Rocks, Caves and Strange Animals

In her book, The Road from Coorain, Jill Conway states, “The landscape where you were raised has a profound influence on your life. It shapes your worldview and your predominant myths.” This has me thinking about Murfreesboro. For several days in 1811 a heavy earth quake rearranged the landscape there. Reports say the ground appeared to rise and fall in waves of motion. Large, interesting shaped rocks and caves were the remains in my lifetime of this upheaval.

A boulder stood just at the entrance to our driveway. Mother named it “Lamby” because it was in the shape of a reclining lamb. Our little house was built on top of a large cave. Daddy had built a rock terrace in back of our house with a split-rail fence enclosing it. Beyond the fence was a steep drop-off, vine covered. At the bottom was the entrance to the cave, also vine covered. You could see the small crawl-sized opening to the cave by pulling back the vines. It was always spooky to me with spider webs and sharp rocks and receding darkness. I never entered it.

During the Cold War when families were building bomb shelters in their homes, the idea of opening the cave as a safe place for all the families on South Church St. surfaced. My Uncle Will claimed to have actually explored the cave and reported that beyond the crawl space, the cave opened to a large sized room that extended under our house, across the street and under the Gannaway house. Uncle Will said that the Confederates used this cave during the War and that it was full of Confederate money.

Sand Spring Lot was just behind our house. If was full of half-a-dozen small caves. As children, we would climb in and out of these. They went down about 6 feet and were self-contained and didn’t lead anywhere.

There was a large sink-hole in Sand Spring Lot with a rickety, barbwire fence enclosing it. This was the only warning of its dangers. Once, the story goes, a mule got trapped in the sink hole and disappeared. We, my sister and I, would stick our toes under the barbed wire and feel the slight suction on our toes.

I loved to play by myself in this always intriguing environment.

All sorts of strange animals would appear from Sand Spring Lot. Imprinted on my memory is the sight of a large albino rat about two feet tall standing on its hind legs. It had possibly climbed up the vines from the cave and was sitting on our terrace, its pink eyes looking around menacingly.

If Jill Conway is correct perhaps this is why I love fairy tales and movies like Harry Potter, Narnia and Avatar. They don’t seem so unbelievable to me.