Читать книгу Every Natural Fact - Amy Lou Jenkins - Страница 10

COUNTY OF ORIGIN

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives.”

WENDELL BERRY

I said the names of those up-north towns as my mother had in the years of hula hoops, eight-track tape players, and unfettered sleeping in the back of our faux-wood station wagon. When we drove US Highway 141 north out of Green Bay to visit family, my mom always said the last hour of the trip passed quickest as we drove the two-lane highway through the Marinette County towns while she recited, as if recalling a well-loved poem, “Coleman, Pound, Beaver, Middle Inlet, Crivitz, Wausaukee, Amberg, Beecher, Pembine, Niagara.” As a child, I’d thought she had us recite the list when we entered each town so we wouldn’t ask any are-we-almost-there questions. Some of these hamlets were so small that by the time we completed the list, we’d passed the tavern, gas station, and church that anchored the settlement to the road, and we again bisected forests and farms.

Decades later, my son sat beside me on our way to the north woods that had never been my home but had always been where I came from. I’d grown up in Milwaukee, but my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived near Wisconsin’s border with upper Michigan. Any sense of having an extended family and immigrant homeland I ever felt touched me when we traveled to the land of forests and to our relatives. I wanted DJ to feel a connection to these people who still lived in the rural setting of our English and German ancestors. I wanted him to love the land and the people that I loved. Because we visited only once or twice a year, I didn’t know if it were possible for him to develop a visceral connection to his rural and agricultural heritage. His older and grown sister, Andrea, missed the connection because I was caught up in graduate school and full-time work and missed several years of family gatherings. The end of her childhood caught me by surprise.

DJ and I were not traveling on US 141 because we drove in from a Boulder Junction Scout Camp, but my voice repeated the sequence of towns as if the recitation were a requirement to cross into Marinette County. I’d engineered a way to meet all family obligations and to fit in a nature outing as well: Thursday with Mom and her new husband at their Mole Lake cabin, a Friday trip to Boulder Junction to pick up DJ from Scout Camp, a Saturday family reunion at Morgan Park, and on Sunday, DJ and I would have our hikes to a few Marinette waterfalls. By Monday, we’d be back to our Milwaukee suburb in time for DJ to begin football practice.

I thought I’d never seen any of the falls in the county that calls itself the “Waterfalls Capital of Wisconsin,” but my reunion relatives told me I had seen them as a child. “You’ll remember Long Slide when you see it.” Aunt Lil referred to her dad, my Grandpa Ed. “Daddy used to fish for trout on the Pemebonwon River right below the falls; he probably took you.”

Cousin Susie recommended Dave’s Falls, just south of Amberg, because a lady at the bank had her wedding pictures taken there. Uncle Kenny overheard our conversation and lumbered over to us, swinging his cane and leaning his body from side to side as he raised each of his bowed bulldog legs. He suggested if we were going to Long Slide and Dave’s Falls, we might as well hit Smalley Falls because it was between the other two. In the morning, DJ and I left the map in the glove box and followed the family directions to our first destination by turning at the big white boulder across from the tamarack swamp.

The Long Slide Falls sign warned “Dangerous Overlook” as we entered a parking lot of sparse gravel and grasses. We scanned the perimeter of the lot and didn’t see a trail but heard the muffled tumult of falling water behind a forest that bulged over the edges of the clearing and obscured any openings into the woods.

By searching the soil in the direction of the distant clamor, we found a tan stripe in the edge of the woodland floor that served as the trail to the falls. I pushed away a cedar branch and looked back at my son who reached forward to hold the bough doorway open. His hand was in sync to push back the limb so we could have continued in a seamless stride through the obstruction. Instead, I stopped, turned, and looked at his sun-bronzed face. I’d kissed and hugged him when he appeared as soon as I stepped out of the van at the Scout campground, but I’d been so busy with reunion shopping, cooking, and catching up with the relatives that I hadn’t looked at him. We hadn’t talked much because he’d been eager to listen to his iPod—a forbidden electronic device at Scout camp. He liked camp but hadn’t told me much more than that.

“What?” he asked, wondering why I wasn’t moving.

We stood holding the arm of the same tree at a welcoming threshold amidst the fresh scent of cedar. “Thanks for coming with me. I always wanted to see the waterfalls.”