OLD RIDGES

Some mornings I get up wanting to write and feel a certain fogginess of mind and absence of subject matter that reminds me of E. B. White and his essay of “Writer at Work.” In March of 1927, he wrote that Edna Millay was contemplating a trip to Washington, D.C., and he quotes a Washington news story: “to have this tender poet here in cherry blossom time and to hear her version of this glorious spectacle [would be great].” E.B. White, who is obviously struggling to create his essay for the day, remarks that “Even the theme is laid out for her, like clean linen.”

E. B. White says that a writer is always straining his eyes, peering ahead and around so that when the moment of revelation comes, his eyes are poppy and tired and his sensitized mind has become fogged by the “too frequent half-stimuli of imagined sight…”

I sat here, reading those lines, waiting for my mind to clear, and wondered if there were new ridges there that prevented clear thoughts. What appeared to me was an actual vision of ridges —chenier ridges south of the Intracoastal Waterway in Louisiana. I could almost smell the marshy air and see oak trees in the distance — old beach ridges or cheniers. The sand in the ridges is above the marsh so that oak trees abound in the dry soil there. According to an entry in Roadside Geology in Louisiana by Darwin Spearing, the ridge, Little Chenier, marked the position of a beach 2800 years ago. The town of Creole is strung out along another chenier where Chenier Perdue, 2500 years old, and Pumpkin Ridge, 2200 years old, merge.

The largest beach ridge plain in Louisiana is near the Caminada-Moreau Coast with as many as 70 sandy beach ridges that began to grow about 700 years ago. Of course like much of Louisiana coastland, the Caminada-Moreau coast continues to erode.

I’m more familiar with the ridges near Creole, Louisiana because I explored that territory when I was writing my book for young adults entitled Kajun Kween. Those ridges provided the setting for this tale about a young girl named Petite Marie Melancon who wasn’t so petite and who became the heroine in a comic strip. I have an envelope of photographs showing scenes of cheniers that includes a beautiful one which Dr. Sullivan snapped, and I framed for a wall of my study. There’s even an alligator in a corner of the photo, and it’s a scene that has not only inspired me while I was writing Kajun Kween, it became the cover of a book of. poetry entitled Old Ridges in which the opening poem describes the scenery I encountered back in the early 2,000s. 

Although the theme wasn’t “laid out for me, like clean linen,” as E. B. White wrote, my nostalgic thoughts sent me to the bookcase where I found Old Ridges and began to read:

OLD RIDGES

Writing a story of persiflage

I found a place of legend,

a station of shade 

cool enough to wade in,

no voice, no sound,

an alligator hiding on the bank

sliding into murky water,

breaking the silence and the shade.

Further back, I could see ancient ridges,

oak groves, wild grapevines overarching

marshmallow, yucca, and oleander,

some distance from the Intracoastal Canal

where I once rode in a boat

bound for Cheniere au Tigre,

weaving through a network of canals

and anchoring at a wooden dock

that may have been near the old town.

We climbed an old-fashioned stile

astride a barbed wire fence,

searching for an abandoned hotel,

and found: the bones of a cow,

the feather of a crow,

the leaf of a toothache tree --

mystery.

Old oaks stood sentinel, asking:

Do you think it’s too late?

I haven’t forgotten how it is

to die before dying,

consider my age,

consider this shade,

no voice, no sound.

What was I looking for?

The corpse of a cowboy lying

among bones of Brahma and Charolais?

a chest of Lafitte’s treasure?

the old watchtowers of WWII?

the tiger that mauled a boy a century before?

Hackberry trees grew among stands of oaks

and in the center of one grove,

a house of silvered cypress, 

torn screen on the sagging porch,

door ajar, as if someone had just departed,

the abandoned house among trees

buffeted and twisted by Gulf winds.

Like the trees, it seemed to say

I haven’t forgotten how it is

to die before dying,

consider my age,

consider this shade,

no voice, no sound…

and a tiger lurks over the ridge.

“A SENSE OF SELF AND PLACE”

One of the publications to which I subscribe is a magazine entitled Cooks Illustrated, a periodical that contains recipes, information about cooking utensils and other products, tips about processing food — a panoply of food fare contributed by three dozen test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Members of this staff test recipes over and over again until they achieve food excellence and also test kitchen equipment and food brands. My favorite articles in the magazine are editorials written by founder and editor Christopher Kimball. The editorials usually contain reflections on how to live a good life or highlight New England (Vermont) people and their way of life.

This morning while I had to sit still and treat an ailing back and leg with light therapy, I re-read an old editorial by Kimball that incited a lot of pondering in me. Although Kimball focused on the character of Vermonters, his musings, written in a style much like the essayist E.B. White, would appeal to a universal audience (in my opinion). The editorial was entitled “The Golden Rule,” and he prefaced his musings with: “It isn’t easy to scratch the surface of a Vermonter…” and concluded with the thought: “We often measure life by the number of new experiences we accumulate…Vermonters measure what remains steady…each of us is expected to measure up in the eyes of our neighbors. That’s the golden rule in country living, a sense of self and place in service of others…”

This editorial in a food magazine struck me as one that describes people who live in my first home of New Iberia, Louisiana. Recently, when a flood occurred in Acadiana, I went on Facebook to find out whose homes had been flooded so I could offer prayers and, in several cases, the use of my home, which wasn’t flooded. On Facebook, I read numerous accounts of the characteristic banding together of those in my home town — a place that already had the reputation of unifying “in service to others” in the event of disaster. The history of Acadiana is alive with the courage and steadfastness of those exiled from their native Nova Scotia by the British as far back as the 18th century.

During the recent flooding, when I read about the unifying acts of those who weren't flooded — how they helped their neighbors — I remembered the courage and steadfastness shown by everyone in Acadiana during and after Hurricanes Katrina and Lily. Victims of the flooding fled from New Orleans and environs to New Iberia for help, where they knew they’d find the unique hospitality for which Acadiana is noted.

After the recent deluge, those who had escaped the flooding went in groups, often in boats, to rescue flood victims, to help tear down the sheet rock in flooded homes and to reconstruct interiors, carry out sodden furniture, cook gumbos and étouffée for evacuated friends and family. With typical joie de vivre, they gave thanks that the flooding had spared many of them by cooking good food, storytelling, and holding rosary sessions and church services of thanksgiving. One of the unique ways they showed their gratitude for lives spared was through collecting rocks from the countryside, painting them with cheerful pictures — flowers, trees, people’s faces, anything that showed a “sense of place” for their lovely bayou country home. They shared these objects of art with their friends on Facebook. I don’t know where the repository for the rocks is located, but I hope to find out when I travel back to bayou country this month.

No, Vermonters aren’t the only people who measure what remains steady; however, reminders from editors like Kimball certainly seem timely in light of the storms and hurricanes that disrupt us this time of the year…not to mention the political storms that have made all of us uneasy about the country’s leadership. But I’ll be happy to return to bayou country to stay awhile among south Louisianans who have “a sense of self and place in service to others.”

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan, taken from my recent book of poetry, A Slow Moving Stream.

A BITE FROM E.B. WHITE

For those who’re burdened by political news and the state of the world today, I recommend a “time out” with someone like E.B. White, the essayist who wrote for the New Yorker during the mid 20^th century. White often turned to farm journals to “escape for a few moments the ominous headlines in the papers…” However, he claims to have found danger even in the agricultural news, and this morning I returned to one of his essays entitled “Plant the Garden Anyway,” in which he talked about his dismay after reading a farm journal article listing dangers in the flower garden.

According to White in Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976, the journal article warned about poison in a single castor bean that would kill a person… vomiting caused by pinks… sweet pea seeds containing a poison that could keep a person bedridden for months… night blooming jimson with enough substance in the leaves to produce delirium… and daffodil bulbs that, when eaten, cause stomach cramps. Danger in the garden indeed! People “back then” must have had bizarre diets!

White didn’t mention bees, digger wasps, and poison ivy. He may have been threatened by leaves, bulbs, and flowers, but the insects and ivy I just mentioned carry their own brand of poison in the garden. To me, the answer to the dilemma of the poisonous plants highlighted in the farm journal is a simple one: don’t sample the plants! Actually, the author of this article recommended completely doing away with a garden that produced such dangerous plants as the sweet peas, daffodils, etc. and changing the seed! Seems like gardeners in White’s day were either a) hungrier than most gardeners today or b) were experimenting with plants containing exotic substances to see if they would induce some kind of mind alteration.

White also discussed the plant patent business in another essay entitled “Prohibited,” in which a man received a birthday present of an azalea, and tied around the stem of the plant (“like a chastity belt,” White says) was a tag reading “Asexual reproduction of this plant is illegal under the Plant Patent Act.” White’s friend tore off the tag and sent it to another friend with instructions to bed it down next to “an old buck hydrangea.”

Whatever dangers White passed on to those of us who have trouble gardening must be taken with a grain of dirt. We should get our plants in the ground where, for a brief period, they will reward us with their bright faces, every now and then attracting swallowtails, monarchs, skippers, perhaps even a lunar moth.

My love of gardens was inspired by my mother’s nightly readings from books like A Child’s Garden of Verses and Marigold Garden. These books had nothing to do with poisonous seeds, but readings from them actually planted the seeds for my poetry writing today. I was inspired by such poems as Stevenson’s “The Flowers:” “All the names I know from nurse/Gardener’s Garter, Shepherd’s Purse,/Bachelor’s Baths, Lady’s Smocks,/And the Lady Hollyhock…”

The straggly garden pictured above, whose seeds I never saw since I purchased seedlings for my two miniscule beds, contains mostly herbs I can eat without getting sick. The sight of this place where moles and rabbits freely graze would probably cause White to smile. The flowers on one side of the yard are deer proof, so they have a chance of surviving. This is a consideration I gave them rather than worrying about poisonous seeds; however, I didn’t count on the invasions from moles and rabbits.

P.S. I haven’t seen either the asexual azalea or old buck hydrangea in the nurseries here on The Mountain, so I can’t foster any plant coupling.