Cross Creek

The most magical place in Florida is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ home in north Florida.  It’s an old Cracker farmhouse, quiet and hot, surrounded by orange groves and the certain sense that time has stopped.

 The only way to get there is to suspend time and space. And cross the Styx, a slow muddy river between Ocala horse country and the college town of Gainesville.

We imagine ourselves as tourists in Miami during the 1950s, staring at paper Florida map placemats in a diner.  Drawings of mermaids and pirates on Florida’s west coast strike us as elementary school myths.  Instead of I-95, I -75, the Turnpike and AIA flowing like the karmic rivers of birth, old age, sickness and death away from the Fountain of Youth near Tampa, the one road out and up is 441.  

This is the Route 66 of Florida.  Tom Petty wrote about it in his song “American Girl”.

“She was an American Girl raised on promises…She stood alone on the balcony. Yeah she could hear the cars roll by out on 441 like waves crashing on a beach.”

Exhaust shimmer and occasional green lights combine to carry us past Palm Beach mansions.  Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando doesn’t exist in our 1950s mental continuum. Our thoughts turn more toward gator farms.   Soon we are skirting Big Daddy Don Garlit’s Drag Racing Museum and Café Risqué, a small strip club outside of Micanopy, both imaginary at this point.  Now we are on a two-lane road and are crossing the Styx, probably named by early settlers who thought the area was as hot and snaky as hell.  Now it’s time to pass One-Beer Road and we are home.

The heat is prehistoric and clocks have stopped. Our busy imagination is still.   We slip three bucks a carload in the honor system box. As we enter, we pass a Rawling’s quote talking about the enchantment of Cross Creek. In another venue, she hinted at the force of nature which is the flip side of the peace that can be found in Cross Creek and the surrounding swamp.

“All life is a balance, when it is not a battle, between the forces of creation and the forces of destruction, between love and hate, between life and death.  Perhaps it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins, for even creation and destruction are relative.” Rawlings wrote.

Because we’ve taken the tour so many times, we just sit on a wooden bench in partial shade and listen to insects crank up a dissonant concert. Flowers, chickens and the wind in the trees are different from the flowers, chickens and wind we noted during our last visit. These markers morph into one standard sound, light and noise show as we wait. After a while, we will walk around the rusted parked 1940 Oldsmobile and read a sundial:  “Grow Old Along with Me.  The Best is Yet to Be.”  These words surround a 3-D figure carrying a scythe.  Is it the Grim Reaper or just Father Time? 

The Pulitzer Prize in the house hasn’t moved and the weather only changes once in awhile.  In the right season, the blossoms on old orange trees smell like perfume.

It’s time to go now, and return to our own time.  The route back is quick, efficient and a little boring.  No imaginary placemat maps and we avoid slow hot 441 in order to get back home as quickly as possible. Our vacation in a time warp hasn’t aged us, but it hasn’t returned us to our youthful selves. Just as the protagonist in the Yearling, we slip into the problems and privileges of adulthood.  The peace of the Florida backwoods which exists right now without us seems like a half-remembered piece of childhood.