moment longer. It cannot be made to stand idle in order that we may savor special moments, enjoying them for just a little while longer. I’ve always felt that Special Moments should last at least 180-seconds, but no, that’s against the way and laws of Time and we are allowed but the normal, sixty-second minute. And, yes, in a sense, I think of Time as somewhat cruel and yet I know that he must do what he must do and thus, I’ve learned to accept Time as he is, as God intended him to be…
Time has a cousin called Progress, perhaps the cruelest member of the “family?” For the most part, Progress is considered cruel in that he devours our forests, then spits them to form asphalt, cement, highrises and eight-lane highways to places abundant in all of the above. Places I care not to travel…
Cousin Progress has gone so far as to take much of Life’s quality away from us. The less-important things being the L.C. Smiths, the sweet-swinging Fox Sterlingworths, and even the venerable, old 30-30 caliber saddle guns are not as they once were. Today, their magazines are stamped out pronto rather than carefully, and masterfully machined. Perhaps so the makers can get them into the hands of hunters more quickly, for everyone knows that Time doesn’t play favorites…
Once, not too long ago, I worked into one of my melancholy, writer moods. I was perhaps feeling the cumbrous weight of realizing how swiftly life passes us by. How soon the time comes when without farewells, we must take the Ultimate Trail and pass over to the “other side.”
In the rearview mirror, or looking over my arthritic shoulder, I thought of those times during my childhood. To a bundle of yesterdays which found me fishing a magical brook with a length of kite string, a safety-pin hook, a seasoned branch of willow and a tackle “box” made from one of Grandfather’s used Prince Albert tobacco tins. Looking back to a place where fish, fur, fowl and fauna knew nothing of Knight’s infamous Solunar Tables. And, looking back further, to a place where native pheasant cockbirds far outnumbered people, I felt I could make the best use of Time by so doing? I thought, by savoring the leftovers in heart and mind, it might buffer somewhat, the hurt in an aging heart, knowing those things were all but gone. I thought I would drive to the place of my childhood. And, that by so doing, I may just be able to recapture Time, a tidbit of that which was long gone – I needed just a little…
But Time had merged with Progress and formed a sort of distasteful corporation. They had gotten together to pretty much wipe out those precious places where my most favored memories were born. I should have known that Time, with the untiring, lending hand of Progress, had changed things. I was foolish, however, and I went anyway. Knowing what I might find but yes, hoping I was wrong.
I knew the old neighbors wouldn’t be there so I could shake their friendly, familiar, aging hands. And I somehow knew, perhaps by some cosmic intuition, there would be a garish, cold and stark apartment complex in place of the two ponds I angled as a boy. Ponds that graciously and generously yielded without reluctance, big, pot-bellied largemouths and half-pound scrappy bluegills. How it hurt to see what Time had done after consulting with Progress. In place of a forest-like stand of cattails, stood row after row of dented mailboxes on rusted stands. In place of that magical, life-filled swamp lay a par-3 golf course. I wondered aloud, “Why would people rather beat up on a dimpled golf ball than listen to the taps, the evening call of roosting cockbirds? Why would they prefer seeing spiritless, gaudy green flags and yardage markers on the driving range over the sight of strutting pheasant flocks in colors that defy the artists’ efforts to duplicate on canvas?”
Even the front lawn of the old homestead fell victim to Time and Progress. In place of probably three-dozen stately blue spruces, stood an aging split-rail, status-quo fence in dire need of repair and suitable support. The 20-foot trees were gone, the pines which for so many years gave shelter and hidden nesting places to crimson cardinals, wrens and widowed mourning doves. I had to close my eyes in order to turn back the hands of Time and dam the tears…
I asked myself, “Would my little meadow still be there?” A wondrous place filled with wildflowers which I always told friends were painted by the gentle hand of God. Was I foolish to think that Time and Progress had perhaps passed the meadow by? Could this golden thread pulling me along, connecting me to yesterdays lead me to at least one very special, yet unspoiled place? A place where I would go when Mom and Dad were at odds with me; that hidden covert where I would go to brood and think and write poems about sylvan magic. Curiously, I followed the golden strand’s lead…
The hills along the way seemed steeper, more difficult to comfortably navigate, but ultimately, I was glad I’d followed. For “my” special meadow lay there, just as I’d left it long ago, untouched even today, by Time, by Progress. It was then I realized that Time is cruel on one hand, yet on the other, he is our ally. Time says not what we may do with it. We can, if we so wisely choose, do with Time that which satisfies us most, that which is most precious, and important to us. And no, we cannot stretch it into more than its sixty-seconds per minute, but we can, however, make every moment more golden by using those minutes to the fullest.
Someone once wrote, “Time, as it passes us has a dove’s wing. Unsoiled, swift and of silken sound.” And so, as it soars by, we must live in tempo with Time’s speeding wingbeats, savoring each second until the moment disappears beyond the horizon. For then, and only then, will we be satisfied, knowing we made the very best of it all.
Even as we hunt the wild turkey, is it not the short-lived time during which the gobbler answers our calling that we most enjoy? Is it not that time, ever so fleeting, which we spend sitting alone on oak-burdened ridge tops that fills us to a point of overflowing, to the point where the culmination, the kill, need never arrive. In a sense, we are drinking in the magic of the moments which is sustenance for the soul…
Are we not guilty, somewhat, of sometimes cheating ourselves? By not pausing to smell the proverbial roses? By not using Time to examine the intricate venational patterns in fallen autumn leaves or by not following the leaf which floats the crystalline current of a sparkling mountain stream? Think about these trivial, but so special moments that could be ours….
Years back, during an autumn turkey hunt, I was started by a man who’d stepped out of a laurel thicket. He was half-bent at his middle and as I said, “Hello,” he straightened to return the greeting. I asked then, whether he’d seen anything, meaning turkeys, at which time I learned a priceless lesson regarding Time. He told me he was following the scratchings of a turkey flock, but as I looked to the ground, I noticed he was tracking the shuffled leaves in the wrong direction.
I mentioned this to him and he looked at me with his sparkling, smiling eyes and told me that he knew it. That he’d just like to see where the turkeys came from and that he didn’t care whether he shot a turkey or not.
“Shoot, I’m just takin’ my time and enjoyin’ it,” he said, “in fact, if’n I had more time, I’d follow these scratchings far enough back I might just discover where the birds were born…”
And with that he was gone. Much like Time leaves us. Ever so quickly…