8/8/2019 When Most People Think Of

1/3

Briana Hicks

November 22, 2010

Halling, 1A

Spirit Song

When most people think of the country, they envision acres of green, stippled

with big red barns and little white houses lived in by round, dimpled women in flowery

aprons who get a kick out of offering heat-stricken strangers lemonade and freshly

canned peaches. When I think of the country, I see abandoned lots and time tired trailers

and Spanish moss that reaches down from trees and tickles your nose as you walk by.

My mom and her family grew up out of Orangeburg, South Carolina and spread

across the southeast like kudzu. Orangeburg is a small town, and most of its inhabitants

are some kin to me and my family- mostly wisecracking old broads, mean enough to

scare Annie Oakley off aim. We used to visit all the time, and half of my childhood

memories feature me and a troupe of little boy cousins wreaking havoc around my aunts

front yard.

My mothers third oldest sister lives in a sturdy little house on a piece of land that

sits just off of a long solitary road, bordered on all sides by great oak and pine trees. Early

morning and late night sunshine likes to stream through the gaps between the canopy and

scatter across the dirt ground. My cousins and I used to play games, prancing through the

shadows, wondering who would break into the light first. Behind the house was a once-

red barn where my uncle kept his chickens, all speckled and squalling; they scared me, so

I never went any closer than the playground, which was not much more than a few

rusted poles nailed together in the general shape of a swing set, a slide, and a few

irregularly spaced monkey bars. Those were our favorite. We would sit across the top of

8/8/2019 When Most People Think Of

2/3

themits really a wonder that the bars never buckled beneath us and then we werent

dirt-covered ragamuffins: we were pirates, or spies, or famous music stars.

We were exactly who or what we wanted to be at that moment in time.

Aunties driveway comes off the road like a white sand river, swoops down, and

meets the road again, creating a sort of small island in the center. Its is all dust and

bleached gravel, and we spent most of our time there, mostly because the rest of the

ground was riddled with shards of broken beer bottles. My sister showed me how shifting

through the rocks where the sand met paved roadway could uncover little treasures:

small fossilized seashells and leafs, delicate almost there imprints from the past. She told

me that maybe all of South Carolina had been the bottom of some great prehistoric sea

that maybe the fossilized bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex lay beneath us where we sat.

Logic now tells me that those rocks were probably imported from a different region, but

the possibility refuses to leave me completely even today.

The central island served little to no purpose it was just a patch of emerald

grass and a cluster of trees that had grown over a faded blue car with its hood stuck open.

Mostly people just parked their pick-ups there when everywhere else was full. We would

sit out there, chewing on red sorrel, talking bigger and badder than we were, wrestling,

letting my older cousin train us for some unknown combat mission. The inanity of it all

escaped us. To us, this was life. Time spent in my aunts yard was immeasurable. An

hour, two? More? It all ran together.

There were days, standing just outside the light trailing from the porch, or as the

days sun scattered and softened to dusk, when time stood still. When the earth itself

ceased to spin and held its breath, and the trees stopped growing, and the wind paused in

its endless dance to listen. Then there it was the deep pulsing that falls from a sapphire

8/8/2019 When Most People Think Of

3/3

Briana Hicks

November 22, 2010

Halling, 1A

sky, that echoes in a deep sea. It swells up from deep inside you. You cant hear it with

your ears; it resonates from a place within, a place eager to sing this universal spirit

song. The rivers sing it. The stars. It is what connects us. It is the bases of humanity, of

religion, of science.

I am lucky. Most people will never witness this stopping of time, will never be a

part of this song. But once you have, there is no going back. Can a moment redefine you?

Inspire you to be better? This one can. Can you be reborn in an instant? This instant, yes.

The song is born in the country, written and heard there. It echoes though the trees

and settles in the dust. It gives sagacity to the land, which in turn, gives life to us. There

is no irony there: that such beauty hides itself amidst a world of rust-covered cars, shanty

houses, and dirt roads. Anywhere flashier would hide the simple beauty of it. In a

rundown hovel of a town, however, it can drift down from the heavens or stretch up from

the earth and grab the attention of a young girl.