On The Author's Absence

I just returned from a stay at my grandparents's home in Central Mississippi. I managed to find my way onto a few backwoods dirt roads (one of which happened to be mud thanks to a water truck directly in front of my car spraying it down generously) and knock about some in Greater Winston County. Explored the only cave in Winston County- and probably the only one for many miles- known as Nanih Waiya Mound Cave (around there it's pronounced 'nan-er wi-yah'). It's a humble cleft in the side of a very unusuall hill, in the middle of a swampy flood plain. The entrance is small, but the cave opens up enough to stand up straight, and slopes down, eventually ending in a pool of water. I understand the passage continues somewhere under the normal water level; during drought one can go a little further. At any rate, normal conditions allow one to get in just deep enough to be in near complete darkness, a sort of deep twilight. It's not the most impressive cave I've ever crawled in by any estimation, but it is one of the oddest- situated right next to a cypress swamp, in a rock that looks like highly compressed clay and defintely not like cave material, and the whole thing appears to be partly natural, partly dug out over the centuries. Choctaw legends on the cave vary- in one legend, the Choctaw people emerged from this cave at the time of creation. In another, rather more prosaic one, the cave is the work of a group of hunters who got caught in a rainstorm. They hid under a little overhang, and hollowed a bit more out during the rain. Later, as an amusement, they hollowed it out further and further, eventually resulting in the cave of to-day.

I also was able to spend some time with my great-grandmother. She has been in very poor health lately, and has had to stay indoors pretty much all the time, which is the hardest thing on her- she can't stand dwiddling about inside. She'd much rather be out under the hot July sun tending peas or flowers! She has been doing better though, after a week in the hospital and a trip to the emergency room last week, among other things. We would appreciate your prayers.