Kenilworth
New member
The nine foundation pillars are left, and about seven feet of chimney. The same orange sandstone is scattered among buildings and bridges from Portsmouth to Cincinnati and was cause for a full-blown town once, about five miles from here (there now is only an overgrown gash, no structures, for the town was not allowed the luxury of drinking its own blood). Inside the rectangle of the pillars are grasses and thistles and a noisy rural silence. The 1830 county census included a map, with roads, landowners, and landmarks, including this building, labelled. Remembering that it was a church, it is easy to reconstruct. Square-hewn oak and locust beams went on the foundation stones. The floorboards would have been poplar, sat on twelve-inch hardwood joists. The walls would have been framed with whatever; probably a mixture of oak, locust, poplar, elm, walnut, even maple and sycamore if someone had dry on hand, and sided with poplar. Perhaps there was plaster inside, and a cedar-shingled roof. There should be a door stone on the north side, facing the road. There is, here in the weeds. The church is built. I stand outside, whitewash the boards, affix a post and bell, create a sidewalk, hitching posts and a couple of humble shrubs. I step through the doorway and back into the rectangle. It is a small church. I can see the structure in all its detail, but no matter how long I stand I cannot resurrect the congregation. All that comes is a faint religious sound of unhappy purple music. I walk through the wall, into the sun, into the authentic hymnody of birds and breezes, and up the hill.
The entrance to this cave is not inviting. It isn?t sinister or intimidating, like some entrances are supposed to be, it simply looks like a groundhog hole. It also looks like it could have fallen or been dug open a week or a month ago, which makes what is inside unexpected.
When I wrote about the caves of this county, this is one of only two that I did not visit in person. The owner was a very suspicious and not particularly hospitable man, and I had made the honest mistake of driving up to ask his blessing after a week of rain, rutting his steep muddy road pretty badly. He himself, I noticed too late, had been parking at the bottom of the hill and walking up. So I went away with his scowl at my back and did not return, relying on the accounts of my elders for that part of the book. Now though, I have noticed that he is never around. The weeds are grown up. Well, there is a place to park well enough away, there are no neighbors near, and the leaves are on. It is sneaking season.
The entrance overlooks the church. Though I can barely see it through the leaves, and though it is a Thursday noon, I can suddenly and plainly hear the voices of the post-sermonal crowd. They make sense too, of what I had wrongly figured was related to the old road bed on uphill a ways: Who were they? Why did they go in there? Probably a lot of them were children, after church. I go in myself. About three miles from here is a small cave with about 65 identifiable inscriptions on the walls. When documenting these, I spent two days making careful scaled copies in notebooks. I would not have the patience to do the same here, for the walls are covered, and I soon realize that this is the richest historical landmark in the county. There are hundreds of names; shallow scrawls, careful gouges, elegant serifs, delicate scripts. There are etchings too of birds and houses and snakes. I have heard about these, some of the local people claim that the bird in Stout Cave was carved by a native hand. I cannot see how such a thing would be known, I cannot immediately distinguish it as older than the rest. But something must be done. Here are the last remaining physical works of physical men, women, and children. Surely their talk was here, their fear, their laughter. They might have been called to from down the hill and been unwilling to go, or might have hurried their hand with the awl or the nail or chisel. Perhaps too there were touches here? Kisses? Bald, reckless words? All that is lost, they all have come and gone through that little bitty hole and into life, to go back finally, invisibly, to ground. Even the writing in all the oldest country graveyards has worn into mysterious veins. It would be odd or frightening to them, maybe, to know then that they were creating in this little cave the most lasting monument to themselves that would ever exist. The only thing I know to do is to record and photograph their names. I cannot imagine what purpose that will serve, or that more than a half-dozen people would be interested in such a documentation, but something compels it to be done. Walking back to the car I remember two more recent cave inscriptions. One, a first initial and last name, and the date ?Oct. 1982?, in an out-of-the-way passage in an isolated Kentucky cave. It is careful, precise, small, and deep, both humble and vain. I will never forget the name. The other like it is my own, made with a chunk of quartz from the stream. To see it you will need to wait for drought, walk for a long time, be small or bring explosives, and turn your head the right way. It was childish, the staking of a claim, which would be obvious to anyone who saw it (no one ever will). But these are monuments to more than our existences, they tell who we might have been, what we might have been thinking that day, how we were feeling. They can join us in thought to dead minds, living ones to ours when we are gone, and this too is resurrection.
We are removed and hidden from this world even before we die. It is obvious that this is so by the luridness of modern graffiti, howling for attention. Please, if you must add your name to a wall or some other ledger, don?t use paint. Don?t make it easy to remove or hide. Make it of the place and of your experience in it. But first embrace the job of making yourself worthy of having existed there.
The entrance to this cave is not inviting. It isn?t sinister or intimidating, like some entrances are supposed to be, it simply looks like a groundhog hole. It also looks like it could have fallen or been dug open a week or a month ago, which makes what is inside unexpected.
When I wrote about the caves of this county, this is one of only two that I did not visit in person. The owner was a very suspicious and not particularly hospitable man, and I had made the honest mistake of driving up to ask his blessing after a week of rain, rutting his steep muddy road pretty badly. He himself, I noticed too late, had been parking at the bottom of the hill and walking up. So I went away with his scowl at my back and did not return, relying on the accounts of my elders for that part of the book. Now though, I have noticed that he is never around. The weeds are grown up. Well, there is a place to park well enough away, there are no neighbors near, and the leaves are on. It is sneaking season.
The entrance overlooks the church. Though I can barely see it through the leaves, and though it is a Thursday noon, I can suddenly and plainly hear the voices of the post-sermonal crowd. They make sense too, of what I had wrongly figured was related to the old road bed on uphill a ways: Who were they? Why did they go in there? Probably a lot of them were children, after church. I go in myself. About three miles from here is a small cave with about 65 identifiable inscriptions on the walls. When documenting these, I spent two days making careful scaled copies in notebooks. I would not have the patience to do the same here, for the walls are covered, and I soon realize that this is the richest historical landmark in the county. There are hundreds of names; shallow scrawls, careful gouges, elegant serifs, delicate scripts. There are etchings too of birds and houses and snakes. I have heard about these, some of the local people claim that the bird in Stout Cave was carved by a native hand. I cannot see how such a thing would be known, I cannot immediately distinguish it as older than the rest. But something must be done. Here are the last remaining physical works of physical men, women, and children. Surely their talk was here, their fear, their laughter. They might have been called to from down the hill and been unwilling to go, or might have hurried their hand with the awl or the nail or chisel. Perhaps too there were touches here? Kisses? Bald, reckless words? All that is lost, they all have come and gone through that little bitty hole and into life, to go back finally, invisibly, to ground. Even the writing in all the oldest country graveyards has worn into mysterious veins. It would be odd or frightening to them, maybe, to know then that they were creating in this little cave the most lasting monument to themselves that would ever exist. The only thing I know to do is to record and photograph their names. I cannot imagine what purpose that will serve, or that more than a half-dozen people would be interested in such a documentation, but something compels it to be done. Walking back to the car I remember two more recent cave inscriptions. One, a first initial and last name, and the date ?Oct. 1982?, in an out-of-the-way passage in an isolated Kentucky cave. It is careful, precise, small, and deep, both humble and vain. I will never forget the name. The other like it is my own, made with a chunk of quartz from the stream. To see it you will need to wait for drought, walk for a long time, be small or bring explosives, and turn your head the right way. It was childish, the staking of a claim, which would be obvious to anyone who saw it (no one ever will). But these are monuments to more than our existences, they tell who we might have been, what we might have been thinking that day, how we were feeling. They can join us in thought to dead minds, living ones to ours when we are gone, and this too is resurrection.
We are removed and hidden from this world even before we die. It is obvious that this is so by the luridness of modern graffiti, howling for attention. Please, if you must add your name to a wall or some other ledger, don?t use paint. Don?t make it easy to remove or hide. Make it of the place and of your experience in it. But first embrace the job of making yourself worthy of having existed there.
