The Ground Beneath Our Feet Has Receipts

In September of 2020 due to varying circumstances during the pandemic, my family and I were selling our Costa Mesa, CA townhome - the second home that I mainly grew up in. We packed up our entire lives into 2 Penske moving trucks, 2 Subarus, Kona our family dog, Mr. Pickles the turtle and Nala my siamese kitty. We drove the 4 cars 2,000+ miles in about 4 days time to my Grandparents home in Childersburg, AL.

We came to visit Alabama mostly when I was younger during the holidays. My earliest memories there; being woken up early to see very rare snow falling, laying on a water bed for the first time, a little dog named scruffy that I climbed across furniture to avoid, being intrigued to look out the terrifyingly dark windows into the endless woods at night.

I also remember going to someone’s house and feeling spirits watching me, we walked down a hallway with paintings and one of the portraits eyes followed me. I’ve always felt this energy or presence, though I began to notice it differs depending on the land. You’d think this was all scary to a young 5 - 11 year old self but to me it was all so intriguing. So much so that I did a full show and tell report in 4th grade about one of my trips, including a rhino gem from my visit to Desoto Caverns and lots of pictures I took on my disposable camera.

After having not visited for so many years and now living here, I had a new appreciation and wild curiosity for this place my father had grown up. I began diving not only into our own family history on my Fathers side but also into the history of this place.

Anytime I drove the hour into the town for groceries, it would come up in conversation where I’m living and was always met with “what are y’all doing all the way out there?!” to which I would ask, from my recent discovery, if they knew that it’s the oldest city in America? Despite my father growing up here, our my many visits and even many Alabama natives, none of us had known either.

A quick history: Hernando Desoto, a Spanish explore, was met by the 26 year old Chief of Coosa in 1540. For about a month the Spanish invaders enjoyed the hospitality of the Chief and his tribe. However as many of these stories go, the Spaniards kidnapped the Coosa Chief and his sister, bound them in iron collars and chains to use as human shields and guarantee safe passage through the rest of the territory, enslaving hundreds of Coosa citizens.

Hernando Desoto… now I’m thinking back to that trip I took to Desoto Caverns all those years ago. I remember feeling a strong underlying feeling of discomfort and that we shouldn’t be there once inside the actual caves. Honestly tough, my grandmother purchasing that rhino stone was the most memorable part for me haha.

Of course after putting 2 and 2 together, I ran to research the history of the caves and what do you know: in 1963 a team of archaeologists discovered a Native America burial site.

*It’s said that DeSoto did not legally claim the caverns, rather that his 1540 expedition encountered the site and was therefor later named in his honor but I'm sure you already know how I feel about that!

Alas a federal report in December of 1796 makes DeSoto Caverns the first officially recorded cave in the United States.

Imagine the shock of my adult self learning the history of all that happened on the lands I'm now living on and then circling back to my younger self's memories and understanding what I was feeling in those caverns? It’s also interesting to me that Childersburg is claimed as the longest continually inhabited city in America, though with so much previous history being erased, one may never truly know.

Maybe this is why I’ve loved learning about history on my own and was never really interested when being taught in school, as the land has always remembered far more than most will ever give credit to. Sometimes all it takes is looking back with older eyes to finally understand what we felt all along.

*The year is 2026 and I’m revisiting this post to state that the caves were in fact renamed to Majestic Caverns in 2022.

RoxyonaApril 18, 2021Comment