Fairy Webs and Deadheads
Intro: I took a writing class at Hamline University in 1992 that included a unit on description of a place. My journals are filled with cabin vignettes, places memorized in my heart. Deadheads was a piece I wrote after turning in several poems and an essay highlighting description. I give it to you first, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, an integral part of this tale.
Deadheads
“The white lilies have closed their palms, pedal fingers reaching up, touching their tips together.
The ancient deadhead bobs in the waves, among the bogs in the evenings elongated shadows.”
I wrote about that deadhead once. I handed in a descriptive paragraph about this cove and the professor returned my paper with a big thick red circle around the word DEADHEAD, and the comment: “Word does not exist. What are you talking about? Should not use.”
At the time, I felt deflated as a writer-in-the-making. It didn’t occur to me that maybe, just maybe, I knew more about bogs and coves and white lilies and yes, old logs, nearly sunken, covered by slimy mosses, slickened over the years of its floating with only the tip of its trunk visible to the kayaker’s eye. That is a deadhead.
A teacher who characterizes without knowledge beyond their own sphere, leaves students paralyzed, discouraged, maybe even stopping them forever. That, too, is a DEADHEAD.
Julia Creek in Early Morning
From cabin journal 2001
The spider fairies were very busy last night.
The cattails are woven together, web cradles hang lightly in the breeze.
Dewdrops cling on the silk left in timeless patterns, unreproducible by man.
The heron watches me put a hole in the beaver dam,
freeing the upstream waters to visit the downstream waters.
Waters gushing and giggling as they flow over the rocks and twigs
making mini-waterfalls, leaving the dam and their confinement behind.
A nearby grasshopper put his legs together rubbing out a ‘tisk, tisk, tisk’
as I floated by his grassy bog, the purple pickerel weeds and clogged lily pads.
The fog is burning off, with the sun to my back – the way ahead becoming clear.
I glance behind and see them, dozens of them, draped with sparkling-moist droplets.
These Fairy Laces of spider webs, bow between reeds, cling to overripe cattails, glimmer from dead branches, hundreds of dainty doilies, spun by tiny beings in the night.
Every season, this creek flows between Julia and Virgin.
Every season, the water boatman and the mallards return.
These seasons will continue long after I’ve left the creek.
I will miss the creek with its Fairy webs and ancient deadheads.
Thankfully, it will flow on and not miss me.
~~~
Thankfully, I did not let that professor shut me down forever. I went on to write what was in my heart. I finally trusted myself.
Has something like this ever happened to you? Was there ever a time in your life when you DID know something, but were questioned by someone regarded as the expert? Did you shut down, or did you go forward?