“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, and always will exist.”

-Slaughterhouse Five

 

 

Across that water there is Seekonk. It's dawn, 28 degrees, windy and my nose is running from the cold. I haven't changed in decades. My nose ran then and will still do so in the cold. In a couple of weeks, I'll wake up with great nosebleeds due to the low dewpoints. I've always have done so. My pillow cases can look like Lincoln's head rested on them.

I haven't been on a health kick since two years ago when I peddled all over this area on a bike and I figured, “Let's see if I can still at least climb over tree trunks, scramble up some hills and down escarpments to the lake.” It turns out I can still. Heart rate and breathing didn't climb as I thought it would. It will one day though.

So, I enjoy it for now.

I enjoy the stillness at dawn, here in these woods, the last vestiges that at one time, covered all of Pawtucket. The only thing you can hear out here is the wind, sparrows, your own foot falls in the leaves and perhaps the occasional plane overhead curving it's way to approach TF Green. Out here, all you have is yourself and if you stay long enough, and I mean long, you lose that too. But for now, the quiet morning is enough. I came out here as a kid probably just for that reason alone, but was unaware of it.

I've walked these woods since I was a kid and fell in love with them. Today as I walked on, I saw fields, paths and old structures I played around when I was a child. The same WPA work project that walled in the river, the old pumping wells for East Providence water and the 1863 railroad that passes through. They are an anchor, a tangible, fixed spot where I can see myself when I was a boy. That past hasn't melted and blended away into nothingness yet. There are markers still.

There's one marker I came across I designed myself then, a rather naughty one but typical of 12 year old boys. I had forgotten it was there as I don't think of it till I come across it every few years or so. You have to navigate some wetlands to get to it. The maker? I had carved a tree with a profanity.

 

 

Thirty-eight years ago (38)..Jesus! I had carved the tree above with the word “Fuck.” The diamond pattern above that? I have no idea now why I carved it. Whoever Tim 'n' Shannon are I don't know. That came not too long after my masterpiece.

1976. I had purchased a small jack knife from Pinault's Pharmacy on Armistice and Newport Ave with a fake bone handle. The blade perhaps was three inches in length. I had no practical reason to have one, except to be like the other boys that owned one. My parents didn't know so it was nice secret to have to myself. Barring your parents from parts of your life means you own that part of you, not them. A burgeoning independence? Sure! So was carving FUCK onto a tree with my secret jacknife. Pre-teen rebellion starting it's career, to be followed by near felonious behavior by us boys in the years to come. Real rebellion comes at sixteen.

In my walk this morning, I searched for this tree. I knew it was hard by a small stream but other trees like it had sprung up over the years. I'm not sure of the type but the bark is thin, smooth and the tree seems to want to live right on high water tables where the mud could swallow you up to your knees. Today it was dry enough to walk on. I kept looking among others that had sprouted up through the years for the one tree. No luck. All these newer trees made things confusing. I then searched for the oldest and tallest and I found one. I scanned the bark and no carving. I began to think that the bark, over the decades, healed itself over. “Ah well, things pass...everything does.” I said to myself.

But, lower on down the stream I found a lone, large tree of the same species. As I moved around it, there it was. My work of art.

I saw that twelve year old boy who carved it. Long, 1976 hair to his shoulders, wearing wire rim Elton John type glasses you'd see from his Honky Chateau album (Yes, I had them) dressed in Sears Wrangler jeans and a LOUD Beach Boys-type stripped button down shirt, tails un-tucked of course, I'm twelve!

I remember that day. It was a brilliantly hot May afternoon. I was with Jimmy and we were enjoying the after school time we had by screwing around these woods. Carving, trying to catch the frogs in the stream and knowing school was going to be over in a few short weeks. Freedom.

That boy...me, as he was carving, never once stopped to think a 50 year old version of himself would be there to look upon it in the future.

But that 50 year old did.

If the tree isn't cut down, or diseased, perhaps it'll last another 38 years...and perhaps that insulting carving will too.

*****

I'm not alone in making monuments to myself. Further south in these woods are large “pudding stone” boulders. Theses giant rocks were pushed by the ice ages past and dropped wherever they may. One I found years ago, that has chiseled into it, “F.R.B. - 1909.”

Whoever FRB was/is I don't know. But he spent some time with his chisel set to let the world know he was there, that he mattered, for a while at least.

And finally from Kurt's Slaughterhouse a bit of advice...

“That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.”