Robert Waldrup:
CLASS OF 1961
Belmont High SchoolClass of 1961
Belmont, NC
Robert's Story
Lived in Belmont all my life except for a 2 year sojourn in Montana opening an office for the company I worked for. 35 year marriage broke up early in 2001, moved to friends' bicentenarian log cabin for a few months then to Burnsville, NC for a couple of years and then to Hendersonville, NC. Here is part of that story.
From the Cabin on Whispering Creek
©2003 Robert A. Waldrup
I was too busy moving into the cabin and at first I paid it no attention, the creek that is. I liked the sound of it frisking past the cabin, but I had yet to really listen.
It wasn¿t warm enough to begin sitting on the porch, although, I had stood there and listened to the creek as I looked over the mountains, but soon chilly air would force a retreat inside to the crackling split oak fire.
The first warm day in March, that¿s the first time I heard it whisper. Sitting in a weathered rocker, surely rescued from some long-forgotten attic, I remembered an incident over ten years past.
After lunch, a group of us remained sipping iced tea and discussing the writers' conference we were attending. Individuals began drifting off. Soon only one lady and I remained. As our conversation turned to the spiritual aspects of writing, the lady said she was clairvoyant and felt she was to tell me something, She asked if it was okay to do so. When I answered in the affirmitive, she reached over, took my hand and said, ¿You are going to have to let go of your family.¿ I had forgotten.
Recently, I had to do just that: Let go my wife, two sons, a daughter, my home, and everything else.
I spent the first night in a motel and the next day looking for a place to live. I found those I could afford were, to say the least, undesirable.
Then swallowing forty years independencial pride, I went to an uncle and aunt¿s to beg a place to stay for a few days. They turned out to be the best friends to whom I could have gone.
We spoke of the pain manifesting mentally, physically. How I could not even think of the spiritual? I slept little and ate less.
After a couple of days our ¿catching-up-conversation¿ turned to old times and remembrance of a friend¿s log cabin. Go up the backcountry gravel road, ford the creek, and it¿s right there. That¿s how I ended up here to heal at this secluded cabin on Whispering Creek.
As I got out of the car, no tombstones were in sight. Yet, as I looked around, I had no doubt I was standing in the middle of a burial ground. Memories as foul and dry as a mummy¿s breath blustered across my mind, jabbing withered, terrible hands into my thoughts, scorching, shriveling my soul. I could almost feel the phantasms lurking there in the laurel. It was deathly quiet. No there were sounds, but none of the usual clamor. My dulled senses became aware of the sounds of solitude.
A footbridge crossed a creek, tumbling within a few feet of the cabin¿s front porch. I looked through the tangle of laurel at the footbridge over the tumbling water. It looked unsafe. Once I crossed, I knew there would be no coming back. Going over there meant changing eternity. Over there was the unknown; here was the known, the safe. Do I really want to change eternity? What power is this? What awesome responsibility? Did eternity need changing? As I crossed, the bridge vibrated, shaking the pillars of Eternity. I was committed.
One morning a couple of weeks after I moved into the cabin as I sat in my usual chair of contemplation, watching cold blustery snow and sleet sporadically beat against the window, sunlight suddenly streamed through the window on my face. Immediately the thought popped in, ¿And He shall make the light to shine upon your path.¿ This epiphany was the beginning of comprehending my purpose.
That first warm day in March, as I sat in the decrepit rocker, my thoughts ran around as lively as a three-year-old child. Across the rock-strewn road, squirrels squabbled in the walnut trees. Somewhere up in the laurels, a Blue Jay accused me of trespass. That¿s when I began to notice the quietude. I began to hear the trees shuffling their leaves, slow-dancing with the wind. My thoughts began to slow, almost to a standstill, that¿s when I heard the creek whisper. Liquid sounds of the creek stumbling, skidding, whispering over and around the rocks stayed the mummy¿s breath and began to put moisture back into my soul.
I sat listening, feeling, reaching out for the creek¿s slightest rumor or nuance. I became as still as the fence posts outlini...Expand for more
ng the pasture. Then, almost imperceptibly, ever so softly it brushed across my mind. Easily, quietly, it moved. Caressing, embracing my thoughts, it whispered of peace and solitude, healing and health, gentleness of soul and quietness of spirit. The creek had whispered. Who could but listen?
It pointed out a leaf-covered path, unused even by the cows, perhaps by a bear or fox, certainly by squirrels. The path meandered up the hill weaving among poplars and hemlocks past the old barn to disappear among the laurels.
¿Look,¿ whispered the creek, ¿see the path, how it follows the lay of the land, not fighting it, as it glides up the hill in switchbacks and sudden changes of direction. It traverses rocks large and small, sometimes over and sometimes around them. It passes through narrow and difficult places as well as the broad and easy. It moves onward, upward, never hesitating to traverse an obstacle or pass through dense woods or strong shadows. So too, your life¿s path has abundant switchbacks and sudden changes of direction. Without them the climb would be much more arduous.¿
Days later, Whispering Creek drew my attention to a steep hillside in the pasture which was covered with clumps of broom sage mirroring the movement of the wind, here bent, there straight, swaying, floating, partaking life from the wind as it waved, bidding me to come and sit among them.
I made my way up the hill and sat among the broom sage. Both the sage and I felt the wind as it, flowing in fluttering and flickering waves, touched us intimately, lovingly with the breath of the universe.
I sat, listening for the creek¿s soft voice. ¿Watch carefully,¿ the creek whispered, ¿so too your life mirrors the unrested flux of the universe. Bend, dance, sway, float, partake life from its wind. ¿Now you feel the breath of the universe, the same breath that is within you. It is more than part of you; you are of the same stuff as that breath, that Spirit.
¿As the wind flows among and moves the sage so your thoughts flow and move your world by changing, coalescing, creating, whither silkily or in stony starts and stutters. You choose your way. Your life is what you have made and will make it whither silk or stone, smooth or rocky.¿
The evening after the broom sage incident I reread Tony Hillerman¿s explanation of a Navajo expression "Walk in Beauty": ¿The way the Holy People taught us, the goal of life was yo'zho'. No word for it in English. Sort of a combination of beauty/harmony, being in tune, going with the flow, feeling peaceful, all wrapped up in a single concept.¿
Hillerman says, ¿The [Navajo seek] the pattern of all things - to find its beauty and live in harmony with it.¿ So, I stopped trying to adjust the universe to myself; but rather attune myself to harmonize with the universe.
As days went by, I began to sit closer to the creek, the better to hear. One day I sat beside the creek and noticed the translucent skein of smoke rising from the cabin¿s stone chimney.
¿Smoke,¿ the whisperer said, ¿Insubstantial, ever changing shape, almost illusion and what then its memory? Your past and those things which you perceive you possess are like the memory of smoke, an illusion of an illusion. Can you possess an illusion? How then can you lose it? Your perceptions are your reality even if they are misperceptions.¿
Opening a drawer in my mental file cabinet, I put all my yesterdays in a large smoke colored folder, labeled it ¿Yesterday,¿ and closed the drawer.
With Whispering Creek, I began to seek the pattern of Spirit's order. Searching for myself, I came upon the pattern of the universe, a grand symphony played upon the strings of eternity, and I was a note in that symphony.
In the deafening silence, one can begin to hear. In silence is Spirit best heard. In solitude is Spirit best understood. Yet, there is a fear of silence; Spirit's voice may deafen one to other voices. Too, there is a fear of solitude; if alone, Spirit may carry one away.
As the weather warms, I will spend more time sitting quietly, rocking, listening for the creek to whisper. It has taught me of going with the flow, dancing with the breath of the universe, and the elusive, illusionary memory of smoke. I have learned to let go, say goodbye, and moved on. To what I do not yet know, hopefully to superior things and surpassing times. Yet, I do not worry, because I know that while I sit on the porch in a weathered rocker, Whispering Creek will tell me.
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