The Least First Blush of Spring

I'll have Ann's usual schedule today: up and outta here by quarter til six, off in the dark cold. Destination: WXBX in Wytheville, our hometown for twelve years, and the setting for more than a few of the pieces in Roads Remembered section of Slow Road Home. I'll be done with that live interview by 7:30, and hope to find the choicest local Greasy Spoon Diner for hot coffee served in an infinitely-refillable heavy white mug, bacon and eggs, toast and jelly, and a good magazine.

Then by no later than 9, I'll need to be back on the road to I-77 south to the Parkway and 13 miles west to the Blue Ridge Music Center. The local trail club (chapter of Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway) have constructed several miles of trail, but until there are two footbridges in place (30' x 4') the trails can't be opened to the public. I'm hoping to write a bit about the current needs, in hopes that private, corporate or government funds will be forthcoming.

From there, I'll find Chapters, the local bookstore in downtown Galax and see if I can leave a few books shelved there. And finally, I hope to meet up with a couple of folks who were part of our Wytheville gang back when. They owned the bookstore on Main Street, a favorite gathering place, until B decided in his early thirties that he wanted a life change. He left for medical school when I left Wytheville for PT school. Chances are, he'll be too busy seeing patients to do more than chat briefly on the phone. But it will be good to renew old friendships.

The picture above, from last week--a grab shot on the return leg of our morning walk. I want another shot at it, next time in RAW, on the tripod, and with the 80-200 lens. Man, I'm a sucker for backlighting! And here is where we'll see the very first hints of spring: in the tinge of color that comes to the tips of twigs well before the weather warms. Against the dark blue of morning shadow, every trace of color shows up! And look at how different in form these two clusters of trees are--something you'd easily miss in even lighting.

Fragments Forgotten

You're right: this is NOT a recent photo. And yes, I have some current photos I intend to post later this week, but they just might be mixed in with some found yesterday in the archives that never saw the light of day when they were current. Why now, you ask? Picasa, he says.

I have a friend who recently purchased a Canon XT1 (probably far more camera than he'll ever use). He told me the other day how exasperated he is with the overkill of Photoshop Elements that came with the camera. He basically wants to point and shoot and send email pix to his kids. "Why are the pictures so darned huge? I don't want them any bigger than the screen!" I didn't even bother explaining.

I told him that the next time I was over, I'd install a more elemental program for doing minor edits and making his pix files smaller for email. (I had Irfanview in mind) and that's when I revisited Picasa for my friend, but ended up installing it on my machine--a couple of years since uninstalling the beta that did not meet my needs.

There have been many improvements since beta. The program will view Nikon Camera RAW format now. It gives me more options about how I sort my "slides". It has nice visual tools that make it easier and more enjoyable to browse the 15,000 digital photographs in MyPictures.

And that's how I stumbled upon the scenery you see here--and a couple of others from the Way Back Machine I might post in coming days and weeks. And I have to admit: letting the images drive the emails will increase the number of emailed pix leaving Goose Creek. Heck, even a pharmacist can do it!

Be sure and click the small picture to see the larger one. Landscapes just don't survive being squished into a 450-pixel-wide spot!

Filed in: Virginia Mountains Photography

Help Wanted

UPDATE 2 pm 29 Jan: Thanks to 7 ad clickers, this morning's grand total of 31 AdSense pennies jumped to more than $4 today. Much appreciated, and consider giving an occasional peek at an ad while you're visiting the blog. I'm not in it for the money, but I'm not opposed to making my hobbies come closer to break-even. Yoo Hooo!

Doh! Murphy was right: whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first. (And the corollary is also true: whatever you want to do takes longer than you think. And costs more than you figured.)

I have no way to say for sure. I used a different kind of CD-R disk yesterday and the NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A built into my 3.5 year old Dell XPS desktop still gives me E800418ac: fixation error after it seemingly has copied files to disk. If I had a second machine and could try it there, I could rule out a Windows problem. As it is, I could put in a new drive and STILL not be able to move image files from 2000 through 2004 from the hard drive to disk storage. With the 16 Mb RAW images from the D200, I'm going to be needing to make room. Doh! Nothing on the web about fixing this problem that seems solid. Machine no longer under warranty. Doh!

Also under HELP WANTED: any Virginia readers who know about events coming up in 2007 where a starving author could pitch his books to a potential readership, please let me know. This morning, emails sent to the Galax Book Festival and the Fall for the Book festival at George Mason in September. I know there are others. Somebody out there in bookfestland might even consider a self-published author--ya think?

Also, I'd still be grateful for supportive reviews of SRH at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

And I trust the Google Adsense ads aren't causing a great deal of wretching out there in Fragments land. Heck, man, I've already made 31 cents! At this rate, I can pay almost 15% of my DSL charges per month! Click on a couple of those links, wouldja, so I can see if they make any discernable difference at all in "income". Hmmm. Slow going. But then the continents have spread apart going only 1 millimeter every hundred years. I'm patient. If not immortal.

Treacherous Travels

The dog barked his "people" bark--different from his squirrel or deer bark: more urgent with overtones of anticipation. His assumption seems always to be that humans are coming here to admire him.

This particular visitor yesterday around noon was a stranger--very young, very cold and very careless about the roads he chose to travel in his jeep for a Sunday afternoon joy ride. Said jeep was now only partially on the ice-covered bobsled run that is Goose Creek a hundred feet higher and west of here. One back tire hung in the air, off the cold shoulder of our steep, northy not-for-winter road. Could I please come with some chains and my truck and pull him to safety?

Well no, son, sit down by the fire here. Sounds to me like you need something with a lot of weight and a lot more traction than my small Dodge Dakota truck will get you. I'll call 911. The sheriff's office will know of a garage that is on call over the weekends. Might need two trucks: one uphill to anchor the front end while another tries to pull your back wheel back up onto the road.

Three hours later, the boy and his father (they live in Shawsville) stopped by to thank me for what little help I offered. And I resisted the fatherly lecture, shuddering to think how, if that tree hadn't been there, that man's son could have been down in that creek bed upside down in his mangled vehicle overnight before anybody else was foolhardy enough to take the winter road less traveled.

Being There

I'm feeling a bit of grief over taking the path of greatest comfort on Thursday instead of suffering to get the shot. The place my tripod should have been was the spot from which this image was taken back in October. However, on this particular January day--when I was interviewing the Park District Supervisor nearby--the winds were spitting snow sideways and the chill factor was near zero.

In the distance, even from the Park Service office, you could see several distinct snow squalls in the distance, the soft slant of snow a gunpowder blue against steel gray mountains. Patches of sunlight broke through here and there.

But the wind was so fierce, I could barely open the car door. A tripod would have been useless without a cinder block strapped to the central post.

And yet, I should have driven to the half mile to Saddle Gap overlook and sat in the car and at least watched the weather play out from that high place, even if I couldn't bring home the imagery in the camera.

I shouldn't let the technology drive the experience. Sometimes, the higher priority needs to be the being there. No pen. No computer. No camera. Just vision. And imagination. And memory. (Click for larger size picture)

Friday Shorts

* Coldest day of the year so far, but a dry cold, and though I will have to start warming up the car at 7 to get to work by 8, I think I'll get there just fine. I left the house yesterday in a blizzard, gambling that it was just a brief, intense snow shower. Five minutes later, I was driving in sunshine under a cobalt blue sky.

* I have been approved for Google AdSense, and still undecided what to do. Would be nice to recoup at least the cost of the monthly DSL by some (hopefully tasteful and unobtrusive) ads on the periphery of the blog page. I've resisted going this route now for almost five years (anniversary of FFF actually in March) and can cancel out after a few months if it isn't an acceptable fit. This, just in the way letting you know the blog may change in subtle ways soon. Or not. We'll see.

* Hey man, why don't we get wasted and do an interpretive dance of protein synthesis? Maybe only a biologist would get such a kick from this YouTube presentation of a noble laureate in a tighty whitey dress shirt and thin seventies-type tie narrate as several hundred UCDavis college students play the role of messenger RNA, ribosomes and such. What a hoot (at least for me.)

* And here are two images that I found worth a look: a bike "eaten" by a tree (thanks Pablo) and something in our child rearing years I neglected to ever do with duct tape.

* The image above--which has absolutely nothing to do with any of the above topics--was taken a few days ago from the logging road that winds through the steep immature pine forest behind the house. Now this would be a great place to use that panorama function with the camera. And if this isn't done in the near future, there will be no view from back there. The pines are quickly filling in the vistas, as I describe in Slow Road Home in the piece called "Succession".

Now, I better go put on my Friday shorts (and don't forget the pants!) and get to work.

Snow Business

I have an excuse to venture up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway today, threatened snow notwithstanding. I've happily volunteered to do some writing for High Vistas, the newsletter for the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and have a meeting with a Park Service spokesperson regarding the need for a couple of foot bridges at Fishers Peak--over near the Blue Ridge Music Center.

I'll be heading over there next week (again, weather permitting) for some pictures and heck--maybe a hike and my first tour of the Music Center, scheduled to open for regular performances again in June. By then, and by donation or other funding, hopefully the trails will have bridges and boardwalks. Stay tuned. And why not join the Friends in their effort to keep the Parkway beautiful, safe, and well maintained--a national treasure to be proud of!

The strange image above is the result of some rainy-day doodling: a panorama taken from the parkway and cubed, then turned into a "planet". Fun, if weird! You might see more of these. Rainy-snowy days ahead.

Bird Flu Yet to Fly

This is a topic I've not blogged lately, but I've continued to follow the H5N1 news all along. I became aware of, interested in, and concerned about the potential of this global public health issue while teaching biology at Radford in 2004 and 2005.

While the tens of millions of birds who have died from it or been slaughtered because of it might not think so, the virus has been kind to the planet by an evolution toward human transmission that has been slow. But change in this direction has not been non-existent. The incidence of Tamiflu resistance and possibly of family cluster And since it first appeared in a relatively small geographic area, bird hosts now harbor the virus over the majority of the planet. Take a look at the clickable map, and especially of the changes over the second half of 2006. Meanwhile, vaccine development goes on, with small victories and discouraging defeats.

And the press, understandably, is suffering from bird flu burnout, as is the general public. How does a nation, state, or community far removed from the Asian center of this pathogen remain appropriately vigilant for months, for years and not become complacent?

From Yahoo News: Bird flu surges in 2006: WHO chief - Yahoo! News: ... 2006 was a record year for human bird flu deaths. There were 161 deaths from bird flu worldwide in 2006 out of 267 confirmed cases, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data.

"More deaths occurred in 2006 than in the previous years combined," the WHO director general said Monday.

The fatality rate reached 70 percent last year, 10 percent above the average since the first recorded deaths in China and Vietnam in 2003.

"The message is straightforward: we must not let down our guard," Chan said at the opening of the WHO's executive board meeting.

"As long as the virus continues to circulate in birds, the threat of a pandemic will persist. The world is years away from control in the agricultural sector," she warned.

Ice Flow

I'm thinking maybe this will be a good day for some creek ice pictures. At least that possibility sweetens the knowledge that I have to taxi some packages down our luge-run road and up and over to the Check Post Office later this morning. I'll carry the tripod and camera bag with me, just in case.

Here's one I grabbed the other day, and was especially happy about, seeing it "developed" later, inside on the computer monitor. What excited me was the fact that it was taken hand held at 1/15th of a second and is a sharp as I could want. I set shutter priority at that speed hoping to get some motion blur in the water (1/4th a second would have been better in that regard) while possibly not losing too much quality to camera shake. The 18-200mm Nikon VR lens seems to have done its work!

This shot, full res, makes a dandy desktop picture! Tell you what, if you'd like to use it, click this link to open the file (800k) and right click to "save as desktop image". At least that should work in Windows. Let me know if it looks okay on your monitor, and if not, in future I can tweak resolution and aspect ratio, maybe, to improve things. (This is a limited time file; I'll probably remove it from the server in a few days.)

Ice Embryos: Where Snowmen are Born

It was no secret that she was as much interested in getting the husband out for a walk as in getting the photographer to the scene of a potential winter image. The physical investment would no doubt be greater than the photographic reward: her sighting of "weird" ice formations happened to be at the base of Ann's Falls--a "trail" supplemented in two places with ropes to make it under the best of conditions both possible and somewhat safe.

Covered by an inch of sleet, my Muck Boots might as well have been snowboards--a fact that became more evident on our way DOWN this same trail after snagging a few shots.

But she was right: these were odd little hummocks of clarified ice, more or less regularly spaced in the splash zone of our little hidden waterfall.

Two years ago (or was it three?) she discovered the falls and "improved" the trail to them. It is still a special place. But I'll be darned, it's a sure thing that if she hadn't drug me up there under the pretense of a potential photograph, I'd have been content to let this snowman nursery come and go unseen.

Book Notes January 2007

First, thanks to those who have been concerned about our winter travels. Ann spent the night at her workplace and will be driving the now slushy but visible roads home, having worked in the pharmacy 18 of the past 24 hours. She'll be a lot of good company when she gets home, fer shure.

Second, thanks to Chris O'Donnell, long-time Fragments friend, who has been the first to pen a little review of the book on the Amazon.com page. Much appreciated.

And in the Amazonian domain, not without some forboding, I've given them permission to scan the book and make some of it available to readers: up to 2% to print and 20% to read. And this latter number bothers me some as it is the lowest possible setting for how much to make available to read for free. That seems like a lot, but it is that amount or more given as choices.

And along the same slippery slope, I've made the book accessible (eventually when the process completes) to Google Print, as well as offered it as an ebook. This will let it reach other continents where the printed version would be entirely too expensive.

Google is going to scan it sooner or later, it seems, and there is a 30 day quit clause in the contract if it seems the priviledge of reading on line for free is being abused. Still, it felt a little risky doing this, and I hope my uneasiness is allayed by future success stories. Stay tuned.

And regarding the "next book" that I've been mumbling about here the past month or so: I'll show you tomorrow something I wrote in a rare focused hour last week--a kind of possible preface with a photo. But since then, I'm wandering a bit from that "coffee table--full page pix" model, thinking perhaps to have more and smaller photos, some with word wrap not unlike the blog page.

This would allow me to use more of the smaller jpegs (since I didn't start shooting RAW until about a year ago). I could also aggregate several shots on a page--in a kind of montage--about fall foliage; about closeups of nature; about the dog--all with some explanatory, descriptive or more lyrical prose as the compositions demand.

The thought would be, as I posted this morning, to give the reader-viewer of the book a deep sense of this place through time through my eyes and voice. And with this approach, it could include the quirky, the humorous and the more abstract and abstruse elements of creative life than an "arts book" approach. Just an idea.

Sorry. Ruminating out loud again. But after all, that is no small part for me to the purpose of this permanent record of my thoughts, plans and fantasies. I just let folks peek over my shoulder in all this. You don't have to look. But I'd enjoy the company.

Digging the Same Hole Deeper

I quoted an oriental-seeming proverb in Slow Road Home (or made it up, I can't remember which) that "wise man finding no treasure, does not keep digging in the same hole." Well, yes. And No.

In this place and time--Goose Creek, here, today, is treasure--of the senses, of personal meaning and belonging; treasure of comfort and beauty, and treasure in the riches of being able to share it with others through words and pictures. I haven't tired yet of writing about it, or in sharing the minutiae of day by day changes and discoveries in pictures of the same old barn, creeks, valley and woods. I seem inclined to keep on digging.

So any skills or tools I can acquire that help me go deeper in this same small place are welcomed and I hope will be put to good use with the light and time I'm given here.

One such tool, I read about a couple of years ago--an experimental technology that would take many photographs--not just three to five horizons side by side--and stitch them together seamlessly. That program, developed by a couple of young guys from UBC is called Autostitch, and it has recently been released in demo mode for free! Well hot dang Skippy! Often, a single shot of a scene through the lens of a camera is like viewing the Grand Canyon through a soda straw while the eye takes in so much more of the vista. Patching a dozen shots into one: there's got to be a time and place when this is just what's needed to best share the experience of being and seeing.

I only had about 30 minutes of light from the time I downloaded the Autostitch panorama software until full shadow, and ran outside with the camera to take six shots; three at the level of the road and house, and three up above of the treetops and forest above the house. This is the product--low res, not wonderful composition, but amazingly seamless and hands-free stitching. Tweaks are possible, and somewhat higher-resolutions as well. But for me, with most of my "finished products" going to the web and not to photopaper, this will be a great tool to help find more treasure in this deep valley.

You can read more about it here.

Addendum: I'm slipping. Missed a perfect opportunity for double entendre/word play by not calling this post "Digging the Same Whole Deeper". Shucks.

Winter Arrives on Goose Creek

Ann just called from work and she arrived safely, even though the roads were already getting covered with snow on her way in at 5:30 this morning. It's getting home this afternoon that will be the greater concern.

It was hard to believe with yesterday's blue skies that things would change so drastically. Even the US weather radar didn't look so bad. While they still miss it with some frequency, the computer models for predicting weather a couple of days into the future are a far cry better than they used to be, and this info helped us to be prepared last night as we decided if Ann should spend the night at work (at the hospital) or would it be safe for her to wait until this morning.

Now, I'll have to keep a close eye as this system passes, hope VDOT updates their road conditions page frequently and accurately for our out-of-the-way part of the Roanoke District, and make the call about 4 this afternoon. It's always an embarrassment to say "you'd better stay put" based on available predictions and then have her stuck spending the night in a hospital bed when the bad weather goes north of south of us and she could have easily made it home.

This image is a grab shot a yellow labrador retriever and some unidentified woman (who will kill me for putting her picture here dressed in her winter garb) walking back toward the house. (The dog isn't usually leashed, but we heard other dogs barking not so far away, and didn't want to chase Tsuga up mountainsides.) Goose Creek is below the road to the right, the barn is just off the picture as the road disappears to the left.

Oh, and for your viewing pleasure on this bleak winter day, I recommend the Fragments Flickr Slide Show.

Narnia Country Morning

Frustration: frus·tra·tion (fru-stra'-shen) noun:

1. driving west to work watching a spectacular sunrise in your rearview mirror
2. arriving at work as the sky lights up the most beautiful sunrise and not having your camera with you
3. arriving at work just in time for the peak of the surise color, having your camera with you, and being battered by a 50 mph wind and fingers frozen by subzero chill factor to get a shot off before retreating indoors

This is my view from my windshield where I park at work, facing the east horizon of rolling valley farmland. Nevermind that the view just left is of bumper-to-bumper truck traffic on I-81. To the right, the sprawling expanse of Carilion New River Valley Medical Center. This is one of their Narniesque lamps that lights a seldom used paved path along the perimeter of their property.

Friday Fragments

Yes, this is the same old apple tree that appeared a few days ago in a more artsy black and white impression. The lichens that decorate its dying branches give it a kind of surreal luminance and false life.

* We both had meetings last night. We didn't go. Within ten minutes, the walkway and the footbridge over the branch iced over about 7:00, and our decision to stay home from our 7:30 meetings in Floyd and Elliston was confirmed: they can meet without us. This morning, temps have risen and the threat of black ice is not zero but it is much lower than I'd feared. Ah yes, this is what winter travel feels like. I can't say I'm sorry it waited to visit until mid-January this year.

* I feel like I've recovered from a chronic illness. First, every time I'd close an Explorer (XP) window, MSIE7 would pop up. It was maddening. In the end, I disabled tabs in that browser, and that problem disappeared. Then (for the past two weeks) about once a minute, it was if I'd hit Alt-Tab, and in the middle of a browser session, the Excel spreadsheet I had been working on would pop up, then the Word document, then back to a different Firefox tab. It seemed possibly related to the browser, so I uninstalled FF 1.5, installed FF 2.0, and I have my computer back from the hijackers! (Sigh: the Tiny Url extension doesn't work in FF2.)

* With the above-mentioned problems, it made little difference to me that Citizens Internet had doubled the speed of our DSL (for the same price) on January 1. With my program switching problems and general sluggishness that went with it, my new 1.5Mbps connection made little difference. Now, we be jammin'!

* Okay. Excuse me but I need to cut this short. The dog has requested that I stop dawdling and finish the last few bites of cereal. (He can tell and only jumps up when the bowl makes sounds of a certain frequency as it approaches emptiness.) He never expects Ann's cereal bowl, but the spoonful of milk and single tiny fruit in my bowl seems to be his "raisin d'etre" (sic). So I shouldn't keep him waiting.

A Little Times a Lot

The latter measure remains to be seen, but hopefully, sales of SRH via a wider distribution will eventually net a bit of return. I'm in a better position to see how that will shake out, now that for the first time, my "publisher's compensation" page on the Lightning Source site shows some books have been ordered. Here's how it shakes out.

Retail price: $15.95
Wholesale price: $7.18 (at 55% discount, a pretty standard expectation)
Printing cost per book: about $4
My profit per book: about $3.25

This seems pretty sad compared to what I net from direct sales (if you don't count my time or the cost of gasoline for travel or depreciation on the car, or...) But even so, compared to the return per book of 4 to 7.5% in royalties I'd expect if I had gotten the book out through a publisher, this 20 percent return isn't bad. And it requires no more time or effort on my part than to keep the records I'll be sent (and deposit the check) at the end of each month.

So where to go with the color image book? Lightning Source can print them. These folks can do it cheaper with long-established presses in Canada and China.

How will I see how each image comes through the printing process without a direct proof of each page? The way it looks on my monitor may be way different from how it comes out on paper. With a publisher and graphic person to communicate with, this would we far easier. Should I then think about pitching this to a publisher, knowing if I pull it off, I might make less than a dollar a book?

Sorry. Just thinking out loud this morning. This is all new country for me and I'm a little unsure where I'm going in it. It's nice to have your company.

Marcescence

I've posted before--several times, perhaps--about the leaves that persist on the trees into winter. Marcescence, we discovered this clinging to the twig is called.

Here are some more marcescent beech leaves taken last week--not exactly the image I was hoping for. The wind picked up and the sun disappeared from the time I left the house til I reached the logging road where I'd noticed a nice cluster of fading leaves begging to get their picture taken.

If I do the color-image book and include this passage, I'll need several shots to chose from. We'll toss this one into the mix, and hope to better it. But I'd best get the right shot soon, because it won't last forever:

"... This year's beech leaf may stay on the twig until next spring's tiny new leaf evicts it, finally, pushing it out and away, off into space, down to the black soil among the first of the spring mustards and violets."

Pennyroyal: The Smell of Winter

I know, as recent landscape shots here go, this is a drab little composition--notable neither for color or form. But if posting this non-descript image leads you to discover Pennyroyal, you will share with me one of my deepest emotional connections with these mountains: the smell of winter.

While this "winter" so far is the exception, most Januarys offer little in the way of either color or fragrance. As I describe this in Slow Road, the olfactory landscape--the aromasphere--is a barren place, unless you go looking, or rather sniffing, for the smells of winter.

Along Nameless Creek, on the briskiest days of the cold months, there's always a spicebush twig at hand to scratch and sniff. And along the Middle Trail, if you know where to look, you can find a stem of yellow birch (or sweet birch) whose inner bark when revealed by a thumbnail scratching staggers the winter walker to another realm of perception--a kind of smelling salts to wake us from our hibernation inside our wraps of wool and down.

But for me, it is Pennyroyal that sends its musty minty tendrils deepest into that place where winter fragrance and memory live together in a way that only smells preserve. This particular plant carries an emotional weight so powerful it made me cry once upon a time.

In 1989, we had left the mountains and moved back to my home town of Birmingham. I was fully immersed in 14 hour days of physical therapy classes and labs, as absorbed in obligation and unreachable to myself as I have ever been, with a singlemindedness of purpose that comes when we know that, if we look down from our precarious balance in all we've taken on, we will surely fall.

In a rare moment, I slowed down enough one day to pull from the shelf near my desk a book other than a textbook. It was an old favorite of mine: Maurice Brooks' book, The Appalachians. It opened effortlessly to a page marked by a pressed plant: pennyroyal from back home--from a place, a time and a personal identity I could barely remember.

I lifted the flattened sprig from between the pages, and crushed a small whorl of drab brown flowers between my fingers, and inhaled, and was undone. How fully and effortlessly it carried me back to place I had made myself pretend had never existed.

So often back home in the Virginia we'd left perhaps forever, I had secretly plucked the dry inverted candelabra of a plant from a stony bank of a favorite trail and later hidden in my cupped hands, and stuck it under one of the kids' noses. "What is it?" I asked them, pop-test fashion.

They always responded with the name of a bird or salamander or such, just to pretend they couldn't be bothered to remember such silly lore. But they remembered: the sense of smell and power of memory will see to that. And I remembered as I put the pressed plant back between the pages of that book with tears in my eyes.

So for you, should you discover it now that you have seen it, this plant may offer only a pleasant aromatic instant. For me, Pennyroyal embodies the southern mountains in its chemistry and its magic, and this is just part of the thousand words in the worth of this simple picture.

Sunrise on Goose Creek

If I had been 30 seconds later with this shot, I would have missed the colors that flashed across the clouds about 7:00 yesterday morning.

Beauty is often so fleeting. Let's keep our eyes open for it.

Wider Circles

This may seem a small accomplishment to some, but the fact that Slow Road is now available via Amazon.com is a major milestone for my little project. The book is also on Barnes and Noble's webpage, and others, perhaps.

This opens up a new means of getting the book before readers outside southwest Virginia even while I've only been reaching that audience in some small and limited way for about eight months at this point.

However, being qualified as a POD book, Slow Road will not routinely be shelved in the Shopping Mall Big Box Book Stores stores for people to pick up, peruse, and purchase. And of course, Amazon is all virtual, and the book will only be found by folks guided to the site by connections with other similar books, by tags, key words and getting the book's site up from the low end of the rankings of the gazillions of books offered there.

Here's where I would be most appreciative of your help.

Both Amazon and B&N welcome reader reviews. This would be especially easy to do for those of you who have in the past months been kind enough to write a short review of the book on your blogs--a matter of cut and paste. Please consider doing this, won't you?

A thousand people have the book now. A dozen nice reviews that also mention other similar books would do wonders to make Slow Road Home visible to a wider readership.

So many of you have been a part of this sojourn since the early days. Thanks for hanging with me this far, and for spreading the word as many of you have done to your book clubs, family circles, workplaces and local bookstores. Please continue to do so as I am preparing my spring and summer calendar and would love to pencil in 4-5 engagements per month within 100 miles of home.

I do look forward to what lies ahead. If Slow Road can reach a little self-sustaining momentum via online sales, I will be able to focus more on some of the other things I'm excited about--both new writing and photography and the marriage of both. Perhaps more about that to come later this week.

And lastly, let me mention that if you want a first edition, fewer than 100 copies remain upstairs in the Very Back Room! Don't delay! And a reminder: the book and a pack of Fragments Notecards (see Fragments sidebar) are still available for $25.

Review Slow Road Home at Amazon.com
Review Slow Road Home at Barnes and Noble

Veneration

Ann and I both noticed it as we rounded the curve of the pasture headed back toward the house in our morning walk: the old apple tree is leaning more than it has been. The hollow trunk gives way, its branches like arms reach toward Nameless Creek, as if in prayer, lifted up even as the old tree slowly lies down to die.

Trusted Space: Monday, January 15 Open House

"Everybody's unhappy about the weather, but nobody's doing anything about it."

The ironic humor of this old nugget, of course, is that we know the forces that create weather patterns are quite beyond our control.

Some people believe the same thing about other aspects of our modern human existance: that this is simply the way things are and we'll accept this bad weather of our culture, put on another coat, hide ourselves indoors and suffer through.

Rob Paterson thinks we can and should do something about the weather--about the ill winds that blow through our hospitals and corporations, our families and neighborhoods, and the way we think about growth and progress and community.

Where we shelter from this storm and grow whole again is in what Rob calls Trusted Space.

He will build the case that together, flowing with and not against nature's rhythms and currents, we are about to change the way we live--the way we MUST live together--if we are to make it to the other side of the crippling fog of discouragement and collective confusion that typifies so much of modern western culture.

I'm first to admit I only know a small fragment of what Rob is prepared to tell us. But I must say, I think it will be an enriching tale to come for all us "hobbits" who participate in this epic as he unfolds if for us. And I know I am both honored and excited to be able to help in some small way by providing the photographic imagery to Rob's Trusted Space as we move in and through it over the coming months.

Please join us.

How Do You Spell SUCCESS?

'tis a sad day when my photographic opportunities come only from (Friday) work and (Saturday) a day long meeting. But I'm determined to start up the learning curve with the new hardware, so I'll take the shots where I find them. Love the one I'm with, I suppose.

Having the camera at work reminded me of another time that cameras were part of my physical therapy experience. I was working in a "pain center" where folks came after dropping through the cracks of health care or otherwise failing to improve. They were, as a rule, a very discouraged lot. It took a half dozen professionals working together as a multidisciplinary team to hope for success where other individual practitioners had failed to free the patient of their pain--or enable them to live their lives in spite of it.

On their second day in the program, one of us with a video camera in hand asked the patient to do some ordinary things: Tie your shoe. Stand up from the chair and walk in a circle and sit again. Reach up to the top of the door. Balance on one foot. Get in and out of your car.

Six weeks later, when they were perhaps still depressed, feeling like (and claiming) that they had made no progress, we would gather--the whole team and the patient--and watch the "before" pictures of their prior level of disability. They were often amazed at how far they had come, so gradually that they couldn't (or wouldn't) see what those on the outside could observe.

This was a turning point for many, who took hope from the "proof" of the possibility, the reality of improved lives. It was often true that their pain had not changed as much as we'd hope it would. "But you're doing A, B and C 50% better now, and, while it isn't the best results we'd hoped for, it is nevertheless success."

Yesterday, Leonard here gave me permission to post his picture on the hip machine. He's an example of a physical therapy patient who would have very different "before and after" pictures! He's a hard worker, and yesterday I learned: a singer. AND a photographer!

Underfoot Dog

"Will want to be involved in all family activities" is the way Labs were described to us when we researched the possibility of getting our first one back in the early eighties. Oh how terribly right that species description was.

Sometimes, the togetherness is inspired by the hope of a dropped crumb or offered morsel from the kitchen counter (favorites: broccoli "trunks", cabbage wedges and plain old dry dog biscuits). But more often than not, these dogs just must be whereever you are. And doing whatever it is that you are doing.

Yesterday, on a cold, blustery, not-so-good-for-photography kind of day, I worked for a while on the woodpile near the house, bringing armloads to store in the woodring and box on the back porch. The dog matched me one for one, each of my trips resulting in another odd piece that he selected for his own wood pile in the grass by the walkway.

At the end of the day, I had an armload of Tsuga-wood--smaller pieces, mostly (but he sometimes selects uncut lengths six or more feet long!) for the small stove in the family room.

If I could just teach him how to use that chain saw...

Those Look Lyke Cumftubble Shoes

Granted, I didn't know where I was going yesterday afternoon. Originally, the meeting was scheduled for the Winston Link Museum, but nobody there knew anything about it. A phone call found out that the writers' meeting had been rescheduled for the art museum three quarters of a mile away, in the center of downtown Roanoke. As problematic as parking would be, I'd walk, thank you.

But no, actually it was not at the art museum but around the corner another few blocks at the Center on Church. And so I paid the penalty of being a half hour late, and only after the meeting was over, as I began to walk the mile and a half back to the car, did I realize I also had paid the penalty that a country boy pays when he walks fast on city streets and sidewalks in his prissy dress shoes--fine for standing about but not so good on pavement.

My shins were so sore after the meeting that I had to walk on my heels all the way back to the car. And yes, they are even more sore this morning. Call me R2D2.

On my way home from Roanoke, I stopped by to see an elderly gentleman I had learned about from a local minister at a party. The man's wife of almost 70 years and died recently, and the minister, knowing that I was interested in local stories, described this gentleman is being a master storyteller and in some considerable need of company just now. My intention was just to stop by and introduce myself to him, bedridden and living with relatives at the foot of the mountain.

Instead, I spent almost an hour there--only maybe 15 minutes of that with my recorder on, with his permission of course. I haven't reviewed it yet. I'd like to think I would go back and hear much more of what he has to tell about life in Floyd County in the 30s and 40s. I at least need to get what I have onto the hard drive today and then send it on a CD to his family, who have never been able to get this man's life to paper or other permanent recording. Pity, the loss when these old treasures are gone.

By the time I got home it was already dark. My camera and lens had come (I was almost too exhausted to care) but only be after the sun comes up this morning will I be able to do anything to test the combo, now that the batteries are charged and everything is ready to go. The D200 sure feels good in the hand!

I have waded into an online users guide for the camera that is quite excellent, making recommendations about some of the custom settings and explaining some of the more arcane aspects of this extensively--tweakable camera.

It is a little unsettling to be near the bottom of the learning curve again, after the D70 had become so familiar. But it's a little exciting, too. And I'm up to my hip waders in taking notes, so apologies for this blah blah post. Maybe I can get an image up later today--from the new camera-lens combo, of course!

Wimpy Winter

No, this isn't from THIS so-called winter. We did get a skiff of snow yesterday, and there might be a trace of white this morning when the sun comes up. But so far, even though we're 200% of normal moisture for the year, it hasn't been in the form of ice or snow this time 'round. I was just wandering through my image archives (wondering how to make room on the hard drive for larger images to come) and liked this one.

Air Time
Thanks to Wilma Synder for reviewing Slow Road in her regular About Books segment on Wytheville Radio Station WXBX this Thursday. You can read her short review here.

DigiTutor
If you have a Nikon camera (which the movie narrator pronounces Knee-Cone, I suppose, in the more Japanese-correct way) you'll want to stop by and watch the tutorial that may introduce you to features of your camera you've forgotten about or never really understood. Their Digitutor (after you get past the name that conjures up all sorts of images for me) is really quite helpful for newbies like I will be to the D200, which by the way, arrives TODAY!

XFiles
Did you hear about this November (but only recently widely public) UFO sighting at Chicago's O'Hare airport? This BlogCritics writer wonders what gives with the failure to produce definitive answers, or to even ask the questions.

Print As Needed
My choice (thanks, Bob) to go with digital printing as my option for future SRH needs has given me the advantage of being able to have books available when needed without depleting my business bank account. So, I've managed to work on that outcome instead by ordering the camera and lens and letting the photography take center-stage, outlay-wise. Here's a good overview of the economics of Print on Demand for any of you considering getting your book between covers.

Self-cleaning underwear?
Knew a guy in college who, instead of being bothered by washing his skivvies, simply gave them a spritz of Lysol every week or so. This clip is for him:

"Self-cleaning fabrics could revolutionize the sport apparel industry. The technology, created by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force, has already been used to create t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing.

The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.

This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off."

Gravity and The Flow of Things

I left the feet of the tripod unmoved on the sandy bar beside Nameless Creek where yesterday's image was taken. Turned ninety degrees, the lens pointed downstream to follow the flow of spring water south. Just beyond where the creek disappears in the middle of this image, it will curve gently to the left following the edge of the pasture back toward the house, then on north and east to join first Goose Creek before passing across our neighbor's place, then Bottom Creek just beyond the Floyd County line. Together, they form the South Fork of the Roanoke River.

Crossing our little creek in my green rubber boots today, I stepped in water that last night seeped through dark crevices in bedrock underground. And a week from now, that same water will flow into the salty Atlantic by way of the James.

Having creeks in our back yard makes me feel a part of this predictable and regular cycle and of never-the-same-river transience and change. I can sit on the creek bank and think on these things for a half hour a few times each week and never tire of it. Where does it come from? Where does it go: time, memory, and Nameless Creek?

Finding My Way

I have a place I hope to go and a vague map of how to get there, but I need your help.

Many people have been disappointed that Slow Road Home does not include the images--either based on their expectations from knowing Fragments, or to more casual browsers at places like my recent winery book table, seeing the full-color cover and sadly finding no color inside.

Whatever comes next in the way of printed matter will include color images. Now just exactly what form that will take is where I need some feedback. And I'm in the very early stages of this process so don't even know what to tell you is on the menu. I do have some early ideas though.


Of course the images will come from Goose Creek mostly, from Floyd County exclusively. And there will be text that either seeks out an image after being written, or more likely, that springs from the images once they are brought home to be contemplated--much in the way I have been taking "ordinary" landscapes during the past couple of weeks and saying a few words about the where and the so-what of them (even though the writing is not terribly polished or for a book audience.)

The color-image book would also go back and select a few of the Slow Road pieces that already have images from my archives that I've used to illustrate those pieces in my "photomemoir" presentation.

It might be arranged seasonally, where one option for a part of such an arrangement would be to have 4 to 6 set camera points (here at home) with images taken from that exact camera position in each of the four seasons.

Another way to organize would be topically by chapters: the creek, the dog, the woods, the barn, nature, etc. (The image with this post, by the way, was taken facing south along the creek from just down on the creek from the place where this image you saw a few days ago was taken. Tomorrow, a view NORTH along Nameless Creek from the same tripod position.)

The book's images and words should to tell a story, reach some destination, leave the reader with a sense of the whole of this little microcosm (both the outer and the author's inner landscape). I should paint some of myself into the images and the narrative that goes with them. Just how to do that is what I'm thinking a lot about just now.

I just wanted you to know, and to think and feel along with me as I show you little bits of this process here from time to time. There is some kind of method to my haphazard madness--I just have to find out what that it is all about.

Un-Seasonal

This picture featuring frosty pasture grasses against the barn is from a couple of weeks ago when we had a run of cold mornings--unlike the balmy ones we've had the past few. We could comfortably have worn shorts while working outside yesterday. We threw a few sticks of wood in the woodstove before noon on Friday, and didn't crank it up again til this morning (and for my money, we don't need it now, but...)

If pictures of ice on the creek was my hope for winter photography, I think I am going to be disappointed. The jonquils are coming up, so maybe I can look forward to wildflower photography in February this year?

January thaw? There's nothing to un-freeze. Found a tick on the dog yesterday--cold blooded creatures quite active in mid-winter bodes ill for spring and summer vermin.

And yet, I'll have to say that freedom from icy travel has made our coming and going far more casual than it usually is this time of year. Still, I'd kinda like to have winter this trip around the sun.

But it's not your father's planet, Bucko, and those old expectations may just be a thing of the past. Could be, the frost and wood heat in January will be the exception, balmy shirt-sleeve weather and a sheet for cover at night the rule.

Second Guessing Myself

In usual fashion after I have made a major purchase (a rare and usually long-contemplated crisis in our household), it seems that a combination of curiosity and angst makes me go looking to see what kind of damage I've done. (the "you coulda had a V8 reflex, I suppose.)

And, as I imagined, the reviews of the telephoto lens I've purchased are all over the map. I think the consensus among those people that are not absolute purists on the Nikon Forums is that the 18-200mm lens will do exactly what I expect it will do, provided my expectations are realistic for a consumer grade lens with an 11 factor zoom.

I have, however, decided for the time being to keep the D70 body and the lenses I have, as the three lenses and two camera bodies will be interchangeable. It would be a luxury, granted, to have a backup camera (as opposed to selling it and making a little bit to replace the cash outlay about which I feel some small degree of guilt) but I have in the past done without a camera for more than a month while my mine went back to Nikon for repair, and I never want to do that again. Funny: it was the $1200-1500 I expected to make in the sales of my present equiptment that tipped me toward this purchase, and now I'm waffling on that. Oh fickle man that I am.

However, says the devil on my left shoulder, remember that since you have gone to digital as-needed printing for Slow Road Home, there won't be the big outlay for a thousand books like there was last year. This year, you can move your focus (no pun intended he assures me) to photography, and this camera is a lifetime investment that may in turn bring you income! (I like the way that Rascal Rationalizer thinks!)

Frankly, part of my decision was ergonomic: especially the 80-200 lens is heavy and difficult for my hands to hold, and I'm not able to very quickly (or comfortably) change lenses when the need arises suddenly. Having a single lens that will in most cases cover from wide-angle to telephoto will be a real joy, while the quality may not be 100% of what it would be with a professional lens. I am, after all, more interested in getting the shot than in a shot being perfect; it is more about making a memory money.

Heck, nothing I have written is perfect by a longshot, and yet it has often been satisfying to have said it. I have similarly-realistic expectations for the photography, and perhaps both imperfect expressions taken together will come close to saying what it is that I want to say. I think that's an obtainable objective for any future marriage between images in words and pixels.

A Penny Saved...

...is a big disappointment.

I have been pleasantly distracted these past several days with the notion that it is time for me to upgrade my camera: FROM the current Nikon D70 since April 2004 TO the Nikon D200. And although I initially considered lesser lenses, I had at last resolved to spend extra for this lens:

Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR II

What a lens! What a combination! Do it!

But then, my camera-lust relented as my frugal nature regained control, and I arrived at a middle position: hold off on the camera body and stick with the D70 until the price drops some more on the D200. Just get the lens. You can sell your 18-80mm and your 80-200mm and recoup some of the high price for the 18-200 and carry just the single lens! Perfect compromise solution! Yes, I'll do it. I'll order the lens this morning.

No you won't. They seem to be backordered (at acceptable prices) until the third quarter of 2007. Sigh.

NOW THIS! Since posting the above at 5:00 as a draft, I caved. The lens is available WITH the camera body. B&H has them in stock. I ordered the combo at 6 this morning. Oy. Now, I'll be looking to sell some Nikon lenses and a D70 body. More about that soon enough. (Fred doing happy dance--quietly: wife still sleeping.)

Keeping Watch

I was lost in thought, my hands occupied with gathering the wood I'd just cut for kindling at the top of the drive. The sun was warm, the earth smelled of spring on a January day, altogether a very peaceful and satisfying time on a country afternoon.

And I happened to glance down toward the pasture and found that the dog, too, was lost in revery, even as he surveyed the pasture along Nameless Creek for marauding ground hogs, squirrels or the odd mid-day deer.

I ran inside for the camera, and walked back out nonchalantly, knowing that if Tsuga had any idea he was my intended subject, he would immediately be at my feet, wagging his tail, thinking I wanted to be close. No, my lens focal length is not that short, fella. Go back and sit down facing south, and look casual.

I did have to reposition him (which amazingly he allowed) although I didn't capture fully the wistfulness and tranquility I first saw, with him sitting there, on guard, in command, and fully at rest and lost in his puppy-thoughts.

Close to Home

"There is nothing ordinary" I said in the author's note to the book. And yet, I realize I've let our close-at-hand human habitat become just that: nothing but the background canvas on which the more immediate and seemingly-relevant events (most of them indoors and by way of a computer monitor) take place.

One of my New Year's goals is to reverse this relative numbness and indifference to those fragments of ordinary life here that, four years ago, became new to me because they were new to you, the readers of this blog. Of course, that readership has been replaced by fresh batches of visitors several times over, and so I hope to recover a sense of newness in this new year, see the familiar through new eyes as if waking from a long sleep. And I'll take the risk of showing or telling you something I've shown or told before.

Here's an example: in all my archives of images, until yesterday, I had never taken one from just off the back porch facing the pasture, the barn and the valley of Nameless Creek. I guess I just thought since it was not ten feet from the house, it wasn't image-worthy. It is the view we see when we put the dog's bowl out on the back porch in the mornings.

And yet, it is the still-life tableau before us far more often than quick glimpses of the back reaches of the creek in the gorge at the far end of our property. This is a look out our window, so to speak--the beauty we can touch with our eyes. This is the light that comes to us in early January facing south as the sun rises over a frosty field while we are still in our slippers.

There is the barn--again, and I will stop apologizing for showing you yet another image of it. And the little bridge over the branch flows under the bridge, still babbling with the rains of New Year's Day. You can see the mailbox--the one near the right margin of the cover of the book, and the maple tree, also on the book cover and seen again up closer, backlit on the blog a few days back. The road and creek pass just front and back of the tree.

And look: the tiny HeresHome sign that faces the road. I remember what a wonderful day it was in November, 1999, to plant that aluminum "flag" and claim this place for our family. And--I didn't know it then--to share our ordinary with readers and viewers all over the world.

Of Mountains and Molehills

Just so those from *off won't think life here is unrelentingly lovely, I felt compelled to show you the dark side of country life, with a snippet from a little essay under construction.

Our dog, who scares away more potential animal observations than he produces, has a nose for small mammals, and brought us two mammal sightings this week. As far as his species memory and drive goes, insectivores (moles and shrews underground) and small rodents (voles and mice in above ground nests of pasture grass) are food morsels in a wrap of hair, little legged tortillas, and if not delicious, then at least no small excitement to catch and torment in cat-like fashion.