Healing Springs & Other Stories

By Elizabeth Mack

From the lush countryside of the Ozark hills to the rolling prairie of the Great Plains, this essay collection follows the writer as she travels the roads between Arkansas and Nebraska, examining the physical and emotional geography of the places we choose to reside. Told with inquisitiveness and sparkling with insight, the writer laces intimate stories of past and present, taking the reader on thought-provoking journeys of self-discovery. Subjects include an ailing mother, a World War II quest, Willa Cather, noise pollution, a project house, infidelity – all told with a keen eye toward nature and the environment we inhabit. Full of discoveries and revelations, this stunning collection explores the interconnection with the landscapes we travel, the people we love, and the places we call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Mack
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733775311

Elizabeth Mack

Elizabeth Mack was born in Kansas City, and at the age of 13, moved with her family to the Ozark hills of Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. She received a BFA in Creative Writing and MA in English-Creative Nonfiction Writing from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The winner of the Moondancer Fellowship for Nature and Outdoor Writing from The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, Elizabeth’s essays have been published in literary journals including South Dakota Review, Oxford Journal’s ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment), Isthmus Review, Thin Air, as well as numerous magazines and other outlets. Currently, she is working on a memoir of her adolescent years in the Ozarks when she dropped out of high school at 15 and became a teenage mother.A former instructor of nonfiction writing and English at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Elizabeth currently teaches community writing workshops in Omaha and leads private writing retreats. She lives in Bennington, Nebraska, on a 2-acre hobby farm where she keeps chickens and a husband, and works as a freelance writer.

Book preview

HEALING SPRINGS & OTHER STORIES

Written by Elizabeth Diane Mack

Smashwords Edition 2020

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth D Mack

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This book is creative nonfiction memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated. While this is a book based on memory, I have done my best to stick to the truth as I recall.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr. John Price, Dr. Lisa Knopp, and Dr. J.J. McKenna, teachers, mentors, and friends, who helped shape many of these essays with their kind and thoughtful suggestions. Special thanks to Dairy Hollow Writer’s Colony for the Moondancer Fellowship for Nature and Outdoor Writing, where many of these essays were toiled over in the sublime and transcendent Ozark village of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Special thanks to Dr. Tammie Kennedy for her friendship and always insightful counsel on many of these essays. And a very special thanks to my compadres, the Continental Writers, Theresa, Hayley, Kirsten, Jody, Kim, and Susan, whose invaluable help guided me in the creation of this volume. And to the original leader of our Continental Writers troupe, Daniel, whose encouragement of my writing carried me through a fog of doubt, and continues to inspire us all.

Dedications

In memory of my mother, Betty, who passed

peacefully during the final edits of this collection.

For my husband, John, with love.

Contents

Healing Springs

Journey into Catherland

Wheel of Fortune

Memorial Day

Mating Dance

Project House

Soundscapes

About the Author

Notes

Healing Springs

The Ozarks are a land of contradictions. Dirt poor families live a stone’s throw from the Walmart rich. Places of worship and number of hate groups both rank at the top of national lists. The natural beauty of the land is watched over by Christ of the Ozarks, a sixty-five foot concrete Jesus nestled in the hills outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas, what some folks refer to as the gay capital of the Ozarks. With outstretched arms and a body shaped like a milk carton, concrete Jesus looks more like a marauding sci-fi monster than what I’ve always thought Jesus might have looked like, but I suppose Jesus appears in many forms.

I call the Ozarks my home, but it’s more my adopted home. My parents uprooted my older brother, sister and I from the only home we had known, Kansas City, and moved us, three teenagers kicking and screaming, to the hills of Arkansas. We regularly visited our Uncle Murphy who had retired to Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, a tiny town tucked in the corner near the Oklahoma and Missouri state lines, but we had no inkling we’d be moving there. At twelve-going-on-thirteen, I had made up my mind I would hate it. Compared to the metropolis of Kansas City we were fleeing when my father was forced to retire at age forty-five after a massive heart attack, this Arkansas boarder town had less people than our city block. To say Sulphur Springs was small would be a gross understatement. It wasn’t even on any map I could find. When we moved there in the 1970s, Sulphur Springs’ population hovered right around five hundred, and with our move, the population rose one whole percent. The town had one small grocery, a pool hall, a mechanic, two gas stations and four churches. The only redeeming feature Sulphur had for three teenagers was the creek, or crick as the locals called it, a small lake in the town’s city park. As a city child I had never swam in lake or river water, only the occasional over-chlorinated pool. The water that filled the town’s natural lake from underground springs was as translucent as glass, the water so clear I could stand in the lake up to my waist and watch as tiny minnows nipped my toes. The city damned the creek at its widest point, creating a small natural lake, our swimmin’ hole.

On the far side of the city park were three natural mineral spring pumps. On every summer visit, we’d come to the red-roofed springs where we pumped mineral water from the natural ground wells below – the sulphur springs. One pump gave White Sulphur, thought to be good for healing liver problems, one Black Sulphur, for malaria, and one Alkaline Magnesium, thought to be good for intestinal problems, as stated on the three painted plywood signs above each pump. The first two were named (as legend goes) from the color they turn a silver coin when immersed in the water. All were believed to have healing benefits. We saved rinsed out milk jugs to carry home water from the springs, hoping to cure anything from my father’s heart ailment to Grandma’s gall stones. In the basement of the brick building that housed City Hall there once ran artesian spring water. Another natural spring, Lithia, sat just across the gravel road at the north end of the park. A flat roof once provided shade for the spring, which belched and streamed down from the cavernous mountainside.

Overlooking the creek, the rolling foothills lay covered in a thick forest of cypress, walnut, dogwood, elderberry, and mulberry trees, and natural rock formations rich with fossils. This is the heart of the Ozark Mountain region, with the Boston and Ouachita Mountain ranges to the south. To the north, south, east and west, you’ll find Beaver Lake, Table Rock, Grand Lake of the Cherokees, and the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers, with a smattering of smaller rivers in between. Water surrounded us on all sides, and even lay under our feet. Rock formations carved into the hillside from millions of years of rushing water still jut out above the highway as you head south into town, forming an overhang. A road sign on the highway heading south into town warns motorists, Watch for Falling Rock! Sometimes we would cross the dam in the lake and climb the rocks to an old oak tree where boys had tied a rope in order to swing out (barely avoiding the boulders) and plummet into the lake. Perching like birds on one outcrop, we would shed our clothes and sun ourselves, then rise and swing out on the rope, cannonballing into the lake, just deep enough not to kill us.

This Ozark Mountain region is unique, formed by a series of uplifts dating back millions of years. Due to age and limestone content, the mountains eroded into hills,