On God's Creek
The older I get, the more I want to stay in my little writer’s shack beside God’s Creek. Down there I can see nothing but woods on one side and the steep field on the other, where the only sounds in winter are those of the woodpecker who, early of the morning, drills and prods the huge, dead oak which stands like a gray monument across the creek, and the sound of the hickory branches that tap against my tin roof when an icy breeze moves through. If I stop typing and moving and shut down completely, tuning myself into the world, there are more sounds, of course. Far back in the woods, the crunch of leaves (a squirrel, most likely; a fox, I hope). The longing bark of a lonesome dog, way over the ridge. The bubble of the spring-fed God’s Creek, quiet in wintertime, especially the winter after our worst drought, but living now at least: moving, whispering. The barely discernable—but there, yes, there—creak of the floorboards under my weight, the almost-lost complaints of the walls, which t