Alder’s Stash

Cache Owner creekstompers has watched loggers come and go for 14 years. We will be next.

Our last geotour in Madison County spirals through pioneer history. With an entire school district chanting his name in gyms and stadiums, the legend of Jonathan Alder still beats a drum.

Coordinates lead to Foster Chapel Cemetery, where Jonathan’s grave still stands. Kidnapped by tribal warriors, he lived and hunted as a Mingo brave, fighting with Blue Jacket against Anthony Wayne and the American army.

When the Treaty of Greenville pushed tribes further north, Jonathan settled near Plain City, managing a thriving business, selling milk, butter, pork and horses, and relearning English. He built a cabin along the Big Darby, fathered 12 children with a wife from Virginia, and joined the American side in the War of 1812. In that early conundrum of identity and ethnicity, Jonathan worked it out.

The monarch now sheltering his grave lifts arms high and wide, strength of trunk and bark and leaf beseeching all pilgrims to tread tenderly over this wounded land.

Cache loggers respond in kind. A logger on his own journey to his father’s funeral finds solace in this place. A daughter who lost her father to a senseless killing now visits his grave here, with her mother, and logs the cache.

The story of a teenage girl, assaulted and murdered along the back fence of this cemetery 21 years ago, is logged and held gently, with compassion and sorrow.

On this shortest day of daylight, peering shadows sneak and slink.

The previous signer does not show up in the online log. With macabre humor, the darkness deepens around us.

We walk quickly, turning our faces toward those who have walked before us, in a circle of belonging, meaning, achievement, fellowship, and strength.