Blunt Trauma

The sickening blow came suddenly, without warning, just the way that accidental injuries always happen.

One second, parts are intact, working normally, and we take them for granted. The next, we wonder what we could have done to have avoided the pain, the dysfunction, the inconvenience we know will follow. And there's not a thing we can do to put the genie back in the bottle; we just live with the consequences of the fickle finger of fate and hope for the best.

No, I'm fine. It's my camera--specifically, the Nikkor 18-200 VR lens--that is on its way to the Nikon Hospital in NY. At work on Friday, the camera fell from about a foot while I was using it to photograph a patient's exercises for her.

The lens filter is bent, and it just might be that, in addition to other internal damage, they won't be able to get the damaged filter off because of the bent threads. It might be it can't be fixed. A new replacement lens (oh how that would hurt my Goose Creek account!) might be hard to find; they're on backorder most places.

I love that lens. (The camera, thankfully, is okay, and I'm back to the 18-80mm plus the luggable 80-200, for how long, I don't know.)

I literally got sick at my stomach when it happened and for much of the day on Friday. But then I put my little crisis in perspective compared to the events of the noon news, or to recent events so close to home. All things considered, it's only a scratch.

Giant Chickweed

They grow close enough to the ground on short stems, and so even in the bluster yesterday, I could get a shot of chickweed--perhaps the most common and this year most successful spring wildflower. Most chickweed species are, well, weeds.

These particular little plants used to make for a nice field trip object lesson.

"How many petals?" I'd ask. "Ten" they'd say. And I'd pull off one of the five tiny V shaped petals to show them you have to investigate before you answer based on what seems to be true. Then I'd stuff the specimen in my mouth, chew and swallow. (As my ol' buddy Euell Gibbons used to say, "many parts are edible.")

Fern Glade | Forest Ecology

I was hoping to get back to the nearby meadow where Christmas Fern , Cinnamon Fern, Interrupted Fern (pictured here), Northern Maidenhair Fern and Wood Fern all grow together. But it's blustery, and for such tall, frail plants, they will be all in a whirl of motion. So perhaps I've done all I'm going to do pteridologically for this season. Or maybe not.

I'll try in the next few days to go back and do some 'splainin' about the odd fern structure in this recent post.

While Ferns and their kin are a relatively minor part of the vegetation in most of the southern Appalachians, there are glades where fernsare the dominant understory. And on our one visit to Vancouver a few years ago in May, fernsstood leaf to blade and six feet tall, acre after acre.

And of course if you go back in history far enough, the fernsand their kin were the dominant land plants, some sixty feet tall and a foot or more in diameter!

Eco-ethical Decisions | Species Extinction or Oil?

When I first read about this, it struck me as a kind of extortion:

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and his government say that if the international community can compensate the country with half of the forecasted lost revenues, Ecuador will leave the oil in Yasuni National Park undisturbed to protect the park's biodiversity and indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

Here's what's at risk:

Yasuni National Park protects one of the most biologically rich regions in the world, including a large stretch of the world's most diverse tree community and the highest known insect diversity in the world. It is one of the most diverse places in the world for birds and amphibians.

And here's the conundrum:

Ecuador is very poor. Its international debt is staggering. It's chief asset is in the timber and oil of its Amazonian rain forest. Selling those finite resources would be to give away its basis for survival, and it at least acknowledges that this would be to despoil a global treasure of species and habitat diversity. The choice to NOT develop also has the benefit of avoiding the CO2 that would come from development AND maintain the carbon sink of hundreds of square miles of intact vegetation.

Now: how much is it worth to the commons of the planet to pay Ecuador to not develop Yasuni? How is that decision made across cultures and world political divides, and who will pay and how might that be prorated for each contributor? Can we expect energy-hungry nations (very like our own) to volunteer to pay higher oil and gas prices so that unseen indigenous people and rare salamanders can continue to survive?

This kind of tough world-community, for-the-long-haul decision about sustainability, diversity and planetary health is likely to become increasingly common in coming years. I'd like to think our species will have the foresight and resolve to do the right thing, spending proactively to purchase toward the future. This would be a whole new way of thinking. And in this case, a cheap purchase. Look at what one year of the war in Iraq costs!

Month of May Special Offer!

Do you have graduation gifts looming in the near future? Or birthdays or anniversaries where you just don’t know of an appropriate, thoughtful gift idea?

Let me suggest that for some of your gift-giving needs, you need go no further than the end of this post for a solution.

For the month of May only, you can get a signed second edition copy of Slow Road Home plus a set of Blue Ridge Parkway or Floyd County note cards for only $25 delivered. That’s $4 off the usual price, and more than that if you’re from Virginia. I’ll pay state taxes too on this special offer.

ONE BOOK ~ FIVE NOTE CARDS ~ ONE EASY PRICE!.

Details for ordering by check are HERE. Order soon; note card sets are limited. (PayPal transfers also possible, email me.)

Fertile Fern Fronds

Were I still teaching, or if I thought there were blog readers who cared to know the minutiae of pteridophyte reproductive biology, I'd launch into a soliloquy about Interrupted Fern, the structure and function of sporangia, and the place of ferns in the history of land plants.

But suffice it to say that today's post is lifted to the page simply because I like the title. Try saying it real fast followed immediately by the name of this blog.

Slow Road Home: A Year Old Today

April 26, 2006, and there they were at last.

Ann and I watched as the delivery truck lowered the burden at the back door, just as it began to rain. Then there it sat: a plastic-swaddled pallet of 28 cardboard boxes, 48 books per box: my books, finally born, real and shrink-wrapped in threes. Very quickly the first case was opened and a few books spread out on the table in front of me.

And in that first hour, I knew both the beaming joy of a new parent and the utter terror of someone who has just realized he may have bought the Brooklyn Bridge.

I do not exaggerate the ambivalence or the extent to which, on that first day, I was not quite sure what I had done. Or why. Or of what to do next. But mostly, that moment brought relief. I had never seen more than a half-dozen proof pages of the book before April 26. In this leap of faith, this was the very first time I held the completed cover-to-cover book in my hands, and I could almost weep I was so relieved. They didn't look cheap, didn't feel slick-quick or second-rate like some of the earlier "author subsidized" books you see around. But now what?

In that first hour on a rainy April afternoon, I began getting books ready to mail to those of you who had more confidence in me than I had in myself. Dozens had sent PalPal orders and checks even before the book reached final draft! On April 27, I carried three heaping boxes of books to the post office with satisfaction and a sense of completion, finally having accomplished a goal that for almost three years I suspected was nothing more than a fantasy, a self-deceit, a pipe dream.

But more than ever, I was naked before the world now, exposed and public. To have invested so much time and so many dollars in this project would let the world know that in my opinion, there was something here worth the effort. The book seemed a kind of boast and I was both embarrassed and proud.

Was this what they meant by "vanity press"? Was Slow Road Home the ugly baby only a father could love? I had bared my soul in some of the passages now between the covers of this book, made myself vulnerable in ways I had not felt with the free-and-easy weblog and its forgiving and tolerant audience of readers who just blew off the many times at bat I struck out as a new writer.

April 26, 2007, and that slow road still goes on.

Yesterday, I received word that Forever Resorts (in Arizona) is interested in the book for distribution at their facilities along the parkway. This includes the store at Crabtree Meadows, but most importantly, Mabry Mill here in Floyd County. The Park Service will carry it at other concessions like Peaks of Otter and Rocky Knob Visitors Center (also here in Floyd County.)

Some few of you will appreciate how formidable is the task of getting a self-published book "out there". This is beginning to happen, and it has taken a full year.

Why does this matter to me? It certainly isn't about the money. I could add one day a week in the clinic and double my year's income from the book.

I think it's the fact that, when the memoir does find resonance in a receptive and appreciative reader, there is the satisfaction that my message and story has been heard. Something at the gut level has been shared:

Slow down. Open your senses. Appreciate the ordinary. Suck the marrow out of life, as Mr. Thoreau encouraged us to do. Tell your story. Say YES To the beautiful parts of this world just outside your door. Care.

Thanks to all who have shared this journey with me, some few since the very beginning, and also at anniversary this week: Fragments from Floyd is five years old! And here we go!

Fido Fiddlehead

Dog-gone dog. Ann always insists that I take Tsuga along as a photographer's companion.

And she's right: the dog is wonderful help if I need a distracting patch of buff-colored fur in my otherwise muted-shadow background; if I need my legged or leafy subject crushed by a size 12 dog paw just seconds before snapping the shutter; or if I need my ears licked while lying prone, defenseless against dog tongues, holding the camera with both hands in the most awkward of positions.

Yeah. Every photographer needs one of these along.

But that was then. This is now, and I'm off for a full day seminar (the first continuing ed for this PT license period) in Roanoke: a program called Memory, Aging and Sleep. I only hope I can stay away through the most of it. And remember what I heard when I get home. Sigh. I hope they have wireless from the meeting room.

Carrion Without Me

A favorite warm-weather passtime of which I am only mildly apologetic: lying on my back on sidewalk of warm pavers outside the back door, trying to comprehend where in the world I am; where in the universe, where in time. And why.

Almost always overhead, soaring birds on warm thermals trace spirographic arcs through my vision and my thoughts, lifting me up out of our valley to gain perspective, often to look back down through keen avian eyes at the sprawling man, arms outstretched--a tiny squinting crucifix, searching Heaven for Truth and Beauty.

Sometimes, from this supine perspective, the performances of bird with bird, birds with the very air, are so impressive I have to stifle applause. And only rarely do I have my camera beside me. Yesterday was one of those days. And no, this is not an altered image; it took almost 30 minutes for the right combination of heavenly and earthly body to get a shot.

Vultures get some coverage here rather often, starting early in the blog five years ago. Here's one Fragments piece in praise of "buzzards".

Elsewhere in the world of lenses: you'll laugh. Especially if you're a serious bird watcher and maybe even have your own pair of Swarovski (at $600 plus) you won't believe what I ordered yesterday. A pair of $16 binocs. Binolux Rubber Armored.

My mom had a pair that someone had given her. She wouldn't part with them, even though she only watches cardinals in her bird bath on the porch of her apartment, and my heavier, better quality pair would have been a great exchange.

Cheap. Shirt pocket. Free shipping. They should be here in time for our trip to South Dakota.

(And this image, shamelessly photoshopped, to imagine life above the clouds.)

Virginia Bluebells

I hoping for at least five "keeper" images of spring wildflowers for a possible future note card set. So far, it's been slow to happen, first with the early warmth the first of March followed by the rapid return to winter in April.

These Virginia Bluebells are tamed wildflowers; we transplanted them from their original hillside home over on Walnut Knob. And wish we'd brought a dozen more, if only for this one week in spring when the magenta and cyan buds become pale blue and pink bell-shaped blossoms before being eaten by the deer.

Fancy Frustrating Ferns

"God made ferns to show what he could do with a leaf" said Thoreau.

And I'm convinced God also designed them so that no one could ever do them justice by means of a photograph. You have to be there, close to the earth, sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the wet meadow, to full appreciate them.

Early on as they first emerge and uncoil in their singular fiddlehead fashion, they hide among the jumble of leaf litter and fallen branches from spring's last ice storm, camouflaged among the distracting flotsam of the forest floor. You'll not likely find that one composition in all the forest where two or three tiny fiddleheads of Christmas Fern stand in the same plane, illumined against a black backdrop of shadow.

Later on, the Royal Fern and Cinnamon Ferns will shoot up in a matter of days to a ridiculous ratio of height to width so that you see them whole only from fifteen feet away or more, and lose all their divinely-inspired fanciness of detail. They are creatures you have to see complete and in place to imbibe their intricate beauties.

But I'm going to keep trying with my lens. So expect more less-than-heavenly fern pix in the next two weeks--if I'm not embarrassed to show you--and maybe if the gods smile, I'll finally get a fern portrait I'm happy with.

Friday Shorts April 20

~ Find an image of a giant posted over at Nameless Creek this morning

~ Serving Suggestion: think about how you might use ScrapBlog. It is immensely easy to use, free, fast and rather attractive, even in its early stages. Here's my early sandbox scribble. Have a civic event to tell about or report? a church gathering, vacation, event or project coming up or past that would lend itself to a visual slide show? Look for this program to really take off. But don't quit your day job.

~ With all the very unpleasant reportage at WVTF this week, there was some question if there would be time for the usual Friday essays. Mine (the piece you've read here, or some version of it, about children and nature) will air this morning, and can be heard online from the WVTF NEWS web page.

~ Maybe, just maybe, I've gotten past a hurdle in the purported and future "color images book" project. First, I'll likely go with the 8.5" x 8.5" format for a number of reasons. And second, after going all around the world the past few days looking for the combination of inexpensive printing AND wholesale distribution, I've settled on expensive printing and wholesale distribution. That leaves me with Lightning Source (as is Slow Road Home at this point) for printing. The book's retail price will have to be significantly higher than if I had it printed in China, but at least I won't be stuck with 900 "inexpensive" books in the ANNex. I can produce the proof and be done and ready for supplying demand for less than $200, and if it doesn't fly, I'm only out my time and effort--which lies mostly ahead of me.

~ And I spoke in the Earth Day piece yesterday about leaving a smaller environmental footprint. Would you be willing to go THIS FAR? a year without toilet paper? Yikes!

Where are the Dead Bees?

This was one of the more puzzling aspects to me in the recent reports of massive and sudden bee die-off: Hives weren't cluttered about with hundreds or thousands of dead bee bodies. The bees simply went missing from the abandoned hives--left, and never returned. Read on...

" It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives."

This last part--avoidance of the abandoned hive--doesn't jibe with the cell-phone radiation theory. My guess is that there are probably several factors at work to cause this colony collapse. Other sources say bees in the hive are infected with almost every known bee virus and fungus, indicating a massive failure of their normal immune functions.

And as some have mentioned and I have discussed here last summer, "the" honeybee is not native. Were it not for the money made from honey, it isn't likely its numbers and our agricultural dependence on this species would have grown as it has. But now, in all probability, native bees are being impacted by the same stressors as honeybees, whatever those may be, so falling back on that source of pollination may not solve the CCD problem any time soon.

For want of a nail...

Earth Day 2007: How Many More?

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, marked for me the dawn of environmental consciousness, and I was so hopeful.

In southern Alabama, the channelization of streams by the Army Corps of Engineers and clear-cutting of southern forests by the mammoth forest products companies were the issues at the top of the local environmental agenda of the day. As a young zoology grad student, the issues seemed large but surmountable in the spring of 1970. Fixing them would just take time.

Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin was the founder of Earth Day. It took him almost a decade to find a way to lift the declining state of the planet's health into the political radar; most of his political colleagues would have none of it. But in the late sixties, the youth of those times took up the banner, because they came to see their futures as much impacted by the environmental fate of the Earth as by the political fate of Southeast Asia.

Only a few years had passed since Rachel Carson first sounded the alarm that yes, we could foul our own nest, and had already done so. Our air and water were making us sick, as well as bringing about the decline of many of the animal species with which we share the planet. That the products of man's industry and commerce had accumulated to such a degree as to alter the balance of nature was a new and startling alarm, but not so many were listening back then.

Flash forward: Earth Day, April 22, 2007.

I won't bother giving you the numbers that measure thirty seven years of world-wide population growth; energy and resource use per capita; the number of extinct species and disappearing habitats; and the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases and elevated air and sea temperatures.

Suffice it to say that the planet-wide problems we face today fall far higher on the scale of urgency than anything looming just ahead of us on that first Earth Day less than forty years ago. The specter of a rapidly warming planet overshadows every lesser concern we might have. And some still aren't listening.

Working to protect particular species and habitats or air and water quality in our cities becomes moot-like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship must stay afloat. This Earth Day, we acknowledge that it can sink. And we don't have so much time.

I'll be bold and assume that thirty seven years of planet-watching earns me one stand in the bully pulpit. From this one citizen's perspective, four things must happen. Making the rubber meet the road is quite another matter, and these are complex issues we must be talking about in Floyd's meeting places, churches, and organizations.

1. We must take individual responsibility for being carefully conscious of our family and community "environmental footprint" and reduce it. This will require over the coming decades that we restructure our households, municipalities and economies of goods and services on a more local and self-sufficient scale. Floyd can be exemplary in this transition, and many are already moving in this direction. Have you visited the Sustainable Living Education Center at the Jacksonville Center lately?

2. We must insist that efficiency and conservation by industry and commerce play a much stronger role than they have thus far in CO2 abatement. Energy produced by 600 new coal-burning plants already planned for could be saved (and that much CO2 avoided) by changes in air-conditioning and improved building insulation efficiency alone. What are we waiting for?

3. We must not become complacent by thinking that our individual conservation or lifestyle changes alone will fully solve the larger problem. Let's insist that international governments-especially including our own and starting now-shift away from carbon-based industry, commerce and transportation. Simply using less of the same toxin will still, over time, poison the planet-and this, particularly as China and India grow to match the US as per capita energy consumers.

4. We must find a just way to prevent those who produce the least greenhouse gases from suffering the most. And governments would do well to be proactive-in places like Bangladesh, for instance-to reduce the unprecedented refugee crisis likely when tens of millions lack water once provided by Himalayan glaciers. We must channel our national budgets towards a new kind of defense that includes mitigation of climate change impact here and abroad, even while we drastically reduce production of greenhouse gases.

No matter what we do in the short run, climate change impacts on humanity are likely to be large in the coming century, even here in remote Floyd County. Coping with this unprecedented degree of change will require a whole new way of thinking about our relationship with the planet and each other. Let's renew our commitment to these goals this Earth Day, and move quickly toward an Earth Decade.

And while I'm hoping, perhaps we could come to see THIS ISSUE as the common enemy, not other nations with whom we share this shrinking planet. We're all of us on the very same boat. © Fred First / April 2007

Earth Trends: Appalachian Recovery?

This is good news indeed, even if an act of closing the hen house door after the hungry weasel has been and gone.

HARRISBURG/April 12 – Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III and Maryland Governor Martin J. O’Malley today announced the signing of the Highlands Action Program charter, a regional partnership that seeks to preserve the ecological and cultural resources of the Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Highlands. link

The mid-Atlantic region offers an array of recreational opportunities and thousands of acres of public lands that draw visitors from throughout the world, yet also supports robust timber, agriculture and mining industries that have been the mainstay of our economy since colonial times,” Governor Rendell said. Our challenge is to seek common ground and develop policies that will manage the many demands on this land while preserving the natural beauty and heritage of the Appalachian Mountains. Read More at Nameless Creek

An Ill Wind

We're without power at home, possibly until the weekend. We're otherwise okay, just blogless for a few days perhaps. See you on the other side.

Madness at Virginia Tech

We live not 25 miles south of Blacksburg and Virginia Tech. So this recent horror has happened in our very back yard.

Even closer to the killing fields, Ann works at the hospital shown so often on the news over the past few days, as some 17 victims were sent there--the closest hospital to campus. She had an entire work day of thinking "this could have been our son or daughter".

I don't have any insights to offer. Like so many others, I'm just sort of numb. Stunned. Saddened, angry, perplexed.

Funny--After talking with my mom and others her age on my visit last week about how safe they used to feel in downtown Birmingham, I had been contemplating the idea of a piece for the Floyd Press. It would ponder what in the world has happened to this country that we have become so fearful of one another, of strangers, of city streets, of shopping malls and bus stops and parks.

What has happened that we have made our homes into fortresses from which we seldom venture? How is it that we feel safe only in groups? We fear for our children. We make them play indoors for fear of abduction or drive-by shooting. Schools hire policemen with guns to patrol the halls. What is going on?

And then this.

What forces, spirits, convictions or conventions so miserably absent today once constrained man from violence against his fellow man? Have we begun to believe something different, something far lesser about the meaning and value and purpose of life? Or have we merely forgotten those convictions that so many held for so long in what was once in many ways a more civil society under God?

Evening Out

If you get a chance to hear this duo in your area, make the effort. We first heard the smooth "retro-folk" sound of Rebecca Hall and husband Ken Anderson four or five years ago, when we bought their first two CDs. Those disks have gone on to become family favorites, and we're looking forward to CD #3 that is in the works, release expected this summer.

Sorry this image is a little dark and grainy, but I sort of like the simplicity of light against dark--and the tip hat on the stool. I'm still learning my way around the D200, and didn't know how to get it to move to an ISO of 3200. But I do now.

After Oddfellas and the duet and great meal with friends, we visited the Contra Dance at Winter Sun briefly. I had a book to pass on to a friend from Wythe County who lives near and occasionally hangs out with an author whose name you'd recognize. Her mystical awe of nature and light had an important influence on me long before I had the first idea I'd ever find words to describe similar experiences. Could be she'll actually thumb through it. I tried to imagine that, and wondered what piece in the book I might hope she'd settle on, one that she would perhaps read and find herself saying YES! as I did so many times when reading her books as far back as the seventies.

Lastly, from our Be Careful What You Wish For Department--I have an iPod! You'll remember my wishing and washing about this a month or two ago. And as recently as my B'ham trip last week, I considered stopping by Radio Shack to actually talk with somebody about a 4GB Nano, but talked myself out of it (from a frugality point of view). And lo, Saturday morning, Ann picked up an insured package from the Check Post Office: a silver 4GB Nano iPod (plus auto accessory kit) from my blog-reading daughter in South Dakota! How cool is that!?

Having lost ALL my music from my hard drive recently, I had no songs to upload. But as fate would have it, that very day, we received a couple of copies of our friends, the Wolfe Brothers' new CD, Old Virginia Hills, in the mail. (Go here and listen to sound clips from a former Wolfe Brothers album that we've enjoyed, and you will too!)

Now that new album currently represents 100% of the music uploaded to my shiny new iPod--a kind of music-genre purity I'm sure it will soon lose, when I get around to burning 40 or 50 of the lost albums back to the hard drive. Meanwhile, I'm not finding much in the way of free audiobooks for the iPod, though I did download a couple of Sherlock Holmes books and various other moldy-oldey public domain books I can listen to while I work cleaning up the dregs of winter out the back door. Suggestions?

Glue Down That Toupee

...and tie down the cat.

In the last fifteen minutes, we've gone from sunny calm to ominous gray and brooding stillness, a crouching, threatening kind of peace--just ahead of a very sharp frontal boundary that will pass through southwest Virginia and hereabouts obliquely overnight and on into Tuesday. NOAA's language makes me think I'll go ahead of Ann with the truck and the chain saw for a ways tomorrow when she heads off to work.

And I will discourage our local and habitual walker from venturing into wooded areas tonight, you can be sure!

" sustained winds of 25 to 40 mph with gusts up to 70 mph will occur tonight through Tuesday. winds of this magnitude will
likely down power lines...tree limbs...and uproot entire trees. wet soils will only add to the danger of falling
trees...as the root system will more easily pull out of the ground.

motorists should exercise caution while driving in the warning area. be alert to sudden gusts of wind which may cause you
to lose control of your vehicle. extra attention should be given to cross winds when driving on north to south oriented
roads.
...if you must venture into a wooded area tonight through Tuesday...be especially cautious for falling limbs or trees."

More Than Scenery: Viewshed Protection

That we are deeply affected at a gut level by what we take in through our eyes is a given. A picture of an abused animal makes you want to cry, while another image of an injured soldier can make you sick at your stomach.

That we respond viscerally to the view before our eyes is certain. And so there are places we chose to go where what we will see can calm our souls in a world that in too many instances is a "bad scene".

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one such place, and millions of visitors make this aesthetic choice each year. And more and more, when they drive through the Roanoke section of the Parkway, they see that green corridor encroached by man-made structures built to the very edge of the thin boundary of pasture or woods that separates these two worlds.

And they may feel a sinking feeling deep in the pit of their stomachs. A favorite place, once set apart for a different kind of view of the world, is beginning to look like every other common road.

To many, it is appalling that such visual intrusion was not prevented before it ever happened. But there it is: a row of two story homes along a half mile stretch at Milepost 125.5 west of Roanoke. There is talk of a Wal-Mart being built adjacent to the Parkway near Roanoke--unless enough voices are heard to protest it.

Yesterday, the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway sponsored a viewshed tree planting to grow a new forest boundary along this short stretch of roadway, and even under the threat of rain on a chilly April day, dozens turned out to help, including these 25 students from nearby Roanoke College.

If you care about what you see along the Parkway, now is the time to make a difference.

Fragments / Friday the 13th

This isn't much of a picture--the first, I thought, of what would become a series of images of the "million points of light" that the blooming spicebush offer along Nameless Creek. The several hard freezes of the past week put an end to those ideas, and it looks like this is the only reminder I'll have of the short-lived life of Lindera benzoin in the spring of 2007.

BAMA BOUND ~ I just returned from a few days in the Heart of Dixie--a pleasant trip for this time of year, as 'bama was experiencing the same return to coolness that we were here in southwest Virginia, though to a much lesser degree. And the pollen season had mostly passed by the time I arrived last Sunday to spend some time in my home town with my mom. Wednesday afternoon, tornado sirens woke us from an afternoon nap--one went north of Birmingham towards Gadsden, another south towards Alex City. That weather feature I don't miss about Alabama.

BOOKS on TAPE ~ Well on CD, actually. A very thoughtful patient made a special trip back to the clinic last Thursday to bring me BLINK: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. This was the first audiobook I've ever listened to, and it was great--both the book and the concept. I wonder if Gladwell's first book, TIPPING POINT, is available in the same format?

BOOKS in BAMA ~ While back in Birmingham for my birthday visit with mom, I spoke to the seniors group at her church--about a hundred folks--for a luncheon meeting. This might have been most pressure I've been under to do well--in my little dog and pony show before folks mom would see week after week. But seeing as how the book tied back to B'ham, it was easy to find a few pieces from Slow Road Home that "worked" for this setting. The nice man, after reading my bio, introduced me as "Floyd First." I thought that might make a nice local bumper sticker. I hated to correct him.

STEP-IT-UP ~ Don't forget on April 14 to join in for Step It Up Day 2007 in an event near you. Are you satisfied with the pace of politically-expedient change proposed for America's rollback on CO2 emissions? I'm not. Cut Carbon by 80% by 2050 is the more aggressive timetable proposed by this movement. Make your voice heard on this issue, even as we feel our way toward making this massive change in business-as-usual. These are critical times, folks.

Honeybee AIDS?

The following excerpts are from Der Spiegel, reposted to Truthout/Environment March 22, 2007.

Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.

Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."

It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees' death is accompanied by a set of symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."

In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi--a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.

...bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. "This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.

There is evidence that points to agents in genetically-modified corn as a possible cause. Funding to study this has not been forthcoming from the agribusiness industry. Meanwhile, see if you can find a honeybee to show your children. Hurry.

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Albert Einstein

Where Trees Have Faces

Next time granddaughter Abby comes to visit, there will be a surprise waiting for her on a new trail recently created through the Enchanted Woods. It is a trail made solely (well not solely) so that we can pass by this ancient cedar that Ann discovered on a steep hillside we never visited.

She became so fond of this tree she gave it a name (Isabella--why, you'd have to ask her; and she would likely say "it just looked like an Isabella). And she gave it ('scuse me, HER) a face.

So we'll pass on, Isabella's face will persist. And centuries hence, an entire folk explanation will spring up for the discovery of a woodlands race that worshipped trees on a steep hillside overlooking what one man long ago called Nameless Creek. What must they have been like, they'll wonder.

In Search of Wildness

Emily Dickinson was right to see that a prairie consists of only one flower and a bee. When my world was small, a quarter acre vacant wooded lot was enough to make a wilderness.

I grew up in the limits of a sprawling Alabama city, but I was happiest when I imagined I was surrounded by 'wilderness'. In the leafy chaos of empty lots and wooded neighborhood margins I was a pioneer. Playing cowboys and Indians in a tiny fraction of an acre of woods, I could imagine that I was in undisturbed 'native land', and belonged there as a native myself.

As I grew older, I needed more of the nutrient of wildness than my little neighborhood woods could give. I went to summer camp and my backyard forest was magnified a thousand fold. Living at camp for a week, smelling of creek water and pine straw with a hundred other free-ranging feral children,I felt more connected to the larger life of the world than I would have after an entire summer of immersion in chlorine-smelling swimming pools or organized, sanitized sports.

I fished to find wilderness. Fishing possessed its own sense of isolation and otherness and was its own alien country fit for a young explorer. Mostly I fished alone walking the shoreline; more often than not, I'd find myself distracted by a little side creek or a rock bluff along the lake and I would forget fishing entirely. It was not the fish I was after, after all.

Like many of my friends, I followed my father onto the golf courses that spread into the countryside ahead of the expanding city. Our dads went there looking for something--to find tranquility and be near the land perhaps by chasing behind a little white ball. I'd wander off the manicured fairways into the rough turning logs for salamanders. And I decided that for me, just being out there was the point.

It is not easy these days for city children to know the joys of secret woods. Most of the tiny wilderness sanctuaries of my childhood are paved over now. Locked behind guardhouses of gated communities, they’ve become uninviting and forbidden domesticated places. Even the margins and edges from youth were not far enough away to provide reliable wildness. Maybe knowing this has made me long for remoter places when looking for our true home, a place for roots in our later years.

Now, far beyond the edges of a town so small that there are no spreading suburbs, we have found those roots. A vast forest surrounds me, and creeks flow full of bright fish and sunlight. I have tranquility by the sky-full here, and few neighbors to disturb in my rambling walks.

This little valley may be the place I knew I would belong to long ago in that half-acre woods. And I have to wonder if I did not start moving to Floyd County while picking berries with small hands-- beyond my suburban yard in a secret patch of woods where natives lived.

This is a repost from Fragments (or elsewhere) from years ago. It just seemed fitting, what with all the reading and thinking lately about childrens' exposure (or lack thereof) to the natural world.

Wildlife: Up Close and Personal

Ann called almost inaudibly from the kitchen. It almost seemed as if she were trying to talk without even moving her lips.

Finally I made out what she was almost saying: turkey. Right. Here.

I grabbed the camera and got a few mostly bad shots, because the window glass reflection played havoc with the autofocus on the lens. There was practically no light, so the ISO got pushed to 800. I can say this: this is the best picture of a turkey I've ever taken. Because it is the ONLY picture of a turkey I've ever taken.

Ah, wildlife. Thursday, driving to work, I hit a deer. It came up out of a ravine and was maybe 20 feet away when I hit the brakes hard, and the deer the same way--broadside. Thankfully, I had slowed enough that I didn't go up and over the deer, which probably would have turned me into the ravine.

The deer didn't tumble, but instead slammed hard into the bank, staggered and ran back infront of the car AGAIN. I slammed on the brakes AGAIN. And the deer bounded back down into the ravine along Union Valley Road, and I feel certain is still out there somewhere, not feeling so very good.

And the Subaru: a few coarse deer hairs under the license plate frame. That's all. This time.

Solved!

Maybe: the matter of keeping note card packages sealed (as per your vote a few weeks back) and still letting folks know what's in each pack of five cards.

I am printing two sets of five thumbnails on a single photopaper card the size of the finished notecards. I'll be able to display this "thumbnail sketch" of the two pack contents on the display rack or nearby on the counter. That'll work for now.

In the long run, I'm looking at a dozen sets. We'll worry about the logistics of that when the time comes.

Here's the Note Cards page where you can click for the larger image that includes all ten cards in the first two sets: Floyd County Set #1 and Blue Ridge Parkway Set #.

I'll be picking up the Parkway cards this afternoon, but it will be a week before I can send them out if you send requests by email (see sidebar email link). Order info is on the webpage.

UPDATE: Saturday, April 7 ~ I picked the Parkway cards up yesterday, and if you liked the first batch, these are even better! I am pleased. I expect them to go quickly. I think the next batch of cards will be five that come specifically from Slow Road Home, with the relevant quotes (for Ann's Falls, Winter Walk, Home Economics, etc) on the back of the card. That combination would make a nice gift set, don't you think? (And I'll keep this post up top for a few days during which I'll be posting lite.)

Bodies Fit for Work

I have a compliant patient! Can you believe that?

On her first visit, we addressed the obvious observable issue of posture (forward shoulders forward head) and its role in her presenting complaint of upper back pain.

We talked about her workplace ergonomics, bent over a computer keyboard for the better part of each day. Oh, carpal tunnel-like symptoms, too? Let's look at how you use your keyboard, your monitor placement, that sort of thing.

And you have stress at work? How remarkable!

And how often to you get up and move around? Do you do any stretches at work? NO? I'd suggest you find a freeware program that minimally reminds you to stop using the keyboard every 15-20 minutes or so.

She came back the second week having fully implemented everything we'd talked about. Matter of fact, with her input after the PT evaluation, her boss recommended "ergonomic keyboards" for everybody who wanted one.

And she told me about Ergocise, a free reminder-and-exercise program she found that I strongly suggest for ALL YOU GEEKS out there that forget you have an actual bricks-and-mortar body to tend to while you surf, browse, blog and chat. GO GET ERGOCISED!

One Web to Bind Them All

" ...if heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions continue to accumulate under the IPCC's "business as usual" scenario...up to 48 percent of Earth's land surface will lose existing climate zones. " CSMonitor

" Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. " Chief Seattle, 1855

" For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. " Ecclesiastes 3:19

Friday Shorts: April 5

Hmmm. More like Friday Long Woolies. Spring was nice. Remember?

:: First, thanks to Blue Mt Mamma for including two Floydians in her "Thinking Blogger" Awards post this week, after herself being tapped thusly, twicely.

:: Google has made custom map-labeling easy for the common man (or wo- of the same species.) Here's a quick start on a Floyd County map. Come back for updates over the coming weeks. (Serving suggestion: Click HYBRID to show the terrain as well as roads and featured locations.)

:: Did you know that grapes and raisins could be poisonous for dogs? We've been paying more attention to what we feed Tsuga lately, knowing that people foods are not necessarily the best dog foods (though Tsuga protests loudly when I say this.) Last night we fed Tsuga the better part of a whole chicken. Partly because of the scare with processed dog foods. Partly because she thought I would and I thought she would move it from the counter (where it was defrosting for last night's dinner) and the fridge. Ooops.

:: Friends of the BLue Ridge Parkway is sponsoring a viewshed tree planting event near Roanoke, Saturday, April 14 (Step it UP DAY). I'm going to do my best to be there for at least a while. You come, too!

:: Radio Readers: If there are any of you who know visually impaired in the New and Roanoke Valleys of Virginia, let them know they can listen to the author reading Slow Road Home on their special WVTF receiver starting (last official word was) on April 10.

Creature Feature

So we've now had two full nights without a nibble. No creature was stirring, not even a mouse. What a profound relief to be free (for now) of things that go bump in the night. The scratching was so loud at times it even upset the dog, who would come stand in the dark at my side of the bed for reassurance.

But yesterday, we were all well rested. The dog was up to his usual antics for this time of year, what with the butterfly shadows zigging and zagging around the yard on a sunny afternoon.

But when I called him to come in, he balked. He'd come just so close to the house, then acted as if he was guarding something in the grass. And as I stepped closer to see, he picked up his kill du jour: a rather large, long-tailed mouse (species unk).

Odd, I thought. He catches lots of moles, and the cat (rest her soul) used to catch the much quicker and more nocturnal and secretive mice. But I don't think I've seen the dog catch a mouse before. It must have been sick. Uh-oh.

Do you suppose this was one or our poisoned evictees?

I lassoed the dog and drug him inside, and came back and bagged up the potentially warfarin-laden mouse carcass and put it out of harm's way. And we will have to be vigilant over the next few days for a repeat of this scary consequence of our purging the dancing mice from over our not-quite-sleeping heads.

And while in the dog-zone, we discovered last week that the dog had tape worms. And looking back, I have to wonder if this helps explain Tsuga's bizarre eating disorder that had him eating (and puking) walnut shells. Maybe this was just the wisdom of the species (along with eating grass) as a way to either 1) make himself throw up, or 2) cut/shred some tapes in the intestines from sharp edges of the odd stuff he'd eaten.

Pollen-Nation Biology

A pollen count of 120 is considered EXTREMELY HIGH in the southeast.image link

We spoke to several relatives from the Deep South last week when the pollen count in Atlanta reached 5500 particles. And small wonder that we could barely understand their scratchy voices: allergies and throat irritations are at almost record levels.

And all that yellow stuff that coats their cars and makes that yukky scummy froth on every garden pond and lake is finding its way deep into their lungs. Thank goodness for MUCOCILIARY CLEARANCE! Right?

This is one of the healthy body's unappreciated "miracles" that keeps our lungs from becoming the waste heaps they would quickly become if all the soot, fungal spores, bacteria, dust, rug and clothing fibers AND POLLEN that we breathe in every day stayed deep inside our lungs air exchange surfaces.

Two things happen: the GOBLET CELLS that are richly scattered in this epithelium or lining tissue secrete a sticky glue--MUCUS--that traps the particles.

The CILIA are living whips--cellular organelles that are constantly in motion. And this motion is not random but coordinated--even within entire fields of such cells--so that there is a POWER STROKE and a RECOVERY STROKE. The power stroke, of course, is in the direction of UP and OUT. The cilia (as you can see in these movies) push particles toward the throat where we reflexively swallow, sending those umpteen thousand pollen grains to the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs instead of ending up in our lungs. UNLESS...

Unless you kill the cilia. If you want to do that, light a cylinder of plant material with a match. Put it to your lips and inhale. Cilia in this environment beat weakly, then stop entirely. And where does all that mucus-plus-pollen end up? You guessed it. It slides so deeply in the lungs that it can't be coughed up--no matter how violently you try. Make a wonderful medium for bacteria. Can you say PNEUMONIA?

(Parents, this little biology lesson with movies makes a good visual motivator to the would-be smokers in your family.)

High Places

Fred "Walter Mitty" the blogger pretends to be places he's not. Wandering through his digital scrap book, he goes far afield in his head, even while the rains pour down and cold winds cut like a knife, and he sits behind his desk, not far from the cheery fire in the woodstove.

Here's one I found going back to a Parkway excursion a month or more ago. I had passed over it in Photoshop when working on that folder of images, since my main purpose that day was to document infrastructure decline in the National Park. Of course, some of the pix that came home were of scenes and landscapes for their own sake, this being one of them.

There is something about tree silhouttes that intrigues me. One future note cards set, I hope, will be of trees through the seasons: maybe a winter set, and another with them in leaf in spring or fall.

Speaking of note cards, the Parkway cards I wrote about a few weeks back have been delayed by some printer-color problems at the shop. They've had to replace a part or two, and that has delayed the availability of the cards by a couple of weeks. Best laid plans (of mice and men...)

Which reminds me: last night--no mousey noises. Bar Bait. Thanks for the tip, y'all.

Going, Going. GoogleGone!

I thought I'd jump in here and post something quickly--before the Google empire decides to disappear again.

First thing this morning, I could get anyplace on the web EXCEPT if it was owned by Google.

No Gmail. No Blogger. No Adsense reports. No personal search history page. Google News was there but sluggish.

Now, mail is back--sort of--and has been SENDING a single short email now for several minutes, and will probably crash. So I'm expecting the same thing to happen when I try to send this post--wanna bet?

So just in the way of a warning if you're online day is just starting: the bridge to Google may be out. That the entire empire can be effected (by a server-swarm failure, by a hacker, by whatever) gives one pause before investing fully in the Google empire of apps. At least it does me.

The Great Warming

What does it take to get the attention of our young people, the generation that will be most impacted by the coming changes of such great magnitude?

Certainly it must reach them through the buzz, use the internet and other current technologies well, and be timely. The Great Warming seems to have covered those bases, even if the home page is so full of great information as to be overwhelming. And what a great graphic, don't you think?

So let me narrow it down for you, for starters: Check out the Discussion Guide on Global Warming: Changing CO2urse. (Not a typo, but it takes a minute.)

Sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute, seven study guides are offered, including

• Voluntary Simplicity
  
• Choices for Sustainable Living
  
• Exploring Deep Ecology
  
• Discovering a Sense of Place
  
• Globalization and Its Critics
  
• Healthy Children-Healthy Planet
  
• Global Warming: Changing Co2urse
  

As you might imagine, the module on Discovering a Sense of Place caught my attention. I have seen this bonding between people and place crucial in my own story to gain a perspective not possible as a migrant homeowner. Even one's sense of patriotism--honoring the father-land, literally--must begin in the countryside before it can fully extend to love of country.

Also, a reminder that Step It Up 2007 (Bill McKibben's "distributed revolution") is April 14. Read more about it in Business Week.

Bloodroot

It's happening, as it always does, too quickly. Every drive down the lane shows something else already gone by as Spring rushes through on its way to summer. Already, these bloodroot photographed a few days ago along the roadside near home have dropped their petals; the oddly-lobed and distinctive sheathing leaf that belongs one per plant will now begin to swell, growing six inches across by the middle of May.

The red-sapped rhizome that gives this plant one of its common names contains some caustic substances (perhaps accounting for the native American use of this plant as a emetic.) They also are said to have used the "blood" as a war paint or skin "tattoo".

I used to demonstrate this on field trips by digging a bloodroot rhizome, breaking it in two to show the oozing red in