Fragments From Floyd

Enchanted Forest

This walnut along the road, just beyond the mailbox, is a companion piece to the maple image from yesterday. And like yesterday's post, the picture is going to have to be worth the thousand words I won't have time to write this morning.

Wanted all to know--including you, mom--that the VDOT boys were out here all day in their orange graders and dump trucks, and our road is now convalescing and passable. There were a couple of places where trees slid down the side of the creek, carrying some roadbed with them. I don't know how the highway repair folks will substitute for those natural soil anchors lost when the tree roots broke free. At least one of our low-water bridges can only be patched so many times, and seems to me, that number was passed with this storm, breaking off a big chunk of the bridge. They sort of stuck it back in place, but it is not fixed.

So. I have more on my mind and stored up in my typing fingers. But their little efforts will go now to grading twenty more lab papers before daylight. Perhaps we will go stormless and disaster-free over the weekend and I can gather my thots and get back, a bit, to a comfortable flow of things here on the journal. Or not.

First Blush of Fall

Thanks to all for your good wishes and prayers over this wild stretch of weather. Not able to post much today as Ann and I will be escorting each other out of here over questionable roads, and leaving early on her time-table.

Here's what our little road looks like after the waters have receded, mostly. Could be much worse, and we're thankful to be done with Jeanne.

Diluvian Distress

The rain pounding on the metal roof and the roar of the creek woke me first at 11:30 last night. From then on, I slept fitfully; the rain never let up. It rained hard when I got up at my usual 4:30 and before I finished my first cup of coffee, the lights were going off--coming back on. At least the power came back on long enough to check email, print some essential work for the day, and even post an abbreviated blog entry.

But the tension-anxiety inside, you could cut with a knife--Ann's, primarily; mine, on her behalf. Getting her to work was going to mean some gut-wrenching choices of go or no-go; if go, which direction (choose your flood of choice) and when. She shortly thereafter informed me she would plan to leave by 5:00, getting out, perhaps, ahead of the rising waters of our usually-placid step-acrossable creek. And since Ann is reverse-gear-impaired, I offered to go scout the road between the house and the hardtop. A half cup of coffee sat cooling by the computer as I doned my rubber boots, rain parka and grabbed the flashlight and keys.

"I'm going up the high side" I told her as I walked out into the sideways silver rain racing through the narrow beam of the outside floodlights. Floodlights. Indeed.

Before I got in the Subaru, I shined the light over into the creekbed and saw that the 2 x 12 plank we used for a footbridge had been swept away more than a foot of rising water ago. There would be no exit, then, going upstream. Both low-water bridges would already be under water. I took the downstream route along the road, which already was an auxillary creek since water coming over the concrete bridges has just as soon follow the depression of the roadbed as the full creekbanks.

The highest we've ever seen Goose Creek was up to the edge of the road at our nearest neighbors. And that's where it was when I drove past in the very-dark this morning. Just beyond, still water was pooled in a fifty-foot wide depression along the road that was deeper than I wanted to drive through. I took my time, got past, only to discover another and another similar pond where I had never seen water rise before.

After one of the two miles to the hardtop, it was obvious and imperative that I must turn around immediately in the next place to do so. I'm sorry I probably woke the neighbors pulling into their driveway. Their dog barked when I killed the engine in my haste. By the time I got back to our closest neighbors, water was washing OVER the road, and the samewas true in a half-dozen other places between my front bumper and the safety of the house.

In no more than four minutes, the water had gone up a foot. Replaying in my mind was the robotic voice of NOAA Weather Radio's electronic text reader who I'd just heard repeating the little flashflood poem: Turn Around. Don't Drown. But the only way to go was through. So THIS is what a flash-flood looks like, I thought to myself in an out-of-body calm.

When I reached the house (and those reassuring floodlights on high ground) I pulled the car, then the truck up the driveway and away from the road--now also the creek--not knowing how high the frothing, muddy water might come as more bands of blowing rain come through. We were told to expect heavy rain throughout the morning yet. The house is ten feet higher than the creek, so we are in no danger from the water here. A couple of neighbors are probably very nervous about now, however, and it's conceivable the water could reach our barn floor (and all our mowers and such).

The sound of the water, as we stand together on the front porch in the darkness is hostile and menacing. Our little brook. What's gotten into you? And of course it is this very scouring by rushing water that has carved our valley pasture and made these branching hollows over the ages. Nothing personal, even though we give these wet cells of air names and tend to demonize them if they do us harm; or even if they inconvenience or discomfit us.

This may be a tale told in installments as the power comes and goes. Or perhaps this is the most dramatic middle part and by noon the sun will be shining as the waters subside and Ann drives slowly through the ponds that remain across the road, determined that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night (nor high waters of Goose Creek or the Roanoke River) stays these (pharmacists) from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

And I'll keep the light on for you, dear.

I, Teach

Yes, I've been whining a little--about the seeming futility of offering answers to self-absorbed teenagers who have not yet asked the questions--that sort of thing about which, in seventeen years away from the classroom, I had forgotten. And yesterday, my friend, Rhonda, offered this encouragement (I'd like to embellish, but the power has already flickered a few times here and I expect we might lose it for good soon--thank your hot-wet breath, Tropical Stormlet, Jeanne:

Yeah, Fred, I know. I know exactly how frustrating it is to give a stellar presentation (or even just walk in the door) and have NOBODY ASK A QUESTION. They don't! They just . . . don't. And I don't know why for sure, but I have a theory or two: 1. Your students are still at the age (and in a setting) where being cool trumps all other social considerations. These days, it is generally not considered cool, even in college, to want to learn. Or if you do, to let it show. 2. Another way of not being cool: asking a question others might perceive as stupid. Tremendous fear of that, out there among the little desks and chairs. 3. Are you teaching a required course? If so, you're quite possibly the only person in the room who wants to be there.

I inadvertently tested all these theories at once, in the process of trying to explain/ demonstrate the importance of correct spelling and punctuation. My pedagogy: I came to class with my clothes on inside out--khaki pockets flapping, seams fraying all over the place--and proceeded to teach whatever was on the syllabus that day as if nothing were out of order. The kids kept shooting each other looks, then looking at the floor, the ceiling, out the window, anything to keep from looking at me. This went on for 25 minutes before the bravest girl in the class raised her hand and asked very gently, as if she were speaking to a lunatic or a child, "Dr. Rockwell, are your clothes on inside out for a reason?" I almost kissed her, I was so relieved.

Thanks, DocRoc. That brightened my day.

This Dog's Life

Life's not all about running and barking, digging or chasing butterflies, you know.

Sometimes, a dog needs to stop and feel the warm morning sun on his ears; hear the whirr of crickets and not look for them, and just let the moles churn unbothered under his paws.

Sometimes a dog needs to slow down, close his eyes and savor the moment beneath the bright sky with his master when times are good. (I've seen Master do this a hundred times in my one year here--in every season. Until today, I'd never taken the time to do this myself. When HE is not looking, I'll do it again, and often. The years will pass quickly enough in a dog's life. A moment now and then to pause and be thankful may help me not take all of this for granted--or so I've heard HIM say.)

We won't be here forever, from what I hear. I don't know where, but one day we all go away to some other land and never come back. Buster--the dog before me--left suddenly. (They often compare me with him when they think I can't hear them talking--and of course, I can.)

If he had known that he would be taken so quickly from this place, I think he would have paused here in this sunny, green pasture beside the creek for a quiet time like I did this morning. He would have said thanks for what a lucky dog he was.

--Tsuga

Discipline Problems

I'm supposed to be using my morning at home to churn out the class notes, committee reports and survey I'm involved in. And I have been, mostly. But the light this morning was not to be glimpsed casually, looking up from a computer keyboard, but immersed in. And so I slipped the surly bonds of office-work and wandered around for a bit with the camera. Ann and Tsuga joined me--the blurry creatures exiting the image, stage left.

More words and images, perhaps, as the day wears on, and I wear out, and order is ravished by disorder. If it's the way of the universe, who am I to struggle against entropy? If the shoe fits...

Wonders, Above

I want to give you a vision. I hope to lead you to a place where you will see things that, most likely otherwise you would never see in this life. It seems to me that if I can give that to my friends, I will have given you something you can carry with you always--every time the season and sky, weather and wind are just thus and so. And so, listen: I will tell you exactly what to look for, where, when and how. All you have to do is open your eyes.

It has not been all that many years since I first saw this vision myself, after fifty years of living, blind to what had happened overhead in the early fall every year of my life. And, honestly, I witnessed it the first time quite by accident--a glance up the hill on my way home from the garden, and there it was.

Here is what I wrote shortly after that first encounter with aeroplankton, and especially, the gossamer spiders--one of the most indelible memories in a life not devoid of attention to the small wonders underfoot. But less so, overhead.

You will be disappointed if you expect to see what I describe, unless you are careful to attend these guides I will give you:

1) While you may see some floaters at any time of year, it is in the autumn you should expect to be dazzled by the variety and volume of the aeroplankton. At that time of year they consist of countless windborne seeds--milkweed, wild lettuce, thistle and other species that have silky parachutes attached to their small seeds. These will appear as some of the largest of the truly passive inhabitants in the sea of air. Often as you watch, these will shift along their course, first east, then west, rising, then falling at the whim of the currents in eddies and blasts of air.

2) While the prevailing wind carries passive seeds and flotsam along the westerlies (in our part of the southern Appalachians, at least), you'll see countless and varied silver-winged insects (presumably mostly beetles) moving against the current, and often at great speed. Their delicate and diaphanous wing-membranes catch the sun like burnished silver, and even the smallest, because of the intensity of their radiant wings, can be seen at great distance.

3) Even if conditions are not perfect, you will see the floaters and flyers already mentioned. But only if you look up on those few days when all factors are just right will you see the gossamer spiders. Let me offer some advice, because I really want you not to miss this, and the season is short:

The props for optimal viewing are exactly as the 12 yr old Jonathan Edwards described in the linked blog post from September 10, 2002. (see link above) Best time of day is mid-afternoon. It seems essential that the sun be rather low in the sky (from 2:30 to 4:00.) Shining down on the floating webs as it does in mid-day, the sun does little to create the fiber-optic brilliance that is so remarkable in these distant, shimmering webs. The best days are those immediately after a cold front. If there is even the least water vapor in the sky, any clouds at all--if you cannot see the distant horizon with razor clarity--then you will not experience the best viewing of the floating spiders.

I would also suggest, when you are positioned precisely so that your eyes are just barely shielded from the sun (and make sure of this first!), looking past the roof peak (or other sun-blocking object) with a pair of binoculars will reveal an order of magnitude greater number of aeroplanktonic objects than naked-eye viewing, in the same way that the lenses show us so many more stars than we could have imagined in the darkness.

I am writing you, friends, as an assignment. It is my hope and wish for you that you will accept this challenge to attend closely to the world above you in the coming weeks in a way uncommon to you as you hurry through your day. Pay close attention as the sky clears, as the earth tilts toward winter and the great ocean of air becomes heavy with the flotsam of fall. If you see this thing once, you will never again see the world of sky as an empty, inert place, and you, too, will be conversant with spiders.

I'd Rather Be Blogging

Well, here's another case where I've posted an image totally unrelated to the text, just because I wanted to send out one little flare saying I'm still lurking here on the fringes of the blogosphere. (That, and Tsuga's agent called saying I had gone longer than the agreed-upon interval without posting any puppy-pix. Sorry 'bout that--guess there'll be the usual corrective response of two dog-photos in one week.)

I'm not blogging because I'm still catching up from the three workless, unproductive days without power. But one hurdle is behind me, as of today. I spoke to a class (Appalachian Cultures) at Virginia Tech today related to a research paper I did in the winter of 2003 for a 'just for fun' course I took. The prof asked me to come talk about the issues raised in that paper. I think it went okay, and I got a small honorarium. I carried in three typed pages of notes and barely looked at them, so it came across as extemporaneous and casual. This was my hope, so I'm pleased enough, and very glad to have that task now on the completed list.

But now, there is the lab for this week that hasn't come together yet. Which is why I've been up since 2:30 this morning. I tell ya, if it weren't for the massive amount of money one makes in this teaching racket, I'd blow this joint. Get me a real money-making gig. Like writing.

Stinging Rebuke

Ann could stand it no longer. The yellow jackets had made nests (apparently excavated their own holes in the ground, not taken over when a groundhog or mole went AWOL) in two places along her walking path at the edge of the pasture. They appeared when the hay was cut; we'd walk right past them dozens of times with the high grass keeping us naive of how close we tread to a thousand stings. One day last week, early morning before first light, she marched off with her jaw set, her family's farm-chemical insecticide of choice toted in a large red plastic can-with-spout. She poured gasoline (apologies to those concerned about groundwater, including me) and that was that. Didn't so much matter to me; I could just avoid walking where the little devils lived until winter killed them off.

But not so for the nest I discovered directly under my pull-line to the dead ash tree. I found this nest last week, and doused it with an approved $4 can of hornet foam on Sunday morning so I could get on with felling the big ash early in the week.

Monday, after class, I hurried home and changed clothes. I was down at the ash tree by 2:00 with chain saw and axe and all the necessary tools in the back of the truck. This particular tree is growing from the middle of what used to be a small barn or outbuilding of some sort (none of the old-timers seem to know) up almost around the bend of the valley, out of sight from the house. Only thing I needed to do before making the notch cut was take the axe and chop away the dead bark that still clung limply to the tree. I put down my saw, hefted the axe and commenced to chopping a line across the bark at the level of the future notch. (You can see a faint line on the tree trunk in this little image above.) After about the fifth lick, a fire ignited on the back of my neck.

I dropped the axe, turned and ran, falling twice, flailing at my neck, not stopping until I was safe inside the cab of the truck. And from there, thirty feet from the tree, I could see my chain saw covered in a thick writhing felt of yellow jackets boiling up out of the ground exactly where I had been standing as I welded the axe those few short seconds. (Yellow arrow)

I left my saw where it lay overnight. This morning before first light, I went to fetch it home, and wreak vengeance on my venomous adversaries. At 40 degrees F, nothing was stirring within the old stone foundation. With the flashlight, I couldn't find the vermin's hole. Later in the warm, sunny morning, I could see them streaming in and out of the ground like a time lapse of pedestrians coursing into and out of a morning subway station.

Saturday morning, I'm cutting that tree. Unless I discover the hard way that there were THREE swarms guarding that ash. In which case, I'll wait and revisit it in mid-February. Not a day sooner.

Time Machine

I recently had occasion to travel the road less traveled by. Although I'd often come close taking the "back way" on my trips to Blacksburg. I had heard there was some kind of a bridge down Ellett Valley Road, but I never had reason to strike off into the margins of Montgomery County to see this engineering marvel--or eyesore--before last week.

The structure is visually impressive, indeed--shocking, in fact, to the unsuspecting traveler who motors casually along the most unpretentious of country roads. From the heart of Appalachian, all at once overhead, this Space Odyssey monolith of gargantuan proportions appears, then diminishes to the vanishing point, the future overshadowing the past.

You can read the impressive statistics of the bridges construction. The road it bears (two lanes only, probably for another ten years) goes nowhere. It ends abruptly at the horizon of the picture above. Before the project is complete, there will be a second bridge beside the first. I'm sure the valley residents are giddy with anticipation.

This is the "Smart Road"--Virginia Tech's future private driveway from the interstate. It impressed me as an opportunity for some well-heeled engineers to use the rural countryside to show off. Others must feel the same way, because when I mentioned this in a group the other day, one person reinforced my bias, saying "Oh yeah. That’s why the locals call it the "Smarty-Pants Road". But hey: for a mere $17 million dollars, it sure makes for an interesting photo composition, don't you think?

Sanctum Sanctorum

The refrigerator hums from the kitchen, making ice, recovering from three days of silent thaw. Under the house, the water pressure pump thrums rhythmically as the first load of clothes churns and thunks from the washroom. And, although it has always been there during my day at my desk, before these three days of utter quiet, I never really noticed how much sound comes constantly from the computer. Will I always, from now on, hear it so near and shrill, or will I once again learn to unhear?

All day Friday, the wind of Ivan whistled under the doors; the sideways rain pelted against the windows while the metal roof ruffled like thunder just over my head. Above it all was the hiss of the creek--a constant churning surf wanting to climb up from its beach to the road, the house, to carry us to the ocean with it, flotsam on raucous muddy waves. The sky was dark. My room, alone, darker and disquiet.

Yesterday, a cold front came through behind the storm. This morning, we're seeing new low temperatures for the season. With our new ears, if it were not for the return of the hums, thrums, hisses and whirrs of life back to normal, I think we would hear the frost.

Let There Be Light

...and running water; and access to my computer files and email; and the cordless phone. The radio in the kitchen. The simple flip of a light switch when darkness falls.

Power returned at 6:00 tonight. The first order of business was to assess the damage to the stuff in the freezer. And amazingly, about the only thing we lost were a few melted ice cubes in the icemaker! I never once opened the freezer door since the power went of Friday morning. Seems it held the cold very well. The ice cream was soft but I think it will re-freeze just fine.

Thanks to T and L for the hot meal and hot shower today. The first shower felt so good I think I'm going to get another.

Thanks to all who sent their wishes and prayers our way. We're fine. Ann just commented how much she enjoyed last night sitting in the candlelight listening to Prairie Home Companion on the crank radio. Seems a dangerous precedent to me. I get the sense that she might be planning other power outtages in the coming months, just to pull me away from the computer.

Light One Candle

...and another, and another.

Power out since Friday early morning. Am logging in from church. All is well (with the exception of several gallons of melted ice cream and quite a few pounds of spoiled meat, etc.) Hoping for a return of the lights and running water later today, but won't be surprised if it is tomorrow. Or Tuesday. Or...

Man, am I going to have a lot of catching up to do.

Whatever May Come

A dead calm. An ominous nothingness that stirs no leaf or twig. So all we hear in our valley is the water, an unaccompanied solo--for another hour, perhaps, until the green and orange smears on the radar bring the leader-bands of Ivan to the Blue Ridge. We've been told to expect him to overstay his welcome. We're expecting to hear our trickling branch and bubbling creek become frothing torrents by morning, out of their banks, likely, by tomorrow afternoon.

We sat out in the lawn chairs with our dinner under motionless and faded maple leaves tonight. And afterward, we walked down the middle of the valley under a sky so devoid of detail it could have been an artist's gray backdrop thrown overhead from ridgetop to ridgetop. We both noticed it at once: that smell; the too-sweet honey in the air that is common in late spring; a fragrance that is, like a hologram, there, but not there. What could this aroma possibly be from--now, so late in the season when blooms have given way to fruits, and fruits are dying back to brown husks of autumn? It is thick like syrup. It settles in the valley calm.

Hard to imagine now what the morning might bring. But I do imagine. Ann will pack her overnight bag when she leaves in a driving rain in the pitch-black darkness. I'll watch her tail lights disappear up the road, hoping she doesn't come back in five minutes, because this would mean that the water is already over one or both of the low-water concrete bridges in that direction. The chances of flooding are greater the other road out, and she won't know if it is passable until she's driven 7 or 8 miles; and then, short of walking up the mountain 3/4 mile to the nearest hardtop and calling a cab, she won't get to work at all. Nor will I.

Or maybe she'll go, and stay gone. Then I'll have to decide for certain, if I leave, I can get back. Should I come back down in tomorrow afternoon and the concrete bridges are under a foot or more of churning brown water, I suppose I'd have to somehow turn the truck around and park a mile back in the wide place there by that house nobody lives in. I could walk from there, climbing up the ridge and across, above the swollen creek, and home. It wouldn't be easy, even if it weren't throwing down the rain so hard I could barely see my way. I won't be able to carry my bookbag, or my chainsaw. They'll have to stay til I can go back and fetch the truck home, maybe some time Saturday.

I hear it now--the first soft hiss of rain on the metal roof. By midnight, it will come down hard, and the gutter there nearest our bedroom, full of maple whirlygigs and now some maple leaves as well, will overflow and spatter down into the mulch. The creeks will rage and the wind will howl and seem impossible that it was so utterly still and silent at dinnertime. I'll likely sleep through all of the commotion. We'll see what kind of world there is to wake up to. If we have power, I'll be tickled. But I won't count on it. And so, if I am going to post this, best do it before bedtime. Which it is, now, at 9:00.

Now I lay me, down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

Good night, all

Fetch

When you tell Tsuga "go find a stick!"--this dog thinks big. And if he can get it, he'll fetch one nicely cut at both ends, in the preferred four to six foot length, directly from the stack of wood that resides just out the back door, between the house and the shed most of the colder months, waiting to be cut into stove wood.

"Throwing the stick", then, is not dissimilar to the ancient Scottish game called the caber toss.

The return of the fence-post-sized stick, is fraught with risk as the dog shoots past, aiming for the tosser's kneecaps and oh-so-boney shins with the long, hard arms of the caber.

If only this native instinct to fetch arm-or-leg-sized wood could be turned for the good: "Family dog gathers six cords of firewood from nearby forest as grateful owners watch from their warm farmhouse." I can see the photo of the massive mound of limbs and branches--man, woman and dog posed American Gothic fashion, grinning sheepishly. It's sure to make the local paper. Don't you think?

Windfall

To the harvest. If not vegetables, then the next "crop" on our yearly calendar: small, dry firewood for the wood-burning season--its first chill has often arrived by mid-September. Somehow, walking over to the gas wall heater that first chilly morning just would not give the same sense of provision that will come from the familiar ceremony of lighting the woodstove for the first time of the year. The older I get, the more these comfortable, worn rituals become.

We don't know what killed our ash trees suddenly this spring. It bodes ill for a forest already beleaguered by not a few other forms of pestilence. But if the unknown pathogen had to pick on a species, ash, for a wood-burning family, was a good choice. It is a dense wood, high in BTU's and one of few hardwoods that can be burned within a short time of being cut and split. And these particular ashes of ours are full of twiggy tops just right for making the small, quick-burning fires one wants early on in September and October-- just enough fire to make the stove tick and pop as it warms and expands; just enough flame to cast friendly flickers on the wall next to my desk in the dark early morning; just enough heat to waft the smell of cast iron, stove polish and the ashes of the last fire in April into the downstairs--a potpourri of the season of shorter days.

It's no small production dropping a standing tree, and not without risk. I've been contemplating how and where and when to do this job now for several months, waiting mostly for the pasture cutting so there would be less ground clutter to work in after felling the trees along the margins of the field. Most of the job is preparation: I'll need the chainsaw of course, and the fuel/tool bucket; the limbing axe, peavey, come-along, a couple of wedges and a sledge hammer; two fifty-foot lengths of 3/4 inch nylon rope; and 25 ft of heavy chain with a three-inch hook on either end: all goes in the back of the truck. Ear-plugs and a bandana (for soaking with creek water when it gets hot) go in my pocket.

By 2:00 yesterday, even though it was a mite too warm to do the actual work, I was headed off to prepare for task. Ann would come later, to be there if I met with problems when I actually made the felling cut. She insisted I should take the dog with me, so I kept an eye on him in the rear-view mirror as I drove away from the barn toward the end of the field where the dead ashes waited for me. His tongue waggled happily; he was involved in family activity--an important part of the job description for a Labrador retriever.

This first tree--much the smaller of the two (larger pictured above ready for cutting later this week) had more of its center of gravity off toward the creek than I wanted. It might tend to drop more toward the pasture after all, but still fall across four or five spicebush that would tend to spring up when cut and slap a fella silly. So to encourage it to end up on the ground in a more convenient spot, I threw a 2 foot stick tied to the nylon rope through a low crotch. The nearest anchor tree was far enough away I had to use a zeppelin knot to tie together my two hanks of rope. A hauler's hitch let me put a good bit of pull on the tree in the hopeful direction of its fall.

The moment of truth came at last after Ann arrived between batches of cookies. I cut the notch horizontal, about 25% of the way through on the side of the fall. It's always a reward when that triangular water-melon-slice wedge pops out of the cut, leaving a clean gap in the wet wood of the trunk. Now, I move behind the tree, mark the felling cut first with a rock or something so it's clear exactly where it should go: too high, there'll be too much wood above the notch and the tree won't fall; too low, you'll lose your "hinge" and the tree could spin like a ballerina and fall the opposite way the woodsman intended.

I begin the felling cut; take up some tension on the rope; cut a little more and the tree moves ever so slightly away. Take up more tension, pulling the bitter end of the smooth rope using all my body weight. Getting close. If this has been done right, one more cut, another quarter inch of wood gone, and we'll see if I've calculated correctly. That did it! I cut off the saw, move easily north as the tree begins to do what gravity demands, now that its base of support has been reduced to that 1-inch hinge of wood. It hits the soft earth of the pasture with a dull crash. And as usual, it looked bigger up close and horizontal that it did standing on its trunk.

The tops and sections up to big-as-your-arm are now in a pick-up-sticks pile behind the house, waiting to be cut into stove lengths. Maybe I can do that before Ivan gets here. I'll throw a tarp over the little pile, and maybe, on the weekend of cold rain, we'll have our First Fire of the season. We'll reap the harvest of our efforts--a warm, cheery hearth stoked with the fruits of our labors. I'm sorry about the ash trees, but their death has not gone unnoticed. Their lives were not lost in vain. The energy of thirty summers will have one more life. And we are thankful to be a part of that grand scheme of things.

So. This is how it ends.

Well, that was that. This year's garden, sad one that it was, ended today. And even though fall has always been, and I suppose will yet again be my favorite season, there was a sadness in the warm air today. I said goodbye to summer a season notable for its coolness and regular rains. But in this deep valley, where the growing season at its best is marginal, with few hours of sun and temperatures always several degrees cooler than most of the rest of the county up top, this year gave us too little heat and light, and perhaps a bit too much moisture to make a garden to be proud of. I would find myself looking away, not gazing over it admiringly when my eyes would wander west of the house toward the embarrassment inside the garden fence. And so today was good riddance. Apology and regret; hope for better fortune next year.

I cleared away the failed beans, the gray vines of mediocre squash and the legion of galinsoga: this, more than intended vegetables, represented our summer crop--weeds growing luxuriantly in the neglected gaps between weak spurts of gardening zeal. Cleaning off the garden today was to finally sweep this year's failure off to the compost pile, out of public view, and mine.

Today I cranked the tiller for the last time in 2004. Its dull tines turned the weedy residue into the dark earth still wet with Atlantic Ocean moisture from last week's hurricane. When the work was done, I walked behind the tiller at a plod--step; pause, step-while a dirge hummed in its monotone rhythm. I imagined myself a farmer reluctantly putting his old mare up to barn for the winter. The thick-treaded tires wobbled on the heavy planks thrown down between sandy banks, to bear it across the clear water of the creek; then one last climb, it creeped up the ramp and onto the barn floor. The red machine had stayed in the garden all summer this time, covered with a tarp, of course, a permanent fixture for four months and giving color where nature's colors should have grown. Now that it's under roof again, I am unsatisfied, incomplete, restless.

This is not like me. Usually this time of year, I'm revving up to full throttle in anticipation of fall--the best time to be alive in the southern mountains, in my book. I'm not sure what's wrong. Maybe it is the anxiety of knowing we don't have enough firewood yet to see us through til March. This certainly seems to be a fact. Or it might be the near-certain approach of yet another potentially devastating hurricane. Ivan will be here by Thursday with its mindless power and fury. The rain will fall on the godly and the ungodly, alike; on the prepared and the indifferent. The waiting is hard.

If Frances hadn't flattened the sunflowers, they'd have only lasted one more week anyway. Houses can fall just as easily, a grim reminder of the impermanence in the things we hold dear. In less than two months, one of the major candidates is going to be in the White House. It feels like a national kind of autumn. I won't be gratified, whatever the outcome in November, and am deeply sad for our country and the difficult seasons it faces.

Today is one of my short days. When I get home, I'll deal with this blue funk by felling at least one of the standing-dead ash trees at the head of the valley, back in the quiet, where Nameless Creek and the New Road converge. I need the physical work. I need a new symbol, a new purpose for the season, now that the failed garden is gone. Grappling with those ash trees will reward me with a product, something I can show for my toil--a truckload or two of white wood, This I will throw off the truck where I can see it, touch it, just out the back door.

It is a fragile discomfort I suffer . Let me see today the first migrating Monarch while I'm bringing in the winter wood, and God will be in his place, and all will be well with the world again.

The picture above is from the garden of 2002, a "good year" that ended in a terrible drought at the end of the growing season.

The Show Must Go On

What an ordeal it once was to display a picture of something to a roomful of students. Ever used one of the old-fashioned noisy, heat-pulsing opaque projectors in a classroom? As clunky as that was, it was better than the alternative: holding open the reference book carted over to your lecture room or lab on short-term checkout from the library; walking up and down each row with a swaying motion, left to right so craned necks and squinting eyes could catch a fleeting distant glimpse of it as you spent precious class minutes showing-and-telling, one wee picture after another.

Enter, the current epoch: internet, google, digital cameras, powerpoint and multimedia classrooms. How easy it is now to pull in relevant images (my own stored on my hard drive, from the CD that goes with the text, from so many sources on the net) that illustrate the lecture points! It's almost overwhelming, and more often than not, while surfing my quest for an illustration I get seriously but all-too-comfortably sidetracked in an infinite regression of topical cul-de-sacs. Sometimes the images and text found by serendipity in this way can alter the course of what I had intended to say, and when, having found too good an illustration not to incorporate the new discovery into the conversation in class.

Did you know that there is a group of folks dedicated to the task of moth photography? Take a look at this one of many pages of moth wing details. What a great way to look at variability within a family, genus and species. How apropos to our discussion of variability within a population related to Natural Editing as we're calling it--natural selection, technically speaking. Look at what's on the menu! Look through these plates of moth families at the range from brilliant and flashy to oh-so-drab and cryptically-camouflaged. And yet they have all, somehow, managed to be reproductively successful in their own unique habitats.

And, as browsing fate would have it, here's a HerbalGram resource on "Secretory Structures of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants," complete with some stunning electron micrographs of the microscopic plant structures that are the source for plant tastes, smells and various secretions of medicinal value. Great! I was already planning to carry some scratch-and-sniff plants in on Wednesday this week: sweet birch, spicebush (seeds and stems), sassafras, pennyroyal and maybe the thallose liverworts from under the cliff by the creek. While they're passing around the specimens du jour will be a great time (even though it doesn't fit the original topic for the day) to project on the screen the stunning images of some of the structures that create those aromatic, species-specific smells.

I have a strong sense that I'm learning way more in this teaching process than my students are in their learning process. I guess we'll see: the first test is coming up tomorrow!

Bindweed

All Work and No Play...

...makes Jack a dull boy. (The recent incarnation of this old bromide is that it makes Jack fat. Yeah, that too.)

This morning, for the first time in more than a month, I don't feel oppressed by responsibility to this new classroom opportunity that was visited upon me in late July and began with chalk in hand on August 25. This past week, the struggle up the curve of learning what and who and where things were got noticeably easier.

I found my stride in the classroom: how to coordinate the slides and my notes; how to get the AV set up while talking with four students simultaneously. I found a comfortable compromise between passively sitting in place and pacing, pointing and acting out the discussion. My watch alarm is set for five minutes before the end of class, so I don't run out of time before wrapping up the day's lecture, and so there is some time for after-class housekeeping. I only left my CD in the drive once. So far.

I no longer fumble with the three identical keys at a locked door--always a conspicuous mark of a clumsy newcomer. The faintly inscribed __X key is for mail, __25 for office, __28 for labs. Got it now.

My "regular" parking place I have discovered out of necessity is beyond the boundary of aggressively sought spots near campus; I'm just fine with walking--I wasn't doing well with "nature red in tooth and claw" in the parking lot before work every day.

After enduring the awful ergonomic asymmetries of carrying a 25# attache case in one or the other hand the first week, I've settled on my old North Face day pack toted on both shoulders, even if it is now, like most everything else that goes to school with me, gaining a patina of dusty white, the color of chalk.

This weekend, I have somewhat of a respite from class prep with a test coming up on Monday, all ready to go and next week's lab a continuation of the past week's. But this is the eye of the storm, I realize, and there is a lot of work ahead, not three weeks into a 13 week semester.

And even though this morning, the pressure is palpably less than it has been, I don't seem to be able to ease back into the writing rhythm, can't fully relax and find the flow of feeling and belonging I had when I stayed in place during most days. Every day there's an expedition to another land.

I used to talk about "work toxins." I wouldn't use such a negative descriptor for those concerns and demands that block my writer's mind now. But there is some turbulence in the stream of things in the being away, in leaving and returning, in changing hats so often.

This new-old kind of work is just starting to be fun again. But I haven't yet found the balance between the two ways of living, the two centers of importance. I have hope that it will come. I miss visiting everyone's blog and feel out of community, in a sense. It surprises me that I still have a few visitors and it preys on me that Jack has been a dull boy of late. Dull, but not lazy. Many good things are happening. The next month promises to be the fullest in my life in a long time. I'll do my best to give you vignettes, and hopefully more word and pixel images as I learn to keep the plates spinning. Life is full. Fall is coming. And I intend to play again!

Beauty and the Beast

I received this email yesterday from a Park Service member of a committee I'm on. This bodes ill for the tourist season of Leaf Lookers soon upon us. Seems the Parkway will be out in a few places, and devasted along many miles. All the more serious with Hurricane Ivan likely to be here by the latter half of the coming week.

The Parkway received a severe (catastrophic???) hit from Hurricane Frances over the last two days, almost all of the damage occuring in North Carolina. Six major rock slides, loss of the roadway in four separate places, serious damage to two visitor centers and a number of campgrounds and developed areas. Very preliminary estimates are $6 million dollars and a year's worth of cleanup and repair with Federal Highway Administration assistance. An FHA response team will be in the park early next week to make more accurate assessments.

Fred B. Prepared

I always considered it insult to injury: a last name of "First" made more silly by the middle initial that is a verb. Fred be First. (Who be second?) Ha Ha. Well, buddies and buddettes, yesterday I be prepared, like a good Junior Woodchuck.

On my return from Radford, I chose to avoid the safe, sure route back to Goose Creek. Frances had passed over us and the rain had ended, but only after dropping more than four inches on SW Virginia. The safe way home, as it turns out, would have taken me only so far beyond Shawsville before I would have been forced to turn back. The Roanoke River covered the only road up the valley toward home, we learned later.

So it was a good choice, paradoxically, to come down the high side--the way home most prone to flooding (over the two low water concrete bridges) and to trees sliding down the steep banks to block the road. Once I was committed and heading down the steep road that descends into the creek gorge, I could tell there might be problems. The road was seriously washed out. I put the truck in 4-wheel-drive and took each bend slowly.

About half way in the deserted mile between the last house on the road above us and our place, I rounded a sharp curve and discovered a truck stopped in the road. The occupants--two men, one a neighbor I recognized--were standing at the front of the truck surveying a two-pronged oak lying across the road at a 45 degree angle--the base about 10 feet above the road, its top some 50 feet below in the raging muddy creek. As I turned off the engine and got out of the truck, they stared at the blockade as if a concentrated gaze would levitate the deadfall from their path.

"Kindly looks like you boys could use a chainsaw 'bout now" I said, in my best local dialect. I wasn't sure they'd recognize machismo if they stepped in it, but it was all over me: the smug haughtiness of one who, for once, had the tools he needed for Manly Work.

"You want me ta do it" asked my good neighbor, a backhoe operator who had excavated for our house addition and cleared the pines from our field. He sensed my hesitation: I was dressed for class, and a chainsaw can sling oil all over whatever britches you're wearing, not to mention the mud from the rainsoaked road. And that was not the only hindrance as I sized up the problem.

The way the tree was lying on a diagonal would put a lot of stress in the trunk--the chances of binding the bar were pretty good if a fella didn't undercut it just right; and when the main trunks were cut through, the roots up on the steep bank pulled loose of the ground could come sliding down the hillside into the road. Once the main trunk was on the road, there was a good risk of cutting through and hitting rocks with the chain. And, one of the prongs was liberally draped in live poison ivy.

"Nah. I got it" I said with mock confidence, having tallied the things in the "fools rush in" list above.

But soon I'd cut a 15 foot section from both trunks. My neighbor and his companion, both having just come from a funeral at the church on Daniels run and in their Sunday clothes, did their best to roll the large logs away so what little traffic comes down our road could get by. They were about to roll the logs down the embankment toward the creek when I stopped them.

"Hey why don't you just roll them over to the edge of the road. Somebody might be able to use those for firewood" I suggested. "And somebody might go home and change his clothes and be back for 'em in about a half hour."

And shure nuff, Fred B this very morning has five hundred pounds of solid oak in the back of his deer-battered old pickem-up truck. He'll cart the carcass around for a few days, show it off like a trophy--a windfall, a gift from Frances, just passing through. He'll remember her this winter as he watches glowing coals of her unintended largesse, a gift for those prepared to receive it. Thanks.

Waiting. Watching. Wondering.

I'm waiting, now about given up, on our neighbor to come past the house headed out of our valley. If he'd come past and not return, I'd know the way west was open. So far, neither the east-bound car at 5:15 or my 7:05 traffic has gone by.

There is enough light now to see shapes. There is no color. I need color. Hence, the image of Great Blue Lobelia that graces our pasture margins and stream edges. It is most beautiful just at dusk, when its pale blue deepens and radiates, almost luminescent against the drab gray-greens of early fall.

Lights flickering again. I'd better go get dressed for the day. Discovered a few minutes ago that I left my raincoat in Ann's car last night. Doh!

It's Always Darkest

It's always worse in the dark. Ann just left at 5:45 in the pitch black howling blowing rainswept darkness. The creek is up. Can't say how much til we get a little light, and not expecting much of that on this murky, Stygian morning. The lights have flickered briefly a few times already so I have a small flashight in my pocket. Oh--here's a new weather update:

WIDESPREAD...HEAVY...AND CONTINUOUS RAIN IS RESULTING IN SOME TREES BECOMING LOOSE IN THEIR SOIL. WINDS GUSTS OF ONLY 15 TO 20 MPH HAVE BEEN REPORTED DOWNING SOME TREES. IF YOU MUST BE OUTSIDE AS THE REMNANTS OF FRANCES PROGRESSES THROUGH THE REGION...BE ALERT FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF FALLING TREES.

The heaviest rain and wind is predicted for this afternoon. I plan to do what is essential at school, then get on home. By 4:00, I'll take the truck to the end of our little road and back, so when Ann calls, I can advise her--and maybe clear trees from the way before she starts home. The chainsaw will be a useful tool to travel with today. And I'll be wearing my rubber Muckboots to class and will carry a change of dry clothes, just in case. With a driving 30 mph wind on the open campus, I'm expecting a classroom full of drownded rats today. Well, maybe not FULL.

Build An Ark

In the next day or two, we may be seeing our creeks higher than we have yet in our five years here. We've never known the creek to rise full out of its banks. But if you look our at our five acres of level pasture, it was water that flattened it in millenia past. These mountains were leveled by water and I have a great respect for its force.

We've been dry now most of the past month, so the soil has a good bit of saturation potential, given a resonable rate of rainfall (hurricanes are not noted for giving up rain at reasonable rates, of course.) We're not in line for the worst of Frances; that seems at present to be heading slightly west of us. The mountains of NC are expecting up to 25% or more of their usual annual rainfall today and tomorrow. There just isn't much of anywhere to go in those rocky hollers and it can come up fast. They could see some significant flash-flooding.

Tomorrow morning when I leave for class, I'll be carrying my chainsaw with me, just in case. There's a good chance we'll have some trees down over the road. Just to be safe, I'm sending as attachments to my yahoo account the test I'm not quite ready to print and this week's lab handout. Power could go out and be gone for days here, less likely on the University campus.

I wonder what effect all this rain might have on the fall foliage colors this year? Won't be long now it will really seem like autumn--which I guess is my favorite time of year.

Well yes, I'm rambling. Just thot I'd put up a rare afternoon post, quality notwithstanding, because I could potentially be blog-deprived for a couple of days. If you don't hear from me, you'll know Frances is visiting.

The Muppet Movie

This week's lab (as received from headquarters) involved sampling one tall weedy plant called Wingstem for some statistical comparisons of populations. To get to them, the students would have had to trample a dozen other species of things in flower with interesting tie-ins to class: shared family characteristics, variability within a species, means of attracting insect pollinators, seed dispersal mechanisms and the like. So, I bucked the system and created my own lab.

Realizing that Thursday's two labs would likely be flooded out by Frances, I went yesterday to get pictures of as many of the class plant "UNKNOWNS" as I could, even though there was heavy overcast and 20 mph winds blowing everything around in the viewfinder. I managed to get a few posted to a "gallery" (an overall view, then a close up) for our indoor lab this week; then next week, if the hurricane brewing in the Atlantic will have the good manners to stay at sea, we'll go do the fieldwork part of the lab and hope some of the things are still in bloom.

How many of these could you identify?

So, the image above was one of the more interesting from my wind-blown recon mission. If you squint your eyes just a little, it looks like a google-eyed Muppet character, don't you think? (The green "head" is the seedpod of a mallow of some sort.)

Mood Indigo

I only partially succeeded in accomplishing the "unnecessary thing" yesterday. In the end, I compromised: it wasn't school work, but it wasn't exactly unnecessary either.

There are three ash trees that died suddenly this spring. They should all be cut down, cut up, and stacked to dry if we're going to get any use from them as firewood later this winter. So yesterday morning, I took the saw down the valley and cleared spicebush, witch hazel and other brush from around the trunks in anticipation of felling them in a week or two. Ann and Tsuga "helped."

And once again, Ann gets the "finder's fee" for the subject of the the photo above. "Fred, have you ever seen anything like this before" she asked, holding up a stick tinted the most un-natural color of deep, rich blue.

It is a fungus of some kind. And no, I had not seen blue suede in the fungal world before.

So, I got some work done and "played" a little with the camera, too. Now. Back to putting together the first test--something totally necessary.

A thing unnecessary

And so my life has returned to a long-ago-normal week of daily packing up, driving off, giving at the office and returning drained. Not one to treat responsibility lightly--especially when to fail to attend it will result in a public display of my procrastination or casual dalliance with my obligation--the first-time-around class and lab preparation has pretty well insinuated itself into the core of who I am of late.

This past Thursday, I especially dreaded. It was my first day of labs; I would have one before and one after lunch. I felt ill-prepared but things went surprisingly well in the morning lab. Afterward, I grabbed my paper sack lunch and headed for the nearest door--my first day on campus through a meal time.

Just outside Curie Hall I discovered a comfortable round iron table and bench in the shade of a massive sycamore behind the peaked triangle of glass that is the campus greenhouse. I began eating my sandwich absentmindedly while I thumbed through the Orion that had come in the mail the day before.

Peace. It occurred to me after a few minutes that something was different about that simple ritual of eating and reading, feeling the cool of the shade on my arms and neck, having reached and survived my first full week on campus. Calm. Freedom from the uncertain dread and insipid fear of the unknown. It lifted from me and with it gone, I realized how out of balance my waking hours had become. I resolved to take control by keeping some time and passion set aside for the me that is not a teacher, employee or traveler. Time for fragments from Goose Creek.

But I have 70 lab reports to grade. I have 25 more questions to generate for the first test coming up. The second lab in the week coming up may be complicated by the rain bands of Frances; what will we do if we can't go do the field work? Am I really prepared for lecture on Monday?

The tension between responsibility and whimsy is especially strong on this beautiful early September weekend. I hope I will succumb to a few moments of rebellion, give in to the rage against the machine, and post a picture or two; have a quiet conversation with myself; take the time to journal to the weblog. Stop and smell the goldenrod.

In the words of a long time friend of mine whose life has been dominated by obligation for too long, "I miss me." I think I'll go try to find the missing person today. At first light, I'll head off with a profound lack of purpose to do something totally unnecessary.

Riders on the Storm

No trips to the airport this morning. It would be foolish to risk traveling INTO an area so many will likely soon be taking great pains to leave. The Hurricane Center prediction now is for the storm to cross FLA, track north up through the panhandle, and into central Alabama. Mobile is just too close for comfort. So Ann has a three-day weekend and has given me notice, at the end of it, THIS HOUSE WILL BE CLEAN! Which means MY plans for three days at home has certainly changed. It now appears we will be cleaning up a storm.

Could be that, by Sunday, we'll be tying down the cat and dog and getting ready for Frances up our way. I could use some easy firewood, but would just as soon not be cutting from trees from a tangle across our little road.

The picture above is from our daughter's porch in South Dakota, taken after a strong afternoon thunderstorm had passed through. I didn't adjust the color here--only a bit of contrast and edge enhancement. Eerie, don't you think? You can't fault powerful storms for lacking their own kind of beauty and appeal. Did I ever tell you about the time I was mesmerized by an approaching storm until I realized that I was in a tornado?

Mouth of the Dragon

It's for certain that, even more than my usual close watch on the weather, I'll be following the path of Hurricane Frances today. By day's end, Ann and will have to make the decision whether or not she should leave Friday morning for her long-planned trip to Mobile to meet with high school friends. It looks likely she could get there before the storm. What happens while she's there and getting back to what might be a mess here--these are the unknowns. Right now, if I had to put money on it, I'd guess we're going to decide to lose the plane ticket and not gamble on much greater losses.

We met in college our sophomore year. The summer of 1969 we were engaged. I lived in Birmingham. She lived in Biloxi. That was the year of Hurricane Camille, a Category Five monster. On the news, they told of the devastation of the 25 foot storm surge, 190 mile an hour winds. Hundreds perished, many of them at "hurricane parties." Ann's folks lived within 200 feet of Biloxi Bay. I couldn't get through by phone, calling a dozen times a day for three weeks that August to find out if she lived or died. She lived. By the next summer we were married. And we've weathered some hurricanes and many lesser storms since then. And we are still married.

I had just finished PT training in Birmingham and taken my first job in far western North Carolina. In early October, I drove to Greensboro for my licensing exam. The year was 1989. It was clear as I drove east when I entered the path of the Hurricane Hugo. It took my breath away--not a tree was spared some damage. Sheet metal was wrapped around the branches of what trees remained standing. As it passed through Virginia that year, it uprooted many large white pines and hemlocks up our sheltered valley that we saw for the first time in 1999. We crawl under those massive tree trunks every time we walk up the gorge of Nameless Creek, a reminder of the incredible power of a hurricane, even this far inland.

Ann's travels are one consideration. What happens if we stay here and Frances comes our way is another. How does one prepare for this wet, spinning top of energy the size of a small continent? Any predictions of its path are only mildly helpful, its final course determined by nudges on the ground and in the atmosphere; or the fervent prayer of one small child. Who knows why these things go where they go? Hurricanes are the price we pay for the heat engines that keep us all from either freezing year round, or roasting. If we found a way to disrupt a hurricane before landfall, should we? The people living in trailer homes on the beach certainly think we should.

Hope those of you living in the eastern Southeast are keeping an eye on this one. It has the potential, not of a Camille, perhaps, but of being another Hugo, or Floyd. See you on the other side.

Dimorphic

The existence of two or more color phases, shapes, or appearances within a population is called dimorphism. Last weekend, while everyone else at the wedding between the I-do's and the Silly Cutting of the Cake was contemplating the happily-ever-after lives of the newly-wedded, I wandered around in the woods amongst the yellow jewel weeds--the yellow being one of its morphs. Around our home place, we only see the orange variety. At higher elevations--like the Parkway in Floyd County, or in Blowing Rock at the wedding--the yellow ones predominate. Maybe there is some other variable than elevation-temperature. Wonder what it is that adapts each to their respective niches?

I got all wound up two Augusts ago, describing the orange jewel weed, including the story about the time Ann made cookies from the seeds--darn near broke the neighbor's teeth. "What were those little rocks ya put in there, anyway?"

Correction: these are actually two different species of impatients, not morphs within a species as I had thought I remembered. The yellow is Impatiens pallida and the orange, Impatiens capensis. I'm glad I fact-checked before hitting the send button. This time.