Down the Groundhog Hole

The place known as the Scrubby Field is ragged, irregular in every way. A clearing of several acres in the woods toward the river, it has no ready shape, no sharp boundaries. It appears on the verge of returning to wood in just a few more seasons. Humps of stumps rise from it, covered in honeysuckle and wild rose. A dead apple tree, gnarled, seasoned, presides over everything from near the center, although the field has no center, so the tree stands off-center.

On entering the field, careful you don’t fall into a groundhog hole. You can’t see them, with all the wild growth, some of it so tall you can barely see ahead, much less where you’re stepping. Complicating matters, this place evidently was cleared in such a way as to preserve obstacles, not remove them — perhaps to create more habitat for hunting — and so you’re often setting foot on a stump or a log. Or slipping off the edge of a stump or log into a groundhog hole.

In that event, you could easily break a leg. If you’re fortunate, you might make a straight drop, one leg in almost to your hip, no twisting, no damage, just a story to tell of how one day you fell clean into a groundhog hole. A wildwood rumor has it that if you’re skinny enough, or so fated, to fall into a groundhog hole all the way, with both feet, you’ll drop into a bath of sunlight, and come out completely changed. But that’s just a rumor and the rule still applies to watch out for groundhog holes.

The River Obscure

The gorge of the River Obscure is formed by a gap between bending trees, rays of sun slanting from the far side, and a pile of rock perhaps seventy feet high suggesting a bluff hidden in the treetops. Tourists would never come to see this place, because once more than three people got here, something bigger would be needed to impress the group. They’d be looking at each other, and in vain for something more. One person, however, stepping out onto a sandbar for the first time, on a late afternoon in summer, can feel it. The true magnitude of what we encounter can sometimes only be measured by the silence it inspires.

Tweets Illustrated: The Rivanna River Address

Ballpoint pen on #10 envelope.

Tweets Illustrated: The Rivanna Rolls

William Theodore Van Doren. Pencil and watercolor pencil on paper, 5 x 5.

North Fork, Rivanna

The river connects the lowest points on land, on its way to the deepest places on earth. I’m standing in the river, feet on the ocean floor.

Rivanna

River river river
End to end to end your name flows never-ending
River river river river
One part starts where one part starts where one part starts
River even backwards you’d be much the same
If only in a dream
End to end to end to end
Upriver
To the stream.