“Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the St. Johns River”
By Kevin McCarthy
One of Florida’s most famous writers was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896 – 1953), author of The Yearling, Cross Creek, South Moon Under, and more than a dozen short stories. She won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Yearling, which also became a well-loved movie starring Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, and Claude Jarman, Jr.
In 1928, she and her then-husband, Charles Rawlings, bought a 72-acre orange grove near Hawthorne, Florida, in a small town called Cross Creek, for its location between Lochloosa Lake and Orange Lake. They tried, but failed to make a living growing oranges, while they wrote. Their neighbors, however, became memorable in the stories of Mrs. Rawlings.
In 1934, when she realized that her marriage to Charles was failing, Marjorie went with Dessie Smith Prescott on a ten-day trip down the St. Johns River, from the Highway 50 bridge to the Ocklawaha River, where they finished their 100-mile-long trip. That experience provided Rawlings with the determination to end her marriage, and also gave her wonderful material for the “Hyacinth Drift” chapter of Cross Creek.
She also used the St. Johns River in her Yearling novel and a novel for children called The Secret River. Rawlings had several relevant descriptions in her Cross Creek book that describe how much that peaceful trip on the St. Johns meant to her: “I shall never be happy on land again. I was afraid once more of all the painful circumstances of living.” And this: “If I could have, to hold forever, one brief place and time of beauty, I think I might choose the night on that high lonely bank above the St. Johns River.” And finally: “Because I had known intimately a river, the earth pulsed under me. The Creek was home.”
In 2003, I joined friends Bob and Edwina Davis to retrace the trip that Rawlings took on the river. We managed to go from Lake Harney, to the Atlantic Ocean at Mayport, in a week, stopping along the way to talk to residents and experience the wonders of the St. Johns. Most importantly, we were able to experience in a small way, the peace and calm that Rawlings experienced on her St. Johns River trip.
The St. Johns and other Florida waterways have given countless boaters an escape from hectic lives, a chance to experience nature in its splendor, opportunities to catch many kinds of fish, and another reason to be thankful we live in such a marvelous state.
Kevin McCarthy, the author of Saint Johns River Guidebook – 2008 (available at amazon.com), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.
