“I dwell in possibility”
-Emily Dickinson
October’s gold and reds bring a magic to the air and into the wistful heart. I’m writing this in Ireland now, where it’s known as a “thin” space. My blood and bone somehow know the truth of whatever this means. A place between…where possibilities are born and there’s a strange sense of openness, of “not knowing”…of mystery known and curiously welcomed! A freeing space. Home.
According to the old stories, the Hickory Nut Gorge was just such a “thin space”. The Cherokee and the Catawba knew this. They knew that where two streams meet is a holy place. And here there were five streams gathering together at Bat Cave: Reedy Creek coming down from the eastern Continental divide from Edneyville, and the Hickory Nut Creek, and the Middle Fork of the Hickory Nut Creek, and then the Broad River, along with Grassy Creek coming down from Shumont. They both wanted to pass through here but were afraid. They knew it was such a sacred place and would have their holy men—and holy women, as the Cherokee was a matriarchy—come and hold rituals here, so that they could then pass through safely.
October can bring such thoughts alive to us as we walk the woods and along rocky streams or gaze out at the grandeur and expanse of Lake Lure and discover that we meet a grandeur in ourselves. A place of quiet, of peace, deep within us in the midst. We dwell in possibility. What some call the gateless gate, the placeless place, a new threshold where we can, step boldly into the unknown. Yes, the leaves fall from the tree, and yet the tree is somehow still alive through the quiet gestation of the coming Winter.
Indeed, this time we are living in feels very much like a kind of collective “thin space” of “not knowing”, a time of increasing uncertainty filled with the “unknown” before us. Oh, may we all breathe in deeply this air of our beautiful Hickory Nut Gorge and know the mystery and relax deeply into our inner stillness, perhaps, even, as Dickinson closed her stanza with these words:
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
(“I dwell in Possibility – (466)
BY EMILY DICKINSON)