Tuesday, September 7, 1982

JoElyn, Jane, and I, together with David, William, Lisa, and Kathy Siegel, went rafting on the Chattahoochee yesterday, Labor Day.  It was fun seeing Jane and JoElyn in such circumstances.  At one point the raft left me (when I had gotten out to dislodge it) and I had to hustle to catch up with it.  At the “jumping rock” one college boy took off his bathing suit, shot the moon, did a little “hutchie cuchie” dance, and dove in.  The kids [ages 8 and younger] will never forget that.

Why do I want to share this with you, the reader?  Well, I am now 81 and when this story took place I was 41.  The story reminds me of something that belongs in a time of youth – both the boy on the “jumping rock” and those of us in the raft.  I would like to be back there with the river cascading down over the rocks, heading from “the hills of Habersham” down to the sea.  This little snippet of a journal entry places me back into two poems – one, Sydney Lanier’s The Song of the Chattahoochee, and the other, Robert Frost’s Birches.

Here are a few lines that will give you the flavor of The Song of the Chattahoochee:

Out of the hills of Habersham,
  Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
  Far from the hills of Habersham,
  Far from the valleys of Hall.

And then, the following excerpt from Frost’s poem still moves my heart:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Following is an excerpt from my memoir, Don’t Miss the Miracles, (see chuckjohnstonmemoir.com) about an adventure I had at age twenty-three as a young teacher at McCallie School:

One early-March “spring” holidays, I took four or five boys on an overnight hike on the Appalachian Trail where we began at Newfound Gap (5,000 feet) in Tennessee and climbed to the top of Clingman’s Dome (6,643 feet) on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. I remember being surprised to find two feet of fluffy new-fallen snow as we climbed to this, the highest elevation on the Appalachian Trail. I was just as surprised to spot a birch tree that to my knowledge then only grew in the more northern clime of New England. I only recognized it by pictures I had seen of the American Indian birch-bark canoes.

We were having so much fun hiking when I said to the students, “Hey, this could be one of Robert Frost’s birch trees. I’m going to see if I can climb to the top and swing out, letting it carry me gently to the ground.” So up I went, branch by branch, until to my amazement the boys gathered at the base of the tree seemed to grow smaller. I moved by tiny increments, fearful of a premature descent. My heart was beating as if I were on a roller-coaster when it inches to the pinnacle before it starts its mad rush to the bottom.

Nearly panicked about what to do next, I shouted down to the boys, “Grab the Frost book—front flap of my backpack. Quick, quick—read what I do next.” Curtis Baggett was the first to The Poems of Robert Frost and started reading frantically: “When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the line of straighter, darker trees …”

“No, no. Skip down. What do I do next?”

So on Curtis read: “He always kept his poise, / To the top branches, climbing carefully / With the same pains you use to fill a cup / Up to the brim, and even above the brim, / Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, / Kicking his way down to the ground.”

So, with heart in throat, I flung myself kicking into outer space for my memorable ride to the ground—only to hear a crack that echoed off the side of the hill and to find myself hanging helplessly at about the second floor of a three-story tree. As the boys helped me down, it occurred to me that Frost wrote his poem of a summer pastime when sap was running in the trees; here in the highest reaches of the Smokies, in two feet of snow, there was clearly no sap running.

I came away with only scratches and bruises; the boys came away with a great memory. To this day I will still say with Frost, “One could do worse that be a swinger of birches.”

Can’t you see how, at 81, floating the Chattahoochee or swinging birches would stir my soul?  For me, God is a God of Adventure.  He has led me into situations where the outcomes were uncertain, but never disastrous.  Strong river currents, high mountain peaks, and invigorated poets – all have been a part for me of the good gifts of a good God.