Fragments From Floyd

Ah, we came home from dinner and took our refreshing evening walk in the bracing coolness of dusk. How refreshing, reminding one of a deep draft of lukewarm water, or perhaps filling your lungs full of exhaust fumes behind a Greyhound bus.

Carry me back to ol' Virginny: leaving on a jet plane first thing Monday morning. Sigh. Its been good to see our family, and it will be good to be home. But guess what: Virginia's expecting a heat wave all week long, just so we don't miss South Dakota's heat wave too very badly.

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Thank goodness I Diigo. Otherwise, I would have had a hard time working on this piece about the birds and the bees I'm working on for an upcoming column for the local paper.

I was a beta-user of Diigo so only have a few dozen bookmarks. But being able to go immediately back to the paragraphs I'd highlighted for this little essay saved me lots of time. I'm going back and forth now between Google Notebook and Diigo for this kind of online data-gathering.

Diigo is a feature-rich service, and not flawless in its earliest public incarnation. But I'd expect some impressive additions and improvements as the online tool takes off. Check it out, geekly friends.

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I just lost my magnum opus on a Blue Ridge body attempting to adapt to the dehydrating evil winds of the Great Prairie in the midst of an unprecedented heat wave. It was actually pretty good. I lost the document while cooking in somebody else's kitchen this morning from South Dakota, and that's that. I won't struggle to reproduce it.

Suffice it to say that, in spite of my attempts to make my piece with this particular manifestation of what nature can do, I have not done so. It seems an ill wind, with conditions for wildfires in western SD the worst in historical times. The National headlines this morning speak of the deadly heat wave in California as a sign of things to come. Some will scoff at this association, saying this unusual heat is only a natural fluctuation or caused by solar flares or el Nino. Can we say for sure about the causes of THIS heat wave? No. Can we make predictions about the future likelihood of hotter summers? Probably.

Due to this semi-random nature of weather, it is wrong to blame any one event such as Katrina specifically on global warming - and of course it is just as indefensible to blame Katrina on a long-term natural cycle in the climate.

Yet this is not the right way to frame the question. As we have also pointed out in previous posts, we can indeed draw some important conclusions about the links between hurricane activity and global warming in a statistical sense. The situation is analogous to rolling loaded dice: one could, if one was so inclined, construct a set of dice where sixes occur twice as often as normal. But if you were to roll a six using these dice, you could not blame it specifically on the fact that the dice had been loaded. Half of the sixes would have occurred anyway, even with normal dice. Loading the dice simply doubled the odds. In the same manner, while we cannot draw firm conclusions about one single hurricane, we can draw some conclusions about hurricanes more generally. In particular, the available scientific evidence indicates that it is likely that global warming will make - and possibly already is making - those hurricanes that form more destructive than they otherwise would have been.

For those of you who have commented here recently on the issue of global warming as brought into the discussion by the Gore movie, I'd suggest RealClimate, from which the quote above was taken, as a good place to learn the science from the scientists. Their archives will answer a lot of your questions and send you to the original research to back them up.

Well it's a shame you won't be able to share all my lost "evil beast" metaphors describing how tthe dry heat feels to a wet-mountains kind of guy. Suffice it say, we'll spend another day inside playing scrabble, weather-bound by the wild-haired evil sibling of a January blizzard.

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My hands haven't been the size required for my daughter's little HP notebook since I was ten, and alas, it is the only net-conected computer available. I woke up, as I expected I would, at 2:20 am local time, which is 4:20 and just the time I wake up every day back in Eastern time. And for this early, early rising, I had visions of quiet creative time writing. I brought along quite a few projects on my laptop, most all of them requiring a web connection. And that's not happening. Yet.

I show excellent signal strength to the house's Belkin router, but "limited or no connectivity" because the network can't assign my computer a network address. Our crackerjack technical support team is working on it. (Although he's about to cry uncle.) My wee hours creative time has been frittered away in very uncreative ways. I"ve about finished off a pot of coffee before anybody else is up stirring, which will soon include the granddaughter and we know where the writing and reading will go after that!

We had a nice little prairie storm yesterday afternoon here in Rapid City. Got some pix, but will I be able to post them? Stay tuned. Meanwhile my fingers are falling all over themselves on this Lilliputian keyboard trying not to step on each others toes. (How's that for a mixed metaphor!)

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She's been at it again, our resident archeologist. This item came out of the branch beside the house. There is an inner numbered dial and an outer numbered ring.

My guess is, it's the dial off of a safe, and the rest of it--along with gazillions in gold coins--is somewhere in the branch! Grab that shovel, maw, and let's get digging! (If there are other suggestions to what this remnant might be, as long as there's a fortune underground involved, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts!)

And totally unrelated to the above...

Board

We found our 2 x 12 bridge about a half mile downstream after last week's flash flood. It's just fine, if a bit waterlogged, and back in place over the stream by the barn. Every time this happens, I say I'm going to cable it to a trailer anchor in the bank, but I never do, so I think I won't do it one more time.

Library HeeHaw

Thanks to all who arranged and participated in the words-and-music event last night at the Radford Library. A couple of dozen folks showed up, and one black and white spotted dog wandered in between Whiskey Before Breakfast and Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Good to meet mommy-blogger (and to be the first in-the-flesh blogger contact for) Sally from very near by; thanks, Danny for coming over from Blacksburg and helping me tote my dog-and-pony paraphernalia out to the truck afterwards; and good to see my micro-friend Georgia from RU and Bill and Sue from Ann's workplace and mine, respectively. As usual, it was fun, but since folks had already been sitting an hour for the music, I glanced across a lot of stuff to shorten the program, and probably set the pace a bit too fast for a SLOW book.

Take Two

I'm thinking second printing. I'll have to go upstairs and count boxes, but think I'm about half way through the first batch. Speaking of which, any readers out there who have spotted typos or glaring goofs in SRH, I'm going to be keeping a list of such for the next few months so I can make wee changes to the second printing. Do let me know the title of the piece and what the changes are, much appreciated.

Nugget from the Road

The man in his late 80s was still frail from a recent illness when I saw him. I asked him what kind of work he used to do. "Worked as a chemist in (secret government facility out west where nuclear bombs were concocted.)" He chuckled to himself and told this: "I was giving a talk once, and somebody asked me about working with plutonium. They asked me if I'd suffered any ill effects from it. I told 'em "Yep, after 30 years of working with the stuff, it made my hair turn gray."

Photo-op

The UPS truck pulled up in the drive yesterday afternoon. I didn't remember ordering anything. Neither did Ann. Then the lights went on: could it be my camera is back from Nikon repair just at the 11th hour of my need to have it? Yes! I tried to love Ann's new Canon Powershot, but it's just not the camera I'm used to, and I'm so pleased to have the D70 back in my hands. They repaired the factory defect for free, AND cleaned the CCD that had spots on it from DAY ONE! I had to touch up every image that had sky or other unbroken fields in the upper half of the image. Now, I won't! Expect pix in days to come.

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Should you care what happens in the Middle East this week? Does it matter that our government is refusing to talk with all parties involved? Here are some of the possible scenarios that could result from unrestrained military action in Lebanon by Israeli forces in the coming hours or days. And if you read William Rivers Pitt's piece to its conclusion, it gets even worse. You decide: given what's at stake, is the Bush administration doing enough?

If conflict between Israel and Syria breaks out, the fighting will in all likelihood not stay between them alone. Syria and Iran signed a mutual defense pact not so long ago, which means fighting one could be tantamount to fighting both. While Israel's military capabilities are undeniably substantial, a war against Syria or Iran, or both, would be no simple task.

Beyond the dangers involved in such a clash lies the potential for a widened conflict that draws the United States in. Iran's batteries of Sunburn missiles, if unleashed from their mountainous shoreline overlooking the Persian Gulf, could attack heavy American warships patrolling those waters. The Sunburn has the capability of defeating Aegis radar systems, so damage to the American fleet could be severe. Iran likewise has the ability to, overnight, bring their fight against Israel to the American soldiers in Iraq; Iran's Shiite allies all across Iraq can introduce a whole new front in that struggle.

There are also economic ramifications to consider. If Iran is attacked, or if their government chooses to squeeze the Western world, they could decide to turn off the petroleum spigot. Gas prices in America climbed again through the middle of July, but a disruption of petroleum distribution on this level would send those prices skyrocketing and badly shake the global economy.

Syria, if pressed into a corner by Israel's effective attacks, could choose to break the seal on the final and most dangerous option: their stockpile of chemical weaponry. If gas bombs are used against Israeli troops, and explode within Israel's borders, the situation will spiral completely out of control. Israel would erupt in rage and visit a terrible retribution on both Syria and Iran.

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This is a form of raspberry called wineberry. They grow wild along the roadsides between home and town, and this time of year, their ruby fruits bedazzle the hurried traveler like so many gemstones hanging on long arching canes. I've rarely seen them harvested, but from their name alone, you know they have a history of usefulness.

For our first years here, we contented ourselves with picking a batch or two from the thicket of wineberries that grow on what we thought was no-man's land down the road until our son found out that the place is on the property of a neighbor who discovered Nate stuffing his mouth with the soft red berries a few summers ago. No harm done, come back any time, he said. But Ann wanted berries without trespassing, so we dug up a few from another nearby spot and transplanted them just behind the house. This is the first year we've harvested berries, and they're kinda fun to pick.

Like other raspberries, the fruit pulls easily away from the fleshy receptacle (that comes with the fruit in blackberries)--you can see where one berry is missing on the bottom cluster, only the whitish receptacle persists. The vines are covered in fine bristles, but they lack the prick of blackberry canes. When you're done picking, you don't look like you were in a cat fight and lost.

Their flavor is mild, not at all like black raspberry, but mixed with other fruit of the season, or by themselves as I'll have them on my cereal here directly, they make a nice addition to a summer's wild harvest. And so far, the bears have left them alone. And when we pick them, we put the dog inside so he can't see that THESE berries are good to eat, even when they're RED!

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The Japanese beetles have arrived several weeks early this year. Usually their numbers rise after the blackberries are past ripe; this year, they suck the juice out of a few drupelets on each berry, making them still edible, but not so enjoyable to just pop in your mouth.

Of course, you should never, ever just pop a blackberry in your mouth, or you might be spitting all the way back to the house: tiny stinkbugs may lurk on that juicy bite, and you'll be sorry. I know I was. Blahhk!

So we have our beetles and our stinkbugs to contend with. But then, to fill our buckets, we have to contend with a fruit-eating dog that finds the biggest, juiciest berries that hang in the shade of the lowest branches, just at Tsuga-eye-level. He pulls them off deftly with his meat-eating teeth, avoiding the thorns, and moves just ahead of us, anticipating where we will be moving next along the sunny edge of the pasture.

Weird dog. His favorite treat that he gets when he's not eating berries and we really want to bribe him is a quarter of a small cabbage that we buy just for this purpose. He just loves it! He's a Floyd dog for certain: earthy, fruitivorous and vegan, and living off the fat of the land.

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But it might be hard to say when.

A Fragments friend wrote this morning, telling me about this piece on Floyd Fest in the Richmond paper. This is how the piece begins:

No doubt about it, rural Floyd County is one of the hippest places in Virginia, with the latest generation of hippies, artists, nature lovers and every sort of laid-back refugee from the urban rat race living shoulder to shoulder with the easygoing local farmers.

The place has become part paisley, part pasture; half hemp fashion, half hayfield.

And one reason Floyd has gotten so hip is FloydFest, a musical extravaganza held every year in a wide field surrounded by woods and mountains where thousands gather to groove nearly nonstop to the sounds of dozens of bands and singers over several days.

However, the article never says WHICH several days.

FloydFest 5 (2006) will be July 27 through July 30. Check the website for details.

Bummer. We had already booked tickets to travel and will miss the Fest-ivities this year. Y'all have a good time.

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I don't have time to do it justice, but I just found my notes from "An Inconvenient Truth", scribbled in the darkness of the Grandin matinee on Thursday afternoon. I can read some of it, but not all; if I'd been the compulsive type, I could have held my keychain flashlight in my teeth as I wrote, I guess. So before I toss the page in the trash and move on to other things, let me make some comments about Al Gore's documentary.

There is perhaps too much of the narrator in it for some, but for me, Gore's inclusion of some of the formative events that shaped his life and philosophy helped me understand the source and sustenance of his passion for the planet, which I am convinced is as genuine as my own. Significantly to me, he sat under Charles Keeling (who first saw the pattern of CO2 increase over historical times). Gore had an understanding in the late sixties that "we could lose it all" if we tip the balance of health of the atmosphere--that incredibly thin skin of finely-balanced gases to which our burgeoning population has added so many millions of tons of carbon over and above the norms for the millennia preceding the industrial revolution.

He had that moment of deep comprehension in the mid-sixties that we must put the health of the planet in a higher priority than the health of the consumer economies we fret over with the stock market reports every day at five. Not many people, much less politicians, get it. It is indeed an inconvenient truth that we cannot pursue a future that is like our past. And Gore has followed that conviction for thirty years, in spite of the political points it has lost him. He's been called an owl-loving tree hugging whacko, and so have I. I understand what draws him to care for life beyond man's. We're both southern and the same age, so I suppose there are other affinities that make me appreciate what the man has done with his mind and his voice during my times.

But my conclusions about the issue of climate change and man's role in it were not changed by seeing the movie. Along with Gore, I've been watching this scenario develop since the sixties. I left the movie with a deep sadness in the reality that, while some individuals will see the light, in the end, our political system, and those of China and the developing world will not likely jump from the pot until the water has already boiled. We will continue to treat the earth as if it were nothing more than a passive, lifeless concrete block that we do our living on. We will just keep doing what we've always done, and we'll get what we've always got, deferred til the next administration, diluted in air or water downstream or invisible in the atmosphere or dumped someplace out of sight or in other ways deferring the true costs of the effluents of our affluence. We can only hide, ignore and defer for so long before we have to pay.

I look for ways to reduce my environmental footprint; I want my children to do the same. I'll continue to try to face these hard truths and talk about them with folks who mostly already feel the way I do. Beyond that, until some horrible, sustained and undeniable series of environmental catastrophes happens not to "them" but to us, most who see the movie and even more of those who make a point NOT to see the movie with their minds already made up, will not acknowledge the extreme ill health of the planet's economy. And it will just get sicker.

As a world society in these times, we just don't seem capable of suffering privation, reduced profits or change in the short run to insure sustainability in the long run. However, if the conclusions of very many climate scientists are accurate, even the most skeptical among us may live long enough to be convinced that we have a tough set of global problems. Our children most certainly will inherit the consequences of our indifference and inaction. By then, our window of opportunity will likely have passed.

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NOTE: Help me here. The wife nixxed an earlier version of this a couple of weeks ago, saying she thought it was too preachy or something. I forget. I had intended to use if for the newspaper column. I'm thinking about that again. For those who know the Floyd Press readership, is this offensive, sermonizing or otherwise objectionable? Let me know, 'cause I have to decide something soon!

A man, his wife and young daughter stopped by my table at the Fourth of July fireworks event. He had heard a recent interview on WVTF where I was discussing my book, and he wanted to talk with me about it--but not so much the book as about the fact that, as I mentioned in the interview, I have been searching for a new direction for my life now that our children are grown and we have settled permanently in Floyd County. It did not take long to know from our conversation that this man was searching: for involvement, for connections and for community. Turns out, he and I were asking some of the same questions about life's purpose near or after retirement, about finding oneself in and contributing to a new community, and about the future growth and change in Floyd County. And so our conversation lasted more than an hour that late afternoon as storm clouds gathered and the sky darkened over the high school ball field.

"Will you look at that!" he said, as we surveyed the green lawn before us, strewn with young and old, standing, sitting and blanketed in little clumps and clusters. "This is what it's all about. What a simple, peaceful scene. Nothing flashy or pretentious here, nothing fancy or high-tech or loud--just people enjoying one another's company."

And his comment shifted my thinking and our conversation in the direction of a report I'd read recently. A sad situation exists in America, the very opposite of what we were seeing before us on the ball field at sunset. According to this study Americans are more socially isolated than they were in 1985 when the average person in the study said they had three close friends. Sadly, in the new study, nearly a quarter said they had "zero" close friends and more than half said they had "two or fewer". Someone said that "people watch Friends on TV. They don't have them." Intimacy within families was down, too.

The reasons for this increasing isolation are not hard to find--in today's larger numbers of divorced or single adults; in longer commutes, longer and more stressful workdays. Also to blame are the larger percentage of people living in cities and suburbs, the loss of sidewalks and front porches, and the trend toward "cocooning". Families rarely sit to meals together, and those most "well off" are isolated in their private spaces around computers, televisions, music and movies inside their fortress "McMansions".

We live in an era of declining "social capital"--a term used and fully explored in the book, Bowling Alone, published in 2000 by Robert Putnum. This author and others suggest that social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy. Americans are far less connected to each other than we once were, on average, and this bodes poorly for our cohesiveness as a culture. Interestingly, even our physical health seems to be connected to being connected. Our chances of dying are cut by a quarter simply by joining and regularly participating in one club or organization, and in half by joining two.

And as I stood there chatting with my new acquaintance, I wondered aloud. Might Floyd and similar smaller, off-the-beaten-path places in rural America persist as tiny islands of relative "social well-being"? Is it possible in places such as this to resist or at least slow down the erosion of connection between neighbors and kin, a wasting away of personal accountability and care so common now in many of the burbs? Because of the overall pace and scale of things in Floyd and similar places, maybe those who live there are more willing to reach out and participate, to acknowledge the need for one another, to help a neighbor, to make a new friend. And maybe here, more than in some other larger, faster places, there is a growing awareness of the value in "local"--for our foods, our entertainment, and our friends. But then, maybe this is only a rural fantasy, wishful thinking that we could somehow swim against the growing tide of alienation in our society at large.

And yet, looking out over the field of Floydians waiting for fireworks that balmy night was evidence that many do still appreciate the worth of "slowness" in our sit-down meals and in our laid-back waiting-for-dark social events on the lawn, a commons where we can simply enjoy being with one another doing not much at all under a warm summer sky.

UPDATE 23 July 06: Thanks for your responses, I have sent this in to the Floyd Press for next week's column.

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This is the kind of thing, perhaps, that I could sink my teeth into. It requires cafeful research, though not merely the accumulation of dry academic detail. It is the story of simpler times, hard times, times closer to the land and what it provided. Such a story would allow for some creative nonfictional embellishment in imagined dialogue and scene-setting. It would give the writer an excuse to interview some interesting sorts of folks and take field forays into beautiful places as part of the "work". And maybe it would add something to the body of understanding of our literal and figurative roots in these southern mountains.

As I feel my way into what kinds of things I might like to work on, should there be a book number two, "Ginseng: The Divine Root", is a type of writing that I might find challenging, interesting and satisfying for as long as it takes to complete the task. I've got my eyes and ears open.

His voyage in studying ginseng took him from the southern Appalachian Mountains through upstate New York, all the way to China.

"I've been interested in forestry all my life, but it wasn't until I went to a workshop in Virginia that I became intrigued by ginseng," Taylor said. "I had always thought of ginseng as a new age medicine, as an Asian plant, but I soon discovered that people in our own region had stories about growing up with grandparents who collected ginseng right in the woods of the Appalachians. And, that led me to really explore the history of the plant and the people who are connected to it."

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I've been awake since three, after one of those days where there was too much to process before going to bed, and the wheels just never stopped turning--some nocturnal energies for the good, some not so.

We had a vicious storm Wednesday night. It washed out our ford by the barn--the 22 tons of rock that repaired the aftermath of Hurricanes Fran, Jeanne, Ivan and crew will have to be replaced in November after this year's yet-to-be-known Katrinas and Ritas have come and gone. I can't get across for my firewood in the truck and that's not good. What's left of the garden after the wind and hale was eaten to the ground by deer the night of the storm. I am so discouraged. Gardening, quite frankly, is scant pleasure these past few years since my hands hurt so from arthritis. My inclination is to never garden again. There's just too little return for the pain and effort. And yet, I've never felt the need any more than I do in these days to be self-sufficient. This kind of conflict keeps a fella stewing in his juices in the very wee hours. I'll be give out by end of day, for sure.

However, yesterday was very productive of book-related happenings in Roanoke, where I spent the whole day. (I'll spare you all the details, but tell two nice occurrences.) First, I stopped by the radio station to record an essay, the "hawks" piece from a short while back. While there, I planned to offer Slow Road Home as a gift to the very well organized Radio Reader program for the visually impaired that is coordinated by the NPR station. Ben, the director of the program, was most appreciative of the book, but immediately suggested "Why don't YOU read it?" and I thought that was a great idea. This will mean several hours in the studio over several weeks in September, and I'm looking forward to that.

And, with all my running around, I had an hour to fill before the matinee of An Inconvenient Truth at the Grandin (a future blog post for certain) so I went down the road to the local library branch. I thought I might as well inquire at the desk about who to contact in the Roanoke Library system for possible readings and such, so I plopped my book down to begin my inquiry to the young man behind the counter. "Oh, I know that book! I was on the selection committee for the 'local voices' panel for the Valley Bookfest and you were one of the five authors selected!" Due to an oversight, nobody had notified me on July 1 per their stated schedule, so wasn't this a nice surprise! I've since confirmed I am one of the five, but I'm still awaiting details of the August 26 event. Fortunately, we hadn't scheduled a conflict except for the granddaughter being with us then for a few days. We can work around that.

So isn't this just the way life is? What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. And we roll with the punches. Still, I think about those canning jars of beans and tomatoes that the deer wiped out and about the hopeless task of keeping a stream in its banks, and if it weren't Friday, I'd get plumb discouraged.

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I learned of the few early human cases of avian flu back when I was teaching my first sememster at Radford in the fall of 2004. It seemed so distantly not-in-my-backyard--on the far side of the planet, not my problem other than for its biological interest. Now, the situation has almost become a global matter, and of immediate concern on our side of the planet, perhaps, soon.

RICHMOND, Va. -- State and federal wildlife officials plan to check for avian influenza in birds that flock to Virginia's waterways.

About 800 waterfowl and about 800 shorebirds will be tested, starting with mute swans in August. The testing area mostly will be around the Eastern Shore, the Chesapeake Bay and rivers in eastern Virginia.

Virginia's diverse wetlands make the state a key autumn destination for birds heading south, and that's one reason the state is considered a primary sampling site, according to Bob Ellis, assistant director of the wildlife division for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Ellis led development of Virginia's plan, which will extend through the fall.

[...] the virus also could come via the Atlantic Flyway, which stretches from Greenland to Canada and south through Virginia to Florida and Puerto Rico. American birds summering in Greenland mix with those migrating from Africa and Europe, where avian flu already exists.

Experts said the first infected birds could show up along the East Coast as soon as late August or September.

I wonder what the reaction in the previously indifferent public will be when the first H5N1 infected bird is discovered in North America--probably first in Alaska, then a short while later, along the eastern flyway. What kind of restraint will the media show as they alert the public to the potential risk of exposure to infected birds?

Also at risk then will be the family pets--especially cats--and of course, pet birds. How long might it be from the first instance of detection in wild birds along the coast before it shows up in domestic poultry, or in zoos; then how long before the first human case in this country? But that couldn't happen here. Could it?

America's governors think it could. And if help comes, it is far more likely to come from your state than from any national-level "emergency" management. Ultimately, we will depend on neighborhoods and communities perhaps more than hospitals, which will quickly be beyond capacity. There are still many "ifs" here, but after almost two years of following the story, it seems far too up close and personal to ignore.

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Well, not exactly.

But if you watch this video, you get the idea that it must be in our animal natures to flirt with possible disaster as a way of proving our young selves. I'd bet anything this monkey is a "teenager" and a male. The tigers he taunts are also subadults. And he knows exactly how close to approach when he pulls their ears, dangles passively like Mohammed Ali with arms lax to his sides.

You can almost hear him saying "yah yah yah yah yah, you can't catch me." He risks certain death if one claw connects with monkeyflesh, but he takes that chance over and over in the name of--what? Fun? Adventure? Something to tell the gang or the grandchildren in years to come?

You have to get past the very-foreign-language subtitles and the America's Funniest schtick in the retake loops and sound effects. But beyond that, this is truly an amazing piece of animal behavior, agility and interaction. It's worth three minutes, trust me.

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It's time to call on the Friends of Fragments to help broadcast book-seeds to new and fertile ground beyond the Realm of Floyd. How can you help, you ask? By simply cutting and pasting the message below into an email message to a church, civic organization or other group located in a hundred mile radius of Floyd. (Or, if all expenses paid and a per diem and rental car are provided, as far away but absolutely no farther than Honolulu, HI.) I'm looking at filling in some spaces for September and the fall.

Greetings from Floyd County.

My name is Fred First, and I'm writing to inquire if there might be interest in a future program for your organization. I'd be delighted to share with your members the story contained in my book, Slow Road Home: a Blue Ridge Book of Days, published in April 2006.

The book is a regional memoir that draws from my background as biologist/naturalist, photographer and teacher, and arises from my love of the southern mountains and in particular, of our sheltered valley south of Shawsville.

The story of a special year apart, told in lyrical and sometimes humorous vignettes, will find resonance with any who have risked stepping off their secure but deadening career tracks to do something entirely different with their lives. It will speak to those who have longed to find roots and belonging and relationship with some settled place at last; and it will offer gentle encouragement to folks who have thought they might someday want to write, but have not yet begun.

This short presentation about and from the book has received a very positive response from those who have attended book events for Slow Road Home at the Radford and Bent Mountain libraries, Warm Hearth Village, the Jacksonville Center in Floyd and elsewhere. The book and author were featured recently in an interview for Studio Virginia on WVTF, Roanoke's NPR station where I have been a frequent essayist over the past four years.

I encourage you to visit the book's website for excerpts, endorsements and more. I'd be happy to send you a review copy of the book if requested and look forward to hearing from you soon about possible dates for programs in September and beyond.

Kind regards

Fred First
gckpress@gmail.com
blog: fragmentsfromfloyd.com
book: slowroadhome.com
Floyd County, Virginia

And while we're shamelessly soliciting, you know that just exactly now would be a great time to order several copies of Slow Road Home for those old friends that live where you used to, who you don't see so often but with whom you want to keep connected. Slow Road is a book about connectedness of various sorts. Don't you think they'd appreciate it? Just click the PayPal button on the book website. It's easy. It's hypoallergenic and non-fattening. It's a vote for mom, apple pie and (certain nostalgic, anachronistic remnants of) the American Way. Buy a book--support the Goose Creek Slow Living Movement and keep Fred off the streets!

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Your book arrived today. I have to confess -- back in the days when I was a regular reader here, I never quite "got" your desire to have a book published. It seemed unnecessary given what you have here (on the weblog.)

I get it now. The book is beautiful, inside and out. It's going to be like my hidden spot in the swamp, something I can return to again and again when I need a quiet place to escape the noisiness of this world. Like my spot in the swamp, will help to remind me of what really matters.

I've pulled this comment from a few days ago to hold before me as I try to think about why I write, about what strong and persistent force has compelled me to get the words of a year of blogging into book form, and about why I've chosen to do so in a way that feels very much like I've published my self and not just my words--giving the term "self published" a different spin than the usual "vanity press" associations often mistakenly attached to the words.

I think back on the process, and I wonder how things would be different this morning if I were still waiting--a year after the book was finished--to hear back from XYZ Press's editors about the first of a dozen hurdles that would separate the desire to have a book and actually holding it in my hands.

I think about the personal involvement behind every step as Slow Road Home has come to reality; I think about the parts of me I would not have imparted in the book had I given over the details of page and cover layout, content and timing to a ponderous and impersonal publisher who would own the very personal expression that I wanted Slow Road Home to become.

I'm glad I have done this the way I did. I know that there are some who judge a book by the presence or absence of that publisher emblem on the cover. I mentioned some examples of this bias the other day. More recently, the Public Information office at a nearby college has not responded to my email request to help publicize an upcoming event on their campus because--as I was warned by another writer--they are not warm to the notion of "self-published" books.

I'm not whining in telling this. It is just the way things are. I'll have to find my own path in marketing and promotion just as I did in writing, designing and printing the book. Some parts of the journey will be harder with a self-published book (I recently read that a self-published book is a business for the author; paying a subsidy to get published is a business for the subsidy publisher.) I just have to better understand the business model I'm trying to follow.

I will have to direct my business in some different ways than I would if I'd given over that control to a large publishing house in a distant state. I'm feeling my way through this. I have no regrets. I've carried a few readers to quiet places, and brought them to my front porch on Goose Creek. I'm satisfied with that.

You might want to swing over read what another self-published Floyd County author, David St. Lawrence, has to say about all this on his blog.

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Partly it's my own procrastination and distraction; partly, it's the family company who have been sharing the house with us until yesterday morning. But regardless of reason or excuse, the time has come to dig down to the top of my desk again, and perform a pile-ectomy from over in the corner of the room. It is there that all the hidden stacks of someday magazines from the wardrobe rise now in irregular columns beside the woodstove. The wardrobe is finally in its place of honor and prominence out in the AnnEx, and I'm without storage space until we put in shelves here in "my" room, to hide all my flotsam. But there's too much of it.

It's come to this: I've had the painful revelation that much of what was hidden behind the oak doors of the wardrobe needs to take its last trip--to the dumpsters up on the hardtop: unopened copies of National Geographic; two years worth of Orion Magazine; an assortment of "possibility" magazines I collected back when "getting published" was a pressing concern. I'd like to think someday I'll read what I passed by when it was a current issue, but in all honestly, I won't.

As I heft the armloads of precious archives onto the flotsam that preceded it in the rusting dumpsters, I'll look around to see if anyone is watching as I perform the execution of a witness, as I put to a violent end the evidence of my sloth and lack of discipline, out of sight and mind, these trees that have fallen in the forest with no one to hear. It's a crime.

Meanwhile (a word that is such a cop-out segue...) a new day is dawning in the photographic realms along Goose Creek. I was taken aback this past week to come home one day and find that my wife--the most technology-averse person I have ever known, a neo-Luddite of the first stripe, was singing the praises of her visiting sister's digital camera. My wife, who shuns anything with buttons or dials, found that even she could point-and-shoot, and wanted me to investigate the possibility of getting HER her own camera. She never thinks I take enough of the right kind of picture (grab-shot people pictures regardless of photographic merit) and I'm sure is thinking about both our upcoming trip to South Dakota to see dau, grand dau and family AND her November highschool reunion.

So surprise: her dad, also visiting, very generously ordered the camera for her and it arrives tomorrow! And of course, SOMEBODY has to read the manuals and take it for a test run. And SOMEBODY has to check out the macro function that, along with the swivel LCD, will allow that someone to take close-to-the-ground shots of ferns, wildflowers and such that he hasn't been able to do since the Nikon CoolPix 950 bit the dust. The camera: Canon Powershot 620, a fine 7.1 MP piece of work. Yes, I think Ann is really going to enjoy the rich feature set of this camera, which for her purposes includes the on switch, the shutter switch and the carrying strap. Stay tuned this week for samples from the 620, while my Nikon is in surgery, getting a tummy tuck.

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In summer, I like getting out of bed wearing only boxer shorts, period. Not two pair of socks, silk longjohns, sweatpants, T-shirt, sweatshirt and fleece sweater...the typical Winter straight-out-of-bed garb.

...getting out of bed and going straight to the coffee pot. Not going out on the porch where it is obscenely dark and cold in all the garb mentioned above to get kindling to start the fire. On a summer early morning, there will be no crumpling of newspaper, no wiping soot off the sleeve of my fleece sweater. In summer I won't bang my knuckles on the woodstove door pulling singed digits back from a smouldering fire that all of a sudden leaps into a conflagration, a sampling of July sun, up close and personal.

I like sitting on the front porch in my boxers with a cup of coffee in the mornings. Maybe two cups.

... and listening in the early dark to the quiet sounds not made by man, while sitting in my boxer shorts, on my front porch, with a cup of coffee, straight out of bed.

... then the warmth of the morning sun on my bare legs, while sitting on the front porch, listening to the quiet sounds of nature, holding a good book in my hands--which are not covered in soot.

... the warmth of the morning sun on a vine-ripened tomato eaten whole in the garden, standing in my skivvies, while I can still taste my first cup of morning coffee.

... I like the smells that rise from the warm earth, wafting on the rays of the morning sun--the smell of pollen like bread baking, lilacs, yellow sweet clover, spearmint along the creek, damp loam...the smell of coffee and of ripe tomatos.

I like the orderly rows of stacked firewood that season behind the house, waiting for a time when the sun's scorching heat will be only a uncomfortable memory, its pleasant warmth a fleeting rarity. In the heat by the stacks of winter wood, I like the sour stink of oak, the medicinal astringence of walnut, and the sweet smell of cherry. Each piece of it from woodlot to face cord has been handled over and over by these hands that will in a few long months crumple newspaper and offer every one of those stacked pieces of cordwood one by one into the stove, a sacrament, while my mind thinks back to how very pleasant it was to be effortlessly warm, to smell the earth, to live in my skin alone, and to have experienced summer.

From the Deep Archives of Fragments, July 9, 2002. How well I remember writing this. A refugee from Alabama, July is my least favorite month, and summer not my favorite season. I wrote this in the infancy of my writing and blogging life as an exercise in character improvement (mine), toward coming to love my enemy and blessing them what curses me. I even remember which pair of boxer shorts I was wearing when I wrote it. (This piece came to me yesterday as I drove to work in the muggy heat, grumbling about summer's shortcomings. I laughed out loud, and thot I'd see if I could find it for you. What do YOU like about summer? Share with us.)

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Had a good visit at Warm Hearth yesterday, and remember now why I enjoyed my year and a half there as therapist. It is like being in a village of friends (chiefly the surviving women) who could also be your grandmother(s). We had perhaps twenty. In this setting, contrary to Floyd where your guests arrive tastefully late, everybody comes early. I'd decided to read a piece about cutting firewood for the guys in the audience, but then, I'd forgotten there wouldn't be so many. There was only one. Many who came were still active readers. They asked a lot of questions or had tales of their own related to the pieces I read (which included the Mother's Day piece I posted to Fragments, Home and Hearth, and Like a Dog--held loosely together by the thread of "writing down the memories."

I touted blogging as a medium for storing and sharing one's thoughts. I must have come across with sufficient (or excess of) zeal because I was asked to come back some time and talk specifically about blogging, how to set one up, and what kinds of opportunities such writing might provide. I also am hoping to hear from the one nice lady (who was far older than the twinkle in her eye would have suggested!) to help her with a small book she wants to put together just for family. She just needs a few prompts to get word wrap around her images in Word, then convert it to pdf. Another was from my home town of Birmingham. They stayed after; they trotted back to their apartments for money for the book; they made me feel welcomed and the book appreciated, and thanked the activities director for setting up the event. This was a very receptive audience. But then, they are--and have been--readers. Here's some scary stats originally from Poynter's ParaPublishing, borrowed from a "bookaholic's" weblog.

Only 32% of the U.S. population has ever been in a bookstore.

Customers 55 and older account for more than one-third of all books bought."

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

42% of college graduates never read another book.

80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57% of new books are not read to completion.

UPDATE 15 July: This, for those who understandably questioned the statistics. You weren't the only ones!

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Did It My Way

And it's the hiway. I'm discovering some of the costs of self-publishing. Do they outweigh the benefits? Probably not. But they do disappoint me, and I think in time, things will have to change.

Twice this week, I've paid the price for not producing my book through a "reputable publisher". Partly, I understand the problem, and partly I protest. Since I'm an Alabama native, I've explored the possibility of having the book made available to my home-staters, and it looked at first as if I was making some progress. A lit mag editor said yes, they'd review the book for their print magazine for the Spring of '07. Now, very kindly and appreciated, he explains that his organization is having disagreements about doing full reviews of "author subsidized" books. Secondly, an April 07 book festival in Birmingham stipulates that, in addition to being a native of the state, your book must be from a "reputable publisher". Well, far as I know, the reputation of Goose Creek Press stands unblemished, but I don't think that's what they mean. It means "sorry, Charlie. We don't recognize your effort--no matter the endorsements, sales volume or other comparisons to "real" books. "

Everything is Broken

I confess I haven't used it very much lately. Summer is a down-time with photography, generally, and moreso this year with other things taking center stage. But finally, last night, a photo-op: Ann's dad's 92nd birthday party held down the valley in our "secret place" above Nameless Creek. I turn on the camera (Nikon D70) and nada. No power, no LCD, no nothing. Just a green light flashing at the bottom of the memory card door. Different card, different battery, same blink. So while we're in South Dakota in a few weeks, I guess my camera will be in RepairLand. I'm so bummed--not to mention it will cost me the equivalent of a couple dozen book sales to fix, most likely.

But wait! What's this? Oh I love the net. Digital Photography Forums / Nikon D70 Forum to the rescue. It seems I'm not alone. Early adopters of this camera who purchased in March and April of 2004 are experiencing BGLOD--the blinking green light of death. Nikon will repair it for free, and it may take as little as a week to have it back. So pardon my whining.

Warm (Hearth) Fuzzies

Today is my day to meet with the residents of Warm Hearth Retirement Village to talk about and read from the book. I'm having a hard time deciding which two or three selections might mean the most to this audience. I've stopped expecting in these events to be able to distill "what the book's about" into those few pieces that I read. That will have to be inferred from the little bit I say about how the book came to be, and from my "presence" and then, from purchasing the book. But I do want to find appropriate pieces for this audience who will be older than average, more well traveled and experienced, and maybe more patient as listeners. Many will have been teachers. Some will have had experiences like mine, searching for roots, for belonging and sense of place. I want to have plenty of time to let them tell their stories by the questions they ask and comments they make afterward.

So, Slow Road Home readers, here's your chance: What three selections would you chose for my audience today at 3:00? We have to decide soonish!

Long Way Home

I recorded the "lost dog" story some of you read here a while back. You can listen to it online at or listen live tomorrow on WVTF after the Civil War pieces at 6:50 and 8:50.

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I remember now my love-hate relationship with home health visits. It's like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. Yesterday, with the first tentative knock, my chocolate offered a snarling pitbull slamming up against the decrepit door of a sagging trailer that turned out to be yet another of Google Maps "close but no cigar" wrong addresses.

You take the bad with the good. Other times, my destination as a roving physical therapist has been a quaint gingerbread house at the peaceful end of a winding, shady lane in a beautiful part of the Blue Ridge where a little old lady has lived alone since her husband died. She is in her best house dress and slippers, expecting me. After we have our ten minutes of formal introduction in the parlor, we are friends. Never mind that I'm not from here, and don't talk exactly like other folk in this holler. She says "son, everybody just calls me Gran, so you should too." And when I leave, she asks "Do you and your wife like fried apple pies? I just made these this morning" and a few disappear from the paper plate before I make it back to the office.

Yesterday, on my quick walk back to the car from the wrong-address pit bull, I remembered one of my first home health visits in Floyd County, back in 1997--my first year of box-of-chocolates home care. The address was close to town and I was sure I was near to the address on the paperwork. Right there was the mailbox with the house number on it, but where was the house? Opposite the mailbox, back up through the shadows of a dense stand of tall, feral scrub pines a rutted, barely-graveled road ascended steeply into the underbrush and disappeared. Surely not, I thought, knowing surely so. I steeled myself to what I must do, put the truck into 4WD and started into the unknown.

Several side trails branched off left and right as I inched my way forward in first gear, but each seemed to be less rutted than the main path and I hoped this meant less traversed than the one I chose to follow to whatever dwelling might lie at the crest of this inaccessible place. No wonder the patient couldn't get to the clinic for treatment, I thought. He'd need a helicopter! Finally, up ahead, a shaft of light penetrated the gloom. The pitch of the road dropped, and I made out something--not a dwelling exactly. Maybe this was a neglected outbuilding of some kind and the house would be somewhere beyond.

But no. The road ended at a bramble patch and I had gotten where I was bound to go. Two Dobermans lunged at their chains, barking viciously. The dwelling was almost obscured by piles of old batteries, by ancient truck fenders in various shades of rust; by tangled bales of orange bailing twine. And over there were what appeared to be several pickup-loads of asphalt shingles covered in moss and lichen; and divers once-painted farm implements fixed in place since my children were born. Dotting the devastation were a dozen dog houses rotting where they stood in the shadows of what had once been a clearing around the "house". To the left were stacks of fertilizer melted into an amorphous mass on what was left of the original pallets. I was in awe, even as I wondered if the snarling dog's leashes would hold, should I have to get out of the truck, which of course, I had to do. Dear Lord in heaven, I thought, somebody lives here. My patient lives here. Don't judge the book, I thought.

An unshaven elderly man came to the door, limping, and shouted for the dogs to hush. Yes, I was at the right place, come on in. And I made my way up the steps past mountains of dog kibble in bags, cases of canned fruit, boxes whose labels had long since disappeared under the awning of an overhang the length of the faded pale green and rust colored trailer. "Sit down" he offered, shifting three piles from here to there as best he could to uncover an empty surface. He'd just had a total knee replacement, and it wasn't going so good for him. I tried to focus on the paperwork and the patient, and a half hour later, had the range of motion and strength measures I needed to complete my visit. I went back a half dozen times to see John. Got to where the dogs didn't even bark. And I never left without carrying something home, at John's insistence.

"You and your wife like apple butter?" he asked, as he excavated his way to the far corner of the room where he spent almost all his time since his wife left him. Moving case after case, he finally found the half-gallon mason jars of apple butter. "And here, take one for that nice nurse who came to see me before you started a-comin', he insisted. "Y'ever get bee stings or cut yourself when y'shave? This is the best stuff I ever found. I have to send to North Clina for it." And he dug down into the warehouse to find three cases of Resinol Pine Oil Ointment. I still have the two bottles he gave me. I haven't had all that many shaving cuts, what with the beard and all.

I can't tell you how many times in one version or another, I learned that good people come in all sorts of skins and boxes. While I've encountered a few exceptions to the rule in my years in the pain clinic and home health and outpatient care, if you just listen and care and withhold judgment til you get to know them, there's a worthwhile soul inside just about every wasted body and every neglected shanty you'll ever drive up to, Dobermans or pit bulls notwithstanding. Turns out, that books and covers advice is a pretty good piece of wisdom. Sometimes, you just have to turn a few pages to get into the story.

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Red-tailed hawks nest in our valley in the summers, and we hear them so frequently overhead that sometimes we don't even bother to look up. But on a recent summer day, had I allowed that shrill and ordinary call to go unacknowledged, I would have missed the extraordinary performance of a birdwatcher's lifetime.

High up against white cumulus, a pair of red-tails rode the thermals where the rocky tailbone of the ridge dips into Goose Creek. One bird traced a wide path at four hundred feet, the other, at eight hundred or more. They circled in opposite directions in a single rising kettle of warm air, aware of each other-probably male and female. The lower bird called its rasping tee-DEEER! and as if in response, the higher bird tucked its wings tight against its body and plummeted straight for the tallest White Pines along the ridgeline. He pulled out nonchalantly at the last instant, to climb the warm air again and soar in lazy spirals above his partner. I've watched redtails perform this power dive before, and it always thrills me. For a moment, I become the bird I'm watching, I see what it sees and feel what it feels. My head swims as I pull out of the free fall, climbing once more, to look down on the tiny white house where the man stands looking up, shading his eyes with his hand.

But that man had never witnessed the display that followed moments later. The two raptors flew circles in close formation in an ordinary kind of way, when the one broke away alone to his higher berth. And then, from a great height, the higher raptor tucked his wings and his silhouette against bright cumulus became the shape of a wingless fuselage of a falling missile, a feathered arrow. The trajectory anticipated the arc of his partner along her slow circle. At the very last instant as I was about to believe I was witnessing an attack, the perfect line of the free-falling bird veered just enough to miss its target. The nearness of his passing pulled his victim sideways into the turbulent undercurrent of his fall. Just then, he unfurled his wings full, breaking his descent. He rose just enough that the two birds were suddenly side by side. And they embraced.

Talon in talon, wings wide and fixed, they fell-yet not a fall, but a dance, a sacrament each bird for and with the other. A russet, feathered carousel twirled with the smooth choreography of a maple fruit in slow motion. Bird with bird, they whirled in a giddy centripetal act of play or thanksgiving. Round and round through the buoyant air, their outstretched wings traced circles in space, while they held to each other for life, for joy, in graceful descent. At the last moment, they parted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and resumed their silent scribes in the thermal over the ridge.

What does one say in the presence of such wonder? Are there ever words to express this unexpected and poignant beauty? I stood there, awe-struck, and speechless: was this practiced or spontaneous--a ritual fixed by instinct or a creative act of will? My inner poet even considered for the briefest moment that these two birds chose to do this there and then because I had acknowledged their presence by looking up, an honored and appreciative audience of one.

I know better, of course. But even so, having witnessed this, I'll be more open to these small and private miracles of beauty in the years that remain. And I will ponder the possibility that we create these revelations simply by being receptive and ready for them in the ordinary of our busy lives.

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I have the sense that each letter I type is a grain of sand falling through the narrow neck of an hour glass. My honey-do list looms closer and closer as each character pours out my fingertips, and the urgency of another's agenda deadens the blogging nerves connecting brain and keyboard. We have company coming, and as far as one of us goes, that pushes blogging and writing to a very low priority. The hour glass is almost empty!

Beyond that, I'm hard pressed to glean nuggets from the past three days that anybody would be interested in hearing--not that such considerations have slowed me down one bit in the past 4 years of blogging. I've been away to the Appalachian Writers Association Conference on (the wireless-less) campus of King College in Bristol, TN. (Bristol, you may know, is bisected by the TN-VA border so half is in each state. I'm sure there's a story in how that inconvenient arrangement came about.) So I'm three days behind, and just catching up with emails and book keeping and getting names of people I met in Bristol into Outlook is a daunting task.

One good outcome of the weekend is that my book table was next to the Appalachian Authors Guild table. I joined the group to promote the book, and took the LAST slot for a table at the Highlands Arts and Crafts Festival in Abingdon, VA on August 5. I'll be sharing a spot with a young lady I met whose book of poetry and pictures I want to let you know about when I find out it has been released--hopefully in time for the Abingdon event. Oh, and I talked with the authors guild folks about their need for a blog--to show case participant author's events, and create a more interactive and timely presence for those who have their works with the guild. They were very excited about the prospects of such, and I'll be doing what I can to help with this.

I was hanging out down at the book tables Saturday morning with a half dozen other folks when Sharyn McCrumb walked in unexpectedly, for the plenary session and evening banquet. I got a chance to give her Slow Road Home, with the pages marked where I talk about my "appalachian epiphany" that she inspired. We chatted about Floyd, and about Floyd's racing history, since NASCAR is Sharyn's new passion. (Another young author at the conference has done a Bristol-and-racing book through Arcadia Press that seems to be selling well.) Anyhow, that was sort of an unexpected perq, even though the book might not get another look.

Also, I met and had the chance to get to know Robert Cumming, owner of Iris Press in Oak Ridge, TN. Iris Press is attracting interest from a variety of poets and authors, many of whom have books with the big guys in New York and elsewhere. The personal attention to both the authors who have books in process with Iris, and their uncommon detail to cover art, page layout and overall book quality seems to be drawing much good attention to a press that typically produces ten to fifteen books a year. In a very lopsided swap, Bob gave me four of his books--all poets with a heart toward nature--in exchange for my one. I look forward to being influenced by the voices in these books, and will share those thoughts and insights with you in coming weeks--when the storm of houseguests has passed.

Meanwhile, we've had a bear at the back door (while I was out of town!) AND the back door frame seems to have shifted and we can't get it open. (The dog is absolutely bewildered by this.) Why does everything break when you have company coming? Hmmm?

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Published in Road Less Traveled / Floyd Press -- for July 6, 2006

I stood on the back porch listening as two pileated woodpeckers beat a drumming dinner call from the hillside behind the house. How exactly do they know where to bore for their meal, I wondered? And before I knew it as I stood there musing, I had become a beetle grub in a dark tunnel, hidden inside that pine trunk. I could feel my insect skull as it was rattled by the living jackhammer that would soon become my doom. Closer and closer came the business end of that massive beak to my thin, pale and segmented beetle skin. So this is how it ends, I thought. (And it was about here that I wondered if I maybe I'd seen too many Gary Larson cartoons over the past decades.)

This little mental scenario, of course, was just a day-dream, a wandering of thought and a wondering about the nature of nature and how it all works on a scale we usually don't imagine. And it occurred to me just then that several times in the days before, I'd had conversations that turned to the matter of just this kind of curiosity and inquisitiveness. "Do all adults harbor a sense of wonder, or is it lost in childhood for most?" asked one friend. Do today's children have the imaginations that we think we had as children? And is a sense of wonder, awe and curiosity essential to being a fully-developed human, to maintaining a healthy culture and society? Are artists, by necessity, curious people? I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions.

Like most, I suppose, I am only curious about a limited range of things. I have always felt a vague guilt for not being the least bit curious about how my car, or lawnmower or my word processor work. I just want to pull the crank and start driving, mowing or writing. I don't have much curiosity about numbers either, and never understood my account-father's fascination with tax laws and ledgers. On the other hand, I'm sure that most accountants or mechanics haven't a clue what I see so fascinating about the sex life of flowers or the biology of salamanders. But I've been fascinated with nature since before I could talk, my mother tells me, and at fifty eight, I'm still a boy when it comes to mind's play and imagination in the out-of-doors. This, I consider a valued and abiding trait, while many others would think it foolish and a waste of time should they drive by someday when I'm lying flat on my stomach in the wet pasture taking spider web pictures.

But I would encourage this: that each of us nurture a passionate and curious relationship with some thing--a hobby, an idea, or a discipline--as life moves beyond childhood into the busy lives of adulthood and parenting, then from mid-life into retirement years. Nurture curiosity. Years ago, I was privileged to know Max Thomas, who at 92, still would tell me "I'm studying on that" when I offered a medical or biological explanation he didn't fully trust or understand. He never stopped being inquisitive and curious, and it enriched his life--and his neighbors--to the end. Learning takes a lifetime.

It is simply a matter of good mental fitness and personal growth as we age to have a passion for something worthy of our time, to hold some question before us whose answer will always stay just out of reach. I trust our schools are teaching our children in such a way that they experience a driving curiosity, which sometimes means shaking predictability and routine up a bit. Mark Twain remarked that "If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way."

Don't settle for too tame a world devoid of frequent moments when you stand silently in wonder. The illusion of full knowledge is often the end of the matter--but we don't have all the answers in our Age of Science. Those of us who are older can remain children and play, even if our joints and muscles don't honor our commands as they once did. Go out and hold a cat by the tail. And tell us what you've learned.

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Estivation or aestivation (from Latin aestas, summer) is a rare state of dormancy similar to hibernation, but during the months of Summer. Animals that aestivate spend a Summer inactive and insulated against heat to avoid the potentially harmful effects of the season (such as the increase in temperature, or relative lack of water), or to avoid contact with other species with which they may otherwise be in competition, or for which they are prey.

A period of torpor. Summer dormancy. Avoiding potentially harmful effects of the season. Yep, I feel it coming on. I am more prone, in my Alabama origins, to estivate than to hibernate. And even though we're having a respite from the heat just now, I get sluggish and lethargic and stuporous in mid-summer. Seasonally affective disorder during the long, hot, languid days of summer. That, and some travels, some out-of-town company and some book-related events til the end of the month may mean blogging will be sparser than usual.

If you need me, I'll be buried up to my neck in wet sand right there (click image for larger view) where the two channels of Nameless Creek come together--in the shade, saturated in cold spring water, green light and serenity. Ah, September.

Meanwhile for the ear: learn to play the spoons. I was surprised at our recent party to discover that this is not a universal bit of skill--to use common kitchen utensils for percussive accompaniment to clogging music. It takes some practice, but if you got rhythm and you got spoons than you got music in your hands.

And for the eye: If you're not going to see the movie, watch Jon Stewart's interview with Al Gore on the Daily Show--in two parts ONE and TWO.

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The dog, unfortunately, has discovered a new taste treat that was one our dog, Zachary's, favorites. Zach thought of box turtles as a kind of peanut with legs. Now, T-dog has discovered that while they're not much of a challenge to capture, they sure have a nice crunch and can be a useful diversion in a bored hour between digging for moles and chasing groundhogs. (I discourage his harming tortoises, but usually, he's found and injured them badly before we catch up to him.)

I would find Tsuga's latest kill at the top of the drive by the maple, under a swarm of flies, Ann directed me. I muttered indignantly, hoping the dog would overhear me and know my displeasure at both his kill and at my job description which apparently includes designated handler of mutilated wildlife. (Ann does her share of this, I have to admit.)

Yuk. I must have walked right past this carcass a dozen times without seeing or smelling it, but it was obvious the insects had wasted no time, and were well into their work. First had come the flies, who find a body just moments after life no longer prevents microorganisms from turning solid tissue to liquid. And then, the fly eggs and larvae laid in the carcass set up a short-lived but structured ecosystem that time-lapse photography would show can last mere hours in a small corpse like that of a former box turtle.

So after a full day since death, when I found this tiny lump of turtle-shaped organic matter, it had become a virtual colony of life--inhabited by a disassembly crew buzzing and crawling with as many purposes as there were species. The largest and most obvious were the American Carrion Beetles with their flat, black and yellow bodies. Rove beetles, elongate with upward-arching stingerlike abdomens, moved about like tiny sportscars, in a hurry. New to me were the almost round Hister Beetles--shiny, black and by the dozens.

One of the most interesting things about these insects of death--not a bit of natural history most people are at all interested to explore--is their mutualistic relationship with tiny hitch-hiking mites. Listen to this:

... the mites demonstrate "phoresis," the symbiotic relationship in which a non-parasitic organism hitches a ride on another. Second, after being transported to a corpse by carrion beetles the mites quickly get down to the business of eating fly eggs and even small maggots, thus reducing the fly population and creating more space and food for beetle larvae. Carrion beetles return the favor by hauling the non-flying mites to the next banquet of fly eggs when yet another animal dies. It's even been suggested that some mites perform maintenance on carrion beetles themselves, cleaning off bacteria the host insects are bound to pick up as they explore a carcass. link

And here and here are pictures of beetles with their cargo of flightless migrant workers along for the ride.

So my distasteful duty turned out to offer an interesting natural history moment after all. And there was a Part Two to this quick trip outdoors yesterday, but perhaps, given the necrotic nature of Part One, I should put some distance between the two tales and leave the more pleasant one for tomorrow's post.

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I was cleaning out some files from a folder in My Documents. Curious, I clicked on "For dad June 2004" and I'm sorry son, I just had to share this. It's not so far away from Father's Day that I can't justify the timing. And I'm still waiting for that beer.

For all the times you made me hold that damned ladder;

For all the times you said, "if you throw that tennis racquet again, we're going home," and I threw the tennis racquet again, and we went home;

For that time you wanted to go hiking in the Smokies, and I wanted to go to Amy Harris's pool party, and I pitched such a fit halfway to the Smokies that you turned the car around and drove us home at breakneck speeds, only to give in half an hour later after I pitched another fit, and we went to the Smokies, and had a nice time;

For beating me every time at every sport and every game, many years after I was sure I was better than you;

For the thirty-seven times you told me the name of the same green-metallic beetle, while each time I was thinking about some girl or some song I'd like to write, or some song I'd like to write about some girl, only half an hour later to see a green metallic beetle, and wonder what kind it was;

For the times you crushed between your fingers something sweet-smelling, or sharp-smelling, or minty-smelling, or putrid, and shoved it toward my nose, saying, "Nature snort;"

For all the arguments we've had about religion, and all the agreements we've had about politics;

For all the times we've called each other "smart-ass," audibly or otherwise;

For every time you should've made fun of me for the way I split wood, and the vast majority of times in which you did;

For all those really stupid ideas I've had, which you vehemently opposed, until you knew I'd go through with them anyway, at which point you supported me;

For all those trips I've taken, and you've secretly worried about, even while you tried to project all your concerns for me onto "my mother;"

For teaching me to light the water heater--and to rake with full, efficient strokes, and curse at the weed-whacker, and spread the peanut-butter clean out to the crust;

For all the creative ways you punished me, with just enough consequence to sting, and just enough humor to tell stories about later;

For finding your craft, your voice, and a fulfilling sense of place--for living my aspiration and giving me a sense of place, even as odd as I feel to live vicariously through my father;

For all those times, all those lessons, all your friendship and love, this father's day I bought you an ice-cold bottle of beer,

Which I'm drinking now as I write you this poem,

All the while thinking, man, he would've enjoyed this.

Thanks, Dad. Love you. I'll spot you that beer sometime. -- NLF

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IN a half dozen paces, I stepped from one world to another. The air warmed, the sky brightened. From woods to field, the air held a different scent. Only a few feet beyond the edge of the forest, the wind lifted the wide brim of my straw hat and my eyes slowly adjusted to a shadeless expanse of brilliant blue.

The plant life understands this "edge effect" and responds by growth in layers of form in this ecotone that is neither forest nor field. Vertical grasses give way to low spicebush shrubs in the shade of young white pines with their whorled branches; and finally older and more permanent hardwoods form the overstory in the dark forest beyond, telling a tale that I sensed first with my skin.

And so this may not be a great photograph, here where I turned to look back on the shady place I had just been. But it records one of those brief and uncommon moments when one feels included as a small, passing part of a structured and orderly community of life, of relationship that all too often we might see as "just a bunch of plants."

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Someone sent me this link that sent me to the page on Barnes & Noble's site where my book is listed as "now available for pre-order and available on August 28". But I think we have us a little problem.

I have established no relationship with Barnes & Noble and don't intend to for some while--perhaps until the first run of books is complete or beyond.

So I'm wondering: is it prudent or even legal for them to do such a thing? Will it not cause ill will for the bookstore to have people pre-order the book in July expecting delivery in August, when there are no books to deliver? And how will that reflect on the author of the book, to seem to say it is or will be available and then have to apologize to potential buyers when they have to spend time getting their money back?

I have had the book for only two months, so I'm not ready to make any big changes in how I distribute it quite yet. I'm told that fall is the best season for book readings and sales, and I probably won't make any drastic changes until after the first of the year. But I need to have those changes in mind now, so I can start doing my homework. One option is to set up a relationship with a distributor that has access to many of the national bookstore chains. That would have me making one large shipment (the second printing in whole or part) which would increase the book's reach--and hopefully, volume--but seriously cut the profit per book.

The other thing I'll consider is the possibility of pitching the book to a publisher like John F Blair or Algonquin or one of the university presses. I'm not sure what that would buy me other than some respectability. On the other hand, the book seems to have met no first impressions that it is in any way inferior because it is self-published. Having it picked up by a trade publisher again would only grease the skids of getting it into distribution, and I think I can deal directly with a distributor for that purpose when I get ready.

Meanwhile, if you run across a webpage other than slowroadhome.com that offers the book for sale, please kindly give me a heads-up so I squelch the discounted prepublication imaginary sales before they cause problems.

And if anybody has any good experiences with a book distributor or knows of an author who has, do let me know. Finding a good one really seems a shot in the dark, and I hear far more sad stories than happy ones in this arena--lost or damaged books, exorbitant shipping charges, books discounted beyond the agreed amounts and such. I'd just as soon keep up my existing mom-and-pop (mostly pop) one's and two's distribution method as suffer that kind of aggravation.

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What pulls you this morning? What vision draws you out into the world, into a Saturday waiting to be filled?

Wake up, walk out your door, and wonder.

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I need to be thinking about the next book affair coming up soon on July 13, but it won't likely happen today. We'll leave the house around 11, and have lunch with some new friends just outside of town. By 1:30 we'll be winding up the mountain for the Wine Down the Music Trail gathering up at the FloydFest site. If we can last out in what for the mountains will be blistering heat, it will be after six when we head home by way of downtown Floyd, where we'll stop briefly at Cafe del Sol for the wine and cheese (oh please no more wine) reception for the featured artists whose works hang there on the walls. And by 8, we'll be back home to let the poor dog out for a quick walk and wee, and then to bed. So as I say, my thinking about this book event won't happen today.

The upcoming reading is an opportunity to speak among the ghosts of friends, in a familiar place among unfamiliar faces. It was perhaps the best therapy job I ever had. (And I guess I've taken paychecks from maybe 15 different outfits, full and part time over the years since becoming a physical therapist in 1989.) In this setting, I saw patients in their own apartments or condos, wearing their own clothes, surrounded by their family pictures, books and what little of their personal things they distilled from their larger, younger lives to assisted living, or the community of smallish condos at Warm Hearth Retirement Village in Blacksburg.

For 18 months, I made my own schedule, seeing a half dozen residents, plus or minus a few, three times a week, and they often became my friends. Visits would consist of 30 minutes of therapy and an equal period of just plain conversation, often accented by a look at the family album, or an explanation of or long story about some valued memento on their mantle and how it entered and influenced their lives long ago. I met family, who were often the reason why this person, who had spent most of their lives at a university in Sweden, were now living in the mountains of Virginia. Many of the residents had a son or daughter who were Virginia Tech faculty. Some of my patients even called me when their medical orders and insurance had expired for their original conditions and paid me privately to work with their mom or dad. The visiting was, I think, often as therapeutic as the therapy.

I went by a few weeks ago to arrange for the July afternoon Slow Road Home event, and sat in the office with the facility administrator and activities director, both of whom had been there when I left in May 2001. What I learned was that, in an assisted living facility, five years is a very long time. Almost all of the 100 residents and many of my friends were gone, replaced by a new of equally interesting but unfamiliar names on the doors. I walked the hallways, remembering.

There at the end of the hall, was NG's apartment. Every time I visited, I was someone different, usually a family member. Nancy was "pleasantly confused", a former faculty member somewhere north, and remained very structured and organized, even in her benignly demented state. And on my arrival at her door for a therapy visit, she quickly assigned duties to me--a presumed favorite nephew most of the time, I think--for the upcoming family reunion which she imagined herself to be in charge of.

And on the opposite side of the building and one floor up, was JC's apartment. A little crone of a man, comma shaped from ravages of osteoporosis, he wined and complained about the food, about the parking lot, the noise, the other residents and the administration. But sit him down to his electric organ, and he became a genius and a healer himself with the music he played. The last note echoed from the walls, and he became a bitter, bent gnome of a man again. We became good friends, and the music was our common ground.

If I'd been writing then, there would have been so many wonderful stories, personalities and character cameos. "And so what happened to . . ." I asked over and over on my recent visit. All gone, they told me. And so the people who will attend this 3:00 gathering on the 13th will be strangers who live behind the doors of those I knew and remember so well.

What should I say to them? How to I weave these memories of Warm Hearth into everything that has happened in my own life on Goose Creek while my elderly friends were spending their last years in those tiny apartments? What passages from the book, or beyond the book, should I share that will be meaningful to this gathering of wonderful folks in this special place? I'd best be getting my thoughts together. And hey--maybe that is already happening as I write these lines this morning before the sun comes up.

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