Rawlings's Life: Water

"Cross Creek is a bend in a country road, by land, and the flowing of Lochlossa Lake into Orange Lake, by water. For the two lakes and the broad marshes create an infinite space between us and the horizon."

The waters of Florida, comprising 7,700 lakes, 1,200 miles of coastline, 660 miles of beach, 4,500 islands, 600 springs, and 12,000 miles of rivers and streams, stirred Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's soul and revealed her spirit. The Florida waters became a catalyst for her epiphanies, moments of insights, and revelations, all of which transcended her life and work at Cross Creek. In chapter 22, "Hyacinth Drift," Rawlings escaped from the "hardships [at home] that seemed . . . more than one could bear alone," to traverse the St. Johns River's main channel with its many tributaries. In Cross Creek, this journey takes on another meaning, becoming a metaphor for life.

Symbolic of the paths chosen to live, Rawlings's journey through the main channel and tributaries of the St. Johns River represents life choices and opportunities. Similar to the process of decision-making and growth, first, needing to be stripped of the old to be born again, like spring following winter, Rawlings's first night on the St. Johns River is cleansing: "I had never lain so naked a place, bared so flatly to the sky." Moreover, just as life has no books or maps to navigate us on our journey, the maps used by Rawlings and her companion, Dessie Prescott, to guide them down the St. Johns River become useless, due to drought and vegetative changes. It is the water hyacinth, symbolizing faith and drifting without resistance, that eventually guides them to the end of their journey, the mouth of the St. Johns River. For Rawlings, the journey down the St. Johns River is a process of renewal and growth, moving her from a "lost touch with the Creek" to rejuvenating the creek's meaning as home; this revelation enables her to return to her life and face its challenges.

Just as Florida's unique liquid nature has shaped our history and culture, so do the St. Johns River and Cross Creek help shape Rawlings by providing a meaning to her life and a literary voice. Such a metaphor, as in "Hyacinth Drift," illustrates the importance of Florida's waters to her life. As Rawlings says, "the river life was indeed the finest of lives and there was no hurry in the world."

With a Pulitzer Prize for The Yearling and the popularity of Cross Creek, both of which were inspired by her life at Cross Creek, Rawlings had indeed found meaning to her life and her literary voice along the banks of the creek. The waters had become her muse. As Connie May Fowler reminds us, it is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who "ensures that our cultural memory would be embedded with the likes of Jody and Ma Baxter and Dessie, that the people and the lifestyle-though today largely extinct-would at least be remembered." And, in doing so, "a simpler, more honest world will live forever in this state's imagination."

--Christina Engstrom