Posts by Rosalie Toler

Sept 7, 1995

On the way down to Hemmed in Hollow, along the Buffalo River, a hiker can take a side trip over to Granny Henderson’s house. It sits in a meadow near a fallen down barn. Granny Henderson was an old lady who lived on that farmstead in Arkansas until she was in her early nineties. She milked cows, kept chickens, maybe goats, she walked and chopped wood during those years. And that’s all. But it became her claim to fame. Her old age, her remote home, and her hard life in that rough place that she loved. Now her house is in the National Park and when someone says “That’s Granny Henderson’s place,” many people from a lot of places know where it’s located, what it looks like, who she was, and her story of long, rugged, daily living. She has become a local, colorful character just doing her best, being who she was, and that’s all. In all her years of living, she probably never reckoned to be well known.

Yesterday we learned that the mail forwarding works and ate a picnic lunch under the trees. We rattled up the road from our campground and went to Jasper for bread and mail. The Spice of Life Bakery is grand. We bought a round of focaccia bread and an eight-grain bread–dense and tasty, and two brownies with nuts and two without.

Today we drove to Springfield. The scenery was muted by drizzle. We returned six library books. I did laundry while Gerry went to the dentist. I went to the dentist while Gerry got groceries. We had lunch with Mom Toler and she had baked an apple pie, sending two huge slices home with us. We mailed a letter, stopped at the St. Louis Bread Shop and picked up my rear-view mirror off my mountain bike at The Bike Shop.

On the way, we passed a canoe rental with trailers full of red and green canoes and drove by the remains of the old Dogpatch theme park. We passed overlooks and saw three-covered mountain tops blurred by the misty drizzle. We saw a boy with a day pack squatting under a tree and 24 head of cattle grazing. We crossed Crooked Creek and noticed a white stucco church in Harrison. Age had given it brown streaks but its turrets and bell tower remained appealing.

We went on highway 7 to Harrison. At a sign that said to 392, we turned left. We turned right at a sign that read To the Airport and passed an old red barn with hay sticking out its door. We reached Industrial Park Road and turned left; it curved right on Johnson and passed a lumber yard. Now were were on Airport Road–the winding road had changed its name. We passed the airport and the Arkansas State Police Station. A small airplane flew along for a while–high but beside us. We turned left at North 65 and passed a stack of black bags where people had been picking up trash. We listened to Radio Flyer on the radio and I counted Branson billboards–15 between Harrison and Branson, before I went to sleep, and between Branson and Springfield, the number overwhelmed me.

We had a storm, here, and lightening ricocheted off all the corners of the night in sizzling light. The thunder pounded the air and the earth shuddered. Gerry ran around looking out all the windows. There were lots of campers, here, and he felt responsible for their safety and yet knew he couldn’t do anything. Later, he said that that night he felt tension leave him and his leaving tension caused all the lightning and thunder.

Saturday, Sept. 9, 1995

We listened to country music being sung and played at an AARP picnic on the pavilion and hiked to Pruit and back. We saw a fat man in flowered shorts and a white tee shirt, go off and leave his fire burning high and found yellow foxglove in the woods. We saw a yellow butterfly hover beside my legs and look fine next to my blue, Japanese Gardener’s pants. We watched a farmer call his cows home and watched the man with the young son and wearing the flowered shorts leave another fire burning. He went to bed, having put on a huge log, and left it blazing. At 10:30 Gerry woke him up and told him he couldn’t do that. He said he wanted hot coals when he woke up in the morning. We’ve found cigarette butts on the trail and it scares us. Last week, 30 miles from here there the rangers worked two days to put out a forest fire. Buffalo Point campground has been on a fire ban ever since.

Patrolling The Campground Alone One Morning

Theres’s a continuing people-nature connection:

Bluffs and dignity, sunlight and mercy, tall trees, long shadows, and love, water and life and laughter and lines strung with wet underwear, shorts, towels, green grass and volley-ball games, thunder and enthusiasm, lightening and energy, fire rings and friendships with conversations into the night, and the silent beach–no swimmers yet–just water, bluffs, sun, sand, rock, insect conversation, bird song, and me.

Last night 6 college kids arrived with a German Shepherd puppy and a terrier puppy. The terrier ran off into the woods on the trail to Pruit–after dark. They found it but during my patrol next morning, one of the boys suddenly jumped up, dashed into the woods, and came back carrying a small, black bundle of fluff.

In the afternoon, five turkey vultures (usually they stay near the river, above the woods) came right overhead, circling and circling, weaving their patterns, practicing maneuvers–like an air show of precision and grace–just for us.

Sept. 12, 1995

Yesterday we hiked Pruit and did trail maintenance; I’ve written the detail elsewhere. I saw two yellow butterflies–one large and one small; they looked like before and after, like child and mature. I tickled the chin of a small, daisy-like wildflower and told her she was beautiful; went down to the beach and said “Hello” to the bluff’s reflection in the water.

When we first got up, my clothes were cold–they struck my skin with their coldness, sliding the cold down my body, and goose bumps prevailed. But my body and a sweat shirt overcame it. There was a mist on the mountains blurring the image of the trees. The sun was in the sky in an envelope of pink cloud. Gerry was up, drinking hot coffee from a red mug and he whispered “Good morning, ” because he knows that loud noises shatter my brains and rattle my soul when I first get up. I’m going to cook bacon for breakfast and coffee because on a chilly morning their fragrances are special gifts. And the gift giver Himself was here in the morning mist, and the pink sky and the chill. I’ll bet He sniffed deeply of the sweet aroma of our aloneness with Him and loved the fragrance of bacon and coffee.

No campers. Complete silence. And the sun has just cast a line of light across the entire campground–just beyond the pavilion with the shadows of the trees at the edge of the line. And a separate, thin strip of light streaks through the base of the tree next to the volley-ball court. And it widens and rises to strike the whole tree with a glow. And the far mountains are blurred, and the close trees in front of the mountain are so full of light that angels should be singing.

Granny Henderson cabin
Bob Linder, photographer