I hadn’t heard about Serpent Mound until I read Gloria Steinem’s memoir, My Life On The Road. Tucked deep into southern Ohio was this mysterious spot. Knowing that I was soon headed to the midwest, I figured a swing through Adams County in the not-so-distant future was possible.
It was April of 2018 and my second time in the Appalachia. It was a tour where we embraced the tour-ism. Some highlights included betting on horses at Keeneland, hiking the Daniel Boone National Forest, checking out sweet music memorabilia at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and living my best Ralphie life at the house that the movie “A Christmas Story” was filmed in.
Not everyone was keen on all of my suggestions.
Blake waited in the van at the Christmas museum and Bryce gave me a hard no on visiting Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. I’m still annoyed about it, but if being well past 300 feet underground wasn’t enough, my excitement over the passage called Fat Man’s Misery was the final blow. He would have been fine, but there was no convincing. Maybe he was still sore about driving in New York City the year previous.
Anyway, there were no objections to visiting Serpent Mound. I administered the directions in the van and kept the part about a 45 minute detour to myself.
A lot has been written and disputed about Serpent Mound. The twists of the serpent’s body align with the sun during equinox and the tail with the winter solstice. And maybe the snake is eating an egg? Or maybe it’s eating the Earth. There also isn’t total agreement on when it was built.
Given the dubious facts, anyone who knows me might expect I would be more critical.
On the drive, Bryce and I listened to John Prine and producer Dave Cobb talk about Prine’s new album The Tree of Forgiveness. As we pulled up to a parking spot in front of the visitors’ centre, Blake was sleeping and Bryce and I were so invested in the stories behind the songs and the songs themselves that we couldn’t leave the van before the broadcast finished. At the tail end, Prine and Cobb talked about recording the song “When I Get to Heaven”. Cobb said that Prine laughed every single time he quoted his father in the song, saying,
“Buddy, when you’re dead, you’re a dead pecker-head.”
Both Prine and Cobb fell into laugher again. I don’t recall us laughing in the van. Maybe a sniff and a smile? Then the song started and Bryce and I heard it for the very first time.
In it, Prine starts out with a whole lot of silliness about about going to heaven and starting a rock n’ roll band and opening a night club. The chorus is more silliness. He’ll have a cocktail (vodka and ginger ale) and smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long. Then he sing-talks about finding his parents, and his brother.
By this point tears were in my eyes and a lump was in my throat. The sincerity of his joy to see them was undeniable. Then he went on about his aunts and that got me thinking about my aunts, and how my mom is gone… and by then I was just hoping that Bryce wouldn’t catch me trying to hold myself together.
When Prine knocked on his guitar and delivered his father’s quote for the second time, Bryce and I both fell to pieces crying and laughing and made such a commotion that Blake finally woke up and looked at us startled and said,
“What’s going on?? What’s wrong with you two?!”
And then we walked around a place where everything was a little strange and where it felt like an absolutely normal thing to construct an effigy that’s over 1300 feet long and no one seemed to really know why and who cares why it was done anyway? It’s just great as it is. We climbed a rickety tower in high winds to look down on the huge grassy shape of a serpent and it all felt perfect. It all made sense. There was even a black snake coiled up in a tree to drive the point home.
Don’t worry about it so much, it seemed to say. Life can be silly. It’s more fun that way. Embrace it.
Happy birthday to The Tree of Forgiveness. And God bless John Prine.
You invited me here last winter (to your sub stack) and I finally made it and I’m hooked. Just like you intended. ❤️
Smiles and a few tears watching The video❤️