August 6, 2013
I hadn’t walked the Genehouse walk for a few days because of a bad blister. Change was everywhere, notably at the top of Stroke Hill on Stanka Lane (I named it Stroke Hill because it is a mile and a half climb up a steep hill, and shall take me home to Mother one day), the farm on the west side of the road. There was a huge fairy ring of mushrooms, twenty feet in diameter, the fungi softball size, in the yard. Continue reading
August 4, 2013.
Last night at Genehouse, I walked outside at one a.m., wearing only shorts and shoes. The tree frogs and bullfrogs were rehearsing. The night was black, pregnant with stars, almost cold. I walked up the north hill, sliding my feet toes first because I couldn’t see. I stood silent for thirty minutes and contemplated the sky.
Then I heard it: Steps. Tentative. The meadow was filling from all directions. A stick on the ground cracked. They came. “They,” I knew not what, but I was surrounded. I made myself rigid, arms at my side, slow breaths.
My archaeologist’s eye focused and I began to see large moving shadows. Then I heard the snorts and otherbreath, the familiar huffing of an alpha female. Something brushed my back and a rough tongue sampled my salt. I was standing in a herd of deer. They had come up the hill to forage for food and the still, dark mancreature had them curious.
Coyote howls began and the pack acknowledged and the huffers, the adults moved the group away from me, until the herd transmogrified into dark matter. A rabbit screamed. The North Star gleamed, as it did for escaping slaves near this very spot, two hundred years ago; as it did on this very spot for the First People twenty-five thousand years ago: a timeless beacon for a journey.
One can stand still and go on a journey. Last night I was Odysseus. Last night the world came to me.
August 2, 2013
I was halfway through my power walk this morning. Normally, I don’t stop, just turn around and head for Stroke Hill, up Stanka Lane. But I did stop, and I saw an old man on a bike, slowing down.
I didn’t want to talk–I admit it. He was dressed in white shorts, white tee, white ball cap. He asked me if I had seen the beautiful egrets, the mothers feeding their babies; and yes, I have seen many egrets.
He stuck out his hand: “I’m Dexter.” “Gene,” I replied. I asked him if he lived on the river and he said yes. My friend Jerry lives on the river, so I asked if he knew him. “I live next door to him,” Dexter said. Small world. Continue reading
July 30, 2013
At Genehouse a swarm of yellow jackets have built an underground nest not six feet from my front porch. This morning I sat and drank green tea and watched the frenzied colony from the dining room window.
In the 80’s, I was mass stung by yellow jackets on the Appalachian Trail. It took me three days (no food or water) just to stand and move again and make my way down the mountain. Now a single bee sting sends me to the hospital.
So these marvelous creatures must die, that I may live; only the morning rain is stopping the killing. I got the Wild West kill em and chill em speech from an enthusiastic saleswoman at Home Depot as she sold me the solution.
Do yellow jackets know joy? There will be mass death when the sun returns.
Only the rain is stopping the killing.
July 26, 2013
July 26, 2013
I drove to Farmer B.’s last night. We ate grilled chicken, grilled zucchini, salad and blackberry cobbler. We harvested cucumbers, blackberries and bags of fresh kale. We drank Stag beers on the pergola and watched the frenzied hummingbirds going for the feeders at sundown.
And then rose a magic moon, over the forest to the east, pear-shaped, and fire orange, then higher and turning color to Luna moth-pale yellow green. And insects tuned up for moonrise music.
Small wonder that Mesoamericans, under such a moon as this, felt gods.
July 16, 2013
When I was a boy, my superhero fantasies included “carrying” pistols around and killing bad guys. I actually fired a lot of guns, thanks to my mom’s brothers, Dee and Jess and also Grandpa Jones, who taught me to shoot Texas jackrabbits in the rear end, to hear them cry out. I killed a fair number of helpless animals–just no people.
Nature does not recognize a distinction between the two. Only humans see human life as something more important as frogs or fish or houseflies. I am a humanist; I don’t need a deity for me to know I must live my life according to a code of ethical conduct. I respect everyone who feels differently—racists excluded. Like most of us I grew up and learned to separate fantasy from real life.
Some men never grow up. Some men feel downtrodden and powerless. I feel for George Zimmerman. He never grew up. He had unhealthy fantasies and it is blind fate that he placed himself in a situation where fantasy and reality cross.
People who participate in neighborhood watch programs are taught never to leave their vehicles, never carry a weapon, always have a whistle and a cell phone to call 911 in emergency. Mr. Zimmerman, perhaps with visions of superherodom swirling in his head, was not adequately trained, was armed, was not prepared for the consequences of his actions. He did not set out to kill a boy. The 911 dispatcher told him to remain in his car. There would have been no national news story, had he listened.
A boy is dead. Nature will not take note. Trayvon—what a weird name. Ewing (me)—what a weird name. Mr. Zimmerman didn’t know the boy’s name but he could see the color of the boy’s skin. He would not have killed me, would not left his vehicle to investigate an old white man. Yet I am more dangerous than a boy in a hoodie. Experience has taught me what I will and will not do. I am capable of killing. I understand nature, but I think that boys should be given the benefit of the doubt. Innocent children die all the time. Hate begets hate.
And so it goes.
Shame, anyone? Anyone?
July 16, 2013
On my walk from Genehouse yesterday at 9:30 morning in the morning, 92 degrees and 95% humidity, I saw the usual snowy and great egrets lined up along Scotch Jimmy Island’s northern shore in the river. And I saw a smaller, same-shape, dirty looking, grey-white bird on the shore behind one of the great egrets. I stopped and watched the show.
The smaller bird mimicked the movements of the great egret in front of it–left, right, forward, backward. It was still and patient. Then the mother egret speared a silverfish, about twice the size of a minnow. It turned 180 degrees and faced the child, which stepped three steps forward, raised its head and opened its beak, and Mom stuffed the silverfish down the infant. The child turned and stepped gingerly out of the water and resumed its pose. None of that feeding frenzy, like baby robins competing for the worm. It had its mother and it knew its food was coming. It was a ritual and a rite of passage.
Oh yes, a Norwegian rat (one of the oldest mammals along with chipmunks), its fur thick and lustrous, ran from the grass cover along the highway, right over the top of my orange running shoes, and disappeared into the steamy, Soybeanian jungle. Had I a child with me, I might have fed it the rat.
Maybe not.
June 30, 2013
a carpet of fireflies lit up before sunset
the glowing lights undulating over the insect city
I sat shirtless on the front porch
untouched by the last of the biting buffalo gnats
the scourge of Up South
the rubythroated hummingbirds making a last call at the feeder above my head
and then came the harbinger
the first long, mournful wing-song of a single cicada
it seemed to struggle
early birthed creature on the north maple tree
it did three stanzas then called it a night
soon the entire orchestra will arrive
soon we’ll be wondering where summer went
Grandma Duncan used to say
‘Them katydids, I wish they didn’t
‘They sing of winter
‘Why the good Lord make skeeters and katydids I don’t know’
Grandma also disapproved of the moon landing
of moon romance:
‘Moonlight darin’ us to go insane yessir
‘Me a Godfearin’ woman
‘I hope them astronauts find the light switch and turn it off.’
June 29, 2013
I’m walking west on the River Road and a wall of black rain rushes at me and then marble-size hail starts falling on my bare arms and legs. I’m bruised and stung and raw, a hailstone smacks the left lens of my sunglasses, and this kid stops in his truck and yells for me to get in. There are beer cans, a vodka bottle and candy wrappers all under his feet.
He drives me up Clifton Terrace to Genehouse, this beer drinking decent kid and I say, “Thank you, sir,” and he says, “Pay it forward, man.”
Indeed. Cosmos, bless this drunk boy on a Saturday afternoon, protect him and ease his pain.
June 25, 2013
Outside my writer’s window is a giant maple tree with four main trunks fanning out. The southwest trunk has formed a huge arch, actually touching the downward slope of the hill. A pileated woodpecker lands on that arch every morning and hammers at it.
Sometime in the last few days I noticed that the scartlet-headed bird, the second largest woodpecker in the U.S., had landed and was watching me intently. Every day since, it lands, watches me, then beak-hammers.
This morning, Scout the Cat (I named her after my friend, the writer Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for “To Kill A Mockingbird”) was asleep on the windowsill. The pileated landed on the tree arch and fixed its gaze on the enemy of all birds. It gave its standard screech, waking the cat.
Scout stood and fluffed out her fur, making a third bigger than she really is, her tiger stripes swollen and pulsing like a nest of snakes. She watched the woodpecker and began to tremble and make a mewling sound. The bird dove from its arch perch straight as the crow flies, landing on the outside sill, cat and bird now nose to beak through the window screen.
The bird shrieked. The cat, reaching back to Pleistocene roots, to her ancestor sabertooth tiger, emitted a guttural growl, a sound so primeval, beyond Edenic, from the days of cats eating Neanderthals and Solutrians, then she spat and hissed, unhinged her claws and swung at the screen.
The woodpecker screamed, “Fuck me,” (or so I imagined) and fell off the sill. The cat growled and stood guard. I touched her back, and my predator/companion, who gleefully gulps spiders, ants and creepy-crawleys, looked as though she wanted to eat me.
The pileated woodpecker, with its Woody Woodpecker flame of head feathers, landed back on the tree arch and taunted us.
But tremble, o tremble did the majestic bird, for it had looked into the claws of death and lived to remember it.
