LAUREL CREEK

The "Exotic" places I've visited are all on this side of the big water. Some are magical. A great loss is a piece of enchanted property at the top of "Dead Man's Curve" which I sold 45 years ago. 

Imagine a fast mountain creek splashing over large boulders and into quiet pools as a backdrop. Below the Hemlocks, Hollies, Oaks and Pines, and just at the sandy edge of a swimming-hole, a ten-foot slab of limestone juts out to form a sheltered alcove above the sandy shore. Midway across the creek, an almost perfect rectangle of stone is an invitation to lie naked in the dapples of sun until the heat is too much, and the icy water an irresistible invitation to splash, sputter, and primal screech until something inside is set free and soars away...

On the shore, dried and dressed, a faint path leads uphill to the mouth of a V-shaped grotto with fifteen-foot-high bluffs narrowing the space to the point where a wet-weather rill sometimes flows. When it does, the water follows the bottom of the cliff on the right before disappearing into what sounds like a deep cavern where haunting echoes are made. Dead center of it all is an ancient holly, the largest I’ve ever seen; it looks at me as though it has a tale to tell, and maybe I’m telling it to you now...The forest is dense enough to color the air in shades of green. The Hemlocks are like shaggy entities gathered for a meeting of roots and tendrils to complain of intruders. When I was young, and still owned those two wild acres, Barbara and I would leave the kids with mom so we could tryst there like forest elves.

We danced in beauty.