Hills of Eden

Jory OSB Sherman

Description

Jory Sherman's first book for Gallivant Press, The Hills of Eden, is a deeply personal look at the green highlands of Missouri and Arkansas. His work could easily be described as a travel book. He does lead the reader down beautiful and poignant mountain highways and long-forgotten back roads to places that reflect the timeless legacy and unforgettable characters of the Ozarks.

As he has written: "All the dirt roads lead somewhere, and I have followed many of them since that first morning, a wanderer and an explorer, never expecting anything but always finding something of great value, whether it be a diamond-strewn creek in sunlight or a midnight river full of dancing stars, or a verdant woodland glade."

Or maybe it's a memoir of the time Sherman spent in the highlands, the time, he says, that was both mystical and magical "as if the green spring hills were being born at just that moment, as if they had lain dormant beneath a low sky full of heavy clouds, waiting for that first kiss of sunlight, waiting for me."

He has written: "These green hills and memory percolates up through the thick layers of civilization in my mind ... The hills that first morning arose out of a thick mist like some Brigadoon stage set that appears only once in a span of years, then disappears until another generation spawns."

Others may prefer to use The Hills of Eden as a devotional because the power and the passion of his writing, the depth of his insights, the raw energy of his thoughts are stimulating, motivational, and inspiring. His words, his stories, those he met within the highlands remain firmly implanted in your mind long after the final pages have been read.

As Jory Sherman remembers: "I discovered long ago that it's not the things that last. It's not the things we see and touch which endure in reality, but the images of those things that are important to us, that seem to mirror memories in the soul. The images are those intangibles that we can summon from some deep place inside us and relive and enjoy again and again, though we be far from home, far from the hills and hollows that we have journeyed through to find our own truths, our own personal mythology."

As reviewer Lee Kirk wrote: "This is the sort of book that may be pulled down again and again on those days when you're feeling blue, or when you're somewhere else and need to smell and feel the Ozarks one more time."

Sujets

• Essays
• Sciences et techniques
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781937569013
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

HILLS OF EDEN
 
 
Jory Sherman


 
 
 
Copyright © 2011 by Jory Sherman and Gallivant Press, an imprint of Venture Galleries, LLC, 1220 Chateau Lane, Hideaway, Texas 75771. 214-564-1493.
 
Venturegalleries.com
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval program, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise except as may be expressly permitted by the actual copyright statutes or in writing by the publisher.
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-9375-6901-3
 
 
Text: Jory Sherman
Editing/Design: Linda Greer Pirtle
Cover Design: Jutta Medina
Photos: Marc Sherman and Caleb Pirtle
 
 
Published in eBook format by Venture Galleries, LLC
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 

 
 
 
For my friends and fellow writers in the
Ozarks Writers League and the
Missouri Writers Guild
Foreword
 
In ancient times, according to my friend Zachariah Sitchin, author of The Earth Chronicles, when human civilization began in Sumer, the Shi’nar of the Bible, the gods created the Adamu , first man, whom we came to call Adam. Adam was given a helpmeet, Eve, and they were placed in a region the Sumerians called the Edin . This was a paradise on earth, a garden full of fruit-bearing trees, edible plants and a host of creatures that roamed the lush landscape and drank from the pure waters of the streams. It was a land between the two rivers, The Tigris and the Euphrates .
We know the Edin by another name now.
Eden.
Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden because they ate fruit from a forbidden tree. They were driven from paradise and made to live in a far more dangerous world.
So, buried deep in our consciousness, is our desire to return to that pristine land called Eden. Over centuries of strife and warfare, man has sought a return to that Eden from whence he came, the paradise that was denied him. So, he searched the world over and discovered new lands and claimed them, fought over them and lived in them, and on them.
And always, these explorers were pursuing a dream, a lost memory of a paradise where green hills rose above the land and where rivers and creeks flowed and wild creatures dwelled in harmony and peace, a place where birds sang and fishes swam, and there were glorious sunrises and sunsets to mark each magnificent day.
Of course, Paradise is an illusion, and Eden only a dim memory buried deep in the collective subconscious of the human mind. But, consciousness is a universal gift that allows us to seek and find an Eden once again.
When we first came into the Ozarks, it was spring and the dogwoods and redbuds were in bloom. We saw their bright lamps glowing in the green hills and felt that we were coming home. In fact, we were just passing through to see friends from California on our way to Minnesota. We never made it that far. We came into the hills of Eden and the hills came into us.
We discovered the mystical mornings when fog nestled in the hollows and caressed the cedars and pines, the lakes and creeks that swarmed with fish, the peace that lay at the end of every homely country road, the people who seemed to hold secrets that existed beyond time because the hills had changed them as they had changed their ancestors. They seemed to share an intimacy with the land that was beyond our comprehension until we planted our own garden and walked their fields and sat on their porches listening to the soft voices of the old-timers as they shared their bread and memories with us.
We found a new Eden in this land of hills and hollows, in the wild mushrooms that grew in the forest and were as elusive as elves. We found many things. We found ourselves just as those first Tennesseans found themselves back in the 1930s when they searched for a tranquil homeland.
There is a peace and serenity in these hills of home, places where you can go and find perfect tranquility. The experience can be, and most often is, spiritual. If there is a bond between man and his planet, it is formed in those quiet moments when he gazes on a solemn sunset or listens to the whisper of the wind in the trees, or sits by a glass-still pond with a line in the water and hears the croak of frogs, the saw-buzz of insects in the waving grasses.
There is a special allure to the Ozarks that is profound, mystical, and mysterious. No words can explain this attraction, but I think it has something to do with man's longing for a spiritual union with his true home, the universe itself. Man has always ventured beyond his home in a quest for knowledge, and this movement is almost always westward, toward the setting sun, that grand golden beacon in the sky that represents energy, warmth, immortality.
We ask of ourselves, always, three prime questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? And, when we venture beyond the boundaries of our birthplace, we are in search of the answers to these questions.
Life, we find, is not just one thing, but consists of many small moments, many incidents that, over time, form a tapestry of where we have come from and who we are and, ultimately, where we are headed. Often, we find that we may have missed some important moments, and there is a poignant feeling of loss.
There is a richness to life and a grandness to living that transcends explanation. All we can do, most of the time, is enjoy those fleeting moments of bliss and happiness that we find along the path of our journey.
In these pages, some moments are portrayed through the eyes of a single person who may represent generations of humans who came into the gentle hills of a place and found homes, not just physical structures, but places where the heart finds nurture and contentment and harmony.
And in time, these hills become all the hills of the world and the universe. In morning mist and evening shadow, they seem to live a permanence and a meaning to a life that is ephemeral. And then, they do not seem real at all, but only some divine creation that exists for but a single moment in time and so becomes timeless, eternal. Our minds know different, but our hearts believe that all the good parts of life are lived in a single moment of incredible beauty, when the hills form both barriers and vistas, when they hold us safe from harm and protect us from outside invasions; but at the same time, they beckon as boundaries to be climbed and crossed, so that we may glimpse the world beyond and beyond and beyond.
But, always, we return to the hills of home, in life or in spirit, and so it seems that they are always there, and always will be there, in memory or in fact. And, if those hills were ever gone, we would not know what to do or where to go. So they are there, always, and we can go to them anytime we wish, and we can linger in the dusks and dawns and listen to the heart murmur, and the spirit soars with a song that is peculiar to such timeless places.
If you listen closely, you will hear my heart singing. If you look closely, you will see my shadow among the trees and on the hillsides. If you read these words, you will know that we have been there in those ageless hills and that we have walked together in the only real home we will ever know on this earth.
The hills of Eden.
 
A Journey Through January
 
There is a stillness in these Ozarks hills. A deep hush settles in the hollows as if the earth itself is holding its breath. In the mist of a morning, it’s so quiet atop the ridge I can hear my heart beat as the echoes of my solitary footsteps die away, lost among the fallen dead leaves of the oak and hickories, now only skeletons themselves, bleak reminders of winter’s wan cast.
The cedars stand ghostly in the dim light of dawn, staggered down slope among the wispy shrouds of fog that cling to the rocks and stumps like shredded cotton batting, while the creek at the bottom, a thin thread of silver and beryl, seeps down to the smoking mirror of the pond.
And here we are in the month of Janus-faced January, what some call mid-winter. I am reminded that the month is named after the Roman god, Janus, a single-headed deity with two faces, each looking in the opposite direction. Janus was the god of gates and doorways, and over time, he became known as the god of new beginnings. It seems an appropriate month to begin every new year, and I suppose this is why I walk up to the ridge above the hollow and look down at the sleeping land below, to ponder how this year begins and get a sense of how it will flow and end.
As the mist rises and the sun burns away the fog, I walk up into the hardwoods that border a meadow that halts abruptly at a bluff outcropping. There is the waterfall that feeds the little creek that flows into the mute pond where catfish and bass float like sleeping mobiles in a Paul Klee painting. Once, I had a copy of the artist’s “Fish Magic” on the wall, facing the desk where I wrote poetry, stories and books. I loved the print of this painting because I could go into those depths and become part of the underworld beneath the sea. Now, beneath the bluff and its lacy waterfall, I can go into a January painting with its ever-shifting colors, its soft and golden play of light in that magical dell where I see the tracks of deer that have foraged for grass during the night, pulling the sear blades out of the ground to nibble the roots for nourishment.
Little wrens flit through the underbrush, little gray birds that I realize have followed me up here like small beggar urchins hoping for a handout. But, I have neither bread nor seed for them. They will have to fend for themselves in this austere January world. And they do, of course, feeding on insects I cannot see, hibernating grubs, perhaps, creatures that live through a winter as food sources in some mysterious plan. The buzzards have gone south, like the ducks and geese, and doves, but there are squirrels in their dens and quail tracks along the stream that show