Looking back at “Big Rock” with Gail and Nonie
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
My two oldest friends have celebrated their 75th birthdays, one this past week. In July we will be the same age again, until then I’m rubbing it in. I’m the youngest of our trio.
The three of us don’t get together as much as we would like, or ought to. There are many restraints on our lives, but thankfully we are still, sort of healthy. Ultimately when we do get together we recall our youth and usually Big Rock figures largely in our memories.
Big Rock was one of our favorite haunts during those long, hot summers so long ago. The trail is still clear in my mind. We’d leave my backyard, bushwhack through the undergrowth covering the first hill, and pass the scary tree where the birds used to chatter in the Fall. It was such a long hike that we each had to carry silver, metal Army surplus canteens full of Kool-Aid on our hips and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in wax paper in our Army surplus rucksacks on our backs.
At the top of the hill, after the first leg of our journey, we would cross a field of tall grass until we reached an old falling down barbed wire fence. Holding the rusty strands for each other, we’d carefully climb over the fence and trek across the field toward the foot of the steep hill. Our knobby kneed legs would get covered with scratches and bug bites, but we didn’t worry about it. Ticks were something we didn’t even think about.
From there we hiked up a leaf covered, logging road. Big Rock was at the top. On our way, we would take time to carve our initials with our Girl Scout jack knifes into one of the many smooth-barked trees that border the old road. Reading the carvings in the tree was like a Whose Who, of who was in love with who, or who had recently visited Big Rock.
From Big Rock we could see up and down the valley and across the way and beyond the river to the other hills that guard and protect Wellsville from the outside world. There, quenching our thirst with sugary drinks and filling our stomachs with sticky sandwiches, with the warm summer sun on our backs or stretched out on the sun warmed rock watching clouds drift overhead, we’d dream of what was beyond those hills and wonder what was ahead for each of us. When we came back from our personal revelries we’d laugh and promise to be friends forever.
When we meet these days, we often talk of going back to Big Rock, but bad knees, wobbly feet and allergies have pretty much ended those dreams. If we ever do get to see Big Rock again, I think it will have to be in the seat of an ATV with someone who isn’t afraid to have an adventure. We may not need to take a GPS with us, but it might not be a bad idea to have a paramedic onboard.
Today when I look at my old friends I don’t so much see Gail as the well-traveled, respected and accomplished woman she is, as much as I see the eager, agile, mischievous friend with sun bleached hair. When I look at Nonie I don’t see the intellectual, well-versed, respected and beloved teacher, so much as I see the adventurous, auburned-haired, imp of my youth. I see the girls who jumped in the leaves from a garage roof, flipped off a trapeze, who galloped around the backyard, rode bikes, travelled west on a doghouse, played ball, slid downhill on a toboggan, got into trouble and learned about life.
It is a little inspiring to think that all those summers ago when we pricked our thumbs and held them together mingling our blood or carved our initials into a tree near Big Rock and promised to be friends forever, that the promise would come true. We’re no longer young enough to believe that forever is a long way off. A lifetime of experience tells us that forever may only be an hour, a day, a month, a year or as much as a decade or two away.
When we get together Gail, Nonie and I will continue to look back at our memories while we explore new trails into our elderhood. As one of my generation’s favorite icon put it, “we boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before,” setting our course by “the second star on the right and (going) straight on till morning.”
