There’s a cleft in the hill across the pasture from where the old house once stood, where, now, only the stone summer kitchen remains, a place to store hay out of the weather. My time on that prairie was short, the city was calling to me, but the imprint it left on my spirit is still there. I carry little tributaries of Doyle creek in my blood every time I walk.
There was a magnificent American Elm at the end of that pasture, I would imagine it’s still there, what’s forty years to a tree like that? Maybe a couple of months in people time? I remember participating there in the classic ritual of disaffected youth – leaning against a mighty trunk and reading a book of learning and sophistication. I’m fairly certain it was a copy of “Trout Fishing in America”. I’m here to verify that there are no trout in Doyle Creek, but that it is, indeed, in America.
No, the open prairie couldn’t hold me, but I didn’t go far either. As soon as I leave our little house in North Riverside and dodge the traffic on 13th street to set off along the river, it’s as if I just threw open the doors to the old stone summer kitchen and let the smell of the ripe brome hay count my memories back to me, carefully, one at a time, like cards in a hand of gin rummy – here you go, this is what you get, lets see how far down the river it takes you