I grew up in the Ozark foothills of Arkansas, in the small, sleepy town of Springdale. It got its name from a spring-fed creek that runs right through the middle of town, aptly named Spring Creek. On its journey, the creek flows at the bottom of a big hill. On the top of the hill is Bluff Cemetery. When I was growing up, we had never heard of Spring Creek or Bluff Cemetery. We only knew it as Dead Man’s Creek. The creek and the cemetery together were Dead Man’s Creek. And it became my special place.
The first time I went to the creek, I was very little. A close friend of the family, who was also my appointed Godfather, Tommy, took my sister, my younger brother and me. I remember climbing up a steep set of honey-colored stone steps to get to the cemetery. They were old and broken in places. There was a black wrought iron rail to hang on to, but we were too little to make good use of it and Tommy had given us all bags of candy, which we were more interested in holding. It was Spring, around Easter, and the air had that incredible sweet, clean smell that happens right before it rains. That is still my favorite smell, and it always takes me back to that memory and the magic of the creek and the cemetery in the Spring.
When we were young girls, my best friend and I spent some wonderful summers there. We would walk or bike several miles in the heat to get there and stay all afternoon. The creek was crystal clear and cool, with currents that turned around large boulders and islands of gravel. It was lined on both sides with huge trees and not very visible from the bridge. It was a tricky descent from the bridge to get through the trees and brush and even an old barbed-wire fence that was supposed to keep us out. But, once we were there, imagination took over and we would be lost in play for hours. It was our own private world where no one could see us or bother us.
We would eventually make the climb up to the cemetery, never paying much attention to the cows grazing on the hill. Many of the graves in the cemetery had familiar names, but I didn’t have family buried there. There were very old, simple markers and new, beautifully crafted monuments that looked like sculptures in a garden. There was so much to explore, so much mystery, history. It was a strangely beautiful place with tall oak trees, fiery with color in the fall, shady and cool in the summer, dark against the snow in the winter. And from there you could look down at the creek and the bridge and the hill dotted with cows.
When we were a few years older and interested in boys, Dead Man’s Creek was a favorite place for the girls and boys to meet. In the summer, we would flatten cardboard boxes and slide down the grass, tumbling at the bottom. When it snowed in the winter, the hill was the perfect place for sledding and flirting, and we would spend the day there. On one particularly memorable, crisp winter’s day, Donnie O’Neil held my hand on the frozen bridge above the creek and gave me my first real kiss. I somehow knew he had been planning it all day. It was a soft, warm kiss that seemed to last forever. Maybe it has. My crush on Donnie was brief, but I will never forget him, or that day, or that kiss.
When I left for college, it was many years before I returned to Arkansas to live. But on my trips home to visit family and friends, I would try to go to the creek. I would sometimes go with a sister, or an old friend, but often I would go alone. Springdale is no longer a small town. Dead Man’s Creek has changed much over the years. The stone steps to the cemetery are still there and the towering old oak trees. But many of the trees along the creek were removed and the creek is now visible from the bridge.
When my mother passed away, it was early in the morning on Christmas Eve. That afternoon, I had the strongest urge to go to the creek. My sister Sharon asked if she could go with me. It was a cold, brown, overcast day. We walked in the cemetery for a while and then sat in the car for a long time, just looking and being quiet. After a while, Sharon mentioned how peaceful it was and how she was happy that our mother had chosen to be buried there, even though all of her family was buried in Oklahoma. I almost stopped breathing. I hadn’t known. She had never told me.
Now when I go to the creek, I visit my mother. And in this place that holds so many memories for me I find peace.
