A Diary of My Younger Years - The Autobiography of Ivan Hall

A Descriptive Piece

A Descriptive Piece

Most of the country around Woodbury presents one grand mass of mountain scenery. About five miles to the north of Woodbury is a great tall rugged mountain called Shaft Mountain, on the top of which is a crater hole, covered with pumice stones. A person standing on the top of this mountain can see for miles around.

At the foot of this mountain rises a large spring which is the source of Stone's River. This river runs through woodbury in Cannon County, through Rutherford County, and through Davidson County, and empties into the Cumberland River fifteen miles above Nashville.

The following is a descriptive piece which I shall add to my diary as I proceed. Not far from a main-traveled road is a beautiful ravine covered with a forest of tall oak trees. On either side of the ravine run two rocky ridges toward the West. Down through the ravine runs a rippling brook. The forest trees are covered with grape vines, and there are yet a few clusters of grapes yet on the vines. Higher than all rises the mighty oak, with its large boughs extending on every side. The sycamore stands by the edge of the brook, with its smooth limbs extending out over the waters of the pool. A willow stands by the side of the brook, its boughs drooping down and drifting into the waters below. Here the red and yellow spotted leaves float down the stream. It is a bright Sunday evening in October that I am writing this in my diary. It is only a few days since I commenced to write in my diary, but I must go on.

I am sitting in the woods copying this from the scene before me -- the trees and whatever I can see. A few light frosts have fallen, and the green leaves of the trees are turning to orange, red, and yellow and have begun to drop off the trees. Some of the leaves are almost green, and the edges are tinged with a glowing red, while the yellow mulberry leaves look as if they had each been painted by some special Artist. Part of the leaves have already fallen and the ground is covered. The sun burns along the western horizon and sends its golden rays to the hollow below, through the two rocky ledges.

Out from a huge layer of bench rock runs an everlasting spring, trickling down the rocky ledges and moss-covered stones, gliding over the pebbles between the crevices into a mossy trough, where it rushes down and falls into a basement pool filled two feet deep with water, making a continual murmur. It then sinks under the beds of drifted leaves and loose gravel. Here and there it rises and shows its sparkling waters and then sinks again. It finally unites with the rippling brook in the hollow.

An old man used to go and sit by the little stream. For hours he would sit and listen to the rippling murmur of the little rill as it glided onward. He watched the birds as they came to drink at the brook in the solitude and stillness of the forest.

One day I asked him why he sat so long by the side of the little stream. Slowly he replied, "If you were as old as I am, perhaps you would know. I, like you, liked to be among the noisy crowd or playing with the boys at school. But now I love the stillness -- the silence of the forest, broken only by the murmur of the brook and the chirp of the birds. It brings peace to my soul. How pleasant it is to sit and listen to the murmur of the little stream." Here and there the brook widens out and gets deeper, and little minnows can be seen swimming on its surface. Some distance below, it joins another creek and plays between the hills as it joins a small river, then another, until it empties into the broad Mississippi River.