Coastline Pilot

Chasing Down the Muse, July 5, 2002

 

Catharine Cooper

 

The throaty roar of the canary yellow Harley drops like contrails as the 70’s rider, yellow neck scarf flapping against black leathers, roars past me.  I can’t suppress a chuckle. He must be doing 85.  Certainly this gentleman has found his muse.

 

I suspect I’d like to run away with him – well, not him, but maybe Steve on some hog getting me out of the tedium of moving.  Finally, finally - we are poised to begin the remodel of our Wendt Terrace home.

 

Multiple trips of multiple boxes and multiple tape dispensers fill several days.  After thirteen years in one place (my personal record) I seem to have accumulated more stuff than any one person should dare to own.  But there are extenuating circumstances.  I think I’ll call them avocations:  backpacking, sea kayaking, biking, weight training, photography (an entire darkroom), bookmaking, silk painting, quilting, sewing, paper marbling, gardening, cooking, off-roading, reading, research and writing.  Each has its own set of tools and support system which equates to lots of stuff.  The adage, ‘get a life,’ does not apply here.

 

My son, Austin, is disgusted with the volume of this personal collection.  He is helping with the move, and more boxes means more lifting means more tired muscles.  A new complaint is about to pass his lips when we encounter the shelf the holds the photo albums.  He groans at the sight of so many, until he opens one.  Suddenly work stops.  He gazes at images of a tiny him, a sweet jabbering baby who grows through toddler sand boxes to little league pitches and on to college ball.  Edges of his mouth upturn in his famous grin, and slowly he begins to understand why mom ‘saves everything.’

 

I hand him an old valise, a suitcase from the 30’s, and admonish him to handle it with extreme care.  “What’s’ in there?” he asks, his curiosity now piqued.  “Letters from the Civil War,”  I respond.  “From family.” 

 

Inside an aging scrapbook, my great great grandmother, Mary Oziah Cass (my mother’s father’s mother’s mother), had carefully glued newspaper articles, small note cards, and an envelope with two letters.  When I first received the valise, I was incredulous at its contents – that no one in the family had ever mentioned the letters. 

 

Their poignancy –and a real connection to a history which had only lived in books is extraordinary.  “These are real?” Austin asks.  We both marvel at the army issue paper and the flowery inked penmanship.

 

From Nashville, September 21, 1862. 

 

“I have not been in any fights since the one we had on the railroad.  There is occasionally a skirmish in this section of the country principally with forage trains.  There were thirty of the 7^th PA Cavalry and fourteen wagons captured about eight miles from here day before yesterday… So I think we will soon have the mess cleaned up if our Generals will pitch in and do their duty.  For my own part I would be willing to pitch in every day for a month if it would end the war for I am getting tired and sick of the way it is and has been carried out.  It seems to me that about one fourth of our head officers according to their actions and movements are as much in favor of the Rebels as they are of us and as long as such men as them are permitted to command our forces I fear we will make slow progress toward ending this damnable Rebellion.  I do hope that such men will be looked after and punished as traitors for they are certainly the worst enemies we can have.

 

“We are kept on half rations and I fear if they don’t get the trains to running through from Louisville before long we won’t get anything to eat … it can’t get much worse than it is now.  We don’t have any sugar nor coffee.  We have some stuff to drink.  They call it Tea but is is ahead of anything I ever saw before to be called Tea. I will send you a sample if I can get it just to let you see what stuff soldiers will use when they are hard up.”

 

We close up the letter, return it to the scrapbook and valise and Austin gingerly places it in the backseat of my car.  There are some real reasons to keep stuff.

 

The Harley rider fades in the distance, and I ponder my own muse.  She (of course mine is femine) lives in wild places, she surfaces inside of secret suitcases, she dances before me in folk music and campfires, and always, she chides me to reach and be more.  Sometimes she wears a red scarf and always - she chases the wind.

 

 

Catharine Cooper is a locale designer, photographer and writer who thrives off beaten trails.  She can be reached at ccooper@cooperdesign.net or 949 497 5081.