Fragments From Floyd

I remember checking out this book a long time ago. I cannot even tell you the decade, much less the particular "head set" I was in at the time that made me want to read it. Hmmm. Dialogues between Archy, a philosophical cockroach and Mehitabel the cat who once was Cleopatra, now on her ninth feline life. wotthehell wotthehell

Would I have read it in the Taoist-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance epoch? Or the existentialist Christian period of reading? Or the period when Casteneda's places of power was all the rage in my thoughts? Maybe the Karl Popper Brain-is-everything era, or the anti-reductionist thread from the late 70's?

And having read about Archy's typewritten words of wisdom, did I like it? Did I learn anything? Who would have told me about this book? It's all a blur. More and more memory recedes into the murky distance. So be it. wotthehell wotthehell

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Liska wins the prize for odd Christmas gifts this year (and thanks for the photo!) It should provide hours of fun, off and on.

It's the Happy To See Me David! Light switch cover!

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I was home alone, me and the pup, and it was time to work on putting dinner together-- a great time for Fred's Music Unplugged. Crank that sucker up and let'er rip!

The music du jour: Pink Floyd's ~ Time-- all 13 some-odd minutes of it. A clock ticks, a heart beats, a desperate is man running, panting. There is fear. Bells jingle, gong, clang. Percussion! Doppler reverberation! At the end, a voice wails the pain of all humanity.

I've never seen a dog turn its head in quite so many anguished ways as Tsuga did while he listened mesmerized at every acoustic nuance by Pink Floyd this afternoon. It especially twisted his head around (like it used to do mine heard through headphones back in college) when the sound zoomed back and forth between speakers the way it does so effectively in this particular lamentation. I feel your pain, pup. Ain't it great!

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Hoarded Ordinaries: -- "Mundane musings on nature, spirit, & time from a collector of the quotidian" is the brand new weblog of writer and naturalist Lorianne Schaub. She will be a regular visitor, I think, and hopefully a regular contributor over at Ecotone, and a welcome if hestitant new member of the blogging community. She voices some of her uncertainties, stepping into the unknown waters of writing naked, as it were, for the world to read. Stop by and tell Lorianne hello.

The Ecotone Biweekly Topic for January 1 is "Cemeteries and Place"

Happy Wedding Announcement to friends J and S who just let this cat out of the bag (to their ol' Blog Uncle Fred) yesterday. To which Ann Wife of 33 Years responded "well, there ends another good relationship." Just kidding, kiddos.

I opened the mailbox yesterday and found a package from a blogger buddy south of here -- some of her fermented fruity flavor from summer in a little canning jar. Recipes are forthcoming. Merry Christmas to us, and another blogger to blogger kindness bestowed. It warms the heart, it does, and the nose a little bit too, if tossed back in larger sips. Ahhhhh! And last week, in the same mailbox, a heartwarming story of black lab pups! Thank you blog buckeroos and buckerettes, for your thoughfulness!

Okay. Tell us your weirdest Christmas gift. I'll go first: The Hokey Pokey Elmo. Don't ask. Second weirdest: a sixpack of the cheapest redneck beer available locally (and brand of the can most likely found on the side of our road) and a camoflage hunting cap like all the Good Ol' Boys wear. My son wanted me to fit in. Thanks, buddy, I owe you one. That's a warning. And by the way, the dog found the cap on Christmas afternoon and roughed it up for me a bit. Now it really looks gen-you-ine.

I set out for a meeting in downtown Floyd last night. The last thing Ann said before I left after dark was "Watch out for the deer". Two hundred yards down the road, the neighbor's truck was crumpled up behind a massive pinetree off the side of the road, the emergency lights blinking. The airbag had inflated, no one was inside. I found him walking in the dark a quarter mile towards his house, holding his left arm. His hand had broken the windshield. He swerved to miss a deer.

Am I right in thinking the next MT version, due soon, will eliminate comment spam by requiring commenters to register? I sure am getting tired of banning IP's three or four times a day. How 'bout you?

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No wonder I prefer George Killian's Red. It is a most pulchritudinous brew, don't you think? Find your favorite and ponder it's unique look. You're not likely to find a better view of beer than here!

Welcome to the Molecular Expressions BeerShots website featuring digital images and photomicrographs (photographs taken through an optical microscope) of the World's most famous beers. We have arranged the beer images by country.

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"Some day I want a house-- an two-story old house, with double porches, a walnut staircase just inside the front door, and a creek out back. And I've seen a name I want for our place. We'll call it 'HeresHome' -- all one word."
A. First 1975

When we found this place of Ann's dreams, even though naming little hobby farms seemed silly and too-cute to me, I had the sign made and gave it to her the month we finally grew grass in the front yard. Buster was there for the ceremony. This is Buster's place. We grew to know it as he grew from a tiny pup to a sturdy gentle giant of a dog. He was with us from the month after we signed the papers. He and I drove over here from the cabin on Walnut Knob every day for six months while the construction guys were working on the place and he and I did what we could to help. As Ann and I moved our lives into this house and these hills, Buster was as big a part of HeresHome as the valley itself. Now he is gone, but the sign still stands out front.

Tsuga is growing into his role around here. For a comparison of his first picture by the HeresHome sign, take a look here. As much as we miss Buster, I'll have to say, I can see his successor moving into the original owner's paws rather nicely.

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In our country, we have a free press and no governmental control of the media. As long as the message fans the flames of the right war and points in the direction of re-election. Shame!

Last month, an east Texas man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Inside the home and storage facilities of William Krar, investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature. CSMonitor

Big story, right? Huge, right? John Ashcroft throwing the curtain over the naked lady statue so that he can crow at the top of his lungs about how his Justice Department is keeping America safe, right?

So why haven't you heard about it? Well for starters, it could be because Ashcroft is not crowing about it, nor is anyone else at Justice. Not one press conference. Just a quietly issued press release. If that defies explanation, some Ashcroft critics think they have one: The suspects were named William J. Krar and Judith L. Bruey, not Mohammed or Omar or Khalid. They aren't Muslims, but alleged white supremacists. And they were caught right here in Texas. Austin Chronicle

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... thy neighbor's telescope.

Oh, but I do! And especially this week. Saturn not only will be closer to Earth than any time since I was wearing bell-bottom pants-- it also will be tilted in such a way that the rings (which are about 300,000 miles across but only 30 feet thick in some places) are pitched towards our telescopes -- well, my neighbor's telescope-- for maximum visibility. At -0.5 magnitude, I will see the planet (but not the rings) shining brightly, especially on the evening of December 31, even without a crummy 'scope.

See these two posts from CS Monitor for more details.

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Well, Tsuga had a big Christmas. He got a box of gourmet dog biscuits in a tin shaped like a bone, a collapsible travel water bowl, and a collar that lights up when he walks (for night romps down the road.) He loved the evergreen tree coming inside, and beneath it became his favorite place to curl up (and not infrequently lick pine-flavored water from the reservoir in the tree stand). The best part about Christmas was that he turned six months old on the 26th, and this has made him feel very mature and grown up indeed.

He has finally lost the last of his barracuda baby teeth. Maybe chewing the Christmas tree extension cord in two will be his last teething misadventure. Nah. Probably not. He has replaced licking for biting about 50% of the time; sometimes I'd prefer his gentle mouthful of teeth to a tongue-lashing. When we've had enough of his mouthing our hands in play, we tell him "Go get tiger-monkey" (this was his first soft toy with a monkey face and yellow and black stripes; from now on, all soft toys will be 'tiger monkey'). He goes off and searches until he finds it.

Well, we did get out yesterday to enjoy the warm afternoon, and managed to come in with a few keepable pup pictures. Of the three I'll post this week, this one was Ann's least favorite-- and the reason: she thinks it "makes Tsuga look like an old man."

Frankly, I find this rather odd, since older gentlemen -- especially those with close cropped silver beards -- have an air of nobility and wisdom, an unspoken grace and charm missing from the young. And they never, ever chew on extension cords, gloves or boots and do not expect treats for every good behavior. Well, the first part's true.

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Actually, they must have already arrived on Goose Creek.

I had seen the little green cardboard lures wired in bush or two along the creek and was curious if they were finding any Gypsy Moth males. It seemed unlikely. Weren't they more of a northern problem, anyway? Well, yes, they were introduced somewhere near Boston around 1900, but these forest defoliators are spreading rapidly south and west and are in our woods already. Our area is scheduled to become part of the zone that will be treated this summer to "Slow the Spread".

Hot dang. Just what we need on top of the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid is another insect pest of forest trees. It seems they will defoliate about a million acres this year in Virginia alone. So I'm all for retarding their progress into the Smokies -- and they would be there by 2015 without intervention. The treatment involves flying over our region (consisting of 36K acres according to the map I got in the mail) and releasing Gypsy Moth female sex pheromone that will lead males on a unsatisfying wild goose chase and prevent successful mating. There's a public hearing nearby in January. I see they have already addressed one potential issue of possible concern. They state...

"Due to recent events, additional steps will be taken to ensure aircraft and treatment product security".

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Yesterday we took down the Christmas tree. We put away ornaments and carried off the boxes and wrappings and ribbons that Ann didn't salvage for next year. The stockings came down from the mantle and the greeting cards off the piano, so the year is over. This last week on the calendar is an odd time, a misfit afterthought, a space between Christmas and a new calendar on the wall. But the year has ended and only awaits official recognition by those who are conscious next week while Ann and I sleep through the tick of midnight as we always do on New Year's Eve. With the shortest day of the year now past, it seems there should come a new surge of energy, but instead, I feel thick and stupid and uninspired. This too shall pass.

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I was looking for the lyrics to a Red Clay Ramblers tune called "Hiawatha's Lullaby" when I ran across Baby's Blow Dryer CD (and also the ever-popular Baby's Vacuum Cleaner and Electric Fan CD's). I thought at first it was a joke. But apparently these folks are making money on this, and I should be off to create these new CD's of ambient noise from Goose Creek:

1. Rain on a Tin Roof CD
2. Kettle of Water Hissing on the Woodstove CD
3. Dog Snoring in the Next Room CD

I've used the white noise serendity perservation concept myself, back when I was managing a PT clinic that served a large pediatric population. The hallway outside my office door was used for all sorts of (frequently unpopular and vociferously resisted) motor activities as the therapists worked with our young patients.

I resorted to using SereneSounds so I could hear myself think. It's a nifty piece of freeware that allows you to mix a number of ambient noises... a blizzard, a hurricane, waves, wind, a waterfall. You can mix them in any combination and control the volume of each independently. I got clever and substituted some of my digital recordings from around here-- a whippoorwill, a toad, the creek, a barred owl, the wind on the ridge... that sort of thing-- and had a Goose Creek White Noise Sanity Saver!

What sounds would your ambient noise mixer contain?

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LiveJournaler TravelerTrish has set up a new interior design on her site during the holidays -- same platform, different interface-- so that her site has all the usual features we've come to be comfortable with when visiting a weblog created with MT or TypePad, et cetera.

Be sure and stop by and give her some feedback on readability and design changes, and of course, content.

And let me add… Trish's family is now the first and only complete blogger/writer's family where I have met the whole clan, and the first case where we have exchanged mutual home visits!

Being the only blogger in Floyd County has been a lonely business. But really, there is a growing number of us within a 3-4 hour drive of here. And thots are already wafting around that come spring-- mid May, perhaps-- we need to think about a blogmeet over in our pasture. Check your calendars.

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When the book first hit the shelves back in 1998, Frazier's Civil War epic, Cold Mountain, was immediately recommended to me by one of its earliest readers. It was the author's close attention to the details of terraine, vegetation and country my friend thought I would enjoy. And the book has its moments in that regard. But mostly, it was the geography -- trying to follow Inman's journey home by tracing lines on the map inside the front cover of the hardback-- that intrigued me. This was land I knew. I had backpacked that rough high country several times. A good hiking buddy of mine died on the trail -- with his boots on, the way he would have wanted to go-- in '94 on his way to Shining Rock, just a few trail miles from the unfriendly crag of Cold Mountain. I was interested as much in place as in the characters and plot.

The reviews of the movie are all over the map this week, but I'll have to see it regardless, seeing as how it is from 'round here. The language and rhythms, if the Hollywood affects approach the genuine, should seem familiar to a local like me who has lived his entire long life in these southern mountains.

The tale is more or less historically grounded. Elizabeth Hunter follows Inman's steps by talking to surviving relatives who still live in the Waynesville area. Their assessment of the accuracy of the story and the notoriety it is bringing the area are mixed. You can read part of her article on Cold Mountain from Blue Ridge Country Magazine here.

This reviewer writing from a town very near the mountain itself was not impressed with the portrayal. And, she created a new word. Can you find it in the following clip?

"Law’s Inman is soulless, his bumpkinism turning decent prose into lines delivered with laughable earnesty, and later quipped in smart-mouthed moments of caricature. Kidman’s Ada bears a faltering Lowcountry accent, consistent fashion-plate status and the emotional warmth of trout dip. Together, the couple’s passion barely registers. The burning, longing, unquenchable thirst one would typically think would be required to wait four years for an unrequited love to return simply is not there."

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On the top of the ridge that forms the eastern boundary of our land, after a thirty minute huffing climb we stand panting for breath two hundred feet above the creeks and pasture. Dead and down-- locusts, oaks, hickories-- lie heaped like pickup sticks after decades of lightning strikes, gale force winds, ice storms and natural tree mortality. Countless cords of good, solid wood are heading for decay because it's just too steep to get up there with anything short of a dozer to bring it out. I'm especially tuned in to potential firewood this time of year when it is disappearing into the stove by the cartload every winter day. All that heat, wasted.

Ann said with a smirk after we caught our breath yesterday, walking the ridgeline-- "if all this wasted wood here is really bothering you that much, you could backpack up a chiminea and use up at least a little of it."

So, if you see a little trickle of smoke coming from the rim of the pasture, it's me-- singing camp songs, eating s'mores and feeling warmly frugal. Come on up. Bring more marshmallows.

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...The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent

The next they sang was "Stille Nacht." "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky. by John McCutcheon

If you need a new Christmas tradition at your house, let me suggest including a reading or a listen to one of the most powerful Christmas stories from our great grandparents' age. Christmas in the trenches is a true account of an amazing, if shortlived, outbreak of peace. Conditions that night were worse than you can imagine from the lyrics of the song, as you'll read in the story link.

Miracles do happen. Let's pray for one, in our times.

Listen to the words and music.

Read the lyrics by John McCutcheon.

Read the story.

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From Last Year's late December Thaw

In town, the street is outlined in cinders and salt, marking where the gray mounds of snow have finally disappeared down the city drains, heading now for Little River, then north through the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio, then south to the Gulf of Mexico. There it will retire on a beach with a sweet orange drink in a tall frosted glass with a saffron paper parasol. Meanwhile, a few shortsleeved human types busy themselves in the tiny heart of Floyd, finding excuses to step outdoors onto the solid surfaces of sidewalk in the warm afternoon, to greet a neighbor before the real winter comes.

Cars and trucks along the street are gray-brown, the color of lost dogs. They seem embarrassed to be seen looking this way, but what's the point in taking a bath, they ask? In this in-between chapter between pre-winter and real winter, the mud falls on the godly and the ungodly alike, so the Lexus and the farm-use truck next to it don't look all that different, mud being a great equalizer in Nature's homogenizing justice.

Last years Christmas Card at Fragments

Snowflakes Go and See!

From Lifestyles of the Plain and Simple

We have never felt the need to invest heavily in our interior space. The outdoors has always been where we wanted to be, and in most cases, why we moved to where we moved. I suppose this priority shows in our relative lack of attention to what we have inside. As much as I value color, texture, the play of shadow and light outdoors, we really have very little artwork adorning our walls. It seems silly to pay huge sums for framed art when we can step outside and see the three dimensional real thing, with a frame as big as our field of view, zenith to horizon, and complete with smells, sounds and wind! Or something like that.

So. Inside: practical, yard-sale, worn, plain, comfortable. I don't quite understand why I feel I have to apologize for that. It seems that even in our happy eccentricities, there is still the undercurrent of 'keeping up with the Joneses'. But I can tell you, I wouldn't think of trading my creek for their thick carpets and Broyhill living room suite.

From last year's Christmas Party:

Kodak Moment: During the peak of the hooting and so-called singing, eight year old Madonna steps stage center and announces "I'm not going to sing this time. I am going to say something, some Bible verses I learned". And after some brief moments of eye-squinting toward the corner of the room where she could see the memorized verses, she commenced, in total self-posession and poise, pausing only occasionally to peek up at the corner for the next verse. The cacophony of party chatter hushed; you could almost see the shaft of light illumine the little angelic messenger. The passage about the shepherds especially animated her expressive tiny voice, with a cresendo at the word "terrified".

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Wow.

Kodak Comment: During the music, Jean brought out the autoharp and we were fishing around for simple songs to sing, being simple musicians. We got to talking about rounds, and Jean offered that one beautiful but simple round appropriate for this time of year would be Dona Nobis Pacem. Totally serious, low-church Jennie retorts "what kind of a song is Donna No Peach Possum?" I will never be able to hear this melody again without thinking of marsupials.

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A few of you (who I trust will not block future emails from me as a result) have received the message below today. It contains a small a capella recording of our carol (Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming) son Nathan and I will try to sing in church tonight. If any of you out there want to listen (and no critiquing is required, it is a joyful noise at best), drop me a comment or email at fred1st@swva.net and I'll send the sound file.

This seems like a nice way to send special messages-- this free HandyBits program. Think about using it for family and friends this holiday season!

A wild hair, folks. Indulge me.

Nate and I were asked at the 11th hour to "sing something" together at the Christmas Eve service tonight. We've been messing with it some this morning, and I thought I'd send a snippet (mercifully short) of a very old carol along as our Seasons Greeting to some of you who might perhaps not consider this audio intrusion as the worst spam possible. It is sent with the best of intentions, and may your holidays be filled with music and perhaps a few snowflakes.

Suggestion: get a copy of this free software and send a Christmas hello to your grandkids, old classmates who haven't heard your voice in decades... You get the idea... Perhaps a more personal greeting that a text email message.

Best of everything,

Fred and Nate (bass and tenor respectively), Ann and Tsuga (pharmacist and NiceDog Pretender respectively)

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Reader Tim (whose entire comment is appended in the "continue reading" at the end of this post) has been kind enough to wonder what brings readers back and what sends readers away from a weblog that they visit with certain expectations. The issues he raises have made me revisit what Fragments is, and who I am, and how the two of these entities -- in words and pixels and flesh and bone-- live together and make up parts of the whole of life.

The blogger behind Fragments wears many hats. They include 1) the formerly-repressed creative writer seeking to find his voice; 2) the photographer with an audience from around the world now for his "slides" of the things he sees; 3) the father and grandfather wanting his offspring to have a slice of life from his times and place; 4) a grateful owner of five (or more) senses who celebrates the beauty just beyond his doors and encourages others to see and hear the familiar and ordinary in new ways; 5) the field trip leader and teacher who loves learning and can't repress his impulse to share; 6) as many have noted, blogging is an antidote to the existential loneliness we all feel, some like me in more cloistered surroundings than others, and the bonds of community certainly figure into the "hats" worn-- like you, I want to belong, be known, care and be cared for.

These threads predominate the stream of consciousness style that Fragments has become. It is a polyglot, a goulash, a "soup" if you will, of all these parts of me. But living in a world, beautiful and marvelous and full of good and excellent things as it is, it is permeated by greed and hubris and arrogance that threatens the undoing of all those hats listed above. To remain silent in the face of that which would poison the wells that we drink from is to be complicit in these acts. To restrict my vision to puffy clouds and soft puppies and snow flakes would be to create Musak and not music. There will be discords here from time to time because I feel threatened and those I care about, the planet and places I love and ways of life I cherish are at risk.

One of my favorite sayings states: A hungry man does not refuse the fish because of the bones.

I hope my readers and friends, finding here the occasional heartfelt bleat that exposes my political or spiritual biases and concerns, will simply eat around them to find bits that are palatable and nourishing.

Below, some snippets from comments and emails in response to the post earlier this week called Blog Expectations. And in the "continue reading" section, Tim's comment.

From Bill at PrairiePoint

So as it turned out it was the gardening that I most enjoyed writing about. That became the core of my blog and it attracted the interest of a few others who also blogged about gardening. Now I feel a certain obligation to write on that subject…

Quite a lot of people with gardening blogs do keep a separate blog on other topics. I've decided for the time being though to adopt as my subject matter "this is how the world looks from the perspective of a backyard gardener," which will allow me to write about just about anything.

From Trish

Thanks, Bill, because that is just exactly how I feel. These are words and pixels from a quiet corner of the world...that's the same world the rest of us live in, the one with George Bush as president and everything else that's going on. Maybe if you were more right-wing, Fred, I'd be grouching...or looking elsewhere. But I want to hear just anything you have to say.

From LoriAnne

Fred, you've found your metaphor. Several entries below this one, you wondered about blog branding: should blogs be focused on one topic (e.g. politics, place, etc), or should they focus on several.

Blogs should be like soup. They should stir together a tasty mix of randomness: a little bit of politics, a dash of daily observations, a sprinkle of childhood memories, all simmered in the broth of the present moment. Blog readers aren't looking for essays: we're looking for the lightning spark of recognition when thoughts about soup bump into memories of toothpaste commercials.

Logically, these don't belong together. Our magical minds, though, make these connections continually, and blogs should be true to that.

From Reader Evelyn

… The blog IS yours. YOU set the rules. Whatever you post, I shall continue to check your blog nearly every day because I like the "you" that I've perceived through your writings (blog and e-mails) and I like the way you write.

Some time ago I observed to you that you were braver than I. You are brave enough to post your very thoughts in your blog. Many of us do not have enough gumption to do what you routinely do. My perception of your attitude is not "Full steam ahead--damn the torpedos!" but "This is where I'm going folks--you're welcome to come with me!" I like that!

From Fragments reader Tim...

I'm wondering about your decision to include so many "political" posts lately. not angry, not happy... just thinking about it (and would invite others to join in!)

Now, on the one hand, I feel I come here to visit Floyd County once or twice a day, check out what the weather's like, and see how you've been interacting with the landscape. If nothing else, seeing something "political" is a bit jarring and seems sort out of place from the rest of the stuff you usually post.

On the other hand, I'd hate to pigeonhole anybody; I don't want to be the city boy forcing the country Southerner to talk only about the rhododendrons and ice. ("Hey, you! You can't talk about the outside world! Get back up in the mountain!")

And, of course, in some ways I feel that the more places that post about what's going on with Bush, et. al., the better. At the same time, if I didn't agree with your politics, I wonder if I would be put off by it.

One more conflicting thought and then I'll stop: I guess part of me comes here because it's usually a place un-like 99% of the other sites I visit on a daily basis - it has no political flame wars. Generally, here and my Red Sox message board are the places where I find respite from a barrage of Bad Bush News that is necessary but very depressing. The other side of that is THIS IS YOUR WEBLOG. If that's what you're thinking, who am I to stop you?

I suppose I just wanted to sound out my thoughts on this and see if anybody else had responses (Fred, in particular). I guess the important question is: what does it mean to have a genred blog? If you've chosen to have a specific format (i.e. fragments from Floyd county), does that mean things should be somehow outside the realm of relevancy; and don't take that statement out of context... politics are, of course, always relevant. But are there things that aren't? Are there things you thought about posting and then decided didn't fit? I know, for example, that Marie over at the Blue Ridge Blog often mentions that there is a particular thing she wants her blog to be, and tries to avoid bringing other things into it.

[Oh, one last thing. These questions have nothing to do with the quality of the political posts, because it's always stuff I find fascinating.]

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I know some of you out there have right there in front of you a response to the questions being asked by potential-blogger Lorianne (see below). Or you may know of places where bloggers have compiled a list of their reasons for blogging, or things that have worked or not worked for them in their blogging efforts. Can you folks help me lead L. to some answers?

She has a great thing going in her biweekly emailed essays, but I think she needs a way to make them (or at least blog-post-length snippets from them-- fragments, if you will -- more publically accessible. For this she will need to know more about how blogs have (or haven't) worked for other writers.

Send suggestions in comments, I'll be sure our future blogger reads them. Thanks! Lorianne writes:

I'm interested in hearing others' comments about how they started blogging, what they do/don't like about keeping a blog, what (if any!) advice they'd have for a neophyte blogger, etc. I'm toying with the idea of starting a blog in addition to my current column--the blog would offer "raw" entries whereas the column would "cook up" the tastiest bits--but I'm mindful of the time commitment a blog must demand. Am I crazy to think about starting a blog considering that I already teach full-time, write a semimonthly column, am finishing up a dissertation, etc?

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We live in a two person household of spoons.

In putting away the silverware, the thick-handled knifes stick up prominently and come out of the dishwasher rack first. That pretty well leaves nothing left there but the beaters from the blender (from the last bottomless batch of cookies that Ann always has going) and nested spoons of various sizes waiting to be redrawered and readied for another go-round: the stirring of coffee; the spooning of amorphous meaty goodness into the cracked dish that in thick faded magic marker is labeled CAT FUD so we won't get it mixed in with dishes that will feed people. But mostly spoons are for the eating of soup-- the ubiquitous semi-liquid sustenance that is our family food.

Soup is the path of least resistance in the never ending process of meal planning. We've never met a leftover we didn't like, but typically what's left over from our occasional solid meal is only a spoonful of rice, a half cup of beans and a half-dollar porkchop-- too little for tomorrow's plates. What else to do with smidgens but soup? Of course, we never, just the two of us, eat ALL the soup, and so still more remnants join those that have preceded them in the pot-- never all consumed, always amended with anything organic that can be successfully swallowed.

Our soup-pot is an historical archive of all the meals we've ever had. In our current batch of Leftover Soup are scant traces-- perhaps mere molecules-- of the first bowl of soup we ate when we moved into the house four years ago. I like to think of it as Homeopathic Stew with two hundred "similars" in vanishingly minute dilution meal after meal-- a microgram of lentil from last July; a speck of split pea from September-- so that this potpourri of picoparts per million must surely confer immunity to every disease known to man! Still, I have to wonder: if a person ate nothing but soup, and their progeny likewise for generations, would these lineages become permanently altered physically in some way, like fish and salamander species that have become blind and eyeless after living lives in caves for the ages? It gives one pause.

If this is our fate, we should at least try to add some variety to our diets by means other than the choice between Zatarans or Tobasco for our soup du jour. There is a world of choice out there! Consider Joy of Soup. We won't be needing our forks or plates. With all these choices, we may just go ahead and give them away to a family of chewers while we evolve every liquid meal further and further towards becoming a race of jawless soupsuckers.

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It just came out automatically. The cashier the other day had very prominent front teeth, and somehow the epithet "Bucky Beaver" jumped into my head. With a little digging, I remembered Bucky was the mascot for some kind of toothpaste. Beyond that, I had to Google out the facts.

Bucky Beaver - The friendly big-toothed rodent mascot who starred in a series of successful Ipana Toothpaste commercials created for Bristol Meyers Company in the 1950s.

Brusha, Brusha, Brusha. Here's the new Ipana with a brand new flavor, It's dandy for your te-eee-eth.

• How many remember the Gardol Invisible Shield?
• And: "You'll wonder where the yellow went"… (complete the phrase, boomers).
• Where is the following from, and to what tune do you sing these words?

Brush your teeth Round and round Circles small Gums and all A small soft toothbrush the round and round way Will keep your gums healthy and stop tooth decay So clean very carefully three times a day Go round and round Round and round

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It was wonderful to see Blogger Susanna Cornett sitting on our couch again, crocheting the latest in neckware-- a red and white candy-cane colored scarf that just happens to be the colors she will want to sport in her soon-to-be new home of Alabama. After years of being a Kentucky country girl trapped in the concrete jungle of Jersey, she'll be living soon in more hospitable hills of the south, and we are so happy for her!

Last summer when I was a very new blogger, I met Susanna through her weblog, Cut on the Bias. The majority of her well-crafted words dealt with issues related to her area of expertise-- criminal justice-- and ranged widely over topics seen through a lens more conservative than my own. But her strong roots to place showed through her writing, sometimes overtly in a post now and then where she longingly remembered her homeplace in Kentucky or talked about her family who still live in the south.

I bring this up both to wish Susanna the best in her new life in the rural south and to raise a matter briefly that has come up in comments at Fragments recently. The issue has to do with weblog "branding", blog readers' expectations and the role that demand should play in a blogger's scope and content. And I broach this subject because I truly am interested in knowing the feelings of those who come here and want to learn how you as a blogger (if you are) have made the judgment about what subject matter you will and will not post, and why.

Had Susanna confined her words strictly within the limits of "criminal justice and conservative politics" at Cut on the Bias, I would never have had a glimpse of the Kentucky side of her. From time to time, she takes off her political hat and shows up in a handmade shawl singing harmony to an old gospel hymn. Her readers would not have known of her attachments to the land and the role that "roots and place" play in her life if she did not come out of her 'COTB persona' to reveal the full picture of who and what she is.

I think that's all I'll say about this now, and come back to it later-- maybe even after the disruption of the holidays. Today, Nate and I will be heading down to see our LiveJournal blogger friend and writing comrade, TravelerTrish, two hours south of us in Carolina. Too bad we have to be gone from Goose Creek today. Blogger David StL and his lovely wife were going to drop by to deliver a Christmas gift he made for me to give to Ann-- a cherry-wood quilt rack that he makes in his new woodcrafting business up Charlottesville way. (Post us a link to a picture of that beauty, Dave!)

Well, on to other things. And by the way: Susanna, you left your sweater. Should we keep it until you come back in the spring, or send it to your brother's place in 'bama?

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Friday, the webmaster for Fragments host server chose a most inauspcious time to upgrade-- during prime blog-writing time for me (from 7:00 to almost 11:00). The weblog was inaccessible for an agonizing eternity, this a source of great wailing and gnashing of teeth here on Goose Creek (did the neighbors hear me?) The credits at the end of my little radio essay during those hours on Friday gave the URL to Fragments from Floyd so that those few who were interested could potentially have found me here and come to visit. And I was lost in space, page not found. I do appreciate those who persisted and emailed or commented later in the day. Building bridges to Virginia readers is the best part of the radio bits. Later this week, the "Best Christmas Pageant" story from the radio spot will be read in at least one nursing home and one Sunday School class in neighboring cities, and that is a nice thought. Thanks for new visitors to these pages!

Sunday morning-- also during normal blogging hours-- the power was out here (I suppose due to the 10 degree cold putting a heating burden on the grid.) So, it has been a disjointed few days in the rhythm of things around here. Hopefully, the routine will return to what passes for normal for a few days, but then the posting schedules of bloggers everywhere will be disjointed by the holidays. Things won't seem just exactly right in the blog writing and reading world until the Monday after New Years.

And this morning, a mystery guest sleeps in the Veranda Room-- a well known blogger on her way home to another southern state-- who is spending her THIRD NIGHT overlooking Goose Creek! We turned the world of blogging and writing this way and that in a most wide-ranging conversation over dinner last night. More details to follow.

This in the way of an explanation for the voids in postings lately. Be warned. I'll make up for lost time. Even though readers are all gone over the river and through the woods… I'll bet some will read their blog lists even from grandma's house. Eh?

Posted by fred1st at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

"The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun - BANG, it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck around your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets, and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun does." Elspeth Huxley, via whiskey river via OlderAndGrowing

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From last year's adventures with ice. Read more....

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Never ever send your kids from the Eastern Time Zone to colleges in Pacific Standard Time. It makes for all sorts of problems when they come home to visit. We are thinking of asking for a partial refund from the airlines that brought Nathan to Goose Creek from Vancouver on Tuesday. We only see him for about eight hours a day, so we should get some money back, I'll argue.

His typical college student bedtime is 1-2 a.m. PST or 4-5 a.m. local time. As he finally winds down and his biological clocks send him off to bed at his usual time, we are just getting up. And so this morning we are tiptoeing around, doing last minute cleaning before neighbors drop in this evening -- weather permitting-- for a very informal to-do here. How does one vacuum quietly? Or clean ashes from the stove into a clangorous metal bucket? Or hammer a nail to hang greenery on the front door?

Later today, we'll have to bite the bullet and try Tsuga in the same room with wrapped gifts under the tree, of which "many parts are edible".... including the extension cord. Thankfully, it was not plugged in at the time of chewing. We are making the shed cozy for Himself, as his social skills around strangers are most embarrasingly lacking. He isn't mean-- just goofy with excitement, wiggling in epileptic fits of happiness with the attention he feels he so richly deserves. Ignored, he has been known as well to chew the eigrets off the tips of shoelaces while the wearer is saying his hellos to the resident humans. We will most certainly endure an evening of tortured wails from behind the little chain-link gulag out back. Good fences make good neighbors and we'd like to keep the kind regards of ours. He'll get over it.

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We were at a small gathering of friends, all parents of older children but people in their own rights nevertheless, talking-- as we typically do-- of our children's lives, less of our own; and now in season, the conversation turned to Christmas past and those odd expectations and routines that grow up with us at this time of year. The host family shared with us that every December 25th going back thirty years, they play "A Child's Christmas in Wales" written and narrated by the poet, Dylan Thomas. And they hushed the crowd, and played the story for us right then.

It took some paragraphs to adapt to the poet's thick slur over words not all familiar and from another age. But it quickly became clear the poetry in the prose of the piece, and the humor, and the common experience we, too, shared of Christmases, each in our own odd ways. I can imagine, hearing this peculiar but pleasant tale year after year, Mr. Thomas would take on an avuncular familiarity, and his words might become part of our vocabulary of winter and Christmas.

I can't find audio online (though it apparently once was) but you can read it all here. A small snippet....

"And the presents?"

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds."

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The Spitzer Space Telescope -- Hubble's successor-- is just now beginning to send back images with a clarity never before seen. Not many pictures are available to the public yet, but stay tuned. NASA/JPL will surely be promoting this great accomplishment in the coming months by showing us what Spitzer can do for our tax dollars.

My favorite Spitzer image so far is this one, which of course, is of a speed-skating bunny who is headed off-image/left. Hey. If you can see things in the clouds, why not in the cosmic clouds, too?

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...from the American empire (from Sojourner's SoJoMail)

According to the Washington Post, the Cheney family holiday card this year features this quote from Benjamin Franklin: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" A quick look at the full context of the original quote shows that Franklin, who was poetically calling for daily prayer at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, was in no way claiming divine sanction for military imperialism (of the sort that the new country had just thrown off). In fact, one of Franklin's worst fears is that humanity might "despair of establishing Government by human Wisdom, and leave it to Chance, War, and Conquest."

(I thought this quote about the dove was especially poignant and touching given Mr. Cheney's recent pheasant massacre. That certainly gave God a lot to notice, don't you imagine?)

George W. Bush's family Christmas card also carries an intriguingly out-of-context quote: "You have granted me life and loving kindness; and your care has preserved my spirit." This verse from Job (which the White House press release calls a "psalm") comes immediately before a 10-verse accusation that God is persecuting Job: "Yet...bold as a lion you hunt me...you bring fresh troops against me" (Job 10:13-22).

Read more about the religion of the Bush administration in Sojourners:
Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush's theology of empire

The Project for a New American Empire: Who are these guys? And why do they think they can rule the world?

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More snow last night. On top of ice. On top of snow. In fact, it occurred to me that I've been there, done that-- I had described this very winter wonderland last year, telling the true story of the One That Almost Got Me. I can laugh about it now.

"Not a snow for frolicking, this one. There is a sharp, brittle crust on a half foot of dry powder so that each step is like walking on an endless eggshell. At the last instant before stepping out with the right, the left foot sinks suddenly through the white veneer into an icy pit, and conversely with the other foot, step by ponderous step across the yard and pasture. The road is not much better. Scraped, packed, melted, refrozen and rutted, it threatens harm to auto and foot traveler alike. But this slickeryness is nothing compared to the worst-case ice storm a few years back that almost got me for good. I almost died -- laughing. ... more

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Life pulses and glows in pink orange blindness behind the pulled curtains of my eyes. Branches and webs in shadow and glory dance. Brighter waves warm my face like a day at the beach. I may be at the beach-- I am uncertain. And don't care. Where.

Breath lifts and lowers, I rise and fall on an inner salty sea. Warm is around me, on my chest, coming and going. The sun through the window dodges clouds that slip south, dark-bright. I drift--the tether of awareness pulled from the solid bottom of time. Not thinking, not dreaming, content.

The woodstove ticks like a cat purring. Wind scratches the butterfly bush against the house and shakes a blur into maple boughs. In the next room, the dog too is full, safe, rooting softly in his own happiness or oblivion.

How we live our moments is how we live our days.

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An audio essay from Fragments archives. Listen to a short, true story told by yours truly.

Regional broadcast: 89.1 - Roanoke; 89.5 - Lynchburg; 88.5 - Charlottesville 89.3 & 89.7 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton; 91.9 - Marion, Wytheville, Galax & Abingdon

Date: Friday 19 December

Time: Live by radio or RealAudio (see link) immediately after the regular short Civil War piece that airs at 6:50 and again at 8:50 a.m., EDT

Listen via Real Audio: HERE (Live, real-time only)

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Take for example the following case history:

..."The case of the "old man" who "went to bed and bumped his head and couldn't get up in the morning" that is documented in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" is worthy of CSI. There are 2 versions. The first version is presented above, but the second one changes the sequence of events so that the old man "bumped his head" then "went to bed." Obviously, establishing the exact sequence of events is crucial to the creation of a differential diagnosis. If the elderly gentleman bumped his head after retiring for the evening, one is forced to entertain potential foul play, seizure activity or even a postcoital MI (there is no evidence to confirm the commonly held belief that he was alone). Also, it should be noted that he was "snoring." ... more, link via Quantum Tea.

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No, it's not just your imagination. The cost of everything has gone up since this time last year.

“The low inventory of calling birds and swans this year, combined with a resurgence in demand, has boosted prices – a sign of consumer confidence returning,” she added. All told, the swans, geese, calling birds, French hens, turtle doves, and partridges cost over $4,100, representing about 25 percent of the overall Index."

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Today, aviation continues to merge art and science, mystery and mathematics. It has brought the world closer together, nearly eliminated geographical isolation, brought tourism to the masses, expanded and speeded up commerce, and widened the horizons of everyone from poets to politicians and inventors. But it has also transformed warfare, making it more lethal, and handed to terrorists a new and awful weapon. And for all its practical feats and flaws, it has retained a magical hold on the human imagination. from CSMonitor

Thank you, brothers Wright, one hundred years ago today.

However, as we sat at the airport last night-- travel weary son and I, waiting for one final search of the Roanoke terminal for his missing luggage-- the miracle of air travel did not seem so magical. Earlier in the day, along with three hundred other would-be travelers, all of a sudden he had become a flightless bird helpless in Seattle. But all's well that ends safe on the ground, somewhere. Only because of his traveler's ken did he outmaneuver enough others to get a berth on the last flight to Atlanta and now he had made it as far as baggage check in a western Virginia airport, and we were thankful for that.

With all its unpredictability and aggravation, I had to realize that in less than a half day, Nathan had been whisked with relative ease and relatively small expense from Vancouver to Virginia. For shear speed, there is nothing to match those more-or-less straight high lines between points that air travel provides. I considered the historical context.

A hundred years ago, in 1903 when Orville and Wilbur were busily creating the aviation industry at Kitty Hawk, a week-- maybe two-- to travel between B.C. and Virginia would have been break-neck speed. The traveler would have encountered a long succession of coal-fired sleeper-trains and still then have placed great reliance on coaches and taxis and baggage carts pulled by horses.

Two hundred years ago, the only way from British Columbia to our place here would have involved a long sea voyage down the west coast of the America's (there was no canal at Panama then) down under Cape Horn and eventually-- in several months-- to an Atlantic port like Charleston.

Beyond that in 1803, I'd have to do some enlightened speculation to figure what route on foot or horseback our time-traveling son would have taken to get to Goose Creek. I'm thinking from Charleston, he would travel into the North Carolina Piedmont, pick up the Boone Trail north from the Yadkin valley up to Roanoke. Even early in the 19th century, he could have reached Shawsville traveling west for twenty miles on the Wilderness Valley Road (where most everybody on the road in those days would have been bound for the new land of Kentucky.)

From the valley village of Shawsville where the burned out remnant of Fort Vause still stood, the only way to our valley would have been to follow the South Fork of the Roanoke River (in many places walking in and not beside the river) south for seven miles. Beyond that-- after the river splits into its two main feeder creeks including Goose Creek-- only the most determined trapper would have persisted against the steep rocky ravine thick with Rhododendrons and much of the winter covered in ice and snow.

So. This midnight daydream at baggage claim is how I mollified my frustration with modern day air travel's perils and aggravations while I considered its blessings-- all of which became possible a hundred years ago today on windy dunes in Carolina.

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I was planning on the second annual installment of "Christmas on Goose Creek"-- an audio CD I made for family and a few friends last year that consisted of a a dozen poems and stories from Fragments, a couple of favorite guitar and vocal tunes rendered by yours truly, and a Maurice Sendak book from the kids' past read by the old codger himself. No go. The audio editor didn't survive the upgrade to XP, so I don't have the tools I need for CD #2. Small blessings, kids.

So, I had planned to have our son take mom and dad's picture (dad is always behind the camera) and send along for the daughter, and particularly for the granddaughter who lives 1500 miles away and knows us only as occasional voices on the phone.

Granny Annie thought that was too boring (and she's right) and maybe they would get a chuckle out of something a bit more historical (hysterical?) like a picture from our wedding back in the Paleozoic Era. So, I got out the old photo album and ditalized Granny Annie and Grampa Grumpy in the original Red Baron VW Bettle just slightly prenuptial. Three days after the picture was taken, I began grad school and we set up housekeeping in the Married Students Village at Auburn.

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Outside my college years I've probably never done more reading than I have this past year. So why is it that, when I was asked recently to suggest a "best book of 2003" I drew a total blank? I had to think about it to come up with an explanation.

This time last year, the focus of my intentions was to see if there was anything for me to sink my squishy mental teeth into in the realm of "Appalachian Studies". In January I enrolled as a "special" graduate student at Virginia Tech taking one course in contemporary issues called "Appalachian Identities". For the next five months, when I wasn't reading blogs (and I wholeheartedly insist that I should get credit for the two hundred thousand blog-words I've read in '03) I had my nose in one textbook or another dealing with race, gender, history or politics of the southern mountains-- or researching for my paper that dealt with the consequences of cultural tourism in Floyd County. From all that reading, I haven't a "best of" to offer.

At the same time I was playing the role of the oldest student on the Tech campus, I was also doing 'self study' in the meat and potatoes of writing and photography, wanting to take both of these little hobbies to a higher if not very high level. While the half dozen books by writers on writing were beneficial and the Photoshop 7 book has some great technical tips, I don't know that I'd throw any of these into the ring of contenders for the '03 book prize.

Come June, I enrolled in my first writing workshop-- the two week Highlands Conference on Appalachian Writers and Writing at Radford U. It was a most beneficial exposure to a wide variety of voices from the southern mountains. The class texts consisted of two anthologies of Appalachian writing edited by Dr. R. Jack Higgs who taught one week of the workshop and afterward has become a friend and mentor. During the workshop I sat across the dinner table from author and visiting speaker, Ron Rash and bought his book, "One Foot in Eden" which now has the official Readers Digest Advertisement tear-out bookmark prominently placed between chapters two and three. There are bookmarks also in "Gap Creek", "Rosewood Casket" and a half dozen others by authors met through their writing at the Radford workshop. When I finish them--if I ever finish them-- I'll be able to say if one or another is a "book of '03". However, it is too much to expect that I read something actually published in the current year. Get outta here!

Inspired by Jack Higgs to write with greater purpose, I began looking at Fragments as the basis for a seasonal natural history-memoir and revisited (but have not entirely re-read) Sue Hubbell's "A Country Year", Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac", Dillard's "Pilgrim" and "Teaching a Stone" and many more on my shelves gathering dust now for years since their first reading-- many of them, BC-- before children. And of course there has been copious reading about the mechanics of getting something published-- involving countless thou-shalt-not writer's guidelines as well as perusing some of the nature-related offerings of potential publishers I might submit a manuscript to one day.

November: Nature Writing at John C. Campbell Folk School. Another shelf of dusty books cracked, scanned, sampled-- none newer than 1990. I came home from the week at Campbell with a new list of authors never read who are "must read" nature writers and poets. I have six borrowed books of Mary Oliver's poetry lying about now. John Murray's "Nature Writing Handbook" and the "Norton Book of Nature Writing" are sitting on my desk next to my coffee cup. Books everywhere. Nothing to nominate here.

Obviously, many of you are oh so up to date in your book-a-week reading of the latest fiction. I applaud you. I'll suck off of you when you review them on your weblogs-- it's like reading the Cliff Notes version. I get partial credit for having read the books if I read good reviews. Right? At least I can pretend at social gatherings that I know these books and have erudite opinions if I borrow your opinions. Now. If I only had some social gatherings.

Please carry your nominations over to Judith at RedWingMarsh. She's looking for 'what's been hot' in your world of reading this year. I'll forgive her for putting me on the spot. And I promise: at the end of '04, I'll have read an entire book that is more current than the birth year of my eldest child. Promise.

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Ever had one of those days... when everything seemed to be going so right?

Andy at Older and Growing is wondering where he is: Wandering in a fog able to see only a step or two in any direction? Playing a part in a movie? Involved in a paint-by-numbers adventure where some steps are known but the big picture has yet to appear; or on a Quest where he knows what he wants but doesn't know to find it? Where are you? Check the grid.

Jon at Conservation News writes --with a West Coast perspective-- about Place and place writers at Ecotone.

Varicosities of Human Traffic. North America: How Many Roads...

Baby Pictures of the Appalachians and Blue Ridge Mountains

I can't imagine using a single windowed browser. I've used multi-tabbed Netcaptor for years, paid for the full version, and dang. Now I find the same functionality and more in slimbrowser. Very impressive. And free.

And finally, it's fascinating to me, odd duck that I am, that the forest and vegetation I see out my window would also look familiar to someone from parts of China! The mixed mesophytic forest is "now represented by relictual ecosystems in eastern North America and eastern China. The related forests of the Appalachians and central and southwestern China share a large number of higher taxa and relict groups. Many genera and some species and families have disjunct distributions in these distant regions. Over 50 such genera of plants include magnolias, hickory, sassafras, ginseng, mayapple, skunk cabbage, several orchids, jack-in-the-pulpit, coffee-tree, stewartia, witch hazel, dogwoods, persimmons, hollies, sumacs, maples, and yellowood. Several animal taxa also show unique affinities with East Asian relatives, including copperheads (Agkistrodon spp.), hellbender salamanders (Cryptobranchidae family), some land snails, and paddlefish (Polyodon spathula). The taxonomic similarities between these two regions are paralleled by ecological similarities." from WorldWildLife

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When we saw this place we call home for the first time almost five years ago, we discovered that its eighty acres was bisected by a state road. I immediately lost interest and drove on past. Our vision had always been to have a piece of land (thirty acres would have been plenty) with a long, private lane to the house nestled in the very heart of the land; we would have the ideal buffer from road noise and other intrusions-- our private, quiet hide-away. But there it was: a road that ran smack between the house and the old barn. The road dividing the land was only part of that initial disappointment. The steep north face of the valley had been most unkindly cut for timber less than ten years before. It lay pitched and bare like an open book, propped up conspicuously at an incline for all to see the standing gray bones of pine trunks, stripped of branches, brooding over the face of it, making it look ravaged, wasted and unfriendly. It broke my heart.

Ultimately, though, my aesthetic objections were mollified by the joy of discovering the charms of the old farmhouse, the wonder of the two clear creeks, and the narrow end of the valley along Nameless Creek that had escaped the loggers. Maybe we could make a home here after all. And here we have lived now just a bit more than four years, in the house on the winding and narrow gravel road with grass growing up between its two tracks. In all this time, I've spent very few hours on the decimated north slope back of the house where today, we went to fetch home our Christmas tree.

The aerial photo of the place from the 1930's shows that all of that steep land behind us was in pasture then. On the few occasions we've climbed that precipitous property line, sure enough, we've found the old split chestnut rails that once kept cattle from wandering off into tall woods. At some point in the forties or fifties, forest took over the pasture. I wish I knew if it was by design or neglect that the life of the pasture gave way to young forest. This is the natural process known as "old field succession"-- the predictable, gradual and orderly changes that will see one set of residents replaced by another over time.

By the early nineties, the white pines that colonized the abandoned south-facing field in this process of change were large enough to sell to indiscriminate loggers. They came in 1994 and took everything they wanted, ruining three hardwoods for every massive white pine extracted, cutting roads deep into subsoil that remains bare of vegetation to this day. After the 'harvest' to maximize for regrowth in pines (thousands were hand planted after logging) the hillsides were sprayed with herbicide to keep the pesky hardwoods from shading out the valuable cash crop of pines. As the Regional Forester told this, I had visions of Agent Orange coming to Goose Creek. But there was no going back to undo what had been done; we could change the future of this forested hillside and would try to be better stewards than the last folks who gave little thought to things that seem to me so crucial in our relationship with this plot of Earth.

In the summer, the thirty five acres behind the house has been our berry patch. The open canopy lets in a flood of sunlight. A thick tangle of blackberry and raspberry canes have filled in between the waste of ice storms and the skeletal standing pine trunks left from logging. In July the vines cascade heavy with fruit, blue and red, down over the trail like the hanging gardens of Nebuchadnezzar. When we first hiked up to the top of the north ridge that first year, there was an impressive view of the valley, the house and barn, and the two creeks from up there. From the very top of that side of our land more than two hundred feet above our roof, from any place you stand you can turn a full circle and see nothing but sky and ridge and trees, except for the green wedge of our valley through the brush. Ridges beyond ours go on and on, and it's easy to imagine you're in the midst of an Appalachian wilderness. I pretend that the devastation on our hillside was caused by a fire-- a lightening strike-- a dozen years ago. It makes the ugliness seem less personal to think it exists in its present sad state because of an 'act of God' and not the avarice and carelessness of men.

The planted pines now are almost ten years old and a dozen feet tall. In places they grow together thick as a hedge. Soon a new forest will obscure the wider views even from the open paths that follow the contours out to the limits of the logging of '94. Time will come it will be impossible to walk up there at all, even on the logging roads where pines are taking over. Their whorls of five or six low branches will soon touch their neighbors like interlocking arms, turning back would-be walkers. Ten years from now, the blackberry and dewberry and raspberry vines will grow spindly and fruitless in the new shade. The place won't be much good then for twisted and yellowed Christmas tree culls like the one we cut today.

The abused and abject land behind the house is not a great place go for a casual stroll even now. It is not a place for beautiful pictures. But it seemed to me today, being there, that it is not somewhere I should avoid because of what it lacks. I should go there often-- now, while the joints and muscles still work, while there are memories to harvest in the form of berries to pick and Charlie Brown Christmas trees to bring inside for a few more years. But mostly, I will go up to find a quiet place facing south toward the low winter sun, to sit and be still among the standing bare pine trunks and fallen hardwoods and the briars and the old chestnut fence rails.

Amazing. This was a pasture where cattle grazed. Before that, virgin hemlock and oak and white pines tall as ship's masts grew in dark forests seldom visited. I wish I could have seen it then. I wish I could see it fifty years from now when it will be healthy woods once again. But I only have today-- a fixed point in the succession from past to future; and I'll try to do a better job of living in the land and the time I have here.

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Mythic Place: the topic for this biweekly Ecotone writing. The idea brings to mind stories-- grand, old stories-- that become associated with people and places and things that may or may not have existed in fact. Paul Bunyan and John Henry are mythic. BigFoot and maybe the mysterious but real Brown Mountain Lights in Burke County where we used to live-- are myths, or mythic realities-- associated with particular places.

While it not mythic, the story of Mary Draper Ingles is epic-- a larger-than-life heroic drama that pervades this region. This woman's experience in these very hills enters my thoughts often and comes to me as I contemplate "mythic place". In our comings and goings through Montgomery County each week, we unknowingly cross Mary Ingles footsteps with our humming wheels. It is a story that deserves a wider audience, and so I will simply offer her tale to you here. And another account here.

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Here's a man who gets to decide how natural resources of this country are used. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Here is shock and awe, up close and vice presidential.

Dec 10, 2003 3:36 pm US/Eastern Pittsburgh (KDKA)

Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting trip to Westmoreland County this week is drawing criticism.

Cheney arrived at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe on Monday to do some hunting at the Rolling Rock Club and Game Preserve -- a private club with farm-raised pheasants; but some say it was no hunt -- it was a slaughter.

"Your average hunter may shoot more than three pheasants a day; Vice President Cheney shot more than 70 -- and an untold number of mallards... We're appalled that so many animals were killed for target practice essentially."-- Wayne Pacelle, V.P.- Humane Society of the US

Five-hundred pheasants were released in front of Cheney and his men; and the ten-man hunting party killed 417 of the birds. Vice President Cheney alone shot over 70 pheasants.

The birds were then plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight back to Washington, DC.

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To walk the same steps through four seasons; to see the same enduring ridges and clefts like the loops and curls of fingerprints, unique to these hills alone; to see that life goes on in ordained ways around and within me. This is a thing I own. This is wealth. I steal the air that fuels these transient living cells that carry me up and over and down this mountain. The trees that reclaim this tattered hillside, this ancient valley land bounded by surveyed and imaginary lines-- they do not belong to me.

This body that labors more each season to come here itself is leased, a borrowed book written in erasable ink. This I understand. Getting to the top of the ridge in summer and in winter is a form of praise of the things that endure beyond the life of a man, a dog, a white pine or slowly eroding mountains.

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Years ago-- and I am talking about a time so far back that the majority of today's bloggers consisted only in the potential of their ultimate component oocytes and spermatagonia-- I was introduced to Clives Staples Lewis by a secretary in the Department of Comparative Medicine where I chopped heads off rats for a living. In the past week, I've inadvertantly run across two, and was kindly and intentionally directed by Aussie Fragments reader Boynton to a third C. S. Lewis site on the net. I look forward to an icy Sunday for perusing all three of them fully.

1) Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity is a Lewis-inspired online compendium of Christian News and such, with endorsements such as the following:

“Edited by a bevy of mainly younger Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics, Touchstone advances an ecumenism of orthodoxy defined by the Great Tradition. The Touchstone people are bracingly conscientious and determined to follow where the Spirit leads.”
—Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief, First Things

"Touchstone serves the most significant form of ecumenical endeavor today: the rallying and coalescing of those in all the churches who stand for doctrinal, moral, and devotional orthodoxy. The fact that Touchstone exists to serve this purpose gives it great importance.”
—J. I. Packer Author, Knowing God

2) Leaves from a Narnian Cookbook inspired by foods mentioned in Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. And...

3) the multimedia experience "Exploring Narnia"... a link I will send along to my daughter who may soon be reading the Chronicles to her own daughter. It will serve as a quick refresher of the lands and personalities and animal characters of the land behind the War Drobe.

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I don't think the storm that is coming in late today is going to be so fancy as last weeks.

Today we'll scurry around and do what can't be done tomorrow in the ice. Top of the list: go up behind the house and select this year's Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. As usual, it will be a cull-- a "scrub pine" that is misshappen and probably also growing too close to the eventually marketable timber of a white pine. Since our house is small, we don't care that the sad little 5 foot tree lacks branches on one side. The bare side will let it slip in close to the wall. If it's too off-balance, we'll stick some magazines under the tree stand to pitch it back towards vertical, or use monofilament fishing line to tie it to the wall. We're not proud. And the price is right.

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First: An hearty hi-ho introduction to raise the dust of the western hills and a bit of kiddie excitement.

Then, it's time for today's episode:

The LikeTelevision Classic TV channel proudly presents - The Lone Ranger - starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. We begin with Episode four - where the Lone Ranger gets even with his arch nemisis - Red Devers. Plus a special bonus - The Lone Ranger without his mask. Episode four also features DeForest Kelley, a.k.a. Bones from Star Trek as a tenderfoot from out East.

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I found myself singing the chorus to this silly Christmas song as it played on the car radio today. Hmmm. I must have remembered it buried somewhere deep in the cobwebby vault of silly songs, although I didn't know I knew it until I found myself coming in automatically on the chorus: "somebody snitched on me". "I'm Getting Nuttin for Christmas" was written by Sid Pepper and Roy Bennett in 1955. I was seven years old. Yeah, I guess that was probably a pretty big year for Christmas. Hearing Gene Autry sing "Here comes Santy Claus" gave me goose bumps, even though the neighbor kids had told us the jolly old man was a hoax. We still left him some cookies on a plate that Christmas Eve, just to cover our bases. And dog gone, if the next morning, that plate wasn't empty! I think I suspended disbelief for another year at least, just in case. After all, a lack of faith could result in a smaller clutch of toys!

Somewhere in my mother's closet are old home movies of childhood Christmas mornings. In the one I remember most clearly, I had not yet grown into my new front teeth. The year was probably 1955. And I got something for Christmas. That was the year of my first big-boy bike (with training wheels, of course). And probably there would have been roller skates... some few of you will remember... the kind with the key you used to clamp the clanky metal-wheeled skates onto the soles of your shoes, back when all shoes had thick leather soles. The skate key was always lost by Christmas afternoon, of course. Even before the early morning unwrapping of presents, the stocking hung there on the mantle-- the first thing our eyes fell on in that dazzling room magically transformed overnight. A few smaller unwrapped and instantly accessible items stuck tantalizingly just over the rim of the stocking: a paddleball; maybe some jacks or dominoe, some hard candy, an orange and a few large exotic nuts, and once, a Rocket Crystal Radio.

On Christmas day, 1955, there was an extra-large box of red rolled caps down in the very toe of the stocking-- this an intentional tease that one of the boxes under the tree must contain a cowboy holster and pistol! Cap guns were the gender stereotype toy of the times and conferred instant mini-macho on a boy still shedding baby teeth. But that year, it was even better than I expected: one of the boxes contained the whole Hopalong Cassidy outfit: black cowboy pants and shirt with official cowboy fringes; finely tooled tiny black boots with pointy toes; a contrasting bandana that tied smartly around the neck; a wide-brimmed, high-domed black Hoppy cowboy hat that cinched tight under the chin to keep it on while galloping across the yard on a make-believe horse; and not one but two six-shooters each in it's own holster carefully lashed with rawhide to each leg to expedite a quick draw. The draw was what it was all about, pardners. I practiced until I had blisters on both thumbs.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Thunk. There were always duds. But the ones that worked-- oh the reward! The sharp report-- the thrill of cause and effect-- early intimations of control. I pulled the trigger and things happened. An ear-piercing crack. A flash of yellow flame. And a whiff of blue-gray smoke to be blown casually from the barrel. The air was sweet with the sulphur smell of adventures to come. Those were the days. Happy trails to me. I was Hopalong then, and now I have lived so many cowboy years that I have become a dead ringer for Roy Roger's trusty sidekick. Gabby Hayes.

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Picking up the thread of life from year to year by way of the weblog turns these yarns of mine into useful fabric for me. Themes appear. Patterns. Order. Indulge me a retrospective from time to time.

The crusty snow and ice of a week ago is slushy enough to walk on safely this morning, even with a fresh overnight coating of frozen fog and freezing rain. Branches of Hemlocks along the creek, ravaged by a foreign hoard of indifferent insects, are slowly dying, and hold more frozen jewel drops of ice than green-gray needles-- a sad kind of beauty.

The deer have come out of storm seclusion. They lay low when it would do them little good to browse for grasses buried under icy snow, conserving their layer of fat for more productive foraging. This morning, their pronged prints come right up to the front steps, and show signs of a brief stop to munch the Hostas by the footbridge.

Swollen with snowmelt, the creek runs both under and on top of the thick ice- blanket that muffles and modulates the more familiar sounds of a summer creek; cold water has learned a hundred new permutations, variations in the key of winter. Listen. The visceral core of creek runs hidden except in round patches of open water, dark against white. Green waters part around an island of rounded rock here and there and the world is full of flow, smooth and quiet as an Artic island.

Snowbirds leap for tiny seeds of broomsedge, their cold feet leaving cuneiform slits and wedges, like crop circles that appear out of nowhere on a field of white. There is play in their work, tiny swingers of birches. Their antics in a motionless world are reason enough to have hope for spring. Meanwhile, I will make peace with winter.

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...Good Will toward All Species!

I grabbed the mail from the box as I headed out for a trip to town that would most certainly involve an extended wait. I tucked into my rain parka's pocket the issue of OnEarth from the day's mail. This is the quarterly magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council (an organization where we have been supporters since 1979).

Because this particular medical professional chose to place a widescreen television in the waiting room, I wasn't able to wade very far into the magazine. I'm afraid my body language made it apparent that I for one did not need to see and hear the rancid acting and sordid dialogue of "The Guiding Light". But my fellow (im)patients might also have seen my face brighten when I read the following in the Letter From the Editor:

"A final note: I am thrilled to welcome a new contributing editor to our masthead -- the Pulitzer prize-winning poet and essayist Mary Oliver, a longtime friend of OnEarth (formerly The Amicus Journal), where she has published her work regularly for many years. Mary Oliver is a rare beacon of intellectual, moral, spiritual, and literary goodness. She and our other splendid contributors help OnEarth, in its humble way, remain a beacon too."

As Fragments readers know, Mary Oliver is a new discovery for me, and I have enjoyed reading her books borrowed from a friend that lie all about the room now. If you are looking for a way to make a difference with end-of-year charitable donations, consider supporting NRDC. Their record of advocacy for the environment and the integrity of the planet's health now spans five regime changes. And the planet needs protecting now more than it ever has lest gains made in the past twenty years become reversed for the benefit of the few.

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If you explain something so clearly that no one could possibly misunderstand, someone will.
-- Murphy

I was corresponding recently with Andy over at Older and Growing about how easy it is to be misunderstood when the interaction is limited only to the words between two relative strangers. The correspondents lack body language and voice inflection, and there may be little experience of the other person's placement along the continuum of humor, sarcasm, concreteness, mental-emotional triggers and flexibility. Blogging has its benefits, but also carries some risks. Andy and I straightened out our little confusion quickly. But this time last year, the ending was not so happy.

To make a long story short (yes, I can do it, contrary to my copious verbage in recent posts):

Last December I was in the midst of transition, both between Blogger and Moveable Type and between a free-hosted server-startup (with a gal who had seemed reasonable and helpful up til then) and another host that gave me growing room for Fragments (it was at 11 MB then vs 142 MB now). In relating this issue to readers at the time, one of my commenters (who is an expert in MT and servers and all the arcane issues associated with these mysteries) took issue with my hostess on some esoteric detail of geekly interest. She totally lost it and turned on me (because of my commenter's remarks!) and gave me two or three days to "get out" before she deleted my blog from her server. Thereafter she would not allow redirects to my new server. And so images from this time last year are largely missing from those posts.

I woke up this morning remembering all this and went back to read A Tale Most Hideous. It seems amusing now. It was not funny then. So trip along with me down memory lane. There may be a moral in the tale for ye, lads and lassies.

And. I am on the verge of needing to move to a roomier server one more time. Arrrgghh.

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An epidemic of narcolepsy is sweeping the countryside! Well, let's just say it seems to be pandemic almost everyone in our blue-haired age cohort that we talk with lately. But the condition does not necessarily spare even those half our age. Reports are coming in from friends and relatives near and far. "I just can't stay awake in the evenings" they tell us. Trust me. We feel your pain.

We're morning persons, as you can see in most of my timestamps for Fragments entries. So for us, "after 8" is late at night. At that magic hour in our house there begins a sluggish boggy procession toward the bed. While there are gradations all along the continuum toward nocturnal submission, at times the transition can be alarmingly abrupt-- a most striking sublimation in a matter of moments from full waking frenzy straight into a sound sleep in mid-motion.

A couple of nights ago, I finally slowed Ann down enough to have her listen while I read a revised piece from last year. It runs over two thousand words and we would need maybe 8 to 10 minutes to read it through. We couldn't even think about finding this much uninterrupted time until the dog went to bed. He hates it when we ignore him, and begins barking if I read and she listens and we both ignore him momentarily-- your typical two-year-old child. Tsuga finally called it a day and put himself to bed in our room around 8:00. So, we sat down on the couch beside the wood stove; she leaned back against me while I read aloud.

My usual writing wits end on any given topic at about six to seven hundred words, and it was at this point in my apparently soporific reading that I could feel her body twitching, starting at the feet and working their way up. "The twitches" are well known in our marriage after decades of sleep (or reading aloud) in proximity; they indicate the brain is relinquishing control of the muscles and joints and about to give itself full time to Technicolor dreams. I nudged her. "I heard it all" she said defensively before I said a word. She had heard, perhaps, the first six hundred words, and then went abruptly off duty. Oh well. I needed to hear it aloud myself, and at least I managed not to put me to sleep with my own sonorous words.

Then, last night: In a rare flare of late night fervor, she decided she must have access to the computer to type a letter. Sure, she could displace me in the midst of my half-hearted writing; I'd go over to the couch and hold the book in front of my face and feign reading while she typed. Beside the warm and comfortable wood stove slumped back on a soft couch after the witching hour of eight is not prime reading time, I'll grant you. After maybe five minutes of eyelid watching, I looked up to see how Ann was getting along with her project. There she sat a bit rumpled in the chair, but she was typing feverishly. From across the room the lines on the Word document had an odd sameness. I got up to investigate.

She had typed one and a half paragraphs followed by ten-- now going on eleven pages of the letter "K". She had fallen asleep at the wheel, and was careening down the road between the guard rails with her foot on the gas, oblivious. I woke her gently. She mumbled something and trudged sluggishly through the bog of narcoleptic quicksand toward the bedroom.

"Seems to me your should replace all the K's with the letter Z " I told, chuckling at my cleverness as she fell into bed. She appreciated my humor about as much as she had been impressed with my oral reading.

One day, we'll both nod off at the same early hour, a skillet of bacon sizzling on the stove and the tub of water spilling over onto the hardwood floor. The rescue squad will find us in a sound sleep-- one on the couch, the other in the swivel chair. They will call our children who will find a nice home for us so that we do ourselves and others no harm. And that will be fine. As long as we can expect LIGHTS OUT no later than seven o'clock. We wouldn't be much good in a Bingo game after that anyhow.

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"My wife and I have been seeing foxes ever since we moved to this place. They skirted the far edge of the pasture at a businesslike trot, keeping a watch as if they knew that someday we'd give in and get chickens. They seemed somehow to define a boundary for us, too. But because they always kept their distance, they were platonic foxes, storybook foxes, with sharp muzzles and thick red fur and bushy tails, the gloss of wild health."

Verlyn Klinkenborg is describing foxes in general, and then a particular fox driven by disease to enter the author's domestic world. What had been a wild archetype became a particular creature with a presence in the mundane routine of domestic living, like a character stepping out of a storybook into the grime of suburban alleys.

"The wild, I realized, had been a place for me where the identity of its creatures lay hidden. The wild was where the archetypes lived, negotiating their survival, utterly separate from us" he tells us. One fox in his story lost its anonymity.

Sometimes, creatures can go the other way. We've had our hands full this week keeping Tsuga, our six-month-old yellow lab pup, from tasting deer blood. A few days ago, a neighbor, with permission, played the predator-- in the absence of any others than the front ends of speeding automobiles-- and killed a deer near the house. It was a deer we "knew", a buck whose favorite hiding places were a stone's throw from our back porch. Now his blood is spatterred on the snow up wind, by the garden not far from our back porch.

Since the kill, when the wind is from the west, as it often is, the dog stands just out the back door with his nose in the air, pulling from the aromasphere traces of an unfamiliar yet powerful species memory. This dog has never killed, but it is still in his wild nature-- barely covered by a veneer of domestication and breeding to hunt and chase, to clutch a pulsing throat with powerful jaws and meat-rending teeth and to taste blood. The blood of any creature--chickens, sheep, a newborn calf, a deer-- will often cause a dog to revert to the inner wolf that hibernates there, the killer that lives just beyond the boundary between our world and the wild one he came from by heritage.

We're expecting rain later today. I hope it will rain a lot. Tsuga and I will play indoor games while the red snow washes wildness away, past the garden, across the road, and down into the cold creek.

Read more of "Out of the Wild" from Orion Online...

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What a nice surprise to hear (even though Anne of Fishbucket wrote last week to ask permission to post) an audio cut from my son's CD he recorded just before he left for Vancouver in August. Below is the link to the title track called "Wood on Wood". Thank you, Anne, for letting Nate's music hang out at your place. And oh, she's right. The father can connect you with all eleven cuts on the CD for a very modest price, pending a discussion of these details with the musician after he gets home for the holidays next week. Enjoy! ... from Fishbucket:

"We have a special musical treat today boys and girls, and i'm so excited i'm beside myself. Which leaves little room on this desk chair, so move over me! Anyhoo, the song: it's written, played, and sung by a wonderfully talented young man named Nathan. If you happen to enjoy the song, won't you please drop by his proud pop's site and leave a kind word or two? Of course, i'm talking about our fellow blogger, and indeed my favorite folk-writer, fred1st of Fragments From Floyd. Bet he can even tell you how to obtain a cd if you're interested."

Posted by fred1st at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (1)

The idea that over our earthly heads is some kind of universal property we call "UP" is a terracentric tyrrany. UP is a local street sign not recognized by the dark matter of the universe. It only refers us to the center of our local geography, only has meaning on our blue marble of a planet-- a convenient way to tell our heads from our feet.

Disabused of this notion of upness, I stood outside last night to imagine that I was looking down on a pearl on fire, dropped under ice floating on a black lake. I was seeing the core of the earth at great depth under the fissured mud of a dry pond. There was the reflection of the ancient sun from the surface of the Tethys Sea as the continents were breaking apart.

What do you see down there?

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But I think there's more to it than that, Annie. It's not a matter of liking sentences or paint but of requiring them, drawing life from them like oxygen. I think it is true that there are many writers and painters who feel their talent is actually a burden but one they must do to live-- not biologically but aesthetically mandated. I think Trey got it right. From an early age, many of us feel the need to create. "Mommy, what can I make?" We want to say "Let there be"-- like little gods, to create something where there was nothing.

As a blogger, do you feel it-- this need to do something with your mind and hands, bring something into being that was not? I lament all the music and friendships and stories and paintings I will never make but should have. It is late. But not too late.

I am infatuated with words. I am enamored of imagery and composition. Natures of men and leaf are awe-inspiring. Now. What can I make?

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I didn't know. John Lennon's killer-- twenty three years ago today-- saw himself as the "Catcher in the Rye"... a delusional reborn Holden Caulfield. And apparently remains so deluded to this day. From Today in Literature.

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I've seen several bloggers recently -- maybe it's the end of the year retrospective kind of frame of mind-- wondering what's to be made of blog rankings, status and blogger self-esteem. I confess I've been watching Technorati as Fragments flirted with 100 inbound links, reached it, and now has fallen back. So what? There's nothing magic about round numbers. Still, there is a good bit of ego-surfing among blog owners who sometimes take the stats way too seriously.

The latest ranking I've run across is over at Wizbang where, within the NZBear Ecosystem you can vote for your favorite within the very arbitrary categories. Fragments is well toward the back end of Marauding Marsupials and destined to hang there, or fall back further down the pecking order-- if indeed it implies any pecking whatsoever.

Ali over at Quantum Tea discusses this matter and links to BeneDiction's post on the subject from a few days ago. She's happy to be in the bottom 95 percent of blogs and finds a blog's worth not reliably measured by it's ranking status numbers.

I would offer that the various rankings and linkage listings do make for a good way to find blog-families-- weblogs that have some affinity for each other reflected by the fact that they post from each other's material. Hang out at Technorati and The Ecosystem for browsing purposes. I guarantee you'll find some new reads.

Meanwhile, here are some new or rare visitors to Fragments gleaned from recent Sitemeter-readings.

Infomaniac
Views of the NorthEast
Circebleu
Reckoning
Commonweal

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* The woods across the pasture are dark and snow appears illumined as it falls against the shadowed hillside, falls in perfect parallel, each flake or cluster of quills following its own path and not another as if lowered down, down one by one on gossamer threads. Most distant feathers float suspended and, picking out a single one to follow with the eye, it will take an eternity to sizzle to the ground on its immense journey. One from half the distance falls twice as fast, and tufts of flakes just in front of my face zip past in a terrible hurry.

* Snow falls onto the creases of my parka and does not melt. What had looked through the windows like falling flakes are not flakes but aggregations--light loose thatches of tiny ice needles, linear and sharp-tipped-- loose feathers of filamentous crystal down. There is no sign of a six-sided lacey flake in any of it. The locks fall from my shoulders onto my arms, white against the dark of my coat like hair shorn from the barber's shears, slivers of gray and white, they tumble softly to the ground.

* The true white of snow readjusts my perception of colors that I think I see without it there for comparison. The "white" house, newly painted two years ago, already shows a graying in the paint and a dun dusting from the road that seems so apparent against the snow. How odd the "yellow" dog looks against pure white. His markings become conspicuous-- especially the darker places on his rear legs above the feet, the tip of his tail and ears-- all show red-foxy tones. When he is on the hillside, his darkest parts match the tawny broomsedge that stands bent in the snow on the bank behind the house.

* From the front porch, even over the burble of the creek, falling snow hums just below the threshold of hearing, hisses as it falls like tiny droplets against a hot griddle far off. In snow, sounds become muted and flat just as the details of visual texture are now absent from the forest floor-- snow blind and snow deaf-- a partial dampening of sight and sound that is somehow both comforting and unsettling.

* Walking across the pasture full of snow, with only a slight suspension of disbelief, I can imagine that I am walking along a vast shore of the finest white sand. It blows across the road a fine powder; there is not much difference between a drift of snow and a dune of sand. Dry snow squeaks underfoot like Daytona Beach on Spring Break, and you dare not go out onto either without sunglasses. In the high stepping labored trudge through our field, I might as well be walking back through loose sand to the hotel along the boardwalk on Myrtle Beach. Even though the smell of everything is all wrong, one calling seagull overhead would just about complete the illusion, but I'll not wait for it to come along today in this cold wind.

* The pasture grass, cut once late in the summer, lies matted down, mostly, by wet snow. Spikey tops of bent orchard grass bristle up here and there from the white field and it wears an unshaven and haggard look. The turkey hunt out these green whiskers as they stagger across the field in their loopy forays for food.

Posted by fred1st at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

After if first falls, thick and smooth, deep enough to cover gravel and ground and the dregs of autumn-- I go out hesitantly and leave the first blemishes in the unbroken white. In the beginning, there are just the boot tracks to the woodpile and the signs of the dog's quick short trips for the necessary calls. For a time, even these trampings will fill in again with the next wave of snow, leaving just the barest undulations in the surface. But life goes on, and one can do only so much admiring from the windows. By yesterday, there were tracks-- our own and others-- that showed what a busy place our 'deserted' valley really is.

There is where the dog and I went down to wade across the creek to rummage through the barn for the snow shovel, put away last spring when I began to bring the garden tools the other way, over to the shed. And there, past the garden, I'd remembered too late to retrieve my maul, and had to root around with the toe of my boot to find it buried under six inches of snow next to a rounded mound of half-rounds of sweet-smelling split cherry. And those tracks there are not mine, going back into the valley; they belong to the friend who called this morning and asked if he could hunt our land. He left a while ago with only his deer rifle.

Turkey tracks loop back and forth in the pasture between Nameless Creek and the opposite ridge along the old grassy road. Grasses that stick up from the snow have been nipped along the turkey trots, and here and there, the snow has been scratched away and the sodden earth bothered by prehistoric scaled feet eeking a meal. At times their tracks suddenly disappear up the steep bank, and I know they took wing, ponderously, and only because the bank was slick with snow. They will roost in the tall pines up top and be back making more tracks down here tomorrow.

Deer tracks are everywhere in the morning-- each hoof mark a sharp pair of converging crescents in the shape of praying hands-- they are creatures of the night. In the daytime, against the snow, their gray-brown disguise is laughable. Only when they run up the hill away from us does the white flag of their tail match their winter hiding place. It is in the snow during hunting season that they are most vulnerable. And about that, I have mixed feelings.

I cannot think of a greater contrast than deer blood in snow. Another hunter-- a neighbor whose family has lived in this valley and along its rim for generations-- came last night and took down a deer so familiar we felt like we knew him though he never had a name. An eight point buck, he showed up often and very near the house, standing majestically on the hill above our back porch, looking down on us, snorting indignantly as if we were the intruders here. There was blood in the snow, just beyond the garden by the split cherry wood. I had to go see. The hunter will bring us some of the venison. And I will eat it, to honor that gentle grass eater so that his death will not be in vain. I am a reluctant vicarious predator and carnivore living in a fallen world.

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I'd always associated the drooping, lumpy clouds like those you see here with tornados. I remember them appearing in the sky just before an Alabama twister almost carried me to be with Dorothy and Toto.

This kind of hanging, downward sagging cloud is called "mammatus" clouds because they are rounded and pendulous and breast-like. And they may be more likely to signal a storm is going than one is coming, so I learn.

I'm a cloud watcher (I know you'll be surprised to learn this about me) and am having a great time learning what kind of atmospheric conditions lead to the clouds I see over Goose Creek. I'll be bringing readers into my homeschooling from time to time.

Oh and it seems possible we could lose power later today. The snow and ice clings to every branch and winds are expected to rise to near 40mph later today. Send in the rescue dogs if you haven't heard from us by Monday.

Posted by fred1st at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, here's one down and probably a dozen or more winter storms to go. If we're keeping score, while I'd like to stretch it and say we got half a foot, five inches is more like it, with a layer of ice and sleet on top of that. There's a glaze of ice in the trees-- more of the "frozen drop" variety than the uniform coating we sometimes see, and of course the soft snow has a crusty topping everywhere. The dang ice crust is a real boot-killer; it's amazing how abrasive that ice can be, so I've kept Tsuga from spending too much time crunching down through it as it would abrade his paw pads. But man, he does love the snow!

He particularly likes it that birds are so easy to spot today! The poor juncos feeding in the tall grasses not buried by the snow have been bedeviled all day when the pup was out. Of course he doesn't come close to catching one, but he sure enjoys the hunt! Someone amongst Fragments readers told me that the more prominent the "smart bump" I was wondering about, the better birder the dog is likely to be. Not that we will employ Tsuga that way, but he does seem to be a chaser… of butterflies, birds, even floating dandelion and milkweed silks back in the fall!

I've just looked out the window (see the picture from yesterday) and just now there are three huge turkey just to the left of the pine tree on the left of the image (a pitch pine I think). The fog is hanging low and heavy as it does characteristically after snow, and the birds look like dark prehistoric grazers against the valley whose details quickly disappear abruptly fifty feet behind the turkeys. Quite surreal, really. When Ann gets home, we'll go over and follow their "peace sign" tracks down the old road and see where all they've been in their efforts to scratch out a meal from under the crusty snow.

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Civil War cross-dresser and trans-racial. This woman had some cahunas. The weekly civil war essay on the local NPR station talked about her this morning. I'd never heard about this. She was a Canadian who enlisted as a man in the Union Army and later "pretended" to be a woman so she could spy on the Rebs, and on another occasion colored her skin with silver nitrate to pretend to be a black slave named "Ned". Can you imagine this woman's life!?

Posted by fred1st at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

I sit down for the morning writing without anything particular to say. Almost always, something rises up to the surface and I write on that topic, however silly, and hit send, baddabing baddabang. Not very often, but maybe more often as time goes on, I sit. And I sit. And nothing comes out. And I wonder if I am not a rag wrung dry of things to say, stories to tell, opinions to divulge to those who have never asked to know them. But there is the discipline of writing that goes on, unfortunately-- the ponderous duty of daily writing-- even when the well is dry. There are always words. They are not always about anything worth making public, no matter how low your standards for hitting the SEND button have become.

But how I hate the idea of the "morning pages" that will go nowhere. They are like pulling an empty chair up beside my desk in anticipation of a quiet conversation, and then talking for a thousand words to the empty chair. I feel foolish. Somehow, with the weblog, knowing that someone will come and read, and even knowing a bit about some of those someones and their writings and lives, I can pour my thoughts into words with some degree of focus and intention and purpose. Most of the time. Maybe not today.

Ah. There went somebody in a Land Shark-- it's too dark to tell for sure; looked like an 80's model Oldsmobile or such-- up our unplowed road covered in a half foot of wet snow. Definitely not four-wheel-drive. Here may be the day's post. I'm turning the outside lights on because I'm expecting a cold-wet someone to be walking back down the road to call a wrecker in about ten minutes. And ah, the sky is just beginning to lighten enough to see that the silhouettes of the trees say there is ice-- enough for some interesting photos, maybe, without so much that we'll lose power. A picture is always worth a thousand blog-words.

Why so blah? Is it the snow? I look across my inner landscape for things that would hold my interest and there is no color, no texture or detail-- not unlike the monotonous scene outside-- the muse is buried under thick, slushy sameness. Is it the long stretch of being alone? Not likely as this seems the norm here for the past half dozen seasons; Ann will try to make it home this afternoon. It is, of course, the time for the seasonal emotional slump I always pass through at just this time of year when I have not done the obligatory shopping and am torn between resistance to seasonally-frenzied consumerism and wanting those I care for to know of that care in some small, reasonable and not exorbitant but tangible way.

Well it is Friday after all... we are over the hump in the blogger's week and things sort of cool off as people become weekend focused. So, I'll roll with the punches. Today I'll take a few pictures. I'll enjoy the pup out in the snow before it turns to muddy slush. And I'll read the words of others who weren't having the kind of day I'm having today and got words worth reading on a published page.

Well. There's a half a morning page. Who's going to sue me if I stop there and drink coffee instead? See y'all later on.

Posted by fred1st at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

Okay folks, here's the scene out the window where I sit and shovel out the verbage. Pretty much white on white and still coming down. Pup and I will venture out shortly for more. I really need some good winter shots and looks like the Wx boys are going to accommodate. We have another storm coming in tomorrow night with yet more of this lovely yuk.

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Or if you doesn't. Poor Ann. Not flake one had fallen when we got up at four o'clock. By five, the walkway was covered. Not to worry. She packed her bag thinking she might have to stay overnight once she got to work, and we scurried around and got her out of here by six. Flakes were falling like goosefeathers. She'd be alright. And I ambled into keyboard mode and let my mind wander (toward the nose, it seems). The phone rang sooner than it would have if she had made it to Blacksburg, and I knew we had us "a winter event".

She made it just fine in the Forester, as far as almost to the top of Christiansburg Mountain. Nothing deterred her but all the cars that had gone off or pulled off the road and the others that had stopped in the middle of it. Maybe there was a wreck, or a bevy of them, between there and the interstate. She never found out. She called and desribed the scene; from the sound of it, I didn't think it was worth the risk to try any of the other bad routes (they're all bad in this kind of black ice) and so she retraced her steps and came home. I'm thankful she had a safe trip, even if it was a futile one.

We'll spend a day of handwringing (she does the wringing, I am helpless co-wringer) over her "shirking" her responsibility. Who's going to do the work? How will they manage without enough help? Why didn't I go the other way? Why didn't I go in last night? Oh dread. And then, they will not pay her for a missed snow day, so Santa ol' buddy, save a trip to Goose Creek this year.

Meanwhile, snowflakes settle in pure vertical lines as if lowered one by one on gossamer threads. The sky is velvet gray with the faintest lavender glow behind the clouds. Standing on the front porch with a cup of cocoa, even over the chatter of the creek, snow hisses just below the threshold of hearing, like tiny droplets on a perking woodstove a mile away. We can enjoy this day. We can.

Update 12 noon: There was no rest in HooVille and so little Cindy Lou Hoo struck out once again in her tiny sled for one more run up C'burg mountain. This time she made it, and called just now from the parking lot at work. Meanwhile, Mortimer Hoo and his good dog Boo are wondering what sort of devilment they might find now, left to their own devious devices! Hoo can say?!

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'tis a deadly combination: my head cold coupled with genetically inherited "photic sneezing". The stroboscopic effect of tree shadows as they zoomed past-- light-dark-light-dark --on the highway yesterday were almost enough to induce epileptic seizures. They were more than enough to induce a violent episode of sneezing on the road between the house and Floyd. And I'm talking quick-pull-over to the side of the road sneezes, which in turn, converted the plaster in the sinuses instantly into a runny effluvium the viscosity of creek water. What's a fella who forgot his hanky to do? (Actually I had mine. I'm just building dramatic tension in my little tale here, you see).

Snite. It is a word I probably would have read right on past had I not been able to recall my very first visit to southwest Virginia almost thirty years ago. I pulled up to the light in our future hometown, looking around like a tourist, seeing it for the first time and thinking "this is our town!" I waited there at the light behind a fella in a pickup truck (as almost all fellas still are in that county). While he waited, he was overcome, as I was recently, by the need to clean house, nasally speaking, with the greatest haste. So, seeing as how necessity is the mother of some pretty raw and impolite acts, and being a country boy who would never be caught dead with anything so sissy as a Kleenex on his person, and realizing that he was wearing short sleeves-- he leaned out of his open truck door, head and shoulders disappearing behind the rusted door briefly while he snite a large wet spot there on Main Street. You simply cover one nostril with the side or your thumb and blow the other one like Sachmo's horn. Voila. And welcome to town, stranger.

And so I have run across this word not once, but twice in recent weeks used by two highly cultured writers (Diane Ackerman being one, maybe B. Kingsolver the other, can't remember for sure). So it must be a word (it certainly is a wintertime behavior in common practice in some circles). Etymologically, it most likely is a relative of "snout" (see below) and from hence, the name of its discharge and from that, snite, the verb: to clear ones nose of said substance. My two cents. And it occurs to me that my brother invented a related word when very small that we continue to use to this day. If someone is sniffing so as to avoid a snite they are "snicking". The man in the truck didn't.

Origin: OE. Snoute, probably of Scand, or Low German origin; cf. LG. Snute, D. Snuit, G. Schnauze, Sw. Snut, snyte, Dan. Snude, Icel. Snta to blow the nose; probably akin to E. Snuff, v.t. Cf. Snite, Snot, Snuff. Source: Websters Dictionary

Yes, I do still have a bit of cold symptoms. Thanks for asking. And you'll want to know that I am in the stage at which, when I snick strongly, on exhalation my sinuses return that embarassing squeaky sound reminiscent of your dog's favorite chew toy. Surely there should be a creative sn---- word for it, don't you think?

Posted by fred1st at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

A: First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life. Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles. Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of light bulbs as well as prices and figure out how much change they'll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five dollar bill. On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five dollar bill. Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the woods, the light bulb is installed. And there is light. Link-thanks, ConsciousMother et al.

Posted by fred1st at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

We've always driven stick shift cars, ever since we were married, back in the Pleistocene era. There is something about the way the bond develops between the driver, the road, and the machine. The road climbs, the engine pulls, the driver makes the necessary adjustments finding the gear that suits conditions as they change from moment to moment, mile to mile. And so it is with our lives here in the country. A time of changing gears has happened. We hear the changes, feel them in the engines of our lives, in the smells and winds and in the way the air feels around us.

Wardrobes shift as the season grinds into low gear. Now when we go out, it is not a spontaneous walk, come as you are, out the door in into the woods. Not only must we give care to make the transition from house garb to outdoor garb, but for almost every item, we'll don not one but two: tooda shirts, tooda pants, tooda sox. We will make each outside excursion count now, stay outside as long as we can, dream up things to do with our gloved hands before have to come in and put the process in reverse.

The woodstove, starting today, will likely stay on round the clock, every day, until the January thaw. It is the home heating equivalent of chain smoking: one fire does not go out but helps light the next one and the next. The fire will burn constantly from the winter thaw until the first duplicitous freakish warm days of late March that we know are a cruel lie. The last fire will die after the killing frost of May that we thought would not come, and so planted tomatos the week before. It's all part of the rhythm, the manual transmission of life here that has become, now in our fifth year, so familiar. We anticipate shifting seasonal gears, knowing what snow-covered roads lie ahead, not liking all of them, but ready.

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY NIGHT...

SNOW OR SLEET WILL DEVELOP ACROSS THE AREA AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT...AND THEN GRADUALLY CHANGE OVER TO MAINLY FREEZING RAIN BY NOON THURSDAY. THE FREEZING RAIN WILL CONTINUE INTO THURSDAY NIGHT...CHANGING TO RAIN IN MOST AREAS DURING THE MORNING FRIDAY.

AN INCH OF SNOW AND SLEET MAY ACCUMULATE BEFORE CHANGING OVER TO ICING. SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS OF A QUARTER TO A HALF INCH OF ICE ON ELEVATED SURFACES ARE POSSIBLE. THAT AMOUNT OF ICE ACCUMULATION COULD DOWN TREE LIMBS AND CAUSE WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES. ROADS MAY BECOME TREACHEROUS AS WELL...ESPECIALLY BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES.

Posted by fred1st at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At least not permanently broken, thanks to a little help from my friends.

Seems some odd abberation in Moveable Type made it hark up a hairball last week when I posted an image it suddenly thought was to big to swallow, and I was flooded with reports (well, in my low-volume world, a half-dozen reports is a flood) that my right column had disappeared or other forms of weirdness were happening. I begged for help. I am not a proud man.

Immeasurable thanks goes to Fragments Techno-consultant and Kemosabe, Jeremiah, who seems to have found a way to keep the problem from happening again across all browsers tested. We think.

If you would be so kind, please click over to the temporary experimental page here, and tell me (well, tell me and I'll go crying to Jeremiah. I am capable of doing nothing more than lip biting and hand wringing) if the page displays properly. Try resizing your browser, changing font size, etc to see if you can make it unhappy. We're hoping not. Please email or comment re this ASAP. I'm going to assume things are good to go if I don't hear any screams of horror from the Fragments Few. Thanks, y'all.

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Right there on the bottle it lists one of the side-effects as "sleeplessness". What the Robitussin bottle doesn't list is "maniacal disjointed technicolor dreams that go on for hours". What a night! And so these few links are perhaps just a microcosm of my semi-somnambulent wanderings between the sublime and the absurd on the Dark Side of the Moon.

First, realize to your dismay that it is time once again for that "Twelve Days" song that goes on and on. Actually, I've heard it said that STD's are the gift that keeps on giving. So, here you have the 12 STD's of Christmas, complete with stickperson portrayals of the various symptoms. You'll need whatever player the animation requires, and a fairly high tolerance for gross.

Then, on the very opposite side of the aesthetic spectrum... just like the wild swings in my dreams... do take a look at this magnificent natural display. I get excited over spotting a simple sundog. Imagine seeing a sky display like this one! Amazing how ice crystals can influence a vast variety of halos, glories and other sky events too few of us ever see. Great explanation here for what you see and why.

And at the same site, an appearance perhaps more likely to be seen by those few of us who don't get to the Poles very often... the Earth's shadow just after sundown.

Finally (because I know a body can only stand so much linky-clicky) here is a shocking apparition. This is not The Face in the Mirror, anymore. A forensic artist reconstructs what His Sleaziness's face would have looked like left alone. One has to assume that maybe, even now, there's a pony in there somewhere.

I'll see what a little (well, make that a moderately large amount) of caffeine will do and maybe be back to Fragments later this moring. I'll be scooting off to the bustling metropolis of Floyd here in a bit for a haircut and some errands. A quasi-retired physician friend is going to shoot me at his house (after this small head cold I've decided I do NOT want the flu). And a trip to town always provokes a post or two... such over-stimulation for a country boy!

Posted by fred1st at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this picture in my archives from the trip down-moutain last week. It was taken from the Blue Ridge Parkway about mile post 130 looking east toward the Roanoke Valley and low mountains of the eastern Alleghenies. The low saddle that disappears offview to the left is Tinker Mountain that rises above the creek by the same name where Annie Dillard saw the 'tree with the lights in it'.

I will climb another thousand feet when I leave this spot, up into the wind, into the light, the mountains. It always feels like coming home, but the valley too has its beauty.

I am sure than 95% of those who visit Fragments have never traveled on or perhaps even heard of the Blue Ridge Parkway (from which this photo was taken). It is a significant part of our landscape here and I don't think I will ever take its uniqueness and quiet grandeur for granted. Let me recommend (for those of you looking for Christmas gifts for folks roughly cut from the same odd stock as Fragments Fred) this book recently published and with essays by my friend Elizabeth whom you've heard me speak of from the Folk School nature writing workshop. The book "The Blue Ridge Parkway: America's Favorite Journey" includes a wonderful pictorial history of the Parkway creation and construction, and outstanding nature photography in a coffee-table size format. Recommended.

Posted by fred1st at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

We are into our second week with the new Forester, and I have found two things about it that I like very much.

The first thing is the interior roof. Its percussive qualities surpass any I have ever experienced in my long history as driver-percussionist. Resonance qualities are those of a bodhran-- a Celtic drum-- and its acoustic effects are particularly striking during Thistle and Shamrock while the wife is in the grocery store doing goodness-knows-what for those long hours. I know that the people in the parking lot were only staring during my performance because they were impressed with my nuance of interpretation and skill. They wanted to gather round, but for some reason, held back. Oh well.

The second thing I like about this car, and have coveted in the vehicles of others for years, is the outside temperature readout that sits there, blue shining down below the speedometer. What a wealth of information is to be had here-- more entertainment than the 6-CD changer by far. I like the way it gives the lie to the simplistic radio weatherperson who comes on and says "In Roanoke, it's 52 degree; Blacksburg is 47". Silly goose. There are as many subtleties of temperature as there are curves along 221 through Floyd County! Watch that blue liquid crystal number rise, hold, then fall in the dark shadow there where the rhododendrons grow thick on both sides of the road. That is why they grow thick there-- it is northy, harsh, hostile to other plants but they love just this cool pocket which they in turn shade, and cool-- first seeking out, then preserving a local climate that suits their cold roots and curled leaves that laugh at winter.

Up top along the fairly uniform uplifted land of the county at 2700 feet, the temperature that first day of Subaru thermometer gazing was 59 degrees give or take a degree. At the bottom of two miles of descent toward Goose Creek-- 51 degrees. As we rounded the bend to our valley and the southern sky, it climbed to 54 degrees. Watch the snows as they hold fast or melt away here in a few weeks. Snow is a great gauge of micro climate, and it tells me that the people who built this house in just this location a hundred and thirty years ago paid close attention to nuance of light and temperature. What the thermometer does not show is the brutal effects of the wind, but this we felt this morning as we stepped out the back door. "It's almost warm" Ann said. Fifteen minutes later, walking back toward the house, she ate her words as the wind made us want to turn around and walk backwards. The drying effects of wind are part of the details that differ strikingly from one location to another even in a square meter of pasture or forest.

In my more free-ranging rambles of mind, I've wished for something: I'd like to have the vision to see the world in shades of yellow grading to green grading to blue. You know, like the daily temperature maps you see of the country or your state. I'd like to walk outdoors with a helmet-visor that let me see temperature with great precision by color as it leaps or plunges from the tops of grasses to their roots; from the sunny exposed yellows of the pasture to the deep blues under the rock outcrops and the deeper blue under Rhododendron hells. Creek water would be at first colder than, then in January, February, warmer than the surrounding ground and air. There are so many fine tunings in our surroundings-- in heat and light, in wind, in pH, and so many other ways of which we are unaware, though they are all about us, each step, within and without. My new blue car thermometer brings me in touch with at least one of them.

And oh, Ann's favorite feature in the Forester is the front seat warmer.

Posted by fred1st at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know how the experts draw the distinction of meaning between space and place. But in my thinking, there would be only spaces if I did not exist, and you, and the countless billions who live and have lived and will live in these spaces. There would be no place if there were no names attached or values imposed on and lived within spaces. Places are spaces that have souls-- the linking principle between Spirit and matter. We give spaces ensoulment by belonging to them. As we find meaning, gather experience and lay up memory, we make raw spaces into places where life happens through time.

On this small plot of Earth-- our rough sheltered valley in the Blue Ridge of Virginia-- I am the steward, the temporary "owner". For a time, uncertain and finite, this place will be the tableau of my life. Decades from now, I'd like to imagine that my love for and intimacy with this place will live on-- not in the abstract but in the very particulars of the view out my window, in the same footsteps I tread in my day's walk. I have left a record of these days in what I have written to my children, and ultimately, to their children from and about this place-- a field guide of sorts to its natural history and to mine. If they in future years should care to know what our lives have been like here, they will need to know this place-- to sit where I have sat, see what I have seen. And so the importance of protecting place is a matter very close to home.

I have lived in the southern mountains all my life and loved them in a generic sort of way, but only known this homeplace for a short while. Many of my neighbors in rural Virginia have had family roots for generations in these green mountains, and so have ascribed immeasurable meaning to particular stretches of creek and to rock walls, to sheltered forests and gnarled trees and high ridges-- and of course to old home places and barns that have heard the communion of human lives through an unbroken hymn of years.

But when the tax bills become greater than the modest income of those who go on trying to make a living from their farms, there are always others with no value in place and its associations with human histories, but only in the space--ready to come in with a different set of 'best use' ideas that risk turning places with souls into commodities sold to the highest bidder.

When our land is sold, the next owner would be under no obligation to feel for it what we have felt. Ownership of land confers the legal right to make decisions that have no regard for the associations and memories and values of those who came before. The next owner of this place could terrace the ridges on either side of Nameless Creek and dot the hillsides with Swiss A-frames painted in bright pastels. A trailer court would fit nicely in our pasture. Summer tourists in Airstreams could park side by side in the cool shade under the Rhododendrons at the back of our land in that most quiet place that has been our "Fortress of Solitude."

While all of us must seek ways to protect places on the larger scale from countless forms of misuse, one person alone may be able to do little on that scale, for instance, to protect the southern Appalachians from the ravages of woodchip mills or strip mining. Perhaps one person could do more to prevent their county from being overtaken by shopping malls and fast food franchises. But my wife and I can act locally in the near term and with predictable effect to protect one parcel -- our place-- for all generations to come. We are putting our land under conservation easement. And so are several of our nearest neighbors. It will be protected from a future use that does not suit its nature or its history.

A hundred years from now, should anyone chose to, they can read what I have written about these hills along the banks of Goose Creek; they can look at my pictures of the creek, the barn, the ridges above us as they are today. And they will be able to go to those same places, hear the same sounds, smell the spicebush and pennyroyal in these woods and find, perhaps, the very same peace and serenity that I found there in my walk this afternoon.

In this world where places of the heart too quickly disappear under the machinery of efficiency and speed, I will be able to grow old here in this place, pass it on, and know it will still proclaim what I have known, immutable through the decades. What few dollars we might leave to our children will quickly pass. This place protected is our true legacy.

The Ecotone topic for December 01 is "Protecting Place".

Posted by fred1st at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)