Years ago, my family and I spent a lot of time on Garden Creek Road in McDowell County, North Carolina, visiting my grandmother in the white frame house where my father’s family settled after they moved from East Tennessee to Western North Carolina. Across the road from my grandmother’s house was a hillside of woods.
Occasionally my father would ask, “Why don’t we go on a hike?” I knew he meant a walk in those woods he’d known since boyhood, a terrain he loved.
One Saturday afternoon in late September 1970, when the leaves were still green but the air held the crisp hint of fall, he proposed a hike. We were not really an outdoorsy family, so we didn’t own any special hiking attire. My father wore his standard hosiery mill clothes: work pants, short-sleeved shirt, and work shoes; my mother dressed more fashionably in plaid shorts, an Oxford blouse, and white sneakers. And I wore my usual summer apparel—cut-off jeans shorts, a sleeveless top, and whatever shoes were handy.
After a visit with my grandmother on her front porch, we headed across the road.
As we began our trek in the woods, my father found a broken tree limb that he handed to me to use as a walking staff. He then commenced his lessons on nature, pointing out varieties of trees. He picked up a chestnut that lay on the ground, and after extracting the brown nut from its spiny husk, he peeled the shell with his pocket knife and offered me the yellowish, wrinkly fruit. I took a bite and didn’t like the bitter taste.
“Here, chew on this,” he said and cut a birch twig, scraping the bark off its tip.
“Mm,” I said, gnawing on the minty wood, “it tastes like Teaberry Chewing Gum.”
“People used to use a birch stick for a toothbrush,” my mother said.
I remembered her sister Clarabel constantly chewing on a birch twig, its end frayed like a little broom.
“Some people would use it to clean their teeth after they dipped snuff,” she added.
Sometime in my early childhood, I’d managed to taste snuff, wetting my fingertip, dabbing the powder, and then touching it to my tongue. The taste was biting-sweet, and I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to dip it, as many women, especially older ones, did in those days. My grandmother kept her Society Snuff can in a kitchen cupboard, and she must have used it discreetly, since I never saw her touch it.
When we reached the crest of the hill and came to level ground, we could see the ranch-style house that belonged to a family we knew, folks who had once been neighbors on our street until they bought this plot of land and built a new house. I missed this family, especially the two daughters, whom I’d enjoyed playing with as a child.
“This place is changing,” my father observed, and we noticed where more trees had been cut since the last time we were here. “One day it’ll all be cleared off.”
We couldn’t know then how true his prediction would be. Within a few years this woodsy area became an upscale housing development.
That hike in September 1970 was our last one together. I was 14 then. My weekends would soon be spent with girlfriends and boyfriends rather than with my parents. My older brother had already become independent of us, rarely staying at home now, and my time was coming. My father never again asked, “Why don’t we go on a hike?” though I imagine he would have enjoyed spending more afternoons in the woods with his family and cutting me a birch twig to chew on. He likely suspected I had lost interest in such family activities, and he was probably right.
After my grandmother died in the mid-1970s and her house was sold, we lost our connection with Garden Creek Road. But occasionally I still drive there to see her house—now hardly recognizable with dark shingle siding—and look at the woods across the road. I would happily walk that trail again with my parents if I could, but those days are gone forever.