Fragments From Floyd

I had hoped to do this differently, but will just send you to the gallery where I've housed all (or at least most) of the keeper images from the Vancouver trip. Here's the link.

Just discovered something got into the back of my truck and drug several bags of garbage out into the yard--full, heavy bags. The truck tailgate was closed. Whatever it was, it was strong to be able to lift this stuff and carry it to the edge of the yard. Could have been a bear. I looked for claw prints but couldn't find anything. And we thought the dog was upset this moring because we have a strange car in the driveway (that belongs to our overnight guests, still sleeping upstairs!)

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Maybe it is like the raking of a Zen garden, simplifying its lines and calming the mind. The garden bore no footprints when I had finished tilling it the second and final time last week, because I swung the handles of the tiller to the left or right at the beginning of each pass, and walked to the side, not in the smooth path the churning tines made in the sandy loam. This extra step made for a little more work, but because of this investment, no foot-shaped potholes would fill with rain to mar the perfect plane--a calm sea of soil that promises good fishing for what lies below its brown surface. Somehow, a garden freshly turned, free of blemishes in this way, is like a new school notebook, a freshly made bed, or the first page of a good book.

But on the morning after, graffiti scribbled across the beautiful page--deep cloven stabbing punctures led to the freshly-set tomato plants. Before I could replace the battery on the solar-powered fence charger, on the very first opportunity as we slept, the deer stepped through the wire and ate the growing tops out of the early variety I had chosen to increase our chances of a harvest before this cooler-than-usual summer is over. Maybe there are some growing tips left, but growing from the stumps of what remains, our time gained by the early variety is lost. Will we have tomatos enough for the table in July, or buy the product of someone else's success against deer, hornworms, wilt, and end rot?

Hills of Hubbard squash, a row of yellow straightneck, the first double row of green beans and first planting of Silver Queen--seeds wait out there even now in the dark, barely submerged, for warm nights, and the rains that have so far been missing from the gardener's calendar. And so there will be many trips between the garden rows and the creek with the green plastic watering can. Chop wood. Carry water. And hope. Another vegetable year has begun.

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Jim Wallis (via SojoMail--excerpted below) tells about the recent visit of GW "Daniel" Bush to the Lion's Den at Calvin College. While he wasn't eaten alive, the president heard far more growls of disapproval than he'd expected from an evangelical crowd. This is encouraging.

...That new dialogue was visible recently at Calvin College. Karl Rove, seeking a friendly venue for a commencement speech in Michigan, approached Calvin and offered President Bush as the speaker. The college, which had already invited Nicholas Wolterstorff of Yale to deliver the speech, hastily disinvited him and welcomed the president. But the White House apparently was not counting on the reaction of students and faculty. Rove expected the evangelical Christian college in the dependable "red" area of western Michigan to be a safe place. He was wrong.

The day the president was to speak, an ad featuring a letter signed by one-third of Calvin's faculty and staff ran in The Grand Rapids Press. Noting that "we seek open and honest dialogue about the Christian faith and how it is best expressed in the political sphere," the letter said that "we see conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration."

The letter asserted that administration policies have "launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq," "taken actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor, " "harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment," and "fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees." It concluded: "Our passion for these matters arises out of the Christian faith that we share with you. We ask you, Mr. President, to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy...." One faculty member told a reporter, "We are not Lynchburg. We are not right wing; we're not left wing. We think our faith trumps political ideology."

On commencement day, according to news reports, about a quarter of the 900 graduates wore "God is not a Republican or a Democrat" buttons pinned to their gowns.

The events at Calvin, along with the growing crowds at our events around the country, are visible signs that the Religious Right does not speak for all Christians, even all evangelical Christians. What I hear, from one end of this country to the other, is how tired we are of ideological religion and how hungry we are for prophetic faith. The students and faculty at Calvin College are the most recent sign of that hunger.

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WARNING:

We will soon be coming into the late spring and summer, so BEWARE !!!! I hate it when people forward bogus warnings...but this one is real, and it's important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list:

If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey on deer ticks and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up ---

DON'T DO IT!!

IT IS A SCAM;

They only want to see you naked.

I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel like such an idiot.

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Of course our niche is so small and sparsely-peopled that we have culture shock just going to Roanoke, where there is one Thai and a couple of Chinese restaurants. That is haute cuisine and cultural immersion for us. And so, to be in a big city like Boston or Vancouver is remarkably different from our usual experience, and we are constantly making comparisons between that world and our familiar, bucolic and secluded habitat.

The history of the northwestern coast is vastly different from that of the Great Valley of western settlement that peopled our area with white folk. It was to places like Vancouver that our predecessors and their children's children were traveling as they passed along the Wilderness Road. Meanwhile, all of that lush, green and misty land now called British Columbia was inhabited by a rich diversity of tribes, each with their own crafts, arts and customs. We visited the Museum of Anthropology with its open storage display, maps and recent artwork from area natives. The map of tribal territories showed a jigsaw puzzle of influence. I wondered why so many tribes lived side by side in such relatively small land mass, and then realized many of these boundaries are largely island or peninsular areas; others are probably segregated from their nearest neighbors by untraversible rivers or mountains. Like the Galapagos Islands segregated races of finches, turtles and other creatures, these tribes evolved their own unique ways of understanding and dealing with nature, creating a rich tapestry of arts and cultures. In style, I was impressed with the similarities to Aztec, Inca and even Hawaiian masks and design.

The wood sculture above (at least six feet across and eight tall) is by Haida sculptor, Bill Reid. I created my own interpretation of Raven and the First Men. I saw the Raven as a symbol for the hardships of life that wait to pick us off the moment we emerge from our protective maternal "shell." The tribal stories of the raven have him much more a friend of man, or at least a benign trickster who both bedevils and looks out for man. Read one version of the story here.

I was impressed by the facts that, while in Vancouver, we saw almost NO litter.

People use the cross-walks; and drivers honor them by always stopping, even when you wave them through.

I was appalled at the open drug use on the East side of town, and disappointed when my son's girlfriend's car window was smashed in broad daylight right outside the Gastown pub they were in. Some things were stolen--a few dollars, maybe, for the next fix or bottle.

I was impressed by the large population of--be careful here--Asians we saw in every part of the city. I was curious which country had the most resident Vancouverites: Korea, Japan, China, Viet Nam. But when I asked, I referred to them as Orientals. I was informed that sometime in our seclusion in our Small World, that word has fallen out of favor. My son and I got into one our little language debates about how good words keep falling from the vocabulary in the name of Political Correctness, and I was branded an Achie Bunkerite. I since have found explanations such as the following, though I still think the O word is more precise (and will say goodbye to another bit of English language) referring to a particular PART of the much larger ASIA:

Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning "eastern"—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.

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My initial and most lasting impression of our first experience of the Pacific Northwesst Temperate Rain Forest was, not surprisingly, the vegetation. And once again, I look back and acknowledge how much richer my life has been for my eleventh hour conversion from zoology to botany long ago. I never thought I'd get to see a temperate rain forest--a completely different biome and as much like a visit to another planet as I'll ever have.

Yes, we saw a few animals in Vancouver, but we were immersed in an amazingly rich alien botany that was not entirely a mystery to me. I could readily see relationships that tied this new world of plant life to the one I knew in the Appalachian forests of home. I've since confirmed most of my guesses: I've gotten the families right, and in most cases, even the genus. Relatives of our foamflower, spring beauty, lily of the valley, hemlock, dogwood...the list is long. This seems, I know, a small thing to you perhaps, but these affinities between my world and that far-off planet give me a sense of wholeness--a Whole Earthness--that confers a belonging to this achingly beautiful and complex creation.

I would have been thankful for some field guides, but there really wasn't enough time (or dry weather) to indulge, and my traveling companions wouldn't have thought plant ID was very much fun as I would have. It would have been nice to have had my laptop; my notes would have been much richer than the scribble jots on my little hip pocket notebook.

The most astounding thing about this plant life was its size. I attribute this to the ample supply of moisture and to the generally moderate temperatures affected by the warm Pacific currents. But then, there is Bergman's Rule that I remember from college days that says as you go north, species size tends to increase. This holds for animals (body mass and heat production and such) but I don't think it really applies to plants. But that's for later contemplation. I digress.

Familiar things--rhododendrons, hastas, bracken ferns--were multiples of the same species here at home. A single rhododendron flower was 6 inches across, and bracken was as tall as my shoulder! There were dogwoods (genus Cornus, different species from here at home) that were 40 feet tall and a foot across. We saw hemlocks (western, not the doomed eastern species), with striking similarities to ours in the young trees, but the mature trees grow tall and limbless, and are not all dying. And cedars--typically small pasture invaders here--are massive, wonderfully fragrant giants. I found myself just wanting to lay my hands on the trunks of the largest trees, as if I could absorb their history, their antiquity and power through my fingertips and hear a hymn of the earth.

Foxglove (four feet tall!) is a predominant understory plant, and was just before blooming along the forest edges on Bowen when we were there. And the Salmonberry (obviously a form of Rubus, or raspberry whose early fruits are pale orange, the color of salmon flesh) were just beginning to set fruit. Ferns grow in the absolute shade of the forest floor where enormous trees grow from the fallen bodies or stumps of their predecessors, age upon age. And the ferns are huge: a single Sword Fern plant (I could tell at first glance it was a relative of our little Christmas Fern, and turns out to be in the same genus) can be taller than my head, a single plant spreading to cover 50 square feet. This species is amazingly efficient at covering every square foot of understory in many places--a sea of fernery, a wonderful monotony I could not capture in the dim light, but have stored in the film of memory.

(The image above is Bigleaf Maple--a massive tree, its opposite leaves a foot across.)

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Back in April, I asked my Human Anatomy and Physiology class (mostly nursing students) how many had read about the H5N1 bird flu pandemic potential. Not a single one of them had heard of it. It was a big story six months ago. It has gotten bigger. And yet, we blow it off as if it were a Michael Crighton storyline. It isn't.

Salon.com News | "The main bioterrorist is nature herself." A Dutch expert on viruses warns that bird flu is a huge threat to humankind and urges scientists to cooperate in tracking it."

Flu pandemic looms, experts warn world | Many millions will die if Southeast Asian bird virus mutates to lethal form, spreads.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic'
"Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic' Expert warns estimate of 7.5m global deaths is optimistic "

Channelnewsasia.com | "A human flu pandemic could cause 20 percent of the world's population to become ill," said Ron Fouchier, Thijs Kuiken, Guus Rimmelzwaan and Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, quoting figures from a 2004 study. Within a few months, close to 30 million people would need to be hospitalised, a quarter of whom would die. Although these figures are speculative, they are among the more optimistic predictions of how the next flu pandemic might unfold."

What are your state and national health care officials doing in preparation for the possibility?

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__THE GARDEN__ Yesterday, I drove to Christiansburg solely for the purpose of picking up bell pepper sets and the usual bulk seeds (Kentucky Wonder, Silver Queen, Yellow Straight Neck, etc) from Southern States so we could get the garden going. Nada. Sold out. Zippo. I did find what I'd come to town for at a new nursery near Kroger, and when I got home, my seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange was in the mail. So I was on my knees in the dirt last night until after 9:00, and will be back out there through the weekend working frantically against our short growing season. I have this feeling we're in for a dry summer, so I'm lightly trenching my paths between rows so I can use my little battery-powered pump to pull creek water (as long as it lasts: it dried up completely the summer of '02) to irrigate.

__THE COMPUTER__ No, not yet. Watching the ship date jump between May 25 and June 7 and everywhere in between, I called yesterday to find out what's going on (assuming someone there actually would know.) No one knew. Until finally, they figured out that the memory upgrade I ordered, well, that part had been given a new number that the computer couldn't see, so it kept kicking it into the DUH pile. I'm told to expect a call today and a $50 reduction the price and overnight shipping. Not holding my breath.

__THE WORK__ I agreed to be a scorer for some reading comprehension studies in which Biology majors at Radford have been given articles to critique, both early and late in their academic careers, to measure any improvement. I have somewhere between 120 and 160 of them to score according to a 9-element rubric. I figure if I can score 10 a day (about 2 hrs worth) I'll make the deadline easily. This is a paid endeavor I can do from home, no driving, no prep. I took it on to pay for my laptop. What laptop?

__SMALL WORLD__ Turns out (thanks for the heads-up from Andy) that Chris Corrigan was waiting for the ferry, delayed almost an hour by the rescue at sea I blogged this morning. He was waiting to get on the ferry we got off of. I would have loved to have gotten in touch with Chris, who lives on Bowen, to at least have him point out some don't-miss places on the island. But our stay was to be so short, and I didn't know what other obligations there might be, traveling with son and wife. I do certainly have a greater appreciation for Chris's environment now, and should we ever go back, I'm hoping for the grand tour.

__BLOGGER MEETUP__ We're looking forward next week to a sighting, and new species to add to our life list. Blogger-birders Pica and Numenius from Feathers of Hope (California) will be spending Monday night with us. We met first over two years ago, drawn together over the site for place blogging that ultimately came to have the name, Ecotone--a term I borrowed from ecology, meaning "a place where habitats come together." Ecotone is in a state of reorganization, soon, perhaps, to live a second life with a new front end and modified focus. I'm sure, in addition to birding, we'll have a chance to discuss this future in which the group of twenty or more 'regulars' from Ecotone past will have a chance to share our thoughts, and our places, once again. Many Fragments' newer readers would feel at home there as well.

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Rivendell Retreat Center is a beautiful place (pictures to come), but after two days of cold rain, we were ready to be back in the comfort of a hotel room for a while between outtings with our son and his friends in Vancouver. His friend, J, was to pick us up at 11:15 at the Ferry Terminal just a few water-miles from the shore of Bowen Island. I'd been watching the water with my binoculars from the window of our room; the waters were choppy but nothing the large, stable ferry couldn't handle. Sun was breaking out weakly here and there, but the wind would be worse on the water than in our sheltered place on the hill above the harbor.

The ferry arrived and boarded on time. There were only perhaps 40 people leaving the island with us, so we found a comfortable place at the bow for the thirty minute ride to shore. Even as we waited to depart, I stood at the large windows, saying my farewells. I was fascinated by the vertical shoreline at low tide, mesmerized by the newborn clouds rising and growing from the wet forest, lifting like spirits on invisible eddies of cool salty air. It was an atmosphere alien to a Virginian. We would not likely be back. Look. See it whole. Breathe it in and remember. And we were on our way.

I saw it but didn't think anything of it: a small spot of orange bobbing in and out of the swells, far to the north of our path. A woman standing at the window was watching it as we came within a quarter mile. "It's a little boat, I think. Yes, someone is standing. Waving. I think they might be in trouble."

A short while later, the captain of the ferry announced we'd be stopping to investigate a possible distress situation and offer aid. By then, I had my long lens on and was watching as the bow of the small craft rose at a steep angle from the waves, then disappeared, each time rising less and less. In a minute, only the warning orange jackets of the two occupants showed intermittently above the foam. The ferry moved their way cautiously as the tiny boat rolled on its side; the orange bouys of several crab pots floated off in the direction of the stiff winds. The two men were bobbing reassuringly--at least they wore life preservers--but the water was still little warmer that it was in winter, and the wind was biting. They would not last but a few minutes before their arms grew numb from hypothermia and they would lose consciousness.

By then, everyone on the ship was standing at the bow windows watching the drama unfold. A small rescue boat was launched from the ferry. With no small difficulty, the two men were pulled from the frigid water as their boat drifted to our starboard, keel to the tattered sky, crab pots bobbing randomly away. The two had been out of the boat for perhaps five minutes, in a boat half full of water for at least twice that long. They were probably within minutes of losing the ability to hold their heads above water. Here is a closeup of the two as the rescue boat approached the ferry near the end of this ordeal at sea.

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Rain or shine, Vancouver BC is a city of walkers. Out our hotel window we could see folks sitting on park benches along English Bay, no hat, no umbrella--in a heavy drizzle. Water must be like a second skin for these people. They think nothing of being wet. In an hour it can stop and start raining a dozen times, so you can't really wait for 'good' weather to leave the house. There is so much to see, the air feels so good, and places are made for those who walk, jog, bike, skate or swim. There are many dogs on leashes, or well-behaved at the water's edge. It seems a hard place for man or beast to stay inside for very long.

While we were in town, we had ample opportunity to enjoy the wetness as a low pressure cell hung over the Pacific. Only on Monday, our last day, did we see a patch of blue bigger than your hand against the sky. The winds blew, and the temperature didn't make it out of the 50s but for an hour all together. We could dress for that, or work our day around it, but dim light and blowing rain didn't bode well for the camera. Even at its light-gathering best, the shots I'd envisioned just weren't going to come to light. Literally.

On one of our umbrella-walks on Sunday--our second night at the Sylvia on the west side of downtown--as we approached Stanley Park, I heard what I assumed was a chorus of frogs. The raucous calls were coming from the trees. It had to be tree frogs. I'd never heard such a dense cluster of any other invisible creature calling back and forth in great numbers; and the wet weather seemed perfect for amphibians, didn't it? But wait. What were those manhole-cover-sized clumps of sticks in the branches--ten in this tree, half again as many in that one there? And I could see movement, but in the dismal light against the somber sky, it could have been anything. Anything but frogs. Birds. Had to be birds, and large ones at that.

I soon discovered that it was a Great Blue Heron rookery, not a block from the nearest highrise apartment buildings. I was determined to come back the next morning as the sun (it seemed remotely possible) rose over the straight line of the eastern horizon, its rays slanting back into the dark shadows. I would get my shot of a heron mother feeding her young that I imagined. By the time I was conjuring this outting for the next day, Ann had caught up with me. After one whiff of heron rookery, she announced she would be going gift shopping upwind while I stalked the birds.

There near the nesting trees on Monday morning, I got in a conversation with the tennis pro clearing the nearby tennis courts of the past night's rain. April was the time to be here, he said. No leaves, lots of eggs, then chicks, and you can watch the whole cycle. Now the canopy had filled in, and the juveniles were tall and lanky, and hard to tell from the parents. He told about a time some weeks back when a Bald Eagle had fallen from the sky like a rock, straight down into a heron nest. Just above the heads of the amazed onlookers on the courts, the huge bird had flown off clutching two heron chicks, while being mobbed by a half dozen crows. Now that would have been a photographic moment!

I brought just a few pictures back from that outting--just enough to remember this most unexpected opportunity to stand in the midst of 75 heron nests. Well, not in the midst, exactly. That would have been foolhardy. Even with the umbrella.

Here's a series of heron silhouettes that I'm thinking might look nice in a thin silver frame.

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We arrived home from Vancouver at midnight, which the previous week had been 9:00 Floyd time, which is our usual bedtime, except in Vancouver that was 6:00 local time, and not convenient for our social life. And so my wristwatch alarm went off at 5:45 this morning as it did yesterday for us to make it to the airport, except today it would be 2:45 a.m. of the past week. More coffee, and then I think I'm going back to bed until my usual 4:30, which is 7:30 Floyd time. My body is so confused.

I have almost a gigabyte of images (including maybe four suitable for framing) mostly of "Now take one with Nathan (our son) standing with/in front of the ______." I have an equal volume of mental notes, including highlighted bullets: bust at the airport, midnight smoke alarm, rescue at sea, daylight car-thievery, and the OJ Airport Run. And like the images, most of the words are of personal but not necessarily Fragments-friends interest. So, how to handle all of this? Probably a Vancouver Journal with 5-6 abbreviated parts, accompanied by images, then a couple of thumbnail webpage slideshows of 5-8 images each as I'm able over the next week or so.

Meanwhile, the emailbox overfloweth. The grass is high, but not as bad as we'd imagined as it has been as cool here as it was in BC (highs in the low 50s--not the tourist's ideal, but coulda been worse.) I have a temporary bit of paid work I have to start today and stick with til it's done (about 40 hours worth) that will eat into my blogging-image tinkering time. And the garden MUST be planted before the weekend--although the soil is so cool bean seeds or corn will likely rot.

But I must confess, it feels good to be sitting in a place that fits, where the mess is mine alone, and the time, and it is so very placid and still. Cities are nice, friends and family are the essence of our lives, but there's no place like home. I've missed the quiet. Well, it won't be long before we have to go to town and retrieve a BONKERS labrador retriever from Puppy Camp. I'll be checking back in with a few posts later today, if possible. I'll assume there might be a few folks still hanging around. I've missed the conversation, even though I've held up my end of it by the hundred blog posts I've composed in my mind since last Wednesday. Later on!

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Too much to tell and all thumb-tied on son's computer. but we survived the sardinifcation of air travel and have recovered from pretzel toxicity and just now setting off for BC campus (Ann not thrilled that I am thrilled at prospect of visiting the Bot. Gardens!). The plant life here is all of the Miracle Grow variety. Just walking the neighborhood here I am astounded. And befuddled. Who are these strange plants, anyway! More perhaps later!

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Later this morning, we leave for a week away. When we come back from the west-est we've ever been, there will be the mountain of mail to sort and bills to pay. There will be emails to respond to and company coming in several waves. Also, I'll have over 100 essays to score (more about that later), my laptop will (theoretically) arrive; the garden will need planting (late but better than never) and the grass will be knee high. I'll be pushing a deadline for the next newspaper column and of course will want to spend a couple of days going over the pictures and journal notes from the trip to Vancouver. Will I ever find my way back to the Lost Blog?

But not to panic. It might be possible to use my son's laptop and blog from the road a time or two before we get back. But this feels like adios. Will the last Fragments reader kindly turn out the lights?

Meanwhile, you might browse the image galleries. There have been additions to several of them since the last time you wandered over there. You can start with the larger image of the Fire Pink that I took yesterday afternoon, then click through as many images or galleries as you have time for. I feel sure a Vancouver Gallery will go up as I can get to it upon our return. Or you can be more passive and watch the Flickr Slide Show of smaller images recently uploaded there. And thanks, Ian, I'm enjoying my Pro account!

Do email or comment if so inclined. I'll check in from time to time to be sure you're not squabbling among yourselves. Don't make me stop this blog and come back there!

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Nature can be seen sharp and clear through the eyes of the scientist or shrouded in mystery and wonder by the poet-writer.

The scientist's eye sees fact: four fronds of Interrupted Fern viewed from above to show the newly unfurling sterile portion rising above the fertile pennae, dark and full of spores, below.

The writer's imagination sees through simile and metaphor: four wizened birds--like the Skeksis in Dark Crystal--standing in council, their dark arms cloaked in robes, outstretched. I could hear their chanting.

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which one class of things is referred to as if it belonged to another class. Whereas a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A.

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I've been giving a lot of thought lately to what kinds of veggies I'll put in this year's garden. Every year there are new vegetable varieties created by various kinds of genetic intervention to build a greener bean, sweeter beet or (if possible) a less disgusting rutabaga. It's amazing, really, what science has been able to do with the plants we are closest to--the ones that feed us and keep body and soul together.

But I've been wondering lately if it isn't time to take a similarly aggressive approach to changes in the gene lines of that most prominent fixture in our American culture: the family dog. While in some countries, they wok the dog, in America, man's best friend has become a furry scion of the culture and homes he lives in--an American idol, if you will. But the times have changed, my friends, while the American Kennel Club's list of bona fide breeds of dog has stayed monotonously the same for far too long. It is time we rise up to demand changes in our pooches that fit our lifestyles, values and deep (and wide)-seated needs for comfort and companionship. We need best friends that are more like us.

And so just to start the process, here is a partial list of canine change that will bring our closest nonhuman family members even closer to a perfect fit with our Truly American Lives.

First, it seems obvious that in our ample-rumped society, our dogs should also reflect our love affair with the calorie. And so for the breed that has heretofore been known as the Great Dane, we will add genes for increased appetite and decreased activity and call the new breed the GREAT DANISH. Expect these to grow into the 275 to 350 pound range and need special accommodations. Likewise, we can reflect this same gusto for biggie-sizing by a slight modification of appetite in the breed formerly known as the ChowChow, henceforth to be called the ChowChowChow.

Ah, we do love our One Eyed Brain Suckers. And so, for this breed, genes have been selected that add high tolerance to commercials, car crashes, hiphop and cleavage. He will sit unblinkingly beside you for hours and watch whatever you're watching, but prefers MTV and reality shows. The new breed, derived by genetically lobotomizing the Pointer will be called the POINTLESS. Also in this same familial grouping of entertainment pets, welcome the very wiggly and incessantly-barking Brittany Spears Spaniel.

And although we are predominately a lethargic and inactive people--reaping the benefits of oh-so-many labor-saving devices that make the physical world no more than a painful memory--we do take spells where we still remember fresh air and exercise. And along with us, goes the family dog. Designed primarily for college-aged owners, the FrizBeagle has been endowed with Popeye-like back legs and can catch the high-flying disk that once would have gone over the park fence and into the campus fountain recently filled with laundry detergent.

Reflecting our beverage of choice, expect the BeerFetcher, a dog for the Common Man (a hybrid form of the former St. Bernard; the Perrier Terrier; and from the former Jack Russell Terrier, look for the Jack Daniels Terrier.

I should tell you that there are some breed name changes not accompanied by genetic alteration. Since nobody names their children Bernard any more, that breed will become the Saint Bob. And yielding to pressure from the Evangelical Pet Owners Alliance, the little long-haired dog whose name could not be spoken in mixed company will henceforth be called the SHUCKS TSU.

Finally, how could our family pet not share our love for things electronic? And so the dog breeders have responded. Soon to appear in the Kennel Club list: a small mobile breed based on the Wire Fox Terrier. It has a chip embedded in its doggie brain that can be controlled by remote control software that will come standard on Dells, HPs and other popular laptop computers. The breed will be called the Wireless Fox Terrier. Not to be outdone, the folks at Macintosh have hired their own team of breeders to create the functionally similar iPoodle, sure to draw a rabidly devoted band of owner-users. Related to our need for better portability in our pets, the Mexican Hairless, with some modifications to its calcium metabolism, will become the Mexican Boneless. It can easily conform to those tiny, odd compartments in your laptop bag or Attache case (this limp little pup is also sometimes referred to as the Attachehuahua.)

Well there you have a preliminary listing of breeds under consideration or in process as we speak. With our knowledge of both the doggie and human genome, direct gene sharing between man and dog isn't far off. Perhaps soon, we'll be able to acquire some canine genes directly into our own chromosomes! The possibilities are mind-boggling. Meanwhile, the breeders are listening. Send me your suggestions and I'll be sure and pass them along.

Posted by fred1st at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

They have some of the same magical properties as mushrooms that appear on a lawn suddenly. The round, green tops of mayapple dot the meadow one morning, and within an hour, the twisted umbrellas begin to unfurl, carpeting the gray waste of winter with green parasols as far as the eye can see. But in this cool spring, it has taken a long while for the peltate leaves to lift up on a stalk, or stalks. Those plants that bear two leaves give rise to flower and fruit in the axils. Their leaves, held parallel to the earth and a foot above it, form a carpet of lilypads on solid-earth dry-ground under forest.

Missing the short period of flowering in years past, I've not captured a picture of this variously-named familiar resident of our meadow. Yesterday, between storms, we took our usual loop to the back of the pasture along the creek, and since the nothing we found two days before, there were mayapple flowers in abundance. But to get the shot I envisioned, I would have to lie full-prone on the soggy ground and get my viewfinder at ankle-level. I was torn--between getting the image and staying out of the leaf mold. I leaf molded, and here's the proof.

I've rendered this image as closely to the way I saw it (and sensed it in other ways) as I am able. Especially I wanted a sense of the unusual flower of Mayapple. Its petals are thick, waxy and off-white--and as translucent to the weak light of an overcast day as the leaves appear when you are face on the ground, looking up through them from the wet ground. The waxy flower could be made of icey slush or from thin wafers of soap soaked clear, a barely solid cup of rain-sap hiding under a frog umbrella.

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You start a blog, not knowing exactly where it will go or even why you feel compelled to pour your thoughts and hopes out for all to read. But you do it, and you stay faithful. Readers come, and as they do, you begin to respond to these not-quite-strangers who look from the outside at your life. You find something from the legion of ideas and visions that flood in with the first cup of morning coffee--something that gives those visitors a way to know what appears out your window when the sun comes up. Dear lord, they genuinely seem interested! And after a couple of years of this, you look behind you at the cration that has taken shape from this voice, this edifice of words, these images in words and pixels. And you wonder: could there be the kernel of something larger here? From all these fragments of what the seasons have shown me, could there be a book?

And of course there COULD be. That is not really the question. The physical act of binding pages together is trivial, easy and cheap. The question is not could, but should. The weblog has given so many a platform to entertain, to educate, to provoke debate. And not a few, like my friend David, have decided "yes" to the should. It should be a book because it scratches where they (and their readers) itch. It should be a book because their test market of blog readers have responded by wanting more, wanting to own a piece of your wit or wisdom or whimsy. It should be a book, they have decided, because it has somehow birthed itself (with or without the purpose early on to create a book) after months or years of gestation, and the labor pains are too intense to hold it in the dark any longer.

Last spring, I thought and talked about the book idea often. (A proposed cover letter and description of the book is here.) But I had not convinced myself that my reasons for creating a book equalled an unqualified YES that it SHOULD be done. In truth, part of my motive then, I am certain, was merely that I longed to have something tangible to hold in my hands and say "here's what I've been doing with my life since I leapt off the edge of the professional world. This has been why I get up every day. See. My life has not been wasted." While at the same time, what would have appeared between the covers, while having some fair passages and nice phrases here and there, didn't justify the imperatives of ought or should. It was merely something that COULD be done. And then the teaching job came along (for which I am very thankful) and that was the end of those energies toward a book. At least on the surface.

And all along, another hindrance to full investment in the idea that a book should be birthed was this: I never came to grips with the fact (or assumption) that a traditional book couldn't contain images. Seeing seems so tied to saying for me. So much of what I have to say is either stimulated by what I see and photograph or the words (to me at least) are fleshed out by the color, form and meaning of the image paired with the little narratives or fantasies or interpretations from nature close by. And so of late, the multimedia possibilities of something on a CD or DVD--where both the full-res images AND the words could easily go hand in hand--has been of interest. But this form lacks the tactile pleasure of holding a book in ones hands. So, whether I'm any closer to having that concrete raison d'etre sitting on my desk, that thing I can point to as the product of this latest life chapter, I cannot say. But I'm astudying on it, as my old neighbor used to say.

I do know that now, another year along, I have a better idea of what the pieces are. How to weave them together successfully into a larger work I am proud of--I lack that insight yet. This will be one of the things I'll be hoping to have some help with at Hindman later this summer. And I can pretty well say with certainty that summer won't be long enough to finish it, should I start; should the lights pour from heaven and my epiphany show me where to go, and how. Once classes start back in late August, the muse chokes on chalkdust and skulks off to the barn loft to hide. And so it goes.

* A Blook is a book that has arisen out of someone's blog. Don't look it up. It is a Fredism.

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There is something about the grace and simplicity of form and color here that seems very artsy to me. My compliments to the spider. (Larger image here.)

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When I woke this morning, the once-supple cords and bands on the right side of my neck had turned to taut and painful cables of steel. In my family, we would describe this phenomenon as a "crick" in your neck. However you name it, it's not welcome feature here a few days before our trip to Vancouver.

But I figure it's just anticipatory. Why wait to develop neck pain only after the 12 hours of air travel with ill fitting head rests and fitful naps that end with you waking to find your head firmly against your sternum and drool on your shirt pocket?

Why defer musculoskeletal tension until AFTER you've lifted, pulled and carried camera bag, day bag and suitcases for the equivalent of 22 city blocks at a full trot? Why not go ahead and get your neck pain and be done with it, or at least be used to it BEFORE sleeping on as many as six alien lumpy or limp pillows in the coming week?

Usually it's AFTER I've spent from Roanoke to Minneapolis peering obsessively out of the tiny window off my right shoulder that I have a stiff neck. This time, I shopped early to avoid the rush. Arrrrgggghhhhh.

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From my biweekly column, The Road Less Traveled, in the Floyd Press, May 12, 2005. In light of the previous entry topic from yesterday's paper, this little essay was timely. I thought I'd share it with the internet audience as well.

Before we moved into our first home in an older neighborhood of Wytheville long ago, I had never owned a tree. But then on that first day as new homeowners, eighteen trees belonged to us in a personal forest out our back door! We could enjoy their foliage as it changed colors through the seasons. Or I supposed that we could cut a tree or two, or all of them, for firewood--as we, the new land owners, saw fit. Ownership, so it seemed, had made us masters of the tiny bit of nature we had come to own by signing the deed of possession.

A few years later, we moved from town to the country, and that first tiny forest of eighteen trees was surpassed on our little farm by a woodlot of twelve acres. My wife and I and our two children lived in those woods and in the pasture and garden as much as we lived in the country farmhouse. The land soon became much more to us than real estate we had purchased. Living in nature's cycles and seasons, we understood that owning land was both a relationship and an obligation: yes, we owned the land but we also owed back to it. We loved and cared for the place over several years, and we cared greatly about what would happen to it in the hands of the next owners. They could and would do with it whatever suited their values and their own particular land ethic. It grieved us to know that our influence on land we loved would end the instant we signed over the deed to others when we moved away.

And now in our settled years, we have come to rest on Goose Creek in Floyd County. Our valley bears a thin sliver of open pasture surrounded by a vast forest on ridges that go on beyond our boundaries as far as the eye can see. We walk the trails we've worn beside the creeks and along the ridges. Soon now, once again there will be blackberries to pick behind the house from the timbered clearings where a young white pine forest grows with adolescent vigor. From the top of these hills in every season we see beyond us the grandeur of what John Muir called "a cathedral made without hands." This is the land of which we have become a part; it is the world to which we now belong.

But, as I've come to think since living under those eighteen trees, maybe we don't really own trees or land in the same sense that we don't own the air we breathe or these borrowed bodies. All of our material possessions of body and property seem more like a loan to us for our short time here. To my way of thinking, we are obliged to care for nature's resources and gifts with a vision that extends beyond our short lives and short-sighted self-interests. Without thought for protection after we're gone, this beautiful rural land could all become nothing more than a commodity--a real estate jewel to be cut over, then dissected into smaller and smaller tracts over the years.

I think you'll agree that we are abundantly blessed with nature's resources in southwest Virginia. But it is a precarious wealth, and once lost, there will be no paradise regained. There are unfortunate examples in many mountain communities where haphazard growth has forever altered the rhythms and scale of a pleasant place.

But the good news is that it is not too late to think together about the ridges, vistas, forests and watersheds of Floyd County that could be sheltered from damaging and unintended change. I have the hope that if we put our heart and our minds to it soon, we can achieve a healthy balance between land use for the common good and land protection for the longer view. It will depend on how we come to understand the personal rights and public obligations of ownership. In the end, maintaining the rural lifestyle and charm that we love about this place may just come down to how we regard the eighteen trees or eighteen acres out our own back doors.

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According to the local paper (as reported by the local newspaperman, Doug Thompson, Special to the Press) the most recent Floyd Board of Supervisors meeting revealed that already this year, 144 subdivision parcels have been granted. This compares to 159 for all of last year. This rate of growth, while alarming, has gained the attention and concern of the Board. Asking what can be done to slow this process down, the only response was that at present, there was no legal way to refuse the applications. What that suggests is that the current legal framework for county developement must be amended to allow for controlled and proactive growth.

Fortunately, we have not reached the point of no return. We can still take a nibble from the other pill, if you will. But county officials are going to have to chose the lesser of two evils, and soon. It is much easier to control development before it happens than to realize too late that we don't have the water, sewer, roads or other infrastructure to handle it--much less, to suffer the aesthetic consequences of unplanned growth.

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A cranefly (often mistaken for gigantic mosquitoes) rests on a half-matured Interrupted Fern. Truth is, crane flies (depending on the species) either don't feed at all as adults or feed briefly on nectar. They are weak fliers and can grow quite large, and look to me like flying granddaddy longlegs. Their larvae are aquatic, so of course we have rather many of them down here along the creeks.

And since several of you mentioned EATING fern fiddleheads, I wouldn't: unless you're sure that you are NOT eating the globally-ranging Bracken Fern, which is carcinogenic. Eaten and enjoyed are the very similar fiddleheads of Ostrich Fern, which we don't have down this far south. I know it from one specimen at Mt. Lake Biological Station, and like it because its name is fun to say: Matteuchia struthioptheris.

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Laptop The IBM Thinkpad that will replace the dead Dell Inspiron will not ship until June some time. I'm disappointed, of course. I'd hoped to use it on our Vancouver trip next week--to upload images from my camera; to use online maps to plan our city excursions; to blog from the road in a more serious travel-writer fashion. But that won't happen. Still, I'll have it by late July and my trip to Hindman; and I'll be able to use it from campus when I go back to teaching in late August. It's not that I'm bored without a new hard drive to feed and coddle.

Hindman: I'm getting an influx of "Where I'm From" poems again after a bit of a lull. I may indeed reach 100 by June. (Getting those new entries into the list is one of the little wildebeests I spoke of earlier.) We're also featuring two more WIF's submitted last month in response to my newspaper column where I introduced local readers to the poem template. And, at Hindman, I will get to meet George Ella Lyons who created the original WIF and show her the long list of creative responses she's spawned. That will be an interesting experience, I'm certain.

Vancouver: We will be rolling stones next week, spending our first and last nights there with our son in his house (along with a half-dozen other residents); Thursday and Sunday nights at the Sylvia Hotel in downtown near Stanley Park; and Friday and Saturday nights in the bush (at a retreat center). I got a one-gigabyte card for the camera this week, and anticipate filling it rather quickly. We've never been to the left coast, and that far north only when we went to Ireland three Mays ago. We leave Wednesday, and are beginning to enter that period of nervous excitement where the details of travel are both exhilirating and tedious (another wildebeest!)

Missing in Action: I had agreed to be a scorer for some writing samples generated by biology students. It would be a decent chunk of change to work from home, spread out over what I had thought would be almost six weeks. I could easily do ten hours of grading a week and have it done with room to spare. But as of yesterday, I still had not received the papers from the college. I am NOT interested in carrying 160 essays to Vancouver, and wonder what I should do. I was counting on the money to assauge my guilt over buying the laptop; but I don't need it so much that I'm willing to sacrifice my vacation to finish this onerous task now two weeks behind where I hoped it would be. What to do?

Open Air: Today, the screens need to go back up on the windows. The days are warming up, the nights still cool, and without air conditioning, we become personally and perpetually tuned into the season, anticipating temperature mins and maxes to manually thermoregulate and keep things cozy inside the house. If we open the windows at night--even on the warmest nights of the summer--the house will cool to the mid to upper 60's. During the day, we close up the windows after about 8:00 in the morning, and it will warm a maximum of about 8 degrees from the overnight indoor temp. With the two ceiling fans, we're rarely too warm inside. It takes a while to get used to the night noises: the shush of the creek, the wind in the new leaves and the known and unknown sounds of creatures mating or predating in the pasture and meadow. We heard the whippoorwills once already; the night insects, frogs and toads along the creek, and snorting deer will enter our dreams soon. But first, I have to clean the windows and window sills, dust off the screens and get them back in place. To-do list item number 8.

Posted by fred1st at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

...post a picture instead. (click for enlargement.)

It's not that I'm in a negative state of mind this morning. It is only that I don't seem to be able to focus on any one thing out of the swarm of wildebeest swirling around me. The little to-do items are not large, but there are so many of them, and like the herd tactic of giving the predator so many potential targets he can't chose the weakest or most likely to fall, my tasks are slippery this morning. They just don't want to let me pull one away from the pack to attack, wrestle it to the ground, and subdue it.

Sometimes the best way to tease out that one do-able thing is to look away, to catch the day in peripheral vision, to pretend you aren't really watching after all. Post a picture that has nothing at all to do with what looms ahead after the sun rises. As it will. As it did yesterday while I was looking for spider webs along the creek. And spider web pictures are soon to come.

Posted by fred1st at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

I have been following the avian flu situation and am concerned. Many governments around the world are sitting on their hands, facing a plague of historical proportion while recently, the death of a single American woman in a coma consumed countless column-inches of newsprint and national energy. Let's get our medical-ethical decision making in some kind of perspective already! Folks, I'd suggest you treat this with your full attention. At least discuss this with your doctor; Tamiflu is still available. It won't be if this hits the US or eastern Europe. So far, there is no vaccine, and if one is developed, there are not likely to be nearly enough doses of the strain-du-jour to go around. Preventing the disease may not be possible. Preventing the spread will take education, and it will take drastic reorganization in travel, commerce and community life for many months. This is a governmental issue, and not much seems to be happening in this country.

From a letter to the British Medical Journal: (excerpt)

"Governments around the world must stop burying their heads in the sand over the growing threat of a global epidemic of avian flu, argues a GP in this week's BMJ.

Disasters like the Asian Tsunami "pale into insignificance" compared to the human cost of an influenza pandemic, says Dr Higson, which will wipe out "hundreds of millions" of lives if it is not prevented.

A recent report in the BMJ showed that avian flu (called H5N1) is beginning to jump from human to human - as opposed to transmission from bird to human only, as happened initially. This vastly increases the potential for spreading the virus across the population, as infection no longer depends on direct contact with diseased birds."

While this outbreak of 10,000 flu cases now in Hong Kong is not H5N1, when the first confirmed flu outbreak of this scope does appear anywhere in the world, this virulent strain will have fully mutated into a human-to-human form, and will likely run its course as other flu pandemics of the past, with the added vector of international travel tossed in.

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They are almost impossible to photograph effectively. They are many times taller than wide, lack showy parts like flowers, and the least wind sets them swaying in and out of focuse. And yet ferns are some of the most magnificent greenery on the planet. I set out one day last week determined to come home with a few keepers, and have five I'm willing to share.

The first image (and second and third) will be different views of Interrupted Fern, so called because the frond is broken in the middle by the reproductive parts with vegetative parts above and below. This little glade is about two hundred yards from my desk, and catches the light now about 8:30 as the sun lifts over the eastern ridge. It is lit for perhaps 20 minutes before spending the rest of the day in cool shade on the banks of Goose Creek. (View the larger version.)

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Saturday, 4:30 am. I woke up--as usual--at 4:30, and had nowhere to go in the dark. But the early hours of sleep were so fitful, thanks to the nextdoor camper's midnight party, that I was able to stay wadded up in the back of the Subaru til first light. Cold. Thermometer says 34 degrees. Calm. If I can heat up some water for coffee, it won't seem so cold and that will help me wake up. I rehearse in my mind where all the necessary parts are, scattered in my gear. Stove. Matches. Cook kit. Spoon. Cup. Coffee. Coffee? There's the one thing I forgot that really matters. I ate a tupperwear bowlful of cereal with very cold milk while standing in the cheerless crepuscular light of a quiet campground. My hands were by then rigid with cold, so I packed my things into the car as if I were tossing trash into a dumpster, and left. I would head up mountain to Elk Garden Gap, into the first sun, eat my banana, maybe take a picture or two, and stretch out in the front seat and catch another half hour of sleep before the field trips started at 8:00.

Saturday, 10:00 am. The half mile walk is over. I had maybe 18 folks--including several students and their instructor from a landscape class at the community college in Abingdon. It went well, I think, but I will tell you, I was disappointed in what we say--or I should say, in what we didn't see. I know this path well from leading trips around it 11 times in years past, going back to 1976. And it has changed, none for the better. Of course in that period of time, there will be some natural change in forest 'succession' and it will be a more mature forest overstory and understory. But I counted no fewer than 8 species we used to see, and see in abundance, that were missing. And it has just occurred to me that one large boulder, where I used to stop and talk about the "rock tripe" lichen that covered the rock--there were none to talk about. I wonder if something larger is at work to change this untouched cove forest hillside. Acid rain? UV-B from the ozone depletion? What?

But then, I've never watched a forest evolve over 30 years before. Maybe the 'good old days' when we'd come back at the end of the trip and count 40 species in flower was just the peak of conditions that favor that particular assortment of Appalachian flowering plant. The old chestnut stump in the image above (or this enlargment) is a reminder that only in our short and finite presence in them are forests changeless. If we could see the ten thousand-year history of any one acre of hardwood forest, I'm sure we'd be amazed at the rise and fall, the dominance and subordinance of species, large and small. In my life, this few acres of rich hillside at Grindstone Nature Trail has been a relative constant that I imagine as immutable as the granite boulders along the trail. But it isn't after all, is it?

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I hear the announcement of a new "reality" series coming up on television, and it just makes me giggle that we don't have any sort of connection to the TV waves. The risk of that stuff turning our brains to a gray goo is a threat we are totally immune to. But when I read about something I'd really benefit from watching, the fact we are reception-less is not such a happy fact.

A new three-hour series called simply "The Appalachians" has been airing across the country last month and this. I sure wish I could see it. Anybody Tivo? According to the airtime schedule, the ship has sailed most places or the schedule doesn't say when the broadcast is or was. I do notice in North Carolina it will broadcast on UNCTV to the entire state tonight, 8-11 pm. Anybody snags that, I'll gladly buy you a DVD disk, pay shipping and return a batch of Ann's Cookies and a Fragments CD Slide Show.

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Would you want to live longer? Much longer? This recent experiment in mice may hold clues to significantly longer lives in humans someday if we can learn to clean the body of "free radicals". How long would you want to live? I think given the current population of the world (not to mention its current state) I'd be happy with three score and ten (and maybe a bonus 10 or 15). But maybe the better news in this report, I think, is that a reduction of free radicals could also mean a longer life with less pain resulting from abnormal wear and tear and the pain of disease.

Pain is much more widespread than is commonly recognized, and it's costs are staggering. We have just recently begun to understand chronic pain and the toll it takes on individual lives, and we certainly haven't dealt effectively with its management. Most people don't appreciate that long-term 'chronic' pain has an entirely different mechanism than finger-on-the-match instant, acute pain. If changes in how our bodies scavenge free radicals can reduce the pain that too often accompanies later decades of life, I'm all for an anti-aging miracle drug. Adding more years for a person to be riddled with pain and disability hardly makes sense.

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Back in the fall, we (read: Ann, the Catalogue Queen) ordered this silly 'face' to put on a tree in the yard. We'd seen one at a friend's place and "we" had to have one for ourselves. Don't know why it went unnoticed by Himself until yesterday.

But once it registered in his doggie brain, he was disturbed not a little. He kept going back to the tree, round and round, not barking or growling, but not wagging his tail, either. I think he was mostly disturbed because he couldn't find it's south end to sniff.

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The past century has seen the demise of entire biomes, not just the isolated microhabitats supporting single super-star species--the kind of early warning signs of planetary ill-health that humankind first experienced more than two hundred years ago in the twentieth century. Here, in 2175, the League of Global Municipalities has finally agreed collectively to make far-reaching and mandatory restrictions on polluting and energy-extravagant lifestyles; we have put away petty differences leading to war, and the world now considers other species--the ones that somehow have survived til now--as worthy to share this very limited planet with the 20 billion humans that populate almost every square mile of the globe.

There has been considerable excitement over the past weeks as scientists from many parts of the world converge on a small section of southwest Virginia. In a remnant of what once was a National Recreation area in the Mount Rogers region, several confirmed sightings have been reported in the past several months, including one short sequence of frames of movie film. There can be little doubt left now, and the nation waits anxiously for the official statement, to be coordinated simulataneously by several government agencies after protective measures can be put firmly in place. This legislation will insure continued breeding space for the several pairs believed to inhabit the once-isolated parts of mid-elevation southern slopes in Smyth, Tazewell and Washington counties.

It is a great time to be alive, given this reassurance that all the species that once migrated through this area were not entirely extirpated after all. It has been over a hundred years since the last South American rain forests were cleared, burned and replanted in grass to sustain the increasing demand for beef. And not only does the species, long thought extinct, still survive, but it is one of those former icons of the reliable return of spring to our lawns and fields, a familiar species found in both town and country, and easily recognized even by the smallest of children. It is a creature uniquely ours, once as much a part of our heritage and connection to country as the long-vanished-from-the-wild Bald Eagle.

Very soon, perhaps even later today, we will hear the announcement from government officials. And this will be a day to remember. This species may indeed have returned from the very edge of the long list of vanished creatures. Maybe today, we will learn for certain that the American Robin has survived!

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Friday, 3 pm I am settled in to my camping pad--#86 on the Groundhog loop--and doggone, before I set off to recon the nature trail for tomorrow, I think I'll pull out the folding chair, face the woods, and have a beer. Hey, this feels pretty good. When I used to come to these things, I'd usually bring students and didn't have much Fred time alone and quiet here. Dang, a lot of time has passed since then. Hard to believe these trees are thirty years older than the first time I saw them. And so are my old bones.

Time was, I wouldn't have sat for a minute after a two hour drive. And I can't tarry here too long now. I'll need to leave for dinner by 5:30 or so. But sitting feels so good, maybe I'll just throw the sleeping bag down over there in the shade and catch twenty winks. It smells good here--like moss and wet wood--and the air is about as clean as it gets in this part of the world. Yep, I'll nap a while now that it's quiet. Campground will start filling up directly.

Friday 7 pm There's quite a crowd here after a slow start. Folks are still coming in for the 6:00 chicken dinner (exactly the same menu every year now for 31 years!) prepared by the local ladies of Konnarock. Well let's see who's here: all together, there are at least a half dozen faculty from Radford, three of us leading walks tomorrow. And whaddaya know: I ran into our old friend Gary, who often haunts these kinds of outings when he's not doing his six months of nursing in some exotic place--Costa Rica of late, I think. He's back living in his hand-made house in Cripple Creek, between lady friends, gregarious and uninhibited as ever.

I sat across from him at dinner, facing away from the door. About half way through the meal, he looked up and howdied somebody coming in the door by the ticket table. "There's Barbara Kingsolver" he said. "She told me she was going to try to come." Turns out, she's married to an ornithologist (someone I knew, who used to lead trips here like I did long ago.) Gary went on to say "Until just a few days ago, Annie Dillard was coming with me. She had something come up at the last minute. I was looking forward to introducing her to Barbara; I thought they'd have a lot in common."

I tried not to act shocked. "We went canoeing a couple of weeks back. Annie told me she knew how to canoe. She didn't." (Both these writers have summer homes not far from Gary, and I imagine he's probably done odd jobs for one or both of them, jack of all trades that he's always been.) And no, I didn't beg Gary to introduce me. What was I going to say? Hi Barbara, I'm a writer too? Yes, in the same way that a mouse and mammoth are both mammals.

Friday, 10 pm This is the most crowded I've ever seen the campgrounds. And dang, my isolated pad #86 is now sandwiched between two groups with Coleman lanterns ablaze (so much for star watching). The outfit to starboard is a bunch of Very Young People--could be late college for all I know. Everybody under 30 looks like a kid to me anymore. But they are wound tight, and come to stay. At 10:00 they're cooking steaks and making merry. I just want to go to sleep. So I brush my teeth and crawl into the hatch of the Forester, where I've folded the back seats down and laid out my sleeping bag already. I nestle in and feel the tension melt at the end of a long, full day.

Well, crap. With the noise they're making I'll have to pull down the hatch if I'm going to get any sleep. But what I discovered is that the longest diagonal distance available in the back of a Subaru with the hatch down is about 3 inches shorter than it is to the end of my feet. Three times during the first hour of heehaw next door, I must have stretched out ever so slightly in my half-sleep, and nudged the hatch door with my feet. What's this? Why did it get both colder and noisier all of a sudden? Of course, the hatch had popped up and I had joined the party. Maybe I should go see if they have a steak left. I could tell I had a long night of fetal position ahead of me. And I wondered if Ann was lying awake just then, listening to the sounds of Goose Creek, imagining me under the stars, immersed in nature, sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Maybe, if I were 6 inches shorter.

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The path of least resistance: just buy whatever they sell at the local Southern States. For varieties, pick the same ones you bought last year, chosen at random from the two or three kinds they had left. Plant 'em, and good luck. This is pretty much how I dealt with garden planning last year. And I replanted beans twice, corn three times and didn't get an ear out of it. It probably was the wet season and all the shade from the walnuts we have since removed. But it may have just been bad seed.

So, this year, I think I'll not do what I've always done so to not get what I've always got. We will have the possibility for more light and heat to the garden this summer with the trees gone. Why not look for a differnt source of seeds, even though they will cost as much as 100% more? For all the effort that goes into bringing up a garden to fruit, it doesn't make sense to scrimp on seed at the front end.

And, I think I'll be more focused on open-pollinated varieties so we can save seeds from those plants that do best in our unique soil and habitat. I will be more methodical about keeping garden notes like I used to do, to learn each year from the successes and failures of each summer.

Here's a good article on "the best seed companies of North America" from Mother Earth News. I think I'm going to give one of these folks an order soon.

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Noon, Friday, May 06. When I left the house a while ago, I made no decision about what route I would take until I reached the hardtop. And then, the forces were greater on my right hand than my left (who knows how these choices are made?) I followed the cues and took the more northern route to reach Konnarock, two hours west of here. Now, I'm hurtling down I-81 through a landscape peopled by ghosts and punctuated by the shrines of memory. I smile. And I wince.

This ten-mile stretch of scenery once was home--Wythe County and the town of Wytheville. I travel as much in time as in space. Being here, in this long monotonous corridor of Ridge and Valley--just the physical fact of being here--brings back those days in a way that mere recollection at a distance cannot. (Funny how, when I sit down to the piano after years of neglect, the memory of the timing and placement of my fingers comes back in a way I could not conjur from any other position. And so it seems, being physically, bodily in this place I once belonged, I can find the fingering of old melodies, in major and minor keys.)

Sand Mountain: It's not much of mountain, really, neither in height or in the maturity of its forest or scenic qualities. But its crest is no more than two miles from the center of Wytheville, and that mountain is one of the things Ann and I remember most clearly from that first trip here to interview with the president of the community college. We were 26. We stood on the balcony of the Holiday Inn the night before what would become the most important meeting of our young lives, there in the shadow of Sand Mountain.

"Can you imagine being this close to the mountains!" I asked her. And a few months later, we lived on a wide street in town where our front porch faced that dark mountain--my closest access to 'the woods. I spent many an hour along the rocky crest of that glorified hill looking down on the little town below. From there, I could hear church bells tolling the hour. And on a clear day, I could see the front porch of our house from the rocky pinnacle that was my favorite perch.

And today, at 70 miles and hour, I imagine being up there, this moment, looking down on the busy town our former hometown has become, its margins strewn with strip malls and new homes climbing more than half way up the mountain now.

Somewhere below, in the hazy distance on the ribbon of interstate, I can see a much older and preoocupied man heading west, a man who used to sit exactly here on this smooth lichen-covered rock and wonder what the future would hold. And now he knows.

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Bluets on Buffalo This shot is from last year's trudge up the mountain in a cloud. Doug still winces when I remind him of the long climb for the certain clearing I told him to expect at the top. And of course it never cleared. Even so, we came home with a few keeper shots. Here's another one from that foggy day a year ago. And my favorite: Tree Dancer.

I Am Going Natural I leave around noon today headed west, and up, and back into my past. I described last year's trip--my first in 17 years, back to the Mt. Rogers Naturalist Rally. (See this link, and scroll up for parts 2 and 3.) But this year, I'll be leading one of the Saturday morning trips again--covering in two hours the very same rich half-mile loop I lead for eleven years running, before we moved away from Virginia, the mountains, and the familiar spring wildflowers I will get to revisit this weekend.

Time to Get Journey-Proud I've made myself stay focused on keeping one lecture ahead of my students. That's done now, and I can spend a week or so getting psyched about our trip to Vancouver. Here's a nice gallery of images from 'couver. But we're in somewhat of a quandry about where to stay. The first night, we arrive late and will stay in a guest room at my son's place (an older home with 7 or 8 students, and nice enough, but we'd rather prefer a less boarding-house atmosphere and perhaps not so much HipHop in the wee hours--y'know what I mean?) Nate lives near the UBC campus, and we'd like to not be a great long bus ride away. And budget is a consideration. So if anyone has recommendations, we need reservations soon. We leave in less than two weeks.

Depth of Field It opens up; it closes in. It is dominated by vertical lines and monochrome in winter; by thin shapes of green and maroon with each miniature leaf of spring a distinct entity at a precise distance giving depth to the landscape. And then it is an opaque wall of green, closing the viewer into a sea of chlorophyll until it washes away in autumn's chameleon change. I've been minding the changes each season brings--to color, line, light and form. Summer is almost upon us, and of all the seasons, it is the least suited for landscapes. It's haze alone makes the eye look instead at the near-at-hand--at feet and sky, rather than the far horizon. Til fall, I'll notice close-up details in the summer garden; the insects of July; the way the grasses soften the valley floor between the house and barn; and towering storm clouds that form overhead in August. My favorite season has just ended. Our trail is now a narrow corridor in a labyrinth of leaves; we will look down or up, and carry a stick for the spider webs.

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My IBM is From China ~ And herein perhaps lies the reason my Thinkpad order took five days to confirm. IBM and the Chinese company, Lenovo who bought IBM's computer line, had some major reorganization at the end of last week, screwing with the orderly flow of business. Or maybe it was just shear incompetence. When I made my seventh and last call yesterday, I told the rep up front: if I can't get the confirmation email before this conversation is over, I would like to cancel my order. "Oh" he said, after checking on the problem,"Someone wrote your email address as fred1st at SWCA.net instead of SWVA.net." And this after carefully telling each of the seven reps it was SIERRA WALTER VICTOR ALPHA. Maybe if you're from Burma or India, CHARLIE sounds a lot like WALTER. Anyhow, it will be weeks before it arrives.

Top Gun Over Goose Creek ~ The black and sinister F16s have resumed their training flights again along the route that carries them right over our pasture. My guess is that they take a bearing on the NEXRAD tower just up the road. They had stopped their deafening, peace-destroying several-times-a-day passes a year or more back when one of them went down in the county to our south (pilots ejected safely, never did hear what became of the plane, but I'm guessing it didn't find its way home.) But now they have returned, regular as clockwork, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, preceded by a shockwave of ear-piercing noise. They are often so low, we can see the pilot. The sound rumbles angrily in the valleys long after they've disappeared over the near horizon and permeates our peace, an unbidden reminder that not all the world is as peaceful as this place.

I'd Be A Nerd No More ~ I have confessed here before that I am guilty in times far past of playing the accordion. If I'd only had The Roland FR7 back in those days of the Beer Barrel Polka, I coulda been cool--not the brunt of all the accordion jokes. Check it out: a digitally-enhanced accordion--a mere $5600 (via Daily Blatt).

The Balkanization of Suburbia ~ According to this piece from last week's Washington Post (link via DT) "four out of five U.S. homes built since 2000 have been in homeowner association-governed subdivisions." And so 4 out of 5 children living in new housing identify not with a city or town, not with a block or section contiguous with other streets, blocks or sections of town. They live in a netherworld of self-contained communities that are restrictive, exclusive and isolated--often by imposing guardhouses at their entry gates--from the larger population. Each of these loftily-named pods may have its own sports league, community government, identity and status. There are perhaps some good things to come from such cloistered development, but I wonder about the trend as it impacts our ideas of what we belong to, of where we belong. Some living in this kind of setting feel "like a resident of nowhere" living on a island--"an island in dirt." This article was relevant to an increasing trend seen even in Floyd County. Putting new houses into a relatively compact arrangement spares rural sprawl; but it may carry with it the tendency to isolate rather than include those who make Lofty Woods Development their home rather than Floyd County.

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You can probably imagine how shocked I was to discover this prehistoric forest not a half-mile from home! Like you, I thought these giant fossil pterophytes had become extinct with the dinosaurs. But here was a dense stand of bizarre and massive towering antennae-looking fertile fronds of a species lost to the earth as fossil fuels were forming. (Click image for a more impressive, larger view.)

Okay. I'm full of botanical bullshoots. My now-defunct Coolpix would allow a ground-up view--in this case, of the fertile fronds of Interrupted Fern growing right around the bend. I'd planned to go back this morning a year after the shot above was taken, to see what I could do with the D70, but the light has gone flat. And while I was waiting for the clouds to thin and the winds to die, I resurrected this image since I never posted it last year.

You don't want me sitting with time on my hands. I'll always get into some kind of trouble.

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I have thought about it a lot, even though a few days ago on May 3--the three year anniversary--I was too busy with final exam preparation and putting last touches on this week's Floyd Press column to write about it.

Three years ago this week, I reached the edge of the world, and I jumped. After months of bizarre and unplesant changes at work, it reached a point where neither the job nor the profession were bringing me more than a good income. And so on May 4, 2003, I was free-falling into my future, having no idea what kind of impact I could expect should I reach the bottom. All I knew was, I had not found treasure after 14 years as a physical therapist, and it was time to begin digging in another place.

And for three years, I've been digging. And one of my shovels I favor is called Fragments from Floyd. What wonderful symmetry that on May 3 when I remember a painfully difficult ending, I also celebrate the beginning of this most salvific chapter of mid-life. I'm still excavating, but all along I find nuggets of worth--in the process of writing, in the friends I've made, in the chances I've had to give visitors the experience of where I live and what I see and think through the wonderful electronic tools we're blessed to use in our times.

So, if you use the right assay, I guess you could say I've landed on my feet here on my third rebirth day. Though you couldn't tell it from my side of the ledger, I am a rich man--not because I've arrived, but because I look forward every day to what the journey will show me. I've done things and met people and grown in ways that never would have happened without the leap from the edge of the world three years ago this week. And for this soft landing I thank God, my wife who's given me the freedom to dig in this new place, and all those who share this place with me--in the flesh, in the spirit and on the weblog. Thanks, indeed.

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The National Geographic focus on Appalachia recently has sparked an outbreak of Appalachian Pride--in our rivers and forests, our artist and authors, and even in our speech.

Yes, you can often tell someone from the hollers of Kentucky, Tennessee, or Virginia by the odd bits of archaic language they use--a carryover little changed from the Elizbethan speech of their founding ancestors. More than any other regional dialect, speaking "mountain" dialect will stigmatize the speaker's intelligence and competence. It is a flavor of speech America has loved to lampoon, perpetuating the Beverly Hillbillies image of witless bumpkins lacking a larger social awareness.

When I heard author and NPR essayist Silas House was coming to speak locally in 2003, I listened to one of his recorded essays. I tell this story in this post from November of that year (called You Talk Funny) that discusses the role language and dialect play in our perceived credibility and intelligence. I'd suggest you listen to Silas' voice and language. While he has achieved success as a writer, he has faithfully maintained his native tongue and I admire him for that.

Now, with Appalachian credibility on the rise, perhaps the trend of dialect denial is reversing, as this National Geographic article (May 2) describes. While I would still opt for correct grammar underneath the twang and the odd idioms and figures of speech, I'm happy the time may come when Appalachians become unbranded from the yoke of a hundred years of stereotyped stigma.

As it turns out, Silas will be at the Hindman Writers Workshop I'll be attending in late July. I look forward to getting to know him and to a week of immersion in things Appalachian, including the music of the way we talk.

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A month back, I knew that by the time my final exam day rolled around, I'd be able to carry my new laptop with me today. I was going to put up a blog post while my students took their final exam--just because I could. I'd be able to test my new Dell on the campus wireless connection and be ready for the next term of teaching in the fall. Well of course that ship has sailed, and the Dell went back on Monday.

The IBM Thinkpad ordered on Friday of last week remains nothing more than airwaves between me and the Asian lady who took my call. Five days later, after five promises to 'send it soon' I still have no confirmation email regarding the system I purchased. Methinks IBM has had a major system screwup in their online ordering reorganization they enacted over the weekend and can't find the record of my purchase (and probably many thousand others.) I'm toying with the idea of cancelling yet another order and just saying to heck with the laptop. It seemed like a good idea, but...

Meanwhile, my dear wife is busily making apple and bananna muffins for my students for their exam at 8:00 this morning. This bonus feature started with cookies sent for their first test back in February, and the tradition instantly became firmly established. I don't think there's any doubt, Ann's student evaluations would be way higher than mine. She got up this morning at 4:00 on her day off to do this for them. They do appreciate it, and so do I.

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Now I'm quick to confess I am a mediocre birder. I can tell a warbler from a buzzard and have a few bird calls I'll do if you give me an audience and a little encouragement. Well, a lot of encouragement. But I am only a dabbler as bird watchers go (a little ornithological pun there. Catch it?)

But when I saw this picture on Doug THompson's blog the other day (a come-back and a one-up on my Photoshopped bird-against-the-sky picture) I did a double-take. The only small perching bird I could think of that has a hooked beak was the loggerhead shrike (which I can't say I've seen in twenty years or more.) And beside, the body shape and especially the tail were wrong.

"Where did you take this picture?" I asked, knowing that Mr. T has been all over the world toting his 'long glass'.

"Near the Carroll County line" he told me, adding to my perplexity. What the heck was this bird?

He emailed me later and said it might have been a roller. Say what? Seems some lady eccentric back in the sixties when he was in high school here fancied tropical birds. Were these birds escapes from captivity? Could they have been breeding in the wild--in the cold mountains, no less--or migrating back to southwest Virginia from the tropics every year for decades?

Seems there are lots of roller species, and they belong in places like Gambia and Senegal--not Floyd County by a long stretch. Here's a page full of rollers, and a link to a great page of birds of the world, their species status, and to the pages of the photographers from whose collections they were taken--a whole nother day of browsing!

So. A few months back, it was the African Fish Eagle he photographed in a tree in his front yard. Now, more African birds. Soon, we'll have minivans full of the REAL birders who sleep in their pith helmets coming to Floyd County to follow DT, waiting for his next exotic find. I'm hoping soon he'll point us to animal discoveries in other classes...mammals, perhaps. But what I'm really waiting for are the relocated reptiles from Central America. I can just picture the day we see a reticulate python in the Thompson hot tub. (Just kidding, Amy.)

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I could at least browse the web while I held, and held, and held the phone for IBM Order Status department some 72 hours after placing my order for the Thinkpad on Friday of last week. Still no email to confirm the order or give me account information. Tra la. Clickety click. Swap phone from right to left to right. Cruise the bookmarks not visited for months--years, maybe. Let's try WorldNetDaily, always good for an incendiary right-leaning sancitified God-fearing news story. But wait: maybe there's something here.

Posted May 2. They say a special commission has been formed to study the effects of an electromagnetic pulse attack on the US. Maybe there really is such an investigation, but this WND piece scares me a bit. It seems to be painting a familiar scenario: Iran (and Korea, for good measure) are plotting to launch a high altitude electronic pulse attack on the US. Somehow, the similarity of Iran and EMP is too close for comfort to Iraq and WMD as a reason to go to war. Is there anything like the risk this story claims, notwithstanding the unlikeliness of either Korea or Iran having delivery systems (that I'm aware of) to place one or more devices in position several hundred kilometers above the center of the country. That'd take an ICBM, wouldn't it? Of course, a short range missle--a "SCUD in a bucket"--out of the back of a shrimp boat off Staten Island could put such a detonation a few thousand feet over NYC and do far more damage to our economy than was done on 9-11.

But now we're told that Iran is the world's leading sponsor of international terror? Is this right? (from WND:)

"A nuclear missile concealed in the hold of a freighter would give Iran or terrorists the capability to perform an EMP attack against the United States homeland without developing an ICBM and with some prospect of remaining anonymous," explained Pry. "Iran's Shahab-3 medium range missile mentioned earlier is a mobile missile and small enough to be transported in the hold of a freighter. We cannot rule out that Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism might provide terrorists with the means to executive an EMP attack against the United States."

But as I get to snooping around, turns out there is indeed a government-sponsored commission (which doesn't automatically give it total credibility, of course.) The documents are available for download. (This version of the commission report from James Madison University is replete with color diagrams and pictures for those so inclined.) The short of it is we ARE extraordinarily vulnerable to massive electronic disruption that could impact just about every aspect of society (commerce, financial markets, communications, transportation and military) for "months or years." This, without doubt, is our Achilles Heel.

And, as the report points out, it would be an asymetrical blow, with our adversaries (at least most of them such as al-Quaida) using a much less electronically-dependent system of operations. Hardening of computer systems is feasible in "3 to 5 years" (increasing the liklihood that, if it's doable, the bad guys'll do it sooner rather than later?) I have the feeling we're more interested in kicking ass in Iraq than dealing with this kind of threat to national security at home. Read the report. It kinda makes a person sit up and take notice. The electronic world as we know it and depend on it could one day end in an eerie national silence.

But don't be surprised if you start hearing the EMP justification for bringing the hammer down on Iran from the same people that took us to Bagdad looking for Weapons of Mass Deception. They come up a little short in the trust department for some folks, so if a real emergency threat crops up, are we going to listen?

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I have made a point to NOT show my wife the picture of the Phoebe above, taken with the borrowed 2x telextender the other day. You see, we (and especially she) don't coexist too awfully well with the Phoebes in the valley each summer.

They insist on building their mud and poop nests on every horizontal surface they can find on the house (including over the front door: witness the extent her deterrent efforts have taken!) and I've taken up arms to run them off, with resulting property damage (not to mention damage to my self-esteem when I learned who had shot the hole in our mailbox!).

Even the local snakes figure into our Goose Creek phoebe-lore. So there's much more in this picture than meets the eye, and I'm posting it quick before you-know-who sees it and sends me out on bird patrol.

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I must have been about twelve when it dawned on me that I was not as solidly built as some of the boys in my class who'd already started "filling out." They wanted me to come for try-outs for the YMCA football league. I reluctantly told them I would, but I didn't think a pair of shoulder pads and a helmet would be nearly enough protection to keep me from cracking like a handful of match sticks against a charge by Hoyt Stovall or Bobby Wheat at full tilt. Sure, they wanted me on the field--to make them look fast, strong and agile by comparison. I was taller than some, but there wasn't much meat on my bones and so I asked around about how to grow muscles and gain weight. Girls weren't an issue just then, but I'd better be thinking about the day I'd face the beach bully. I'd seen the advertisements in the back of comic books and I knew that I was the 97 pound weakling with beanpole arms and no chest.

My father's advice wasn't a lot of help. He told the story about the young farm boy who lifted a new born calf. Every day he lifted and carried it, and as it grew bigger and heavier, the boy grew stronger until he could carry a full grown steer. While I had doubts and questions about the practicalities of getting one's arms around a bull or its tendency to not cooperate with such human foolishness, those considerations didn't really matter. I didn't have access to cattle of any age near our Birmingham subdivision and puppies or kittens just weren't going to get the job done.

What was I going to do? Soon I'd be in high school, subjected daily to the mortifying, torso-exposing gym class locker room. I was a scarecrow. How was I going to get from the fourth panel of Mr. Atlas's promise to the "LATER" new me in the fifth?

But I persisted, and soon I had some tools and tricks and I was on my way to becoming a real man after all. I think the first muscle-building miracle I bought was a pair of spring loaded V-shaped grippers. These would give me rippling forearms--the muscles, or lack thereof, that were always exposed to view, gym class or not. But these things were so wide and tight for my puny hands that I had to use both hands to squeeze them shut a few times before I lost interest. Then one day, out of a Christmas giftbox, I lifted the Ultimate Answer to my quest for muscles.

This device consisted of four inch-thick chrome-plated springs attached at both ends to a yoke attached to the two copper-brown handles. I felt certain that in just a few weeks, I'd be proud to cut the front yard shirtless, my tanned and rippling upper back and pecs glistening in the Alabama sun. But to start toward this certain goal, I had to take off two of the springs to be able to spread the handles fully across my chest; and when finally I got into the rhythm, out and back, out and back, the springs pinched shut against my scrawny sternum, giving me a humiliating pinch and adding a new element of pain to this hard road to a hard body. This wasn't going to be as easy or as quick as I had thought.

I had other friends in the same mortifying situation. One of them told me about the amazing chest-defining exercises that could be done with my V-springed thingies, or just by pressing my palms together in front of my bony chest! And by george, it seemed to be happening for several of the girls in our eighth grade class (I assumed they MUST be using the Mark Eden method) and so I was certain that "dynamic tension" would work for me too. I spent hours that summer pressing and watching, pressing and watching for bulk and girth. Nada.

Well, of course, the story goes on. And the ultimate answer to my problem was puberty. Amazing what the body's timing will do to latent strings of muscle. But there is only so much that nuture can do when nature hasn't provided that much of a blueprint. I was never destined to have a linebacker's build, but more of a swimmer's. In the high school years, I bought a cheap set of weights (now where did I put that danged allen wrench?) and got sorta beefy. And in my thirties, I used the Nautilus equipment at the college where I was teaching and came as close as I would ever come to being the Hero of the Beach. (Maybe one day soon I'll scan an image from that era and post it off-weblog so as not to scare the children.)

Sorry. I found this saved image in my 'to blog' folder this morning, and this is what came out. You just never know, do ya?

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Well all it takes is the dog acting spooky and Ann is thinking Bigfoot. It's probably just a coon or fox prowling around for some cat food. Might be a bear or bobcat. And they're more likely to run the other way than run toward either a human or a dog.

But for her peace of mind, I had to stand on the porch this morning with the spotlight and patrol from the guard tower while Ann went to her car in the dark. I'm happy to say there were no slanted glowing eyes lurking behind the barn. But sure enough, the dog is wary, watching--for something nervously--out the window even now.

And so the request came up once more to get her something for protection. Thank goodness, this time the word pistol didn't enter the conversation. I think she's wanting pepper spray, so I'm browsing, trying to find out if there's a difference in potency, spray pattern and distance, safety--that sort of thing.

And I'd suppose you could get the stuff at any large retail store. Except for the W place. And we don't go there, even to protect ourselves from Sasquatch.

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We were talking about country life in general, and in particular about those unanticipated things that can sometimes unsettle a newly-transplanted resident just moved into the boonies.

"Yeah, it can be a jungle out there" said Betty, owner of a local retail store in Floyd. "Let me tell ya this wildlife story" which she proceeded to do as it was her turn in our swapping of yarns and tales.

"My husband called me on the cell phone yesterday on his way to work in Roanoke. I could tell he was upset. TOld me he smelled gasoline, the gauges were going crazy on the dashboard, he was gonna limp into the dealership and call me from there."

"A while later, he calls, says by the time he got to Roanoke there was a smell of burning hair coming from under the hood. My first thought was that it was the family cat. Now how would I tell our daughter her cat got poached on her daddy's engine block! But anyhow, the other thing I imagined is that it was the fox we've been seeing around the house lately. And I could just imagine lifting up that hood and out come a set of sharp teeth on a half-baked fox! Anyhow, he said he'd call me back."

"Well, it was a groundhog. A LIVE groundhog. And it had chewed his gas line in half and I don't know what all. And when they opened up that hood, off it ran, all around that dealership, half a dozen guys chasing it. And guess what: it climbed up under the hood of another car!"

I didn't hang around for my turn in this dance of critter tales or I'd have told her this one:

It was one of very few times (twice?) I've been pulled over for speeding. "Let me see your vehicle registration" said the trooper. I reached over into the glove box and discovered that rodents had made a home in the Subaru, parked as it was out in the woods by the house. The registration paper made wonderful nesting material. I grabbed up the fluffy mass of pink shredded official document and handed it to the officer. He laughed. But he still gave me the ticket.

Of course the most common impact (quite literally) that wildlife has on the locals is from deer. I've learned now to spot the unique impression that a deer makes when it throws itself into the side of the family car or truck. There is no other way to sustain a broad depression like that from a side impact. I have one myself now for over a year. It's sort of a Floyd County status symbol. Get it fixed? Well heck no.

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