Angels in the Garden: Wilson Rawls and the Mythical Red Fern

September 24, 1913

My fellow seekers of garden lore and literary magic, on this day, we celebrate the birth of Wilson Rawls, a man who gave us perhaps the most enigmatic plant in American literature - the sacred red fern that never existed in any earthly garden.

The tale of Rawls' journey to authorship would move even the most stoic of gardeners to tears. Picture, if you will, a man so overcome with self-doubt that he committed his manuscripts to the flames rather than risk his beloved Sophie's judgment.

Oh, what gardens of the mind were temporarily lost in that fire!

Yet like a perennial rising from winter's slumber, Sophie's love and encouragement coaxed one story back into bloom. From the ashes of those burned manuscripts emerged Where the Red Fern Grows, a tale that would plant itself firmly in the hearts of generations to come.

The red fern at the center of this beloved novel exists purely in the realm of imagination, yet Rawls described it with such conviction that readers have been known to search nursery catalogs in vain.

Let us savor his words:

I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death.

In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies.

The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.

Is it not fascinating, dear readers, how the most enduring plants in our cultural garden need not exist in nature at all?

Like the lotus of Buddhist scripture or the golden apples of the Hesperides, Rawls' red fern grows in the fertile soil of our collective imagination.

What genius to create a plant that only angels could sow! While we gardeners pride ourselves on our ability to coax life from the soil, even the most skilled among us must bow to the celestial gardeners of Rawls' legend.

As we tend our tangible gardens today, let us remember Wilson Rawls, who taught us that some of the most precious plants grow not in soil, but in the heart.

For is not every garden, in its way, a story waiting to be told?