Stopping by the woods and Friday night lights

A metal sign next to a grassy trail leading down a steep hill reads "Bobbi's Hollow," rather like Godrick's Hollow for you Harry Potter fans. About 50 yards east of the sign, in the middle of some very tall trees I encountered what may or not be a mythical creature, one drawn from a child's imagination. Initially I thought it resembled the blurry photo thrown about over the decades purporting to show a prehistoric creature living in Loch Ness in Scotland. Much more interesting than a horse's head.

On numerous occasions over hundreds of millions of years the land around here has been covered by water, so one can easily imagine a creature of this nature rising out of a cold, deep-water hollow to greet the world, a world where humans did not exist, a world now fossilized.

The limestone bluffs on both sides of the hollow contain many fossils, mostly from the ancient seas. These things interest me however I don’t want to dig deep and study them and I most certainly don’t wish to see a PowerPoint on the subject. Close analysis and dissection often kills the poetry of history. And also, of poetry itself.

I was substitute teaching in a high school some years ago, filling in for a delightful woman having a baby, and we were looking at Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The poem has a strong cadence, so I asked if anyone in the class was a drummer in the high school band. I printed out the poem and we all went out to the school parking lot, each student with a copy in hand. Our drummer led with her snare-drum and we all stepped off. Left-right, left-right. The girls began, in military fashion, “Whose woods these are I think I know,” At which point the boys would echo/repeat the line. Then, “His house is in the village though,” until the end of the poem. The only thing the amused students learned about poetry that day was that it is nothing to be feared.

And speaking of high school, recently I decided to take in a Friday night high school football game. Getting into my car used to be easy, but these days I grunt like an Orc when climbing in. Anyway, I drove the two-lane atop a ridge to a nearby town, to a field where I once happily played linebacker. Friday night football on a cool October night is a petri dish of memories and my reaction to the game took me by surprise. Time remains the same on Friday nights, 2022 looks very much like 1969; same parents and grandparents there in support, same student body constantly moving, paying little attention, same cheers falling on deaf ears, and same marching band hanging around before splitting after the halftime show. In 1969 I loved a flute player in the band, a sweet-breathed girl with a dab of Tabu who had no interest in football but stayed the whole game just to watch me play. These days I have her flute and she has my love.

I have kept many of her letters, letters filled with youthful silliness, with hope for the future that lay before us, and with all the stuff that adds up to love. I wish I could send her a letter today, describing the burnt-orange October beauty of the hollow, and tell her about the creature residing down there. She'd be amused by that and would likely give it a name, a hilarious name that makes no sense, like Sarah. But there are no postage stamps that will assure a letter gets to wherever she is. Maybe one day I'll hand-deliver it.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.