Just Down Past the Rock Pond
- Rebecca Jim
- Jul 22
- 3 min read
Just down past the Rock Pond, and across the field, the lake appears to the south. It had been a lake once before.
My dad inherited the land where I live when his father died in 1929. He was just eighteen years old. His older brother received the land across the fence, but chose to sell it to go into business. But my dad held on to his, paid the taxes for decades before he returned to the land to retire. When he and my mother arrived for keeps, the first thing he told her was he wanted to show her “the lake.”
They passed the Rock Pond, went through the field and found it was gone. The earthen dam had failed. That regret and loss set with me, so when the land became mine, I was determined to remake the dam and at least have a decent size pond in its place.
With the assistance of the fellow at NRCS I call the “pond man” the dam was reconstructed and the pond established. What we discovered just on the other side of the dam was a portion of CLAY had been made easily accessible to dig. It is the finest clay around if you are a potter who defines it that way, and many have.
Over the years, I have struggled with keeping the dam mowed to protect the dam. The weather. Sometimes, the tractor issues delay mowing. It is a dam and steep on either side of the top of it, so being able to SEE where the sides are is important. And then beavers.
At first, I hired people to catch them and relocate them. Why? Because they burrowed through the dam in places and in order to know if the dam was safe to cross with the tractor and the brush higher than my head, I would have to walk through it to the end to evaluate the safety.
After a season of great rains, I returned to the “pond” and found the beavers had done what my dad had all those years ago. They had enlarged the pond and created a lake. It is a beautiful sight to see.
This year with the rains, the dam hasn’t been cut, hasn’t been crossed. But I have mowed a path to it in hopes before the end of the summer, I will be able to clear it for the folks who come to dig clay in the fall. This is how I came to discover the patch of RED BERRIES on both sides of the pathway. During this 4th of July weekend, many were ripe. The sky was already clouding up, thunder in the distance, when I went to pick ripe berries before the rain knocked them off the vines.
There is a rhythm to picking and a zone of sorts that brings me great joy. The time feels like an ancient ritual. The briars don’t bother me, I dress for them, the ticks and chiggers easily handled by jumping out of my picking clothes and into a shower.
That is where I was that evening, birds and insect and thunder the only sounds, until the splashing. The berry patch, I hadn’t realized was now very close to the edge of the much-enlarged lake. Someone just on the other side of the berry patch was swimming in the lake! Right by me. A big someone making so much noise. After listening for a great while, I told the swimmer I was there picking berries. Then the swimmer loudly entered the briar patch!
Very quickly out of the berry patch, with the blackberries and well on my way home, never turning to look back! There should be mysteries in our lives and who or what the swimmer was remains mine. As also will the cobbler be that the berries become.
The place I chose for my homestead is called the Blackberry Hill, the Virginia Stroud print in my bedroom depicts tribal women in the berry patch along with the Little People. And this week we will see what the Senecas call the Grandmother Moon, the time for one of their traditional Ceremonies.
This dear earth of ours can provide for us and asks nothing in return. But my son and I returned to the berry patch this evening with thunder again in the distance to finish harvesting the row of berries the “swimmer” had interrupted. The rain was sudden, we were drenched and the ripe berries came home with us.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Note: Tar Creek’s blackberries are forbidden fruit, beautiful but loaded with lead we learned from The Garvin research. This is another way to understand environmental injustice.
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