My first temple was the universe. Services were outside. Afterwards, it was hard to go indoors, to put siding and shingle between me and ravens dancing in the air, purple oak leaves and galaxied nights, still as frozen air. The world outside was my sanctuary to escape house. When the emotional thermostat was up and the psychic radiators hissed steam, I went outside.
Robins, wild oats, maples, clouds, marigolds, became friends. They were gentler and prettier than my fathered family. I had no other temple than froggy ponds, deer tracks and breeze. My father was an atheist and had me be the same. I invented my own religion. Its genesis was beds of moss under caverns of pine boughs, on tree branches climbed twenty feet off the ground, in sweet clams dug from sucking low tide muck. I took wine and broke bread during lightning storms that bolted me from bed, during hurricane’s tidal surges, in crystalline snowfall slanting in moonlight and streetlamp.
I learned to pull and squeeze nourishment from teats watching Pete Schobol milk his Guernseys and Holsteins, pastured around the corner. My father and us three sons dug out Pete’s barn for our garden manure. Its nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, calcium, magnesium and sulfur sharpened our radishes and scallions; sweetened our peppers, corn and beets and juiced our tomatoes. I visited grubs, ants, beetles, worms, and caterpillars when I turned the manure into the soil in spring to prepare the garden for seeds. Radishes and green onions were the first to come up. We ate them as soon as we could get them out of the ground; washed, salted and mixed with sour cream and cottage cheese.
Breakfast eggs and Sunday dinners came from our backyard hen house. Papa sliced the hens necks’ with his axe. They did run around headless for a second, before getting blood drained and plucked. I crawled over our lawn for wild sorrel for Grandma to make schav. We picked pears, apples and walnuts from abandoned orchards we came upon during family hikes. My father had acquired a nose for free food during The Great Depression. Blackberries and strawberries grew wild in the fields we ran through playing hide-and-seek, ringolevio and Red Rover, Red Rover, come over, come over.
Out of the house, I walked through the back gate, down Timothy Lane to the woods where it ended. Oaks, hickory, maples, pine, hemlock, spruce and birch shaded the path up sleigh-ride hill and down to ice skating Frog Pond. It was kids only territory: catch frogs and turtles, find salamanders under rocks, skip stones across the water. In winter teens drank beer around a fire; young ones held hands, skated in a row; stopped short. When the end child let go, momentum whipped them across the pond. I learned more about creation’s physical laws from a shovel – a lever: from drill bits – an inclined plane wrapped around a column; and from transporting shrubbery in a wheelbarrow, when Father used our labor to plant flowers, ivy and myrtle, azaleas and laurel.
Beaches were all season sunny salt-aired walkways. I collected shells, crab claws and carapaces, fish bones and polished quartz pebbles. I tested my pain tolerance against fiddler crab bites. In summer we swam for hours in the bay. For the cost of a rented rowboat, we fished a bushel of bug-eyed flounder and iridescent porgies. We dug steamers and chowder clams my mother turned into soup. My father made us clams casino with the smaller cherry stones. He opened them, put a bit of bacon, a bit of cheese and bread crumbs on top; slipped them under the broiler for a minute. We scorned mussels until my parents tried meules marinier on a trip to Europe. I cherished fishing with my father. I was happy with him when we walked beaches and dirt roads through local forests. Then Father was light; told stories and sang songs. He forgot his anxieties, was young again, off on adventures I was delighted to share with him.
We often walked Jayne’s Hill, the highest point around. The way began at the end of a paved road where time went backward. There was the abandoned Peace and Plenty Inn which had a New York State Historical Commission plaque proclaiming that Washington had slept there during the Battle of Long Island. There was a freshwater spring gushing from a pipe that emerged from rocks. We lowered our bodies so we could put our mouths into the chilling flow; drink like dogs.
My paradise fell when suburbs came. Bulldozers crushed trees, cement sumps replaced ponds, industrial sod smothered meadows. The earth became a place I trampled with football cleats and car tires. But at least once a year I went to mountains to caress the earth with careful steps. Catskills, Adirondacks, Appalachians, Rockies and Sierras brought me back to my childhood sanctuary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Raskin is a retired preschool teacher and currently works as a child whisperer. He writes with Poets on Parnassus and Laguna Writers. Daniel is now working on children’s stories.