Empty Cabins, River Sides, Mountain Tops— a Few of My Secret Places

who is a member to the Human Race can throw-out their I.D. card telling the security guard just who they are and all that kind of boring stuff, the center of our souls is “that” place where we live, dream, create, then die. It’s unavoidable. Barring an expensive process that has dry ice, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen used to keep us young and asleep to a certain year and day, death is coming to all of us. I do not think that I need to explain that fact.

But being men and women of reality, not many of us who are stationed in the Middle Class of America will simply follow our life’s pathway until we achieve what dreams we have achieved, we live on until we retire, either satisfied or fulfilled. No middle ground here. Face it. We are on one side or the other. People like me are constantly in search of “that” place where all of our feelings of love and appreciation can be felt and held in our hands. And so we go ahead living and enduring until we meet another time or opportunity, one that will maybe change my life.

I want and do not want to cause you any amount of confusion with this piece. It is a true confession of the soul. I am giving it to you to do with what you please. This gesture should solidify the fact that I am not being selfish. I hope that the following photos and text will tell you more about my secret places, the places that I have loved most of my life. There was a span in my teenage life that I would have graciously-swapped every car that I wanted to own or have every cent that I would work to be paid IF I could just steal away into one of these three places because while I was in one of these locations, there is not a thing such as time. Or greed, ambition, disappointment or stress. It is life. Just life inhaling, exhaling enjoying the spirit that God has given me maybe to explore and expand the ideas that I would normally discard IF I chose to not visit any of these three places. Think about it. Hopefully you too have a few of the secret things that I do not know about nor would I care to know about them, because the feelings are yours. All yours. And I would love it to be that way.

the atmosphere ceases to be pulling life from my body. In fact, I just love to sit, not do anything, say anything or feel any impulse that might pull me away from my original focus of wanting to visit this old log cabin. At least with me sitting here, life does exist. Mine.

While I am sitting comfortably on the floor, I see just how broken and rotted the once-sturdy wood held many family members and neighbors to come in and go out. Now the floor is only a death trap. I shouldn’t say that in all reflections. At least the floor was useful and did provide a necessary help to those who lived in this cabin. I can even make out a few nails that were nailed in a few places where some industrious people wanted to make necessary repairs for rain damage or termites. It doesn’t matter that much. Now only the good, rich memories of the family who sweated and toiled in the broiling sunshine to build their abode. I stand silently as I revere their memories.

best-kept secrets. Not the public ones, but those that I have found. Those that there are no roads or trails leading to the river to allow four-by-four’s and other machines to drive to this roaring river and possibly have a roaring party. Not for me. At a riverside, there is peace abound. God’s peace—that can only be found and felt in total silence. No gasoline motors running to disturb the atmosphere and harming the ozone. Just me and the riverside. Oh, yeah, maybe a sleeping bag, a pup tent, a little food, some coffee in my thermos and I am set.

As I watch each wave roll to and from the place where I am sitting, I can easily-imagine that this is the same water (a) two-men crew, Army Captain Meriwether Lewis its leader then selected William Clark as second in command. I can’t be sure about my location. I was referring to the water rolling by my campsite.

When night time slowly engulfs the woods, river, and me, I feel a bit frightened as I have not been this route in years—camping-out alone in the wilderness. Numerous thoughts, mostly dangerous, are beginning to flood my imagination. Everywhere I look, I see the image of a gigantic creature that is rumored to attack any living thing, then disappearing back into the forest. Beside the imaginary images, the only reality that I embrace is the many various noises made by the many creatures who live in the same woods as the gigantic creature. Oddly enough, they do not run away in fear like I would.

I get sleepy very quick as opposed to living in some place near a city where all I hear is vehicles and their noises churn day and night. I guess that we did trade some areas of our God-given peace in order to have prosperity, power, and financial gain. So goes the mindset and thinking of modern man. But I still love the side of the river, not just any river, but (the) river that I found years ago long before I met my wife and then married her. I told her about my secret place near a hidden river. She quickly told me that she did not care that much about rivers or the wilderness.

I can be selfish about this particular area of my life as I begin to have internal thoughts of not caring about what my wife thinks about my secret love affair of camping on the creek bank that I found a log time ago. I love this place. Why should I bring a lot of friends with me when I can enjoy this wonderful place by myself. And the gigantic forest creature.

and I think, no I know, that I found one: on the top of this nameless mountain. Although the landscape of made of rocks and dirt, I still get excited as I make each calculated-step from the ground upward to the top. My heart beats in a distinct pattern that would rival that of the late Ron Bushy, the drummer for the Iron Butterfly, a psychedelic band from the 60s whose one hit, “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” gave the band a lot of royalties thanks to the record selling over one million copies.

Fact: not all mountain tops are the same. Some are safe enough to allow girls to prance about with their boyfriends and kiss them like tomorrow was the last day of life. Of course, I am talking flip here. Sure in 2019, many females can easily scale any hazardous mountain as slick as any house cat. Two acclaimed female mountain climbers are: Catherine Destivelle and Lynn Hill. I proudly take my cap off to salute these brave women.

A mountain top, when it is reached, emits a large amount of fear, danger, and celebration all rolled into one mass that is just waiting for some mountain climber to make an uncaring mistake causing him (or her) to receive a lot of serious, but not lethal injuries. Sometimes I think that it is these emotions are put there to teach us about how to be careful about where we are at the present time.

When I stand and look outward down the mountain, I shake with fear at just the possibility that I can slip and head down the mountain quicker than I came upward. I can make out a few humble homes that sit n the valley below the mountain underneath the clouds that never act as if they want to catch a bus and head to work.

There is no music as sweeter as hearing the wind blow through a few holes I see in a few big rocks on the of the mountain side that means “stay out” to all sensible human beings—but still, that powerful wind takes turns blowing notes of a clarinet made famous by Benny Goodman of the Big Band Era. Beautiful, undisciplined music not written by mortals. Just created by the Creator at any give time when He feels like it.

Then I hit upon that notion. I can sit or stand in an empty cabin, a rolling river and from a mountain top and then sing, read, eat, pretty much anything that my heart desires. To me. . .this is pure freedom.

December 19, 2019____________________________________________