Hidden in the Tall Grass: Essays on rural and natural heritage

By Johnny Carrol Sain

Inspired by the words of Thoreau, Leopold, Abbey, and others exploring the intimate connections between people, place, and nature, Johnny Carrol Sain offers thoughtful commentary on the culture, wild places, and wild things of his home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Pokeweed Press
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578926049

Johnny Carrol Sain

Johnny Carrol Sain writes about the connection between people and place from the rural Southern perspective.

Book preview

Hidden in the Tall Grass

Hidden in the Tall Grass

Hidden in the Tall Grass

Essays on rural and natural heritage

J. Carrol Sain

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American Pokeweed Press

Copyright © 2021 by Johnny Carrol Sain

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2021

Contents

Introduction

To the bone—in moving pictures

One Blood and Water

Two Dirt-Road Lore

Three Significances

Four Circles, Songs, and Seasons

Acknowledgements

Having a place means that you know what a place means, what it means in a storied sense of myth, character, and presence but also in an ecological sense.

~ Gary Snyder

No place is a place until it has found its poet.

~ Wallace Stegner

Boston Mountains region of the Ozarks and the Arkansas River Valley

Introduction

 As a writer who is always happily surprised every time a story sells or a reader reaches out with kind words about my efforts, I have no ideas about who would buy this book or why.

Maybe all writers feel this way to some degree.  But I know that all writers do believe that their scribbles and tappings have some value to others or they would never spend the considerable time and even more considerable effort to actually write. Writing is easily the hardest work I've ever done, and I say this as a former hog farmer who moved thousands of 300-pound pigs onto a semi-trailer under some miserable conditions.  I often claim that I write only for myself and don't give two hoots in a holler about what others think about it. In point of fact, though, I care a great deal that folks read and consider my thoughts cobbled together with what I hope are interesting phrases. Regardless of the critic's jabs, all of it is the result of honest and significant mental labor along with untold hours of tedious revising and editing until I simply can't stomach even one more syllable of my own words. 

But as much as I hope that readers-at-large purchase and enjoy this compilation of little stories about an afterthought area of the nation and one of its lesser sons, you among the general population should know that this book isn't really for you. This book was published with a very select audience in mind. The introduction from here on out is addressed solely to them. 

I imagine that by the time you’re reading this on your own, you’ll be well into your teen years. That was my suggestion to your mom, anyway, because there are some word choices and ideas in here that require a more mature mindset to fully appreciate. But as of this writing, Nixie Carrol, you are five years old. Lenny Renae, you are two. And, Luke Henry, you’ve been here for only six months. This book is for each of you, my grandchildren

In these pages you’ll find a collection of essays about my experiences in the rural southern Ozarks and River Valley of Arkansas along with some insights into the culture of the region of which I am a product. I was born here, have lived my entire life here. And I’m quite certain that if your grandmother and I were to move anywhere else, I simply would not be me. My roots run deep in this place and because of this, yours do as well. 

Most of the essays were previously published in various magazines over the first 10 years of my career as a professional writer, which didn’t start until I was around 40 years old and is an interesting story in itself. But I’ll save that for another time. There’s not really a central theme to the essays, though, I’m sure you can find some semblance of a pattern here and there.

Actually, I’ll save you the trouble: The central theme is me. These stories are simply me, and I’ll explain the why a few paragraphs down. I tried to categorize them, but there’s so much overlap that a clear demarcation is impossible. Some should probably be in one place and others might really work better in another, but what’s done is done and the book is already published. We’ll all just have to accept that the borders are not much more than a flimsy pretense of order.

Included among the selected pieces are memories of my semi-feral childhood as a sensitive and thoughtful boy who enjoyed lonely places and was prone to contemplate everything to excess. It was this time as a youngster that truly shaped who I am today. I could not write about all that I write about without the benefit of those formative years spent roaming field and forest, wading in stock ponds and creeks. I was blessed to be born into a rural setting and into a family that allowed and even encouraged my curiosity and exploration. 

There are a few essays about the culture you come from. That culture flows directly from Celtic and then Borderland (commonly referred to even by me as Scots-Irish) culture, filtered through Appalachia in the New World (a lot of your distant kin still reside in Appalachia) and pooled in the Ozark Mountains. Both sides of my family come from Ozark roots going back multiple generations: my mom’s in Missouri and my dad’s in Newton County, Arkansas. It’s a strange culture to the outsider — rough-cut, slow to change, often prone to violence and addiction with generations mired in abject poverty while also stubbornly and curiously proud. But it’s also a culture that finds honor in hard work paired with a leathery toughness and endurance. It’s a culture that often made do with what was on hand or found a way to acquire what was required, though, not always by the most honorable means. Still, the perseverance through sheer force of will is the one trait that has most inspired me. I pray that if ever you find your back against the wall and facing what seem insurmountable challenges, that you will call upon the grit passed down from your ancestors to see you through. I’ve called upon it myself numerous times and, so far, it’s never let me down. That grit is in your blood, too.  

There are essays about my experiences as a hunter and angler that, I hope, will point you toward a deeper and more complex understanding of what these activities are, the intimate connections to land and waters only they can offer, and also contribute to your understanding of what it means to be human. Your mom and Aunt Kenzie both grew up eating deer meat or squirrel at nearly every meal and even had a hand in bringing venison home from the woods. I hope all three of you become hunters and anglers, and I’ll be trying my damndest to steer you in that direction. But even if you never hunt or fish as adults, I want you to know that this is who we are culturally and naturally. We evolved to be predators just as the bobcat and blue heron did (though, with vastly different tools), and that you are always a part of the circle of life as a consumer whether you choose to engage actively or instead take a passive role. To hunt and fish with honor and respect for those beings you pursue is, perhaps, the most ancient and sacred act of humanity. We are made of those we eat, be it plant or animal. They are the beings who share this planet with us, who join us in the beautiful, tragic dance of life, death, digestion, and life again. 

I’ve also offered a few how-tos and some words on subjects fundamental to being prepared in the woods. Topics include how to build a fire, the proper attitude toward firearms, and the one secret of woodcraft. I’m sure you’ll recall that as each of you reached an age of appropriate maturity I offered these specific lessons and this wisdom along with any tools needed (matches, knives, guns, along with long walks through lonely forests… all of which likely caused your grandmother untold hours of worry) to practice the crafts. However, I thought it would be good to have a reference in this book for the day when you might need a refresher, but I’m no longer here. 

And, finally, there are essays about becoming aware of the world you live in, of your choices and their consequences, about humanity's choices and consequences as a whole, and about my profound love for this specific land and this marvelous planet. Let my words help you find wonder and joy in the wild things, the simple things, the things that even people who live amid the splendor of twinkling fireflies in the summer dusk or the soft chirps of October crickets often take for granted. As Earthlings along with the wolf spiders, barn swallows, snapping turtles, and opossums, we are tethered to and nourished by our grandmother Gaia. Get to know her intimately. Listen to her. Cherish her. Honor her. Stand up for her. Love her.

I want you all to have this collected hodge-podge of stories for a couple of reasons. The first is because there’s a heritage here in this often overlooked land of humble hills and creeks that I hope you come to appreciate and love just as I do. And there are layers within this heritage impossible for me to convey without writing. I hope that through these essays you’ll come to know and embrace where you come from and that this acceptance will help you understand who you are. This little strip of flyover country, featuring the oldest mountains on the planet and a society moving at what seems a snail’s pace compared to the rest of the world, is your place. But also understand that the whole of the planet is your place, too. As the creek once told me (another interesting story that I’ll save for yet another time), there is nowhere on the globe that you don’t belong. You are a product of your specific place and, even more, you are a product of Earth

I also want you to have these stories because there is another heritage beyond the natural and cultural that resides within me, your grandfather, that I need to share with you. I want you to see how I became the person I am because those experiences helped shape your mom, and those long-ago experiences will also help shape you. I’ve fumbled with the proper way to define this legacy for days now. It could be what some folks call spiritual, but I’ve never figured out what that word really means. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t believe you can fully realize its depth unless you can know me, in some small way, as just a boy and then just a man, as just another human being. 

But we all know that I’m more than just another human being. I am, after all, the blessed soul so very fortunate to have helped welcome you to this world, who stood with your grandmother beside your parents as an assistant guide and teacher on your first, and hopefully several more, legs of this wondrous journey. I am the man honored beyond all I deserve who gets to be your Pa.

To the bone—in moving pictures

The lead-off essay in this book, To the Bone, was originally published in November of 2020. And if I remember correctly it took about a year to write. The first drafts were ghastly, utterly horrible.  So bad that I almost deleted it all from my hard drive forever. But thankfully I caught a glimpse of substance in the concept despite my weak writing and decided that maybe my thoughts on the subject needed to mature, that when it was time the proper words would come to me. So I put it in the folder I use for essays still in development and let it sit. Sometimes that’s how it works. I get this idea in my head about what I want to write, but for whatever reason it needs time to ripen. Trying to publish a story still green on the vine has rarely worked out well, so I don’t fight it anymore. Some processes simply can’t be rushed. As summer began to fade and my mind turned toward hunting, I tinkered with it a little here and there. And then when deer season finally rolled around inspiration seemed to flow every time I had a whitetail encounter in the woods. I think the final push to polish and publish, when the bulk of the rewriting was done, took only a couple of days in late October. 

Anyway, filmmaker and friend Andy Sarjahani read the essay after publication and thought it would make a powerful visual story. So over the course of three frigid days in December 2020 we worked on doing just that.

The end result received way more recognition than we ever imagined it would. It was selected for viewing in 11 different film festivals — Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (Missoula, MT), Le Bois Film Festival (Boise, ID), San Francisco Green Film Festival, Made in Arkansas Film Festival (Little Rock), New Orleans Documentary Film Festival, Fayettville Fim Fest (AR), Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (AR), Maine Outdoor Film Festival, West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, Louisville International Film Festival (KY), and the Carborro Film Festival (NC). At Hot Springs To the Bone won the Public Broadcasting Service Reel South Award, and as of right now you can view the film on the PBS website.

I'm much obliged to Andy for recognizing the potential in this piece. I’m also eternally grateful for his and video editor Adam Sekuler’s masterful handling of my thoughts in the often tricky transition from written word to visual expression.

One

Blood and Water

A better vision of the animals is that we are one among them… What holds the story together is the transformation of energy and substance. Thus do I return to the theme of love and death, the possibility that killing and eating could be the ultimate act of respect.

~ Paul Shepherd

"I opened his body and separated

the flesh from the bones

and ate him. Now the sea

is in me: I am the fish, the fish

glitters in me; we are

risen, tangled together, certain to fall

back to the sea."

~ Mary Oliver 

To The Bone

I’m a little squeamish when it comes to handling eyeballs and brains. You’d think that after dismembering hundreds of carcasses — cutting into both warm and cold body cavities, pulling out intestines, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, etc. — I’d be more stoic in the matter. But those eyes, the window to the soul as Shakespeare said, and that gray matter where the soul (or what we think is a soul) resides, trigger uncomfortable emotions. 

The deer who owned the eyes and brains I’m handling has been dead for more than a month. We met, and I killed him, in the mountains near my home.  It happened in a grove of white oaks, green-leaved and loaded with acorns, as the first rays of an October dawn bathed the forest in pastel pink and orange tones. He saw me perched in the oak with these eyes, watched me as I drew ragged breath and the arrow that would pierce his lungs and heart.

We civilized humans have created a narcissistic myth that our own deaths are a tragedy beyond comprehension. Coming to grips with the reality that one day I will simply cease to be, that the organic shell housing my soul or spirit or simply consciousness will be reduced to food for something else (boring as it is, microbes and fungi most likely) is inconceivable. I simply can’t imagine a world without me.

But to the uncivilized world, death is the most ordinary of events. Beings die everywhere and all the time. They’re dying in the forests and seas, on the plains and in the mountains. They’re dying on farms and in yards, in your very home at this very moment. Death is the mechanism for life, returning base components back to the system where they’ll be formed into something else. Every other living thing on the planet seems to know their position in this solar-powered recycling, that the individual alive now is but a temporary placeholder for the individual to come. Scientist of biology and human ecology, writer, and all-around deep-thinker Paul Shepherd writes of this knowing of the prey animals, those primary consumers in the trophic pyramid, and the predators who depend on them as literal conduits of light:

The dream of perfection of the soft-eyed deer and the singing grasshopper is to burst like a small sun into the blood of the wolf and the bluebird, who surrounded by prey, accept each bite as a gift from the sun-parent. 

I can’t say for certain that this deer dreamed of me eating him, but there was a recognition, a palpable knowing in the cool autumn air that morning. The moment of intersection unfolded as though our fates had been intertwined since our births.

He bolted with apparent vigor when the arrow found him, and I thought I’d missed. But blood leaking from his wounds, splashes of a most urgent color, led me to him moments before he died. I was there as the soft golden glow faded from his eyes. I wiped the tears from my own.

And now, morbid and barbaric as it sounds, I want his skull near me. Not as a trophy. Think of it as a talisman, a connection to the wildness that the deer exists within, that we humans once fully belonged to but now experience only as outsiders. We’re domesticated shadows of our former predatory selves, but his skull will be a reminder of my blood bond with the deer. It’s a relationship that’s been consummated by death and digestion through countless generations dating back to prehistory.

The only way I can keep this sacred object in our home, without the putrid smell of decay attached to it, is to get rid of all the soft tissue. I’ll spare the specifics, but after the initial skinning and removal of eyeballs and brains, the rest of the process isn’t so bad. When it’s done, all that’s left is bone. 

Bone isn’t the uniform white color you might think it is. Not a freshly boiled and scraped skull, anyway. Instead, it’s tinted with the softest grays and browns, the muted hues of the tendons, ligaments, and cartilage that once worked with muscle to articulate and animate but now removed leave their subtle shades behind. The skull’s aesthetic, from a distance, is smooth simplicity. But a closer look reveals nuance with purpose --  the various openings for nerves and blood vessels; the tight fit of small, rotating bones that attach ear-butt to skull; the acorn-stained ridges of teeth. A skull is a jigsaw puzzle of form and function guided by evolution. Calcium phosphate and collagen combine to form everything from load-bearing structures and levers to the more delicate, lace-like framework of the nasal cavities. 

The deer’s brain isn’t wired like ours so its protective housing is different as well. But there are striking, though, not surprising similarities, too. We did, after all, share a common ancestor with the deer nearly 65 million years ago. Evolutionarily speaking, successful components tend to endure across species. 

My eyes focus on the hole where the deer’s optic nerve connected his brain to his eye. I try to imagine the sights, the emotions of life as prey. I try to imagine my ancestors from more than four million years ago on the savannas of eastern Africa who knew this position in life as their own reality.

But I can’t. I’ve been too long at the top. 

Somewhere along those four million years separating us from Australopithecus afarensis, we left our shared station with the deer and grasshoppers and sided with the wolf and bluebird. Our shift came about because the combination of genetic gifts — bipedalism, an opposable thumb, and a marvelously complex brain — handed down from evolution proved to be an incredibly effective, though unlikely, formula for an apex predator. Especially that brain. 

The most distinct characteristic of the top and back of the deer’s skull are the squiggled joints called sutures. Sutures allow skulls to flex, protecting the brain during birth and after as it grows. We have them and need them even more than other animals. A human is born with a huge, outsized head compared to our bodies. It must pass through a relatively narrow opening at birth and then our clever brains continue to grow for another 25 years. 

One of the deer’s sutures snakes along the very back of his braincase. The other two start under each antler, nearly encircling the bases, before they meet in the exact middle of his head. The sutures loop and wind in a primal calligraphy across the frontal lobe. I trace their tight meanders, trying to read the ancient cursive like a blind man reads brail.

But I don’t feel prose through my fingertips. It’s something more poetic, lyrical, melodic. It’s a song, perhaps the same one Aldo Leopold spoke of