HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest 

ADVENT/CHRISTMAS/EPIPHANY A.D. 2007

TREES!  Trees define Hill-speak: Cedar, cherry, dogwood, hickory, maple, oak, persimmon, pine, plum, poplar, redbud, sycamore, walnut.  All abound on the forty-plus acres that make up Hillspeak, the center portion of Grindstone Mountain.

There are two outdoor swings on Grindstone.  In either one you can look straight ahead, to your right, to your 1eft – or straight up and you will see ... trees!

If you are enjoying the breeze that comes up from Deer Valley in the swing between the front porches (each of them has a swing also) of The Farm House and The Old Residence, a very tall and very old sycamore will be in your line of sight; look to your right to see the forest that covers most of neighboring Pond Mountain; to the left, the trees that mark the entrance to the Silver Cloud Trail.  And if you look straight up you will see that you are shaded by a maple tree – also very tall and very old.

If you sit in the in the swing in The Farm House backyard you will, again, be shaded by a maple tree–not quite so tall nor as old (it was planted when Patient Wife and I moved to Hillspeak thirty-plus years ago) as the other.  Your view to the right will include not only the Pond Mountain trees but the largest pussy willow I have ever seen and an Androscoggin poplar that is larger and older than is usual for these hybrids.

St Mark’s Cemetery, a short walk from either swing, is shaded and guarded by five old oaks.  At the southeast corner of the cemetery stands a gnarled blue spruce that shows plainly how the prevailing winds blow atop Grindstone Mountain.  To round out the cemetery trees, a Norwegian fir stands midway on the south fence line.  Leading to the cemetery is a line of Virginia pines planted some twenty years ago.  They are a favorite hangout for cardinals and finches.

Trinity Park, which lies to the south and west of the Twin Barns and the cluster of houses, is lined by a thick interweaving of maples, oaks and walnuts.    Almost in the center is an Australian willow that pinpoints the location of the Hillspeak Memorial.  The southeast corner of the park is shaded by, probably, the largest, and perhaps oldest, oak on Grindstone Mountain.

Individual trees take on a personality of their own.  My favorites are the blue spruce at the corner of the cemetery (I admire its tenacity); the sycamore across the county road (it’s slow to leaf in the spring and each year I have to sweat it out until I see the first green); but my all-time, number one, most favorite tree of all is half a wild cherry that stands at the corner of our workshop.  Sometime, on a Sunday afternoon in the early ‘90s it was struck by lightning.  It was, literally, cut in half and there seemed to be no way it could survive.  Some fifteen years later it is still here and, as with the sycamore, I sweat out its first leaves each spring.

Come visit Hillspeak when you can, but please do not be like the lady visitor from Texas who was disappointed with both Eureka Springs and Hillspeak because she “couldn’t see anything for the trees.”

Both then and now, we sorta like it that way.



©SPEAK, INC
805 CR 102 - EUREKA SPRINGS AR 72632-9705
PHONE: 479-253-9701    FAX: 479-253-1277       E-MAIL: speak@speakinc.org


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