Fragments From Floyd

Ah Spring, I Hardly Knew Ye

It always comes and goes too fast, and I always promise myself I will not let it happen 'this year'. Yet here I am once again, watching spring disappear out the tops of mountains and roses (wild ones, and countless familiar spring weeds and wildflowers) will bloom unseen. I watch the season oozing into summer from my truck window as I drive the Great Valley east from Shawsville to Salem.

The valley floor lies a good bit lower than home... some 1200 feet versus 2100 for our place on Goose Creek. From the road I travel to work I can see to the south a series of stair-step broken ridges cresting at 1700, 1900, 2700 and 3500 feet. The lowest gentle slopes are in mixed pasture dotted with grazing cattle punctuating the grounds of venerable old plantations that are archtypical Virginia countryside at its loveliest; the highest range some 4 miles away is Poor Mountain, the highest peak in the series of mountains that forms the southern rim of the Roanoke Valley.

Spring starts where the weather suits its clothes... in the warm, sunny, sheltered valley floor at the lower elevations. And as the season matures, the bloom-line slowly day by day trudges up the mountain slopes (sooner and faster on the southern exposure) toward the crest, where for all practical botanical purposes, this week it is still winter yet, bare and brown and threadbare above a riot of green and chartreuse coming up from below. It is fully mid-spring in Salem; in two weeks, if I go to the Naturalist Rally at Mt. Rogers, it will be perfect early spring at the campgrounds at 4000 feet, spring wildflowers at their peak there that have been gone for weeks here at the house.

One final observation in regard to chronobiology: using the stair-step ridges as a yardstick, our hillsides here in our small valley are blooming and budding more like they lived at 2500 to 3000 feet instead the actual 2100. We are in a 'sheltered valley', a cold sink, a frost pocket... a microhabitat such that we are cooler than one would find for this elevation in general. This is a problem when it comes to frosts and freezes for the garden and fruit trees; but it is not always a problem. This sweltering summer, I'll hear the typical forecast for southwest Virginia:

"Today in Roanoke, highs 80 to 85, except 5 to 10 degrees cooler for the New River Valley (where we live) and points west". To which I will gleefully add: "And another 5 degrees cooler on Goose Creek!".

Journal ~ Tuesday 29 April 2003

It's official. It has now passed from early to mid-spring: the pasture grass is up over the top of my rubber barn boots (almost knee high); the blue violets are almost hidden by the rangier ground coverings; Mayapple is tall enough to shade a rabbit and has blooms; and the AT is about to get its first cutting.

Not that AT... not the one that starts in north Georgia. This AT starts at the barn, goes up the valley along the "New Road", and back around the outside perimeter of the pasture, forking to come back to the barn or branching off across the creek (where the March floods carried off my hewn pinetree bridge) to follow the 'meadow'. Then there are lesser branches of it on the house side of the creek. Volunteers are being sought to begin this year's work on the Annie Trail, push-mowed to a total of almost 3/4 mile.

This morning, walking in the knee high dew-wet grass where the AT will soon appear, we heard the first wood thrush song, echoing between our ridges; tonight there were two of them, and just now, Ann called me to the back door. Listen: in the distance, up back where the blackberries grow... the first whippoorwill. What a haunting, melancholy sound.

At last the days have been warm enough so that I am startled now and then by the smell of spring... not any particular and definable smell but rather a kind of teaball steeping of winter's gray dregs with green things and warm dark earth, mosses and pollen. Aromatherapy. What the doctor ordered. Or would, if he only knew what I really needed for good health.

Left of Country

In response to a recent post here on Favorite Country Song titles, reader and old, er make that long-time, friend Tim forwards the following...

As the Dixie Chicks recently discovered after sharing some left-leaning sentiments, the vast majority of country-western music fans are pretty conservative.

But the liberal minority must have *some* C&W songs...so:

The Top 15 Leftist Country-Western Song Titles

• My Wife Turned Right, So I Done Left


• Stand by Your Domestic Partner of Non-Specific Gender and Sexual Orientation


• Don't It Make My Green Party Blue


• You're All I Have Left 'Cause They Done Took All My Rights


• Tree-Hugger's Daughter


• Sittin' Tall in This Genuine Vinyl No-Cattle-Were-Harmed-in-the-Manufacture-of Saddle


• Ninety Miles From Berkeley and My 'Lectric Car Done Died


• All My Exes Live in California Old-Growth Trees


• D-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y


• There's WMD on Your Lips but OIL in Your Eyes


• Even Socialized Medicine Can't Fix My Broken Heart


• Achy-Bleedy Heart


• Sit Closer to Me in My Truck, Darlin', 'Cause I Don't Like Leanin' to the Right


• I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You an Organic Soybean Garden) and the Number 1 Leftist Country-Western Song Title...


• I Done Cried My Eyes Dryly ('Cause Mah Baby Left Me for O'Reilly)

Between the Lines

Somewhere in a box in the Very Back Room upstairs are dozens of the kid's favorite books from their early years... the ones that they eventually outgrew but were by then too much a part of our family to give away. So, these worn old friends have traveled with us now through seven moves, waiting on the right time to once again come to life in the bedtime stories of grandchildren.

One of the old favorites in the worn old box is a Golden Book called the Saggy Baggy Elephant. If I remember correctly, Sukie, the elephant goes around the jungle lamenting her loose and wrinkled skin, asking advice from all the other animals how she can 'fix' her sags and her bags.

I hadn't thought about this book in decades until yesterday. And the trigger for this pachydermatological recollection: the saggy-baggy face in the mirror. Sukie, I feel your pain.

Guess wrinkles, sags and bags are the price one pays for living long enough to have grandchildren. And the well-traveled box of beloved books now will finally go to someone else's shelves, and then to their Very Back Room for the next thirty years.

Foundations

We visited a neighbor's mountaintop land recently, admiring their views to north and south. North, there is an unbroken series of ridges, woods, and sky... no sign of man's presence, the illusion of wilderness. To the south, snippets of rolling green pasture form a patchwork with slips of forest, and you can seen an occasional silo or barn adding an angular element to nature's softer shapes. It surprised me that I found a certain comfort being able to see 'man in the landscape' versus 'nature and she alone'.

In the same way, this old rocky remnant of a once-inhabited and useful farm building ... a small grain barn? a tiny cabin? down our valley is not a blemish but a comfort and a daily life lesson for us. These stones from the creek, moved in place with great effort and thought and hope of future harvest, remind us of how this very land under our feet has sustained and supported, challenged and delighted people long before we were born. It lies mute and still now under trees growing from its midst, a humbling lesson of our impermanence in this place, a gentle reminder that some day, others will walk here and wonder what our lives were like, what we planned and hoped and dreamed as we walked quietly along the creek by what then remains of the old rock barn.

Hurry, science dudes. Hurry.

Here's the poop, so to speak:

"This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."

Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year.

Invasive Species

No, this is not referring to your new neighbors, or to America's new foreign policy.

Here is a weblog devoted to tracking the spread of non-native plants and animals that show up, and stay, and spread, and typically do damage to native species and ecosystems.

You may be aware of invaders to your lakes or pastures. Around here, we have multiflora rose gobbling up the edges of our pastures; in the deep south where I grew up, the world is being taken over by kudzu, imported as a possible cattle food and to stabilize channelized stream banks (thank you, Corps of Engineers). But do you realize that some American species become non-native invaders in other places?

The Red Swamp Crawfish has taken over the niche of a top feeder in aquatic food chains in Europe. But similar species introduced to Africa, where there were no native crawfish, may be responsible for lowering disease rates there, since they eat the snails that carry intermediate stages of several human parasites.

One Worth Seeing? Can it Be?

Now this looks interesting... a series on PBS called "Closer to Truth" that includes episodes such as: Is Science Fiction Science? How Does Order Arise in the Universe? Is Consciousness Definable? Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion? How Does the Autistic Brain Work? How Weird is the Cosmos? Transcripts are available for each of these, plus video clips.

We don't get PBS because it has worthwhile things on it from time to time, and our DISH package scrupulously culls any channels that require thought or judgement. I think they call it the MTV/Home Shopping and Lobotomy Package. It's expensive, but it sure is worthless.

Flowering Now! In a Forest Near You!

We took a 'nature walk' up the valley this evening, ambling along slowly in a bright fog in the drippy wet woods just before dusk. It's the peak of the wildflowers now, it seems. We came back with this list of 'sightings'. What grows where you live?

• Anemone (windflower)


• Trillium (erect and grandiflorum)


• Miterwort (Bishops Cap)


• Cutleaved Toothwort


• Wild Ginger


• Blue Cohosh


• Black Cohosh


• Perfoliate Bellwort


• Columbine


• Giant Chickweed


• Solomon's Seal


• False Solomon's Seal


• Virginia Waterleaf


• Spicebush


• Fire Pink


• Hepatica


• Bloodroot


• Coltsfoot


• Trout Lily


• Speckled Bead Lily


• Jack-in-the-Pulpit


• Foam Flower


• Violet (blue, sweet yellow)


• Stonecrop

Color My World

It is the translucency of spring that I look forward to from the middle of winter. It is this, more than the season's growth or warmth or change in the view that I anticipate. In mid-April, sunlight will travel 93 million miles to our woods, finding a million tiny see-through leaves. Packets and waves of light pierce cuticle, palisade cells, spongy mesophyll, guard cells...the entire world within the thin thickness of an emerging leaf. Spring leaves take in sun but do they not hold it. Like a ghost through a wall, spring sun shines into and through, and April leaves project a chartreuse glow on the world that you cannot see in summer. Keep your whiskers on kittens. This is one of my favorite things.

Dumb Dog Tricks Explained

I need a little help from you animal behaviorists out there... especially the canine-inclined. I've wondered about Buster's odd antics in the past, and figured out what the play-bow is all about. And I've mused about his typical male-dog leg-heisting instincts. Now I am trying to explain a behavior that could be unique to Buster, or to Black Labs, but might be a more widely observed thing and you may see it in your dog and have an explanation for it.

When we get ready to go for a walk (of course he picks up on the most subtle cues... I reach for my sunglasses; I just begin to slip off my sandals to put on boots... etc) and of course Buster gets all pumped and starts doing his twirly-arounds so we shoo him out the door immediately so his claws don't do too much damage to the hardwood floor from his puppy pirouettes. When we finally come out the door, he becomes frantic to find something to carry with him as we walk down toward the road. He looks for a nice solid stick, but if he can't find that, he'll pick up a piece of bark or a full-sized piece of firewood... and prance off with it (a short stout stick carried at an oblique angle looks like a thick Cuban cigar, giving him a casual Churchillian comportment) often carrying it for a quarter mile or so before losing interest in it. There's a certain place along our usual route where we now find an odd assortment of kindling he has dropped there over the winter months. It almost looks like he's building a nest down there. Hmmm. I wonder...

Any of you observe anything like this in your dogs? I can't think of what 'survival benefit' such silliness might confer. Maybe you've got some ideas. I stand ready to be educated. Or maybe I'll just sit.

Where the Women Are Strong

... and all the men are good looking, and...

Well, I'd say for my part of the program, I came off more like Garrison Keillor, but him after chasing a coupla trucker pills with a Jolt Cola. We had to squeeze three groups into the space normally occupied by two, so it was 128 rpm out of the starting block. I think I sounded a bit like Alvin the Chipmunk. In my introduction to our group topic, I had planned to read a nice segment from a poem about the disappearance of farms in Tennessee as a seque into our individual papers; but we were so short of time I segued through the segue and hurried through my slides so fast I'm afraid that several in the audience needed to be treated for whiplash. (Here's my card. I know a good physical therapist but he's not cheap!)

Actually, all seriousness aside, it went very well. My group (myself and two others) spoke generally on the topic "Touring Culture: What's for Sale?", with my paper on Cultural Tourism in Floyd County, D's on EcoTourism and the Pine Mountain Trail in Kentucky; and N's study of the Smokies, Tourism and the Hillbilly Image (not her actual title). The prof asked our group to stay after class. She wants us to plan to present our papers at the Appalachian Studies Association convention next year; and wants me to pursue additional work on my paper with the possible opportunity to publish it in one of several places. We'll see what happens.

Now. Let's go cut the grass... A FREE MAN accompanied by his FREE sidekick, Buster. Life is (occasionally and inexplicably) good.

PowerPointed Toward Disaster?

Darn near spilled my coffee all over myself this morning when I looked outside at the porch thermometer (barely 30)... 'cause just beyond the walkway a huge marshmallowy ghost hoovered 4 feet off the ground! I'd forgotten the great production last night wherein the Keeper of the Grounds had recruited the staff here to help get a queen-sized bedsheet over the top of a 7-foot lilac. The staff had guffawed at this silliness, claiming "it'll be on the ground by the time we go to bed". He was wrong. I forgot it was there. So with the coffee and this early adrenalin surge, I think I'm ready to put the finishing light and airy touches on my Powerpoint presentation for later this morning.

I'm walking on the wildside here, taking the approach that, with a 10K-word paper reduced to less than a 10 minute presentation, the way to keep it unhurried, informal and easy to listen to is to not overprepare. Gulp. This could cut two ways, you understand. Risky business here.

I could come away perceived as a glib easy speaker who communicates without notes in an entertaining yet professional manner. But, on the other hand, I run the risk of completely losing my loose plan to weave together amusing excerpts gleaned from 33 pages of text, morphing pitifully into a stuttering bumpkin reading each bullet, word for word at breakneck speed, with beaded sweat on my brow and my heart in my throat.

So. Who will I be today? Garrison Keillor? Or Mel Tillis? Off I go.

Working Blues

This cute little joblet that I've taken has, as expected, turned out to be the stuff of which sleepless nights are made. The recipe: responsibility without control. Try it. It'll work every time. You'll dream of a roomful of vaudeville spinning plates wobbling at the top of limber sticks and you must... YOU. MUST. not let any of them slow down, fall and explode in green mushroom clouds of toxic gas that will wipe out all the staff who are watching, depending on you alone to save their jobs. Of course that was just a (formerly frequently recurring) dream. But today I go to the Room of Spinning Plates where the paperwork, to which I must conform, is not at all intuitive (I would change it so that that plate would spin itself) and the secretary's last day is Friday and nobody knows nothing about nothing. I'll be typing evaluations all day, and whoever set up the therapist office was not only ignorant of ergonomics but had a knack for creating Twister-inspired work stations. I'm taking my own USB Ergonomic keyboard. I do, at least, have that wee bit of control.

Hey. I just work there prn. They're not even my plates. It's a stimulus-response thing, I guess... a habit born of 30 years in the World of Work. I'll give it my best shot, keep my cool, make some suggestions to the walls about how things might go smoother, and be happy for a few hours income here for a few weeks. And maybe, after work and the practical end of my school responsibilities tomorrow, I'll re-emerge and say hello to me again! And I owe you a picture.

And yes I will take some cheese with my whine.

Hear Me Now?

I came right to the brink of signing up with Sprint this week for cell phone service when yesterday, I got a nice clear call from our out-of-state visitor's cell phone using Verizon from here inside Floyd County. Sprint had told me there weren't any digital towers here, but what they 'meant' to say was that they couldn't afford to put up a digital tower. I borrowed a Sprint phone today to test coverage and it just doesn't cut it. And I read that the company's long term survival may be in question. So...

Any suggestions with Verizon re a minimal phone to be had online somewhere at a good price? We don't expect to use net services, text mailing, fancy ringers... heck, I'll be happy if tech-averse Annie will even use speed dial. Seems there are no 'free' phones offered with signup in the Verizon service center in Blacksburg. Our neighbors had a cute little Samsung A310 they got for $50 back when a rebate was in effect, seems it's $99 again now. Yadayadayada. I'm just fishing amongst my urbane sophisticate blog visitors to help bring us into the digital age. Other forms of age you may keep to yourself, we have plenty, really.

So Sue Me

I've known folks who, when they were having a day like mine today, would say they were 'just snake-bit'. Meaning, of course, having an evil rotten day. I think too much of the herptiles to use this particular terminology, but you get the idea. You've had those days I'm sure, where bad begets worse in a day-long run of rotten luck, poor timing, low biorhythms... whatever.

The aggravation started this morning when took the dog on a short walklet for one final pee (for him) before I left for class. He got his nose up in the air on the scent of something, and lo and behold, there not 10 feet from the garden fence was the south parts of a north-bound rabbit. Something (fox?) had eaten just about exactly half of it. Fine by me, since this is the time of year I go bunny-banging and have removed three or four every spring that manage to get under the bottom electrical wire. But the dog insisted he was going to take credit for this particular kill; I had to bribe him to get the disgusting thing away from him. I was late leaving for Tech with a rabbit carcass to pitch in the dumpster.

And some other stuff happened that I won't bore you with having to do with traffic snarls, powerpoint files, cell phone service, privet hedges, physical therapy evaluations and post hole diggers. Also, it turned very much back to March again today and once again we'll be firing up the stove tonight because it's said to be freezing in here and The Queen is not happy.

So. This is my excuse why I didn't get that picture for you this afternoon like I promised. And oh yeah... the dog ate my camera.

Slowly, Slowly

I'm finding my idle speed increasing, the stress hormones rising and my life getting chopped up into 30 minute dayplanner chunks and I RESIST! Today, with you as my witness, I promise to stop and be still and let springtime seep into my pores and the wrinkly creases of my frenzied old brain and come back with a picture or two to share. Breathe, Fred. Be here now. Don't march to the sound of the drummers of this hurried world... or at least break rank long enough to keep the march in context and perspective. Life is short.

There. I guess I told me. Back this afternoon with some pix.

Blogfest, Sort of

Back last Fall I first heard from these folks in the Very Deep South who had found Fragments in the process of searching for info on Floyd. Somehow they had acquired property here, and as it turns out, their place is about a mile and a half as the crow flies to our south. One day when they retire from hot, humid and flat, they will be our neighbors. Wouldn't it be nice to meet them someday!

Liska and Bill came to dinner with us last night. They've been here for a few days working to improve the road into their place, experiencing Floyd County fog and drizzle until yesterday afternoon when the sun came out, things warmed up, and we were able to sit on the upstairs porch for a pleasant few moments as the sun settled behind the ridge. To prove that she really truly does read this silly weblog, Liska came bearing a CD with some Really Great Oldies... but she couldn't have known when she suggested we play it last night that I cannot resist singing along; and when it comes to the Tams, I am compelled to help them along with the doo-whopp coreographed MoTown motions as well. For which I apologize. A little.

Alice, you wouldn't recognize your work buddy. She has callouses on her hands, is wearing catbrier scratches like war wounds, and is tough as nails. Just yesterday she pretended to take the wrong trail so she could sprint straight back up a mountain-goat hill... piece o'cake, she said. I bet she'll do it again today it felt so good the first time.

T'was a nice evening and we're looking forward someday to walking up the New Road along the Nameless Creek to sit on our new neighbors deck and watch the sun go down behind the Buffalo. Maybe by then, these guys will have their own Floyd weblog. Ya reckon?

Don't touch that dial!

It's TV Turnoff Week. I'll do my part. You?

I had a great time, and my only question is: If this is so great, why don't we turn off the TV for the other 51 weeks of the year? -Benjamin Loxley, 2nd grader, Lewisboro, New Jersey

We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel, and it is a television antenna: a thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy, in which everyone's opinion is afforded equal weight regardless of substance or merit. -Ted Koppel

TV is the single most significant factor contributing to violence in America. -Ted Turner

I really didn't like TV-Turnoff Week except I did notice that my grades went up and I was in a good mood all week. -Drew Henderson, 2nd grader, Donora, Pennsylvania

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. -Groucho Marx

Our family has been TV-free for seven to eight years... Now you couldn't GIVE me a TV. -Joe Dolan

In many families the television seems to substitute, rather than facilitate dialogue among people. A type of 'fast' in this area could also be healthy. -Pope John Paul II during a speech calling for a 40-day TV-Turnoff

Television is a chewing gum for the eyes. -Frank Lloyd Wright

Given our national television habit, it is no surprise that we are raising the most sedentary and most overweight generation of youngsters in American history. As they grow, these children will run increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems -- unless they turn off the tube and become physically active. -US Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.

Check out the fact sheets re television. Do your kids a favor. Won't hurt you any either, eh?

The World of Work

I always try to catch the local paper about this time of year as high school graduation approaches. It's easy to spot... the full pages of little pictures of the head and shoulders of seniors of all sizes and shapes. The caption reads: So-and-so is the son or daughter of... (mother's and father's last names more often that not, don't match) who will be entering X community college in the field of diesel repair. Most kids from the local high school state that they are bound for some specific curriculum somewhere, headed for two to four or more years of academic buffer before gaining the prize. But then there are others of these kids whose pictures indicate they are heading directly from high school into the dreadful netherworld: THE WORLD OF WORK.

Reading about these kids that were just throwing themselves on the mercy of the want ads after school used to kinda make me grieve. How sad, I thought, that little Bubba has no goals, no career track or expectations after graduation but to be assimilated into the machinery of the marketplace, a small cog in the great machine of commerce. He'll wander from job to job, used and used up by one employer after another, subject to schedules and policies and rules that he has no control over. His wages will be at the whim of decisions made in boardroom meetings from conglomerate agreements that he will not be privy to and his benefits, if he has any, will rise and fall with the price of pork bellies on the Asian market. How sad.

I'm here to tell ya: There are countless folks in lots of 'career tracks', for instance.... hmmmm.. healthcare.... that will tell you this. They thought they were launching a lifelong plan when they went to medical school or nursing school or physical therapy school all those hard years. They were driven by the belief that they would become health care providers. With this credential they would gain a secure, profitable and rewarding profession in which they would be able with a few years of experience to make a good income, control their work conditions to a large degree, and count on the support and gratitude of a reputable and stable agency or corporation that would value and nurture them as an integral part of the team. And the ultimate purpose of everyone from the CEO on down would be the provision of excellent patient care. What a nice thing to look forward to as one's life work.

Nah. No matter what it says on the head and shoulders caption, they're all entering the WORLD OF WORK. This is not your father's Oldsmobile.

I mention this as a long winded way of telling you that I'm back in the clinic again a few days a week (as a physical therapist, if you're coming to Fragments as a newbie) and my low expectations for this work seem already to be warranted. I confess I've pretty well fallen off the healthcare career ladder after thirteen years. Actually, I guess you might say that I jumped off of it about a year ago. I'm still wondering what I'm going to do with my remaining 'good years' here peering over the edge of the World of Work. I'll keep you posted. But I'm thinking about diesel repair.

Fragments Under New Management

I have this feeling that soon things will change back toward the old normal... where I wake up eager to write about some fragment I've seen or heard or thought, to write undistracted by threats of war or war itself, to have words flow without guilt about neglecting the class reading or the term paper. I can imagine once again feeling some kind of connection to my fictitious listener who is my audience... that someone who really, honestly cares to know what's happening in my life, my senses, my imagination.

I'll be honest. I haven't felt like I've had very much passion in writing the past two or three months because of the oppression of current events and obligation to this class I'll be wrapping up this week. I just looked back through the past three weeks' entries to see if there was something worth submitting to Carnival of the Vanities. There wasn't. Yawn. No wonder my fictitious listener has nodded off. Maybe by this time next week. We'll see.

This is a personal journal of sorts, after all. Maybe it's not so strange that there are peaks and troughs recorded here because they certainly exist in the life that it chronicles. You folks who've been blogging for a year or more... (and especially if your 'material' comes from personal experience and not political opinion, of which there is never a short supply): what has been your cycle of creativity and ennui? Troughs along the way? Anyone? Personally, I'm ready for at least a peaklet. Maybe I need Centrum Silver. Got any good herbal rememdies for writer's block? Perhaps a good cathartic... like podophyllum. Don't know what that is? Hmmm. I think I feel a blog coming on already.

Risen Indeed

If Jesus Christ is alive, then the whole of history is not what it seems to those who believe that this day is only about fuzzy bunnies, candy eggs and an perfunctory annual church visit. LeadershipU offers to carry readers back to re-examine the core of the matter, and there are no more consequential questions in history than this one.

"Easter comes and goes without impact for many who attend church more out of tradition (and to please family members) than anything else. Some remain unbelieving unless overwhelmed by evidence, like the Apostle Thomas in the painting above. Church attendance notwithstanding, are there good, solid reasons to believe the rather outlandish claims that God incarnate laid down His life willingly and was miraculously raised from the dead? There had better be! ..."

"Many have noted that Christianity stands or falls on the truthfulness of the resurrection of Christ. If true, then Christ's claims to deity and the eternal hope portrayed in the Bible are issues to be dealt with seriously. If not, nothing important would be lost in the investigation. Many have sought to disprove it, only to believe.

We offer you arguments - in the propositional, non-combative sense of the word - and evidence, musings and personal experience from the convinced side of faith in Jesus Christ. Are you open enough to entertain the plausibility of these things and willing to consider the claims that purport not only to change mortal lives, but to lead to immortality? The stakes could not be higher, so we urge you to consider deeply and carefully the claims of Easter, including those found in our Special Focus".

Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?
Professor Edwin M. Yamauchi
That the Easter faith in the Resurrection of Christ is the core of Christianity can hardly be denied. Whether that conviction is rooted in myth, in hallucination, or in history has often been debated.

Learning Faith From Doubting Thomas
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
This personalized story tells of St. Thomas the Apostle - Doubting Thomas - who witnesses the resurrected, risen Jesus and, in a crisis of faith, confesses him as "My Lord and My God."

Evidence for the Resurrection
Josh McDowell
For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd. Many have chosen simply to ignore the central issue of the resurrection. Others have tried to explain it away through various theories. But the historical evidence just can't be discounted.

How to Pick Your Own God
John Gay
Picking a god is tricky business. Some Hindus say there are more than 300,000 gods. On the opposite end of the spectrum are Buddhists who say there are no deities. And the Shinto religion, found primarily in Japan, believes that gods reside in all creatures, and even in trees, soils and objects. How do you decide?

Can't Hear There from Here

Oh joy! We're entering the modern era of cell phones next week, casting off our 5 yr old plan and equally antiquated black heavy useless 'free with signup' phone and getting an account that doesn't zap us with roaming charges between Roanoke and Blacksburg for pete's sake. We get 300 free long distance prime time minutes and 1000 evening and weekend minutes!

Oh yeah. We can only use our long distance minutes from outside of Floyd County since the powers that be have chosen to refuse to allow towers in the county for digital service. I understand this, and given a vote, I probably would have made this choice. But calling the kids in far away places while sitting on the side of road in the next county, I'm going to wish we could have our cake and eat it too.

Can you hear me now? Well, NO. Not from here.

Slept In. Now Behind Enemy Lines

Well the day is gone on without us. We hardly ever do it: sleep past 3:45 for Ann, 4:30 for me... even on weekends. Sluggardly. That's all I can say. Worthless. No-count. Going on 6:45 and already She Who Must Be Obeyed has presented me with my dreaded Saturday LIST, which, as I scan down the page, I see it does NOT include sitting here at the computer and ruminating and rambling.

Urgent Message!! There has been a WEEKEND REGIME CHANGE! A new flag has just been hoisted above the desk here. My survival training is kicking in and I'm going to try to escape from enemy territory by jumping into the back of the neighbor's beat-up old truck when he slows down on the curve in front of the house, on his way to work at exactly 7:05. Synchronize your watches. Wish me luck. Write me in the POW camp (capture is inevitable). Send your letters to the same address, now under martial law... no, make that marital law). Yes Sir. Yes Mam, Sir. I'm posting it right now, Sir.

I better go.

I'm Justa Bug on the Windshield of Life

From a long list, some selected titles from the best of the worst country songs (link thanks to Boynton)

• Drop Kick Me Jesus (Through The Goal Posts Of Life)


• Four on the Floor and a Fifth Under the Seat


• Get Your Biscuits In The Oven, And Your Buns In The Bed


• Hand me the Pool Cue and Call Yourself an Ambulance


• High Cost of Low Living


• How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?


• I Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling


• I Gave Her the Ring, and She Gave Me the Finger


• I Still Miss You Baby... But My Aim is Getting Better


• If I Can't Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You


• Last Night I Went to Bed with a "10" and Woke this Morning with a "2"


• Mommy, Can I Still Call Him Daddy?


• My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him


• She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger


• Velcro Arms, Teflon Heart

Shedding, Sunning and Shaving

Today! Two signs of spring!

1) The winter constellations are failing; the days lengthen and the Summer Triangle rises in the evening sky; and I'm feeling the impulse to shave my beard. This is a true sign of spring. Actually, the seasonal urge and the doing of the deed typically happens thusly: Day X comes... a warm archetypal springtime day that says with certitude that cold weather has past. On Day X plus 4 or 5, with the babyface all bare and pink and chaffed from the unnatural and barbaric act of shaving (for the first time in months), a renegade Arctic cold front appears de novo and rages through wherever on the planet I am at the time, frigid wind against razor-raw chin and cheeks. If I postpone shaving for 4 or 5 days, it will still happen just this way, it doesn't matter. Yet another act in this seasonal drama is that Ann will, after a day or as many as three, notice that I somehow look different. Eventually it will dawn on her that the beard is missing. She will then giggle and tell me that without the beard I don't have a chin and look like Ferret Face... Frank Burns on M.A.S.H. Ha Ha.

2) The second sign of spring is the blooming of the co-eds on Tech campus today! Until today, one might as well have been in a Gulag workcamp full of sexless drones all rounded and shapeless in thick muffles of parkas and big fur hats. Here today arrived the glorious dehiscence of all outerwear... a spring phenomenon that I have not witnessed lo these many years away from college campuses. Shockingly, they didn't used to be so young under all those winter clothes, I discover.

Well yeah, I noticed. I'm not dead yet. I figure it's like the old fella in the restaurant business said when his wife caught him sneaking a peek at a younger woman: "Just because a fella's ordered don't mean he can't still look at the menu".

Now, if I go in here and shave off my silver beard, I'll look younger... maybe only a mere 30 years older than my current college classmates! And I do too have a chin.

Water, Water Everywhere

Goose Creek ~ April 2003

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

Too Bad about That There

Sorry 'bout that pillaginatin' and lootification, y'all.

The pillaging has ravaged the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient civilization in Mesopotamia, and the losses have triggered an impassioned outcry in cultural and artist circles, including the recent resignation of President Bush's cultural advisor.

Dubya has a cultural advisor? Why do I find this humorous?

The Rest of the Story

(Don't fail to miss Part One!)

---

So. I'm having a typical hectic day in the clinic hearing in agonizing detail about the pains of others and being responsible for treating them. Meanwhile I was having my own agony, up close and personal. The all-too-familiar gnawing pain below my shoulder blade was killing me. On an out-of-the-way shelf I spotted these things the 'dude' had left me back in the winter. I stuck one over the painful 'trigger point' and went back to work, expecting nothing at all to change. A couple of hours later, I realized I had not been aware of the pain. Hmmm. Coincidence, I thought. But after replaying this scene a half-dozen times over the next month, I was reluctantly starting to admit there may be a treatment effect.

In 1997 when I first encountered them, therapeutic magnets (yes, I confess, that's the mystery item) were a fairly new phenom in this country (at least in the East). Now they have found their way into many sports and health-related products... not because, to my knowledge, a strong cause-effect relationship is understood in scientific terms, but for many people they seem to reduce or eliminate some kinds of pain.

It's tough to argue with experience, especially your own. My evidence that magnets have a biological effect on pain was my own personal experience. I had found a way to control a worrisome chronic pain that had not responded positively to any other method available to me as a medical professional working full time in a Pain Management Center!

There is an incredible amount of hype and hysteria and misinformation about magnets and pain. But there are also some tantalizing indications that even in early controlled studies, something is going on here. I'll just leave you with these medically-supported couple of links, if your interested.

Not all magnets work well (or at all) for all pains all the time in all people. The variables are all over the map, and I certainly can only speak to my own experience. I hope I live long enough to see this mystery fully explored, understood, and used appropriately for the pervasive problem of pain. Because as I always say... PAIN HURTS.

Treat Your Children Well...

...their fathers' Hell...

Children inherit genes, but their legacy, too, includes the diets and lifestyles of their parents and kids are showing up in alarming numbers with "Adult-onset" (Type II) diabetes.

Folks, this is an awful disease that can be prevented. The cause?

... Doctors have little doubt. They blame inactivity and overeating. The hours on end in front of the tube, for instance, and the 20-ounce sodas in school vending machines. (Swilling four of those a day is nothing special for many kids, one doctor notes, and adds up to 1,000 calories, close to half of a boy's daily needs, all from sugar.)

... The horizon is really dark," says Dr. Jorge Calles-Escandon, a Wake Forest University endocrinologist. "We know what happens to adults with type 2 diabetes who don't take care of it properly. They die prematurely. They have heart attacks, strokes, blindness, renal failure. There is no reason to believe this will be different for adolescents."

Don't Ask Dr. Science

At the hospital where I worked, I used to be referred to in benign mock derisive way as Dr. Science ("He knows more than you do!" from DucksBreath Theatre fame. Seems he no longer has a presence on the web, sorry to say).

Okay Fred... what's this weed/flower/bug? It was me ... the local Dr. Science that they called when they found a snake down by the emergency room entrance, for instance. (I promptly picked it up and carried it around terrorizing the first floor for a while, gaining instance status, especially with certain staff from primitive Baptist sects). If I didn't have an answer for somebody's what-why question, I'd get creative and make something up, peppered liberally with real or real-sounding latinized terminology.

I bring this up because in this instance, Dr. Science is stumped. I repeatedly observe something in my own experience from direct perception, and I cannot find anyone who offers a 'scientific' explanation for why it works like this. I'm even hesitant to say anything about it to you, since many think it's just 'alternative medicine' hocus pokus, or the gazebo effect.

Still, it's impossible for me to dismiss. Being in the pain business (preventing and treating, not causing...okay?) for some years, when any patient-selected measures worked to effect any part of the complex mind-body pain process and were not harmful, we generally supported it at the Pain Center. So: I have pain. Me, personally. I apply this pain-abatement measure. The pain diminishes or goes away. What am I to think? Others report similar experiences... not universally, but enough to raise eyebrows and warrant controlled tests in major medical centers. Some of these studies have produced 'statistically significant treatment effects', but since there is no biophysical explanation for the results, we doubt that it could 'really' work. (Reminds me a bit of the status of acupuncture in the late 70s before Nixon brought it back, in a sense, from his China visits.)

Since I'm among friends and not speaking as a medical professional, I'll tell my little tale, and you make of it what you will. Your mileage may vary, offer not good in some states, you must be 18 or older to participate, and a fool and his money are soon parted. More about this, later.

Morphing and Other Insults of Age

All through high school and the first round of college I needed suspenders to hold up my pants; I punched extra holes in belts and cinched them til they gathered my pants-tops in corrugated folds. I always kept my shoes on when occasionally I bothered getting on scales, just to show a few more pounds I wish I could claim. Wiry, mildly muscular, I had basically a swimmer's build. A text book ectomorph with mesomorphic tendencies.

In my mid-thirties through mid-forties, I played tennis and racquetball, hit the Nautilaus machines regularly, and jogged. Body fat still at less than 10% but more muscular. Wrestler's build. An ecto-mesomorph.

And here we are. I take off my shoes when I get on the scales now. I punch holes in the tip-ends of my belts to make them longer. For the first time in my life... zapped with sudden and quite measurable gain in girth and weight. Still a swimmer's build. Only now, I carry my Mickey and Goofy innertube around with me. Is there such a thing as an ecto-endomorph!? The assault on this new phenom... pinchable inches... has begun. I am unfamiliar with the terms of warfare and I dread boot camp. I hear the food is really lousy.

Not familiar with 'somatotypes' (endo-ecto-mesomorph)? It's soft science, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.

What body type are you? Read on....

From this source....

ECTOMORPH

fragile
thin
flat chest
delicate build
young appearance
tall
lightly muscled
stoop-shouldered
large brain
Has trouble gaining weight.
muscle growth takes longer.

MESOMORPH

athletic
hard, muscular body
overly mature appearance
rectangular shaped (hourglass shaped for women)
thick skin
upright posture
gains or loses weight easily
grows muscle quickly.

ENDOMORPH

soft body
flabby
underdeveloped muscles
round shaped
over-developed digestive system
trouble losing weight
generally gains muscle easily.

Go Catch Some Light

Talk about shock and awe. Let's keep things in context and proportion in that department, and throw in a pinch of grandeur for flavor.

Here are some wonderful, awe-some celestial marvels, and many more available in the "Top Ten" lists at Astropix.

Master of His Domain

I punched the button on the answering machine, and my gosh, it was our old friend Patty. Why would she be calling after all these years?

No. The message played and as Patty talked the voice explained that it belonged to Patty's daughter, sounding so much like her mom that it spooked me a little. She was calling from Japan, looking for our son's phone number. The two of them have apparently kept in touch, across the years and from around the world, and that is a comfort to know, in a way. I've done such a poor job of holding on to friendships, apparently. At least Nate is forming more permanent bonds, and he will be glad of this when he is our age.

Patty had another child after we moved away. Like the daughter now in Japan, the little boy was pretty much given free reign in a remarkably free and permissive household where mom and dad didn't want to break their little spirits, so children were reared in a very loose and uncontrolling way, allowing the 'wisdom of the body' to govern bedtime, potty training, all sorts of things. Not that we were tyrannical parents, understand, but we did have some rules in our house. Our kids, I think, always envied these peers who lived their bliss, even while in diapers.

The son was named Aldon. Patty explained that this was because he would be the last child for them, and now they were 'all done'. Actually, I think it was a family name. Aldon is famous in our family for this true story:

It was time for bed. Patty reminded two-year-old Aldon to brush his teeth.

"I don't wanna bwush my teef" he proclaimed.

"Aldon, if you don't brush your teeth, they'll rot" Patty patiently explained, then having provided him with the necessary data to make his choice, said no more.

And Aldon replied "Wet dem wot". And he went to bed.

This terse phrase has been a family favorite over the years, and can be used to express all sorts of sentiments of permissive indulgence, juvenile anarchy and oblivion to consequences. You have my permission to use the phrase. But do brush your teeth. If you want to.

Many Parts Aren't Edible

Arisaema triphyllum: Jack-in-the-pulpit, or Indian Turnip

Fair is the canopy over him seen Pencilled by nature's hand, black, brown and green Green is his surplice, green are his bands, In his queer little pulpit the little priest stands (anon.) Of course it's anonymous. If you'd written this verse, would you admit it?

This is my Georgia OKeefe rendition of a familiar and common wildflower. The patch where this one was photographed last year is just starting to show the tips of green leaves breaking through the rich soil of the meadow. By the middle of summer, the three parted leaves will be nearly a foot across.

The name "Indian Turnip" makes you think they might be edible. Not. The roots contain calcium oxalate crystals that imbed themselves in your mucous membranes (like the lining of the mouth) and sting like fire. Yes, I know this from first hand experience, and that's all I'll say about that.

Ruminations and Droppings

We are just a few weeks away from the four year anniversary of 'breaking ground' here on the old homeplace. The dust of reconstruction has settled, the ghosts of those who have lived and died in this house have given up their grumbling over the new tenants, and being here has become as comfortable and familiar as oxygen in air. We have at last arrived, with the illusion of permanance, rootedness, belonging.

Now that the majority of the 'must-do's' are done to the house and yard, how should we amend our five-year plan... within the constraints, of course, of a belt-tightened budget and our usual frugal approach to things? How can we be good stewards of our resources and make this plot of land a better place than we found it, now that the living space is 'done'?

I would love to find a compatible use for the land... grow, raise, build something... that would add value (and maybe bring a tiny profit) to our lives and the worth of the place for whoever comes next (hoping, of course, that it might be family, but that seems unlikely). Keeping beef cattle is a marginal enterprise, plus, it would require putting up fencing, modifying the barn for shelter, providing water while keeping hooves out of the streambed, and so on, with a payback period of quite a few years. We just got rid of a pasture full of scrawny pine trees on what little level land we have here, so putting it back in Christmas trees (a major county industry) or other plantings won't fly. The level land on the property is between the creeks at the bottom of a deep valley... a major frost pocket... so fruit trees, even if they survive the severe deer browse, are likely to succumb to late spring and early fall frosts and freeze.

Failing the larger-scale management of the place for farm use, then, I'm beginning to think on a smaller scale. We could get a few hens and a rooster, but why bother when we have several easy sources of 'organic eggs' nearby. A 'pick-your-own blueberry farm' might have some merit, but then there are already a couple of them, in much more accessible parts of the county than here.

I was walking across Tech campus in the rain last week; seeing the worms all over the sidewalks resurrected the memory of a venture I almost got into back in the "Mother Earth" days when we first moved to Virginia: raising rabbits for meat, growing earthworms in the droppings under the hutches. Rabbits are clean and quiet (compared to chickens...yuk!) and produce lean meat; and since Ann and I are only minor carnivores, a couple of breeding females and one buck would more than supply our protein needs. I could put pens along the edge of the shed behind the house to shelter them from wind and rain. And then there are the earthworms. I wonder how they would be in a nice stir-fry. Hmmmm. I'll let you know when the brainchild is born; I fear a very low APGAR, however.

Waging Peace

In this faltering effort at a 'meaningful act' called Fragments, I could not have said it nearly as well, but needed to express just this, and will relate my hopes and lamentations through Lisa Thompson's thoughtful words in Field Notes.

Lisa concludes:

"There are other ways to make our voices heard that are not confined to simple protest 'against war', but are expressions 'for peace'. These are acts of imagination and creativity that come from the vital heart of each of us. It is incumbent upon us to express our humanity in meaningful acts of art using poetry and prayer, beauty, rhythm and song not only now while bombs are dropping, not only when war is imminent, but always. How else to make peace a greater force than war, love greater than hate, humanity greater than commerce, than to express those values in our daily lives-a practice of peace. Embedded in this poetic form of protest are the means to a vital expression of peace and life long after the bombs stop."

Lamaze Wedding

We're going to a wedding today. We will drive an hour, back into our past, to the small town where our son was born. The bride was born three weeks after our son. We met the bride's parents in the Lamaze class where we learned "hoo haa" breathing and "don't push-- blow". Mom and dad of the bride became our friends, and even though we've all moved away and back again, we've kept in touch. There is a symmetry here, a resolution not common in our tattered lives. I don't usually cry at weddings, but today...

S(he) Who is Ignorant of History

Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini in the 20th century undertook an attempt to overthrow republican democracy and replace it with a worldwide feudal state. They first called it "corporatism", but later changed it to "fascism".

The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) 1983 defines "fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. : A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

There is nothing new under the sun.

Family Fruits Fall Far from Tree

If my kids didn't have the inclination to hang around gramps and granny, they at least are living in places where, if the bones and budget permit, we will be happy to visit someday. Dau is in southwestern South Dakota, and I suppose everybody ought to do the tourist thing once and visit Rushmore. Ann's not been west at all, and we'd love to get out there before the snows set in again in August. Maybe I exaggerate. September then.

Son will be moving in August to Vancouver to begin a masters program at Regent. It sounds like a wonderful place for him on several fronts, and we're looking forward once again to living vicariously through his experiences via copious email and phone calls and annual visits. We've already decided, with the kind assistance of a blogging friend who is a life-long Vancouver resident, that he can probably get by without a car while he's there.

Now: if someone wants to offer scholarships, or free housing near the University of British Columbia, I can put you in touch with an eager recipient of such largess. His parents wouldn't be too sad for such miracles, either. Anyone? Anyone?

Little Fragments Turns One

It just occurred to me that I have now been blogging for a year. Anniversaries like this usually don't slip past me without notice, but in our world, there have been a few distractions of late... I think you probably feel it too. And at this precise moment toward bedtime, in the middle of a week of floods and winds that rage while the grass grows and spring happens hidden in a cold fog, I'm thinking that maybe I've about said everything I have to say. I've told a good many of my old snake stories and veggies tales and dredged up sundry childhood memories of all kinds... silly and sad... and have evolved in this writing effort to become just unselfconscious enough to post them all... a pox on all the critics.

I've created peans to wind, wood and water. I've extolled the rain, the aromas of nature, and the sound of toads and whippoorwills. Four seasons have gone by here on the weblog, and I've attempted to bring you along with the procession with the help of a fair number of pictures... of the barn (in a variety of poses) and of this old house; of bees and wasps and butterflies, up close and personal; of wild flowers, garden vegetables, fungus and ice. You've been inside the house, up on the ridge looking down on the valley in snow and sun, and squinted as the sun glints like diamonds from the crystal surface of our little creek. You've heard tales of mysteries of unidentified things flying overhead, odd sounds in the night, creeks surging miraculously within moments; and what few real adventures or peak moments I have known since last April, you've pretty well been dragged along with me as a part of that, too. It just turns out that that is what Fragments has grown up to be, all by itself, here at its first birthday... which has coincided quite closely with my 55th.

And I wonder: what will become of this burgeoning bundle of birdcalls and bucolic banter now that it is heading into its terrible twos? I'm not setting out a plan for it. I'm just wondering how things will evolve now that you've seen and heard a good bit of what I wanted you to know about the Strange Farmer and his life on Goose Creek. Where are we going now? My own best advice to myself:

Turn off Sitemeter and ignore 'stats', and read and post more about what others are saying and doing (avoiding the geopolitical realm as much as possible). Don't be driven to post every day, but continue trying to write every day (this may be hard, to write with no audience). Be patient and see what moves you, inspires you, angers or saddens you, and see if you can do a better job of fleshing out the feel of it. Don't be constrained by the sound bite preferences of readers flitting about the blogs like honeybees on clover, or driven to say too much about too little. Don't let your writing be market-driven and ignore Blogstreet. Be a happy little Insignificant Microbe and let the punditry duke it out in the Sentient Beings parts of the blogosphere.

I came home tonight and found more than a dozen 'Happy Birthday' wishes from people I had never heard of a year ago. I must say, in lieu of warm living humans about us here, you blogger-friends have been at times the next-best thing, and I value your readership and your friendship. During the year, I've had the pleasure of having three of you come to the house for visits, and expect a couple more Fragments friends here in the coming months. The best part of blogging has been the people.

There have been some 'successes' in the writing for its own sake, which, if there was a point to starting Fragments, that was some of it. Four of the little stories I've told have ended up in broadcast essays on the radio, and this has brought new readers and new friends; one was published in a national pet magazine; one was read at the Christmas eve service at church. More than a few have been of the sort that exemplify the "how do I know what I think until I see what I say" variety. Some of these have surprised me, and some disappointed. Getting up in the early morning, sitting down at the keyboard to write has been a time of discovery and joy in what comes mysteriously from my typing fingers; a tortured time of exasperation and disgust with my inabilities to know what I feel, much less to say it well; and a time of real exchange with real people who I will never see, but remain even so, in a sense, my friends.

Happy Anniversary, Fragments. And my best to all of you who've suffered through its first year. From here on, it's terra incognita. Caveat emptor.

HBD2ME

Older'n Dirt

Okefenokee Journal IV

The morning of the second day on the water we awoke to the amazingly resonant sounds of Sand Hill Cranes nearby. It made me happy we were meeting them in two and threes... not the thousands upon thousands in which they aggregate in their breeding grounds in Nebraska. The bird stands almost four feet tall and their silhouette in flight is unmistakable. The day was calm and cloudless when we put in the water, and before long, the sun would cease to be a comfort and become an adversary for three very winter-white paddlers.

We set out on the water-trail, north towards Floyds Island... one of the greatest wooded expanses of 'high-dry' land in the swamp. None of us had been there and frankly we did not know what to expect. The trail description said we would be paddling in 'swamp forest' and this became true for maybe the last two miles of the way. We entered a different world from the canal and open expanse of prairie we'd seen for the previous 15 miles.

Utterly still mirrored water threaded along the tunnel-like trail ahead of us, so narrow there was little room to get a paddle in beside the boat. Frequently, we would push off on cypress knees instead of pulling water with the paddle, and there were submerged tree trunks and debris under us, massive vines and Spanish Moss on arching branches overhead. The call of a monkey or tropical bird would not have seemed out of place in that jungle-seeming flooded forest. We noticed that there was a definite current flowing in the direction of our travel, just as we had seen in the Suwanee Canal.

All at once, the watertrail ended in a thirty-foot circle surrounded by sandy beach, with a leaning si