- Hiking is walking, not running. Don't race.
- Keep your hands free (empty). Don't carry anything big in your hands or walk with your hands in your pockets. This means no walking sticks.
- Talk quietly so only the people in your group can hear you. Don't disturb other people.
- Keep a steady pace. Hum a song quietly to help you.
- Drink plenty of water and snack when you feel hungry - BUT- don't take your first break until you've walked for at least a half an hour. That lets you set a good pace.
- Let a grown up know if you get 'hot spots' on your feet. Stop and take care of them BEFORE they turn into blisters, which hurt a lot more.
- Don't pick any flowers or other pretty things. Leave them for the next people to enjoy. The only exception is wild fruit like blackberries or blueberries. Thy make a great treat, and give you energy, but only eat what you want while you're hiking. Don't pick them to eat later on.
- Take home everything you brought with you--don't leave anything behind. Even little bits of food, like an apple core or an orange peel, can make things less fun for the next people to come through.
- Leave things better than you found them. Carry a small trash bag and pick up any trash that you might find. The animals will appreciate it, and you set a good example for other people, too.
Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Thursday, March 09, 2017
"Rules for Hiking"
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Civic Engagement
I have voted in every election since I became eligible but one. I have both of my Senators and my Representative on speed dial. I regularly write letters to the editor to my various local papers. I have served on the jury in a criminal trial. I have worked going house to house as a census enumerator.
But I think the most profound and momentous civic milestone I have participated in was the naturalization ceremony for a dear friend. About five-hundred new American Citizens, representing eighty countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe sundered their ties to their homelands and swore allegiance to their new home. It was both humbling and ennobling, mundane and magnificent.
I defy any of the legion of small-minded bigots currently prancing across our national stage to look into the face of any one of those five hundred and say we are not better off bringing them into the fold than we are casting them into the cold. Wankers.
I highly recommend that if you ever have the opportunity to participate in a naturalization ceremony, you do so. It stirs and rouses the latent patriot within us all, no matter how discouraged and disheartened that patriot may be.
But I think the most profound and momentous civic milestone I have participated in was the naturalization ceremony for a dear friend. About five-hundred new American Citizens, representing eighty countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe sundered their ties to their homelands and swore allegiance to their new home. It was both humbling and ennobling, mundane and magnificent.
I defy any of the legion of small-minded bigots currently prancing across our national stage to look into the face of any one of those five hundred and say we are not better off bringing them into the fold than we are casting them into the cold. Wankers.
I highly recommend that if you ever have the opportunity to participate in a naturalization ceremony, you do so. It stirs and rouses the latent patriot within us all, no matter how discouraged and disheartened that patriot may be.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
The Things You See in Traffic
Yesterday I’m heading home in light Friday evening rush hour traffic, minding my own business, when a raptor of some kind (really didn’t get a good look, what with the driving 70 mph in rush hour and all) lumbers across the sky just a hundred yards or so ahead of me.
That’s not what caught my attention; what caught my attention was the fluorescent-orange koi gripped in its talons, easily the same size as the bird itself. Somebody’s pond is down one, I suspect. And that hawk (or whatever) is gonna dine well for a day or two.
The alternate explanation, of course, is the children's book version, where the hawk is simply letting his water-bound little buddy have a chance to finally see the whole world from a different vantage point. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what was going on.
Indelible
On December 1, 1974, TWA flight 514 en route from Cincinnati to Washington National Airport was diverted to Dulles Airport due to strong crosswinds in Washington. Because of miscommunication between the flight crew and air traffic control, it began its descent into Dulles before it had cleared the Blue Ridge Mountains. At ten after eleven in the morning, Flight 514 struck the western flank of Mount Weather at about seventeen hundred feet above sea level and was destroyed, killing all on board.
In July of 1975, I set out to section-hike the Appalachian Trail southbound from Snickers Gap (where Route 7 crosses the Blue Ridge and A.T) to Rockfish Gap at the southern end of Shenandoah National Park, a distance of about 140 trail miles. At this point (and at that time) the A.T. was a notorious and reviled road-walk section, white blazes on telephone poles.Within an hour or so of setting out, pavement under my vibram-soled boots, I walked into the crash site of Flight 514, barely seven months after the fact. It told a very simple, very detailed story.
The point of impact was squarely on Blue Ridge Mountain Road, Virginia Route 601. There was a clear vista westward across the shattered treetops, revealing the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester and South Mountain. To the western edge of the brutal clearing, trees were neatly cropped; each successive rank eastward was increasingly shattered and splintered. There were clearly defined notches at the western edge where the engine nacelles ate into the trees; they faded and disappeared midway, as I suppose the engine pods had. It displayed the cross-section silhouette of a gently banking airplane. I have pictures of it, somewhere.
On the very west side of the road, forming the road bank, was a large outcropping of metamorphic rock. This is what stopped the forward movement of Flight 514 that bleak December morning. The rock was shattered, but beyond the road the trees remained intact; there was no undergrowth. The earth, even seven months later, was scoured. At that instant in time and space, the airplane became a mass of shrapnel too small to take down the trees but massive enough to scythe the forest floor for hundreds of yards up the hillside. It looked like a park. I don’t recall from the news at the time whether or not there was fire, but since the plane was near the end of its flight, most of its fuel had been consumed and the weather was cold and snowy, I don’t think it was a fiery kind of crash. The forest in that next July was not marked by the scars of a large fire.
In July 1975, I was young and impressionable, and modestly observant. I took a short break at the endpoint of Flight 514 to pay respect and take in the image of that moment, captured indelibly in that ravaged landscape. I still go down Blue Mountain Road from time to time; it is a favorite motorcycling destination, and the rock outcrop has become an informal memorial to Flight 514.
The woods to the east and west of the road have largely grown up to hide the scar, but forty years on, the weirdly tortured trees still bear mute testimony to the damage they both bore and caused. Trees grow from their tips; once damaged, they don’t grow them back. They find other routes to the sunshine. It will be generations before the woods fully conceal their secrets from us again.
In July of 1975, I set out to section-hike the Appalachian Trail southbound from Snickers Gap (where Route 7 crosses the Blue Ridge and A.T) to Rockfish Gap at the southern end of Shenandoah National Park, a distance of about 140 trail miles. At this point (and at that time) the A.T. was a notorious and reviled road-walk section, white blazes on telephone poles.Within an hour or so of setting out, pavement under my vibram-soled boots, I walked into the crash site of Flight 514, barely seven months after the fact. It told a very simple, very detailed story.
The point of impact was squarely on Blue Ridge Mountain Road, Virginia Route 601. There was a clear vista westward across the shattered treetops, revealing the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester and South Mountain. To the western edge of the brutal clearing, trees were neatly cropped; each successive rank eastward was increasingly shattered and splintered. There were clearly defined notches at the western edge where the engine nacelles ate into the trees; they faded and disappeared midway, as I suppose the engine pods had. It displayed the cross-section silhouette of a gently banking airplane. I have pictures of it, somewhere.
On the very west side of the road, forming the road bank, was a large outcropping of metamorphic rock. This is what stopped the forward movement of Flight 514 that bleak December morning. The rock was shattered, but beyond the road the trees remained intact; there was no undergrowth. The earth, even seven months later, was scoured. At that instant in time and space, the airplane became a mass of shrapnel too small to take down the trees but massive enough to scythe the forest floor for hundreds of yards up the hillside. It looked like a park. I don’t recall from the news at the time whether or not there was fire, but since the plane was near the end of its flight, most of its fuel had been consumed and the weather was cold and snowy, I don’t think it was a fiery kind of crash. The forest in that next July was not marked by the scars of a large fire.
In July 1975, I was young and impressionable, and modestly observant. I took a short break at the endpoint of Flight 514 to pay respect and take in the image of that moment, captured indelibly in that ravaged landscape. I still go down Blue Mountain Road from time to time; it is a favorite motorcycling destination, and the rock outcrop has become an informal memorial to Flight 514.
The woods to the east and west of the road have largely grown up to hide the scar, but forty years on, the weirdly tortured trees still bear mute testimony to the damage they both bore and caused. Trees grow from their tips; once damaged, they don’t grow them back. They find other routes to the sunshine. It will be generations before the woods fully conceal their secrets from us again.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Carrie
We had Carrie killed, just a few days after her 14th birthday.
She had been faltering for the last few months, increasingly so in the last few weeks. But around her birthday, she rallied and enjoyed having the company of family around. But the day came when she finally could no longer stand on her own and would not eat.
We knew her time had come, but still we debated. In the end, we called the local veterinarian who would make a house call. But the earliest she could come was in the afternoon, leaving us with an emotionally exhausting and trying wait.
We use the time to dig a grave for her in the slight meadow, near the gnarled pitch pine. Our rocky hilltop begrudged her enough loose orange clay and feeble rock to make a decent dog-sized hole in the cold ground.
At the end, Carrie lay on her favorite pillows surrounded by family and the veterinarian and the vet’s assistant. Schroeder sat nearby on the couch. She got one shot of a relaxant to put her at ease, followed by the lethal dose. One moment she was there, and the next she wasn’t
I tucked her in a curled sleeping pose, and wrapped her in a clean cotton sheet. She felt remarkably heavy; we needed the wheelbarrow to move her with any ease. We placed her in the hole, and each one of us laid upon her a few stalks and stems of dry plants from the backyard. They were a memento of her curious hobby, deadheading the spent flowers and shrubs with her teeth. Then we all took turns shoveling the rocky dirt into the hole, and finally placed a large chunk of rough white quartz on top to mark the grave.
The holidays and the presence of family and friends served to keep emotion at bay, and I could not see clear to grieve the loss of my first dog for a time. But some days later, on a blustery, misty gray morning, I took down the green lead and collar from its peg, and began to walk the path through the pines, down to the river, along the meadows of the river, and up the stream valley.
I had barely begun when the weight of the empty lead in my hands was too great to bear. I could hardly walk, and the grief washed over me again and again. I felt so keenly both Carrie’s presence and her absence with every step and at every point at which she would have always paused. It took a long time.
A few days later, we went into town for some errands. I walked into the feed store, and standing at the register was a woman with a dog on a green lead—a Saluki, the only saluki I have ever seen.
A Saluki is a sighthound, related to greyhounds but closer in appearance to a Borzoi but smaller. Timid, pure white, with long hair, elegant bearing and sweeping lines, the sight of the dog rendered me speechless. I explained to the woman I had just put my greyhound to sleep…but didn’t complete my thought that this dog looked like an “Angel Carrie”—a perfected vision of our little rescue, free from the scars of her racing career and the infirmities of a long greyhound life. It was a remarkable chance encounter that left me speechless and somehow comforted.
I feel a little better now, having wrung out some grief and coming to a measure of peace. She was a good dog, a great dog, and had a pretty full life—certainly a long life for a retired racer. I would like to imagine her in a perfected form, something like that sweet saluki but with Carrie’s wry sense of mischief.
We will miss her for a long time, no doubt about that.
She had been faltering for the last few months, increasingly so in the last few weeks. But around her birthday, she rallied and enjoyed having the company of family around. But the day came when she finally could no longer stand on her own and would not eat.
We knew her time had come, but still we debated. In the end, we called the local veterinarian who would make a house call. But the earliest she could come was in the afternoon, leaving us with an emotionally exhausting and trying wait.
We use the time to dig a grave for her in the slight meadow, near the gnarled pitch pine. Our rocky hilltop begrudged her enough loose orange clay and feeble rock to make a decent dog-sized hole in the cold ground.
At the end, Carrie lay on her favorite pillows surrounded by family and the veterinarian and the vet’s assistant. Schroeder sat nearby on the couch. She got one shot of a relaxant to put her at ease, followed by the lethal dose. One moment she was there, and the next she wasn’t
I tucked her in a curled sleeping pose, and wrapped her in a clean cotton sheet. She felt remarkably heavy; we needed the wheelbarrow to move her with any ease. We placed her in the hole, and each one of us laid upon her a few stalks and stems of dry plants from the backyard. They were a memento of her curious hobby, deadheading the spent flowers and shrubs with her teeth. Then we all took turns shoveling the rocky dirt into the hole, and finally placed a large chunk of rough white quartz on top to mark the grave.
The holidays and the presence of family and friends served to keep emotion at bay, and I could not see clear to grieve the loss of my first dog for a time. But some days later, on a blustery, misty gray morning, I took down the green lead and collar from its peg, and began to walk the path through the pines, down to the river, along the meadows of the river, and up the stream valley.
I had barely begun when the weight of the empty lead in my hands was too great to bear. I could hardly walk, and the grief washed over me again and again. I felt so keenly both Carrie’s presence and her absence with every step and at every point at which she would have always paused. It took a long time.
A few days later, we went into town for some errands. I walked into the feed store, and standing at the register was a woman with a dog on a green lead—a Saluki, the only saluki I have ever seen.
A Saluki is a sighthound, related to greyhounds but closer in appearance to a Borzoi but smaller. Timid, pure white, with long hair, elegant bearing and sweeping lines, the sight of the dog rendered me speechless. I explained to the woman I had just put my greyhound to sleep…but didn’t complete my thought that this dog looked like an “Angel Carrie”—a perfected vision of our little rescue, free from the scars of her racing career and the infirmities of a long greyhound life. It was a remarkable chance encounter that left me speechless and somehow comforted.
I feel a little better now, having wrung out some grief and coming to a measure of peace. She was a good dog, a great dog, and had a pretty full life—certainly a long life for a retired racer. I would like to imagine her in a perfected form, something like that sweet saluki but with Carrie’s wry sense of mischief.
We will miss her for a long time, no doubt about that.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
I woke up this morning at 05:00 so I could make it to our data center in time for a scheduled outage window set for 07:00. But did you know the traffic on the interstate is every bit as bad at 06:00 as it is throughout the rest of the morning? So with half a cup of half-calf in me, I sat for forty minutes in stop-and-go traffic, finally getting where I was going around quarter of seven instead of plenty early.
The outage (install a new core switch) should have taken about an hour. We hoped it would take 30 minutes; we warned everyone it would be three hours (Thanks, Scotty!) and it ended up taking three and a half hours. That was three and a half hours I stood in the colo space with my head jammed into our rack, trying to hear the gravel-in-a-cement-mixer voice of the network engineer (who was assisting via cheap cellphone from somewhere in the midwest) over the howling white noise of the air handlers and screaming servers.
95% was done in the first hour; the remaining 5% took two-and-a-half hours, as is usually the case with things like this. At the finish there were twenty-two windows open on the desktop of my laptop. As things were up and running, I was caffeine-deprived, hungry, cranky as a bottle of hornets, and shell-shocked from the noise, as well as probably a little sleep deprived on top of everything else.
I finally grabbed breakfast at five of noon, at a nondescript diner with no apparent calendars on the walls of the kitchen. It was what they called a 'skillet,' which is kind of like you took some kind of breakfast thing and chewed it all up and put it all together on a pretty plate with a biscuit on the side. But it stopped me from being hungry, that's for sure.
The afternoon was kind of a slow-moving blur. It was hard to make sense of work after such a morning, so it tended towards the perfunctory, that's for sure. And today is one of those days that mi esposa works late, so there was no incentive to get home fast.
On the way home I stopped at the local Irish watering hole, and was served by none other than herself. I sat at the bar, surrounded by people drunk on their smartphones. One pint of Guinness, one shot of Bushmills, neat. Sitting at the bar, which I rarely do, I slowly worked them in turns and toasted my day. Gradually, the strains of that least Irish of songs, "Gimme Shelter*" diffused through the background noise. I paid my tab, left a generous tip on account of it being my birthday and all, and left.
But things are taking a turn for the better. 1) Spouse is coming home soon, with a bottle of something sparkling, and 2) I got a call from "Microsoft Computer." After spending the day with my head in a server cage, I was ready for some fun:
*Maybe during the Troubles this was pretty Irish.
The outage (install a new core switch) should have taken about an hour. We hoped it would take 30 minutes; we warned everyone it would be three hours (Thanks, Scotty!) and it ended up taking three and a half hours. That was three and a half hours I stood in the colo space with my head jammed into our rack, trying to hear the gravel-in-a-cement-mixer voice of the network engineer (who was assisting via cheap cellphone from somewhere in the midwest) over the howling white noise of the air handlers and screaming servers.
95% was done in the first hour; the remaining 5% took two-and-a-half hours, as is usually the case with things like this. At the finish there were twenty-two windows open on the desktop of my laptop. As things were up and running, I was caffeine-deprived, hungry, cranky as a bottle of hornets, and shell-shocked from the noise, as well as probably a little sleep deprived on top of everything else.
I finally grabbed breakfast at five of noon, at a nondescript diner with no apparent calendars on the walls of the kitchen. It was what they called a 'skillet,' which is kind of like you took some kind of breakfast thing and chewed it all up and put it all together on a pretty plate with a biscuit on the side. But it stopped me from being hungry, that's for sure.
The afternoon was kind of a slow-moving blur. It was hard to make sense of work after such a morning, so it tended towards the perfunctory, that's for sure. And today is one of those days that mi esposa works late, so there was no incentive to get home fast.
On the way home I stopped at the local Irish watering hole, and was served by none other than herself. I sat at the bar, surrounded by people drunk on their smartphones. One pint of Guinness, one shot of Bushmills, neat. Sitting at the bar, which I rarely do, I slowly worked them in turns and toasted my day. Gradually, the strains of that least Irish of songs, "Gimme Shelter*" diffused through the background noise. I paid my tab, left a generous tip on account of it being my birthday and all, and left.
But things are taking a turn for the better. 1) Spouse is coming home soon, with a bottle of something sparkling, and 2) I got a call from "Microsoft Computer." After spending the day with my head in a server cage, I was ready for some fun:
"...Microsoft computer?? Really?" "Yes, your computer is sending a report to the Central Server that there is a problem!" "MY COMPUTER?? Sending a message to THE CENTRAL SERVER?" "Yes, sir, it is very infected!" "What should I do? Is there ANYTHING I can do?" "Well, yes sir, the Central Server says..." "I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner right now, my computer is right here, it's very small...shall I put it in the oven to disinfect it? That's what I shall do! It's IN THE OVEN NOW, What should I do next?? Can the CENTRAL SERVER SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING TO IT? HMM?"I'm probably exaggerating. Not the worst birthday ever, for sure.
Click.
*Maybe during the Troubles this was pretty Irish.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
"...And What Is Good, Phaedrus?"
"Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was first published forty years ago. That, among numerous other things, makes me feel old.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Weird little metaphor
On the way to work this morning, I saw a Bald Eagle on the wing. It was being harried by a large dark bird, possible a Black Vulture. That seemed like an oddly disturbing metaphor for today, of all days.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Willful Ignorance
Ever since sometime around fourth grade, maybe (when the Commonwealth of Virginia mandated that we be taught the History and Geography of the Commonwealth, and Miss Carver, bless her reactionary heart, executed that mandate), my mind and spirit have been drawn to those low dusky ranges to our west.
From a dozen or so strategic vantage points in the outer suburbs, you can cast your eye westward—there's a feeling I get when I look to the west—and see them undulate along the horizon from gap to ridge, the measure of detail depending on exactly where you are looking from. Regardless, whenever the opportunity presents itself I will at least glance towards those modest mountains, and remember countless days spent hiking and exploring the long wooded spine of Virginia.
So it was with a certain amount of chagrin that only within the last year or so I have had to confront my own willful ignorance of the true nature of Northern Virginia's geology and geography.
What I have viewed so wistfully on so many occasions from the outer suburbs, more often than not, is in fact Bull Run Mountain. Technically the easternmost constituent of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Bull Run Mountain is the southern extension of the Catoctin Mountains, which run northward through Maryland towards Pennsylvania, and peter out and die towards the south around New Baltimore, Virginia.
What I recall hiking on and exploring is the Blue Ridge proper, that broader, longer and taller range some twenty or thirty miles farther towards the west across the rolling Piedmont. Bull Run, Blue Ridge, Massanutten, Alleghenies. While Bull Run Mountain comes and goes in a short distance, the main process of the Blue Ridge extends more or less uninterrupted from Alabama to the Maritimes before diving beneath the waves and heading towards Iceland. It is that range that carries the Appalachian Trail, that hosts Shenandoah National Park, and that accretes so many things of beauty along its forest-draped flanks and hollows.
I was forced to confront my willful ignorance when we started regularly traveling the flank of Bull Run Mountain, and I began to recognize it as an entity in its own right with its own charm and distinctive nature. I also had to try and understand exactly how my brain had managed to willfully ignore the countless times I crossed that twenty of thirty miles of rolling valley without mentally acknowledging the two different sets of mountains. Amusingly, I am fairly certain that of all the places and times I have hiked and explored, exactly one was on Bull Run Mountain, it was short, it was utterly unremarkable and it is now almost completely forgotten.
I laugh to myself now when I look westward. My new understanding of the true nature of gently rolling Virginia doesn't materially change the feeling it gives me to look towards the mountains. In fact, it increases my appreciation, now that I know it in greater, more honest, detail without abridgement or elision. It still makes me happy to look out and see Bull Run Mountain, knowing that just behind it, somewhat obscured by the turn of the earth's surface, lie what I always used to think I was seeing.
Never too old to learn, never too old to recover from a mistake.
From a dozen or so strategic vantage points in the outer suburbs, you can cast your eye westward—there's a feeling I get when I look to the west—and see them undulate along the horizon from gap to ridge, the measure of detail depending on exactly where you are looking from. Regardless, whenever the opportunity presents itself I will at least glance towards those modest mountains, and remember countless days spent hiking and exploring the long wooded spine of Virginia.
So it was with a certain amount of chagrin that only within the last year or so I have had to confront my own willful ignorance of the true nature of Northern Virginia's geology and geography.
What I have viewed so wistfully on so many occasions from the outer suburbs, more often than not, is in fact Bull Run Mountain. Technically the easternmost constituent of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Bull Run Mountain is the southern extension of the Catoctin Mountains, which run northward through Maryland towards Pennsylvania, and peter out and die towards the south around New Baltimore, Virginia.
What I recall hiking on and exploring is the Blue Ridge proper, that broader, longer and taller range some twenty or thirty miles farther towards the west across the rolling Piedmont. Bull Run, Blue Ridge, Massanutten, Alleghenies. While Bull Run Mountain comes and goes in a short distance, the main process of the Blue Ridge extends more or less uninterrupted from Alabama to the Maritimes before diving beneath the waves and heading towards Iceland. It is that range that carries the Appalachian Trail, that hosts Shenandoah National Park, and that accretes so many things of beauty along its forest-draped flanks and hollows.
I was forced to confront my willful ignorance when we started regularly traveling the flank of Bull Run Mountain, and I began to recognize it as an entity in its own right with its own charm and distinctive nature. I also had to try and understand exactly how my brain had managed to willfully ignore the countless times I crossed that twenty of thirty miles of rolling valley without mentally acknowledging the two different sets of mountains. Amusingly, I am fairly certain that of all the places and times I have hiked and explored, exactly one was on Bull Run Mountain, it was short, it was utterly unremarkable and it is now almost completely forgotten.
I laugh to myself now when I look westward. My new understanding of the true nature of gently rolling Virginia doesn't materially change the feeling it gives me to look towards the mountains. In fact, it increases my appreciation, now that I know it in greater, more honest, detail without abridgement or elision. It still makes me happy to look out and see Bull Run Mountain, knowing that just behind it, somewhat obscured by the turn of the earth's surface, lie what I always used to think I was seeing.
Never too old to learn, never too old to recover from a mistake.
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
When Things Come Together
It's nice when things come together. Like when the shortest and quickest route from Point A to Point B also happens to be the preferred route.
I'm somewhere in Research Triangle, which I guess is where research mysteriously disappears, or something. I am here for a couple of days to learn something, and because it is relatively nearby, it made sense to drive rather than fly. The time driving to and from the airport, getting through security, waiting at the airport, renting a car at the other airport, then reversing the process less than three days later would be more productively applied to driving.
I say this because I have always enjoyed driving as a pastime, and consider time on the road an opportunity to experience something different. It is productive, and to have the opportunity to meld a business trip with a mild adventure was too good to pass by. In this instance, I had the opportunity to trace a "Blue Highways" route from nearly one end to the other, and a great deal of the trip was over terra incognito, a transect of my home state I had never seen any of before—a double bonus.
The first hour-and-a-half was pleasant and familiar, covering well-known roads and terrain. Following that, indulging in a little map-less, GPS-less, directions-less dead reckoning offered me the opportunity to get mildly lost and explore some rutted and sinuous dirt roads, more pothole and washboard than road proper. Eventually, I was reunited with my intended route, a minor, two-lane state highway,
I saw hidden gems like the town of Scottsville, (pop. 566) on the James River; skirted Willis Mountain, which has been gnawed away by years of mining the kyanite it contains to feed the spark plug industry, a field somewhere in between with a flock of forty wild turkeys blissfully browsing in the early morning light, and not much later a field with a scattering of bison quietly grazing like clenched fists. All this transpired beneath a November sky of increasing overcast and mood.
The thing about taking a "Blue Highway" route is that you're never more than a few feet from people's lives. For better or worse, you are witness to ten thousand silent vignettes, snapshots of the endless variety of the human condition. In a brief moment you witness and absorb joy, bliss, sorrow, despair...and then they are all gone, replaced by some other moment of insight into another world.
The road, mostly two-laned, rolled southward through deep hollows and ravines of the piedmont resplendent with the yellow-orange cloak of hickories, oaks and beech, then onto more gently rolling hills given to fieldcrops and pasture. Round bales in abundance; fields of some undetermined cover crop, bleached gray by the frost but still standing. The farther south the road ran, the more the land alongside it was given to plantations of pine and clearcuts now grown back with a low understory of riotous autumn colors, as if to compliment the pumpkin-orange clay.
Roads like this are not the arteries of our world anymore; they're not even the arterioles. They're more like capillaries, essential in aggregate but no one in particular is indispensable—but to those whose lives revolve around and are connected directly to them.
I would contrast this route of choice with my alternative, the first choice of Google Maps and Garmin alike—the inevitable interstate corridor, in this case I-95 and I-85. While the "Blue Highway" places you squarely in the middle of people's lives, what you can observe from the interstate highway is generally determined by those who want to be seen. It is a calculated, calculating, deliberate effort to shape and present a very narrowly tailored message to a specific audience. There is no spontaneity within it, there is no humanity in it, there is no serendipity in it. It is commerce, reduced to lowest terms. You can assume that you are being lied to, in one form or another, when you see something from the interstate. When people live in close proximity to an interstate, they try and screen themselves and their lives off from it, to maintain a modicum of privacy.
There is no need for this screening from the "Blue Highway," because there is no dichotomy between inside and outside; the highway is a part of their life.
In a couple of days, I will retrace my route, perhaps with a few minor tweaks learned from my southbound passage, hopefully with enough time to make a stop in Scottsville. I'm looking forward to it, as much as i looked forward to today's trip.
I saw so much.
Addendum:
I'm somewhere in Research Triangle, which I guess is where research mysteriously disappears, or something. I am here for a couple of days to learn something, and because it is relatively nearby, it made sense to drive rather than fly. The time driving to and from the airport, getting through security, waiting at the airport, renting a car at the other airport, then reversing the process less than three days later would be more productively applied to driving.
I say this because I have always enjoyed driving as a pastime, and consider time on the road an opportunity to experience something different. It is productive, and to have the opportunity to meld a business trip with a mild adventure was too good to pass by. In this instance, I had the opportunity to trace a "Blue Highways" route from nearly one end to the other, and a great deal of the trip was over terra incognito, a transect of my home state I had never seen any of before—a double bonus.
The first hour-and-a-half was pleasant and familiar, covering well-known roads and terrain. Following that, indulging in a little map-less, GPS-less, directions-less dead reckoning offered me the opportunity to get mildly lost and explore some rutted and sinuous dirt roads, more pothole and washboard than road proper. Eventually, I was reunited with my intended route, a minor, two-lane state highway,
I saw hidden gems like the town of Scottsville, (pop. 566) on the James River; skirted Willis Mountain, which has been gnawed away by years of mining the kyanite it contains to feed the spark plug industry, a field somewhere in between with a flock of forty wild turkeys blissfully browsing in the early morning light, and not much later a field with a scattering of bison quietly grazing like clenched fists. All this transpired beneath a November sky of increasing overcast and mood.
 |
| Willis Mountain, in the distance |
The thing about taking a "Blue Highway" route is that you're never more than a few feet from people's lives. For better or worse, you are witness to ten thousand silent vignettes, snapshots of the endless variety of the human condition. In a brief moment you witness and absorb joy, bliss, sorrow, despair...and then they are all gone, replaced by some other moment of insight into another world.
The road, mostly two-laned, rolled southward through deep hollows and ravines of the piedmont resplendent with the yellow-orange cloak of hickories, oaks and beech, then onto more gently rolling hills given to fieldcrops and pasture. Round bales in abundance; fields of some undetermined cover crop, bleached gray by the frost but still standing. The farther south the road ran, the more the land alongside it was given to plantations of pine and clearcuts now grown back with a low understory of riotous autumn colors, as if to compliment the pumpkin-orange clay.
Roads like this are not the arteries of our world anymore; they're not even the arterioles. They're more like capillaries, essential in aggregate but no one in particular is indispensable—but to those whose lives revolve around and are connected directly to them.
I would contrast this route of choice with my alternative, the first choice of Google Maps and Garmin alike—the inevitable interstate corridor, in this case I-95 and I-85. While the "Blue Highway" places you squarely in the middle of people's lives, what you can observe from the interstate highway is generally determined by those who want to be seen. It is a calculated, calculating, deliberate effort to shape and present a very narrowly tailored message to a specific audience. There is no spontaneity within it, there is no humanity in it, there is no serendipity in it. It is commerce, reduced to lowest terms. You can assume that you are being lied to, in one form or another, when you see something from the interstate. When people live in close proximity to an interstate, they try and screen themselves and their lives off from it, to maintain a modicum of privacy.
There is no need for this screening from the "Blue Highway," because there is no dichotomy between inside and outside; the highway is a part of their life.
In a couple of days, I will retrace my route, perhaps with a few minor tweaks learned from my southbound passage, hopefully with enough time to make a stop in Scottsville. I'm looking forward to it, as much as i looked forward to today's trip.
I saw so much.
Addendum:
- The bleached gray crop was soybeans. I know this because at one point I pulled over on the shoulder and walked to the edge of a field, where I bent down and snapped off a branch from a plant. The leaves were completely wilted but the pods and the stems remained intact, giving a very odd look to the whole thing.
- I filled the tank in the middle of nowhere, for $2.99 a gallon...full service. Yep, Full Service. Who knew? My receipt was hand-written on a receipt pad made from yellowing newsprint. It might just be the only full service station outside of N.J.
- What is it with company trips and Bald Eagles? I'm driving down a divided highway, and an oncoming car spooks a juvenile bald eagle from the median with something in its beak/talons. I slammed on the brakes and pulled to the shoulder; it flew up and circled above the road long enough for me go get a good look at it but not long enough for me to get a picture. Amazing.
- On the way down, I came around a bend in the road and had to slow down sharply for a woman crossing the road from the mailbox to a small business. On the way home...I came around the reciprocal bend, and had to slow down for the same woman (hairdo) crossing the same road from the same mailbox to the same business. How odd is that?
- What is it with company trips and bison/buffalo?
Yep. Those are buffaloes. Or bisons. - Scottsville is a gem of a little town. I had no idea that places like that existed in Virginia. Lunch at the Tavern on the James was amazing. Enjoyed chatting with Tom at James River Brewing about where they are now and where they're heading. I will definitely be seeing more of Scottsville in the future.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Is there a Librarian in the house?
So I'm looking at the bookshelf, and I notice that "Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap" is on the shelf with the brewing books. Because Margaret Mead, I guess.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Indian Country
The other day I did something I rarely do anymore, which was to take a mid-afternoon ride to get some air and help clear my head. A hundred-mile commute tends to make optional rides less appealing, somehow.
The destination was about fifteen miles away by road, half that as the crow flies; an area that back in the day we referred to as ‘Indian Country.’ It was a crude shorthand for that transitional area between the far edge of the suburbs and the beginning of ‘country.’ It comprised scattered development and industrial parks tossed among fields of scrub and cedar, areas that had stopped being farms and pastures a while ago, but had neither reverted to the wild nor fallen to the developer’s bulldozers. My brother and I both found ourselves exiled to different purgatories in this god-forsaken wilderness for different reasons at a concurrent nadir of our careers.
In any case.
I headed out to ‘Indian Country.’
It may have been most of a decade since I rode out there; the last official record I have is from a cold December morning circa 2004, and maybe a quick traverse a year or two after. But I can’t recall any visits since we left the burbs for the hill in the woods. During that time, the crowding fields of cedar scrub diminished, displaced by more ranks and files of tract houses and strip malls of cellphone stores, fast-food drive-throughs, nail parlors, Chinese carryouts and tanning salons. Office parks, Business parks, Industrial parks—everything but real parks.
You know, every ride must have a destination, if nothing more than an apogee where you cease heading away and begin returning. In this instance, that point was a little country store tucked tight inside a dusty elbow of the road, with a meager swath of gravel outside the front porch and a little more gravel just beside for a parking lot.
When I was billeted in 'Indian Country,' I frequented this little store quite often. It was a timeless oasis smack in the middle of nowhere that sold cold beer, hard-boiled eggs, laundry soap and clothespins, acrid coffee, big sacks of no-name kibble, hunting licenses, any kind of potato chip, night crawlers, deli sandwiches, fishing tackle and live minnows from a converted set of concrete laundry sinks with a big sign overhead, warning all to not shut off the switch or else the minnows would die. The clerks were amiable and laconic, not eager to waste a word when a grunt would do or a grunt when a nod would do, and there was a dusty, sepia-toned quality about the place.
I recall it as the kind of place where you could pull a long-necked bottle of pop from a cooler of crushed ice, pry the crown cap off with the opener bolted to the counter, then stroll out to the worn front porch and sit by the sleeping hound to watch traffic drift past. A nod and a single raised finger acknowledged all who passed by. It probably was never actually like the way I remembered it, but whatever. I liked to stop there, and drop a buck of two from time to time as an investment in keeping places like it around a few more years. It was easy to find a way to make it en route from Point A to Point B, especially when I had no particular desire to be in either Point A or B.
The approach to the store had changed (heavier volumes of heavier traffic demanded such) but the joint was still where I had left it. A sportsbiker on a Ninja was parked in the lot, chatting up a girl in a dusty muscle car. A van full of dusty painters in paint-spattered white overalls pulled in, nicely crushing the safety cone posted to warn-off the ginormous pothole that now threatened the van’s rear axle. The pile of ladders on the roof clattered violently as the van pitched to a halt.
I ungeared a bit and nodded to the sportbiker as I walked to the front porch. He nodded back, sized me and Beast up, then returned his attention to Miss MuscleCar. I opened the creaky front door into a cleaner, brighter, more open, more airy, more spare…mercadito. Tienda.
Hmm. Instead of tackle, and minnows with warning signs, and nightcrawlers, I find international calling cards and Jaritos, Inca cola and pan dulces, prayer candles and sugarloaf, masa and corn husks for tamales. In the cooler beside the usual red-white-and-blue cans of mediocre domestic beers are Sol and Tecate and Corona and Dos Equis—mediocre imported beers. The clerks, who I can barely see over the top of the sparkling clean deli case, are speaking animatedly (en espanol) to the handful of customers gathered around.
But this particular afternoon I’m neither hungry nor thirsty. For better or worse, there's nothing for me here this time. I slip back out the front door, hoping to not seem rude or abrupt. I really only wanted to come here and see if it still existed. It’s a touchstone; a destination; an apogee. And to hell with the ignorant, hateful people who rail against newcomers. It’s a passing of a torch, a brand new coat of paint on a long-standing tradition. I expect that under the new management, I’ll be able to count on this as a destination for some time to come.
More power to ‘em; I’m now looking forward to swinging out to ‘Indian Country’ sometime just to grab an Inca cola y un pan dulce and sit on the porch y ver pasar los coches por un tiempo.
The destination was about fifteen miles away by road, half that as the crow flies; an area that back in the day we referred to as ‘Indian Country.’ It was a crude shorthand for that transitional area between the far edge of the suburbs and the beginning of ‘country.’ It comprised scattered development and industrial parks tossed among fields of scrub and cedar, areas that had stopped being farms and pastures a while ago, but had neither reverted to the wild nor fallen to the developer’s bulldozers. My brother and I both found ourselves exiled to different purgatories in this god-forsaken wilderness for different reasons at a concurrent nadir of our careers.
In any case.
I headed out to ‘Indian Country.’
It may have been most of a decade since I rode out there; the last official record I have is from a cold December morning circa 2004, and maybe a quick traverse a year or two after. But I can’t recall any visits since we left the burbs for the hill in the woods. During that time, the crowding fields of cedar scrub diminished, displaced by more ranks and files of tract houses and strip malls of cellphone stores, fast-food drive-throughs, nail parlors, Chinese carryouts and tanning salons. Office parks, Business parks, Industrial parks—everything but real parks.
You know, every ride must have a destination, if nothing more than an apogee where you cease heading away and begin returning. In this instance, that point was a little country store tucked tight inside a dusty elbow of the road, with a meager swath of gravel outside the front porch and a little more gravel just beside for a parking lot.
When I was billeted in 'Indian Country,' I frequented this little store quite often. It was a timeless oasis smack in the middle of nowhere that sold cold beer, hard-boiled eggs, laundry soap and clothespins, acrid coffee, big sacks of no-name kibble, hunting licenses, any kind of potato chip, night crawlers, deli sandwiches, fishing tackle and live minnows from a converted set of concrete laundry sinks with a big sign overhead, warning all to not shut off the switch or else the minnows would die. The clerks were amiable and laconic, not eager to waste a word when a grunt would do or a grunt when a nod would do, and there was a dusty, sepia-toned quality about the place.
I recall it as the kind of place where you could pull a long-necked bottle of pop from a cooler of crushed ice, pry the crown cap off with the opener bolted to the counter, then stroll out to the worn front porch and sit by the sleeping hound to watch traffic drift past. A nod and a single raised finger acknowledged all who passed by. It probably was never actually like the way I remembered it, but whatever. I liked to stop there, and drop a buck of two from time to time as an investment in keeping places like it around a few more years. It was easy to find a way to make it en route from Point A to Point B, especially when I had no particular desire to be in either Point A or B.
The approach to the store had changed (heavier volumes of heavier traffic demanded such) but the joint was still where I had left it. A sportsbiker on a Ninja was parked in the lot, chatting up a girl in a dusty muscle car. A van full of dusty painters in paint-spattered white overalls pulled in, nicely crushing the safety cone posted to warn-off the ginormous pothole that now threatened the van’s rear axle. The pile of ladders on the roof clattered violently as the van pitched to a halt.
I ungeared a bit and nodded to the sportbiker as I walked to the front porch. He nodded back, sized me and Beast up, then returned his attention to Miss MuscleCar. I opened the creaky front door into a cleaner, brighter, more open, more airy, more spare…mercadito. Tienda.
Hmm. Instead of tackle, and minnows with warning signs, and nightcrawlers, I find international calling cards and Jaritos, Inca cola and pan dulces, prayer candles and sugarloaf, masa and corn husks for tamales. In the cooler beside the usual red-white-and-blue cans of mediocre domestic beers are Sol and Tecate and Corona and Dos Equis—mediocre imported beers. The clerks, who I can barely see over the top of the sparkling clean deli case, are speaking animatedly (en espanol) to the handful of customers gathered around.
But this particular afternoon I’m neither hungry nor thirsty. For better or worse, there's nothing for me here this time. I slip back out the front door, hoping to not seem rude or abrupt. I really only wanted to come here and see if it still existed. It’s a touchstone; a destination; an apogee. And to hell with the ignorant, hateful people who rail against newcomers. It’s a passing of a torch, a brand new coat of paint on a long-standing tradition. I expect that under the new management, I’ll be able to count on this as a destination for some time to come.
More power to ‘em; I’m now looking forward to swinging out to ‘Indian Country’ sometime just to grab an Inca cola y un pan dulce and sit on the porch y ver pasar los coches por un tiempo.
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
#@%$&*!!!
So I was cruising on my way home, just crossed the county line (my penultimate landmark) essentially doing the motorcycle version of SOCMOB (I guess that would RDRMOB) when THWACK!! this ginormous BUG hits me straight in the hollow of my throat at about 70 miles an hour (my doing the posted speed limit of 55 + this crazy-ass bug going twenty miles an hour THE WRONG WAY IN MY LANE).
I actually flinched and meandered in my lane for a second it hurt so @#$%^& much. But I regained my composure, continued down the road to my turn, and proceeded to the end of our lane where I stopped to pick up the mail. Whilst doing that, I reached down to check the slight tickling sensation I felt on my shirt. So, fumblefumblefumble OW OW OW OW OW! #@$%^&*!!!
Yep, it was a #@$%^&*!! wasp I hit on the highway at the posted legal speed limit while SOCMOB, so to speak, and that #%$@^&!! wasp wasn't content to just crash the @#$% into me. Nooooooooooo, he had to come along for the ride, and add injury to insult by giving me a big old sting right smack dab in the center of my sternum for my troubles. And after all that fussing and commotion, he had the audacity to fly off.
#@$%^&!!. ATGATT, my butt.
Footnote: For those of you keeping score at home, that's two snakebites and a wasp sting since Sunday.
I actually flinched and meandered in my lane for a second it hurt so @#$%^& much. But I regained my composure, continued down the road to my turn, and proceeded to the end of our lane where I stopped to pick up the mail. Whilst doing that, I reached down to check the slight tickling sensation I felt on my shirt. So, fumblefumblefumble OW OW OW OW OW! #@$%^&*!!!
Yep, it was a #@$%^&*!! wasp I hit on the highway at the posted legal speed limit while SOCMOB, so to speak, and that #%$@^&!! wasp wasn't content to just crash the @#$% into me. Nooooooooooo, he had to come along for the ride, and add injury to insult by giving me a big old sting right smack dab in the center of my sternum for my troubles. And after all that fussing and commotion, he had the audacity to fly off.
#@$%^&!!. ATGATT, my butt.
Footnote: For those of you keeping score at home, that's two snakebites and a wasp sting since Sunday.
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Herons, plural
On my way to work today I saw something I had never seen before—a flock, albeit a small one, of great blue herons. Three of them, to be exact, flying in formation across the low grey sky.
Recently I have seen a pair of the smaller green heron, noteworthy for their brightly colored legs and feet, in the vicinity of the pond at GMU. They patrol the shore and shallows and nearby woods, and fly spectacularly. But they are no match for the great blues, unmistakable with their deep keels, long curved necks, deadly bills, gracefully extended legs and almost comically graceful flight made possible with the slightest exertion of their wingtips.
Earlier this week, a great blue took off from a pond next to where I work, then slowly, gracefully, ponderously gained both speed and altitude until it soared into the treetops nearby and disappeared. With each flap of its long wings, its scale appeared to change; it seemed to grow larger, more massive, with each stroke. By the time it reached the woods, it had transformed from a shore bird into a massive, commanding master of the sky.
I cannot envision anything but ancient pterodactyls when I see them in flight; slow, steady, unfaltering, their gaze fixed to a point on the far horizon. For the longest time, it always appeared to me that they only flew on paths diagonal to roadways; I never saw a heron cross a road perpendicular nor fly along one that I could recall. But recently I think I did see one cross a road at a right angle, and it seemed unnatural.
But I am sure that before today, I have only seen the great blue heron as a solitary traveler.
Recently I have seen a pair of the smaller green heron, noteworthy for their brightly colored legs and feet, in the vicinity of the pond at GMU. They patrol the shore and shallows and nearby woods, and fly spectacularly. But they are no match for the great blues, unmistakable with their deep keels, long curved necks, deadly bills, gracefully extended legs and almost comically graceful flight made possible with the slightest exertion of their wingtips.
Earlier this week, a great blue took off from a pond next to where I work, then slowly, gracefully, ponderously gained both speed and altitude until it soared into the treetops nearby and disappeared. With each flap of its long wings, its scale appeared to change; it seemed to grow larger, more massive, with each stroke. By the time it reached the woods, it had transformed from a shore bird into a massive, commanding master of the sky.
I cannot envision anything but ancient pterodactyls when I see them in flight; slow, steady, unfaltering, their gaze fixed to a point on the far horizon. For the longest time, it always appeared to me that they only flew on paths diagonal to roadways; I never saw a heron cross a road perpendicular nor fly along one that I could recall. But recently I think I did see one cross a road at a right angle, and it seemed unnatural.
But I am sure that before today, I have only seen the great blue heron as a solitary traveler.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Dominus papa squalus laetabundus
I don't even know where to begin with this. So I'm just going to leave it here.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Regional Studies
I have been reading "Night Comes To The Cumberlands," a thoroughly engrossing and disturbing study of the history of Eastern Kentucky.
The book was written by Harry Caudill and originally published in 1963. The story it told of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and deprivation motivated John Kennedy to create the Appalachian Regional Commission to improve living conditions for the residents of the Appalachian poverty belt.
Caudill established his bona fides in the introduction, which helps deflect a certain amount of the heavy-handed approach he takes to his subject. (Caudill's tone strays to the patronizing and somewhat condescending at times, and his take on both slaves and Native Americans betrays the era from which he is writing).
But if I were to create a "Regional Studies Reading List," I would certainly begin with "Night Comes to The Cumberlands," and add:
The book was written by Harry Caudill and originally published in 1963. The story it told of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and deprivation motivated John Kennedy to create the Appalachian Regional Commission to improve living conditions for the residents of the Appalachian poverty belt.
Caudill established his bona fides in the introduction, which helps deflect a certain amount of the heavy-handed approach he takes to his subject. (Caudill's tone strays to the patronizing and somewhat condescending at times, and his take on both slaves and Native Americans betrays the era from which he is writing).
But if I were to create a "Regional Studies Reading List," I would certainly begin with "Night Comes to The Cumberlands," and add:
- "Born Fighting" by James Webb,
- "Far Appalachia" by Noah Adams,
- "The Foxfire Book" by Eliot Wigginton et al, (at least the first three volumes)
The subject needs to be understood, if for no other reason than that the issues and attitudes described in this book are still very much with us today in our current political discourse. The attitudes of the earliest white settlers of Kentucky are still with us. They are manifest in a concept of 'freedom' that is defined not by "What do I have the ability to do?" but rather "No one can tell me what I can't do."
The two approaches are clearly not equivalent; and they lead to radically different ends.
****************************************
Edit: another book I'd add to the list: "Skyland" by George Freeman Pollock, for his odd (and somewhat condescending) take on the mountaineers he encountered when building his Skyland Lodge. Skyland became the nucleus of Shenandoah National Park, which displaced those mountain families into the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley during the Great Depression. This diaspora into 'modernity' changed the lives of the mountain people irreversibly, and not necessarily for the best. What Cryphonectria parasitica did to the American Chestnut, the coming of SNP likewise did to the mountain families of the Blue Ridge.
****************************************
Edit: another book I'd add to the list: "Skyland" by George Freeman Pollock, for his odd (and somewhat condescending) take on the mountaineers he encountered when building his Skyland Lodge. Skyland became the nucleus of Shenandoah National Park, which displaced those mountain families into the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley during the Great Depression. This diaspora into 'modernity' changed the lives of the mountain people irreversibly, and not necessarily for the best. What Cryphonectria parasitica did to the American Chestnut, the coming of SNP likewise did to the mountain families of the Blue Ridge.
Monday, May 06, 2013
I heard the news today, oh boy
I was reading an article today about fracking, in particular about the experiences of landowners adjacent to properties where fracking has taken place. Often these landowners receive no financial benefit from the sale of the gas produced there, either because of some sneaky dealing with the previous owners, strong-arm tactics by the gas companies, or simply their reluctance to sell the drilling rights. As an acquaintance used to say, "All of the onus, none of the bonus..."
One story mentioned a man who had working in one of the incidental positions related to fracking--he washed the mats that surrounded the drill sites once they were done drilling and were taken up, in preparation for trucking them to the next site.
The man developed a debilitating skin condition from having his feet in the chemical-laden wastewater, and after seeing forty doctors, was no closer to a cure or palliation. He is unable to work.
This is not even a remotely remarkable story in this day and age. But what literally made me gasp out loud was the byline of the story--Clearville, Pennsylvania.
For a brief time, a million years ago, Clearville was my mailing address. It is a beautiful area in south-central Pennsylvania, maybe fifteen miles above the Mason-Dixon line as the crow flies, not near anything in particular. It lies among the many long north-south ridges of the Appalachians as they begin the sinuous turn eastward that defines the topology of central Pennsylvania. Much of the land hosts state forests that came into being during the depression, when farm after farm failed and reverted to neowilderness. It makes for good hunting and fishing land, and as I recall, is flush with wild blueberries in the summer. It also lies atop the infamous Marcellus shale, the home of our benighted culture's mad 21st century gold rush.
Gobsmacked, I looked a little deeper into what's going on with fracking and that little slice of Pennsylvania with which I have a passing familiarity.
Turns out that fracking is all over the map there, and people getting sick from it is just the beginning. While Clearville was my postal address, the actual location was a tiny little crossroads even closer to the Mason-Dixon and farther from anything of consequence. And it turns out that little hamlet was the scene of a natural gas compression station fire in 2010 that required the evacuation of over 40 homes in the middle of the night.
My first thought was "There are actually over 40 homes in Artemas? Really?" My second thought was how heartbreaking is was that Artemas now hosted a natural gas compression station.
Even back in the day, natural gas was a thing there. There was an old capped well atop the property; locals talked about how in exchange for allowing (old-school) drilling on their property, they received free gas stoves, heat and refrigerators (yes, you can make cold by burning gas) and from time to time you could hear the sound of a drill rig off in the distance on a cool summer night.
But a compression station running 24/7, right there...that's another matter.
It was a really, really quiet place; the kind of place where airplanes were generally absent from the sky, where you heard the wind and the rain coming for minutes before they arrived, where birdsong was common and plain to hear, where a car coming along the long gravel road was never a surprise.
The two streams and spring nearby ran cold and clear. I guess that's all changed now, and that change can't ever be undone by us or our children or our children's children. I'll just try and keep it in my memory, how it was. And as much as I abhor folks who randomly quote scripture, it seems very Genesis 25:25-34 to me.
Edit: Apparently I conflated two parts of the story. The man who got sick was elsewhere in Pennsylvania; the Clearville incident involved a number of horses and other livestock who sickened and had to be put down. But the basic gist remains the same. A beautiful state is being destroyed to obtain a commodity whose price just keeps falling, just so we can ship it elsewhere in the world.
One story mentioned a man who had working in one of the incidental positions related to fracking--he washed the mats that surrounded the drill sites once they were done drilling and were taken up, in preparation for trucking them to the next site.
The man developed a debilitating skin condition from having his feet in the chemical-laden wastewater, and after seeing forty doctors, was no closer to a cure or palliation. He is unable to work.
This is not even a remotely remarkable story in this day and age. But what literally made me gasp out loud was the byline of the story--Clearville, Pennsylvania.
For a brief time, a million years ago, Clearville was my mailing address. It is a beautiful area in south-central Pennsylvania, maybe fifteen miles above the Mason-Dixon line as the crow flies, not near anything in particular. It lies among the many long north-south ridges of the Appalachians as they begin the sinuous turn eastward that defines the topology of central Pennsylvania. Much of the land hosts state forests that came into being during the depression, when farm after farm failed and reverted to neowilderness. It makes for good hunting and fishing land, and as I recall, is flush with wild blueberries in the summer. It also lies atop the infamous Marcellus shale, the home of our benighted culture's mad 21st century gold rush.
Gobsmacked, I looked a little deeper into what's going on with fracking and that little slice of Pennsylvania with which I have a passing familiarity.
Turns out that fracking is all over the map there, and people getting sick from it is just the beginning. While Clearville was my postal address, the actual location was a tiny little crossroads even closer to the Mason-Dixon and farther from anything of consequence. And it turns out that little hamlet was the scene of a natural gas compression station fire in 2010 that required the evacuation of over 40 homes in the middle of the night.
My first thought was "There are actually over 40 homes in Artemas? Really?" My second thought was how heartbreaking is was that Artemas now hosted a natural gas compression station.
Even back in the day, natural gas was a thing there. There was an old capped well atop the property; locals talked about how in exchange for allowing (old-school) drilling on their property, they received free gas stoves, heat and refrigerators (yes, you can make cold by burning gas) and from time to time you could hear the sound of a drill rig off in the distance on a cool summer night.
But a compression station running 24/7, right there...that's another matter.
It was a really, really quiet place; the kind of place where airplanes were generally absent from the sky, where you heard the wind and the rain coming for minutes before they arrived, where birdsong was common and plain to hear, where a car coming along the long gravel road was never a surprise.
The two streams and spring nearby ran cold and clear. I guess that's all changed now, and that change can't ever be undone by us or our children or our children's children. I'll just try and keep it in my memory, how it was. And as much as I abhor folks who randomly quote scripture, it seems very Genesis 25:25-34 to me.
Edit: Apparently I conflated two parts of the story. The man who got sick was elsewhere in Pennsylvania; the Clearville incident involved a number of horses and other livestock who sickened and had to be put down. But the basic gist remains the same. A beautiful state is being destroyed to obtain a commodity whose price just keeps falling, just so we can ship it elsewhere in the world.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
A Moment, 2012
The sun rises on Main Street on the longest day of the year. What do you see? What do you smell?
Friday, November 16, 2012
Road To Kilmarnock
On a cold gray November morning, I am driving to Kilmarnock, a small town at the distal end of Virginia's Northern Neck. The neck is bounded by the Potomac on the north and the Rappahanock on the south; at its tip is the Chesapeake. The land is mostly flat sandy farmland punctuated with rich stands of pine and long walls of grey-brown oaks with their leaves around their ankles. The spine of the Northern Neck is a long, low dwindling ridge breaking the flatness and adding some twistiness to the roads. Soybeans are being harvested today by giant John Deere combines; corn is long gone from the fields, leaving only the rough stubble of its stalks behind.
I travel Route 3, a state highway that begins in the Piedmont at Culpeper, crosses the Fall line at Fredericksburg before meandering down the coastal plain and ending in Gloucester. It waxes and wanes on its way to the waterside, first four lanes, then two, then four again so many times over that it's hard to keep track. I note that every time it dwindles to two lanes, the driver ahead prefers to drive at least ten miles below the speed limit. This phenomena, and the astonishing length of the Northern Neck—after a short time driving, I reach what I assume to be the midpoint. It is not; I still have almost an hour and a half ahead of me—contributes to my sense of having been driving for ever and that I will never, ever, reach Kilmarnock.
I travel Route 3, a state highway that begins in the Piedmont at Culpeper, crosses the Fall line at Fredericksburg before meandering down the coastal plain and ending in Gloucester. It waxes and wanes on its way to the waterside, first four lanes, then two, then four again so many times over that it's hard to keep track. I note that every time it dwindles to two lanes, the driver ahead prefers to drive at least ten miles below the speed limit. This phenomena, and the astonishing length of the Northern Neck—after a short time driving, I reach what I assume to be the midpoint. It is not; I still have almost an hour and a half ahead of me—contributes to my sense of having been driving for ever and that I will never, ever, reach Kilmarnock.
I was wise to leave my arrival time vague.
A few miles shy of Kilmarnock, I crest a gentle rise and see in the distance a figure walking on the shoulder amid the wind-blown leaves. Though he is walking determinedly, with his back to me, I can tell by his posture he is hitchhiking. As if in confirmation, he hears my approach and turns to stick out his thumb. I have already changed lanes and begun to slow down.
He trots along the shoulder to where I have stopped. (I am always glad when hitchhikers do that; there is nothing more infuriating that a dawdling hitchhiker.) The front seat is full of a jumble of things, so I reach back and open the rear door so there will be no confusion. I am slightly embarrassed for making him ride in the back, but there is only so much...
He ducks in gratefully, trailing a nimbus of stale cigarette smoke behind him. He extends a scarred and calloused hand for me to shake, and thanks me profusely for stopping. I run through the obligatory preliminaries—how long you been out there, how far you heading, and so on, and find myself pleased that though my long and arduous trek to Kilmarnock is nearly done, I am still going just far enough to get him to his destination.
A few miles shy of Kilmarnock, I crest a gentle rise and see in the distance a figure walking on the shoulder amid the wind-blown leaves. Though he is walking determinedly, with his back to me, I can tell by his posture he is hitchhiking. As if in confirmation, he hears my approach and turns to stick out his thumb. I have already changed lanes and begun to slow down.
He trots along the shoulder to where I have stopped. (I am always glad when hitchhikers do that; there is nothing more infuriating that a dawdling hitchhiker.) The front seat is full of a jumble of things, so I reach back and open the rear door so there will be no confusion. I am slightly embarrassed for making him ride in the back, but there is only so much...
He ducks in gratefully, trailing a nimbus of stale cigarette smoke behind him. He extends a scarred and calloused hand for me to shake, and thanks me profusely for stopping. I run through the obligatory preliminaries—how long you been out there, how far you heading, and so on, and find myself pleased that though my long and arduous trek to Kilmarnock is nearly done, I am still going just far enough to get him to his destination.
He tells me his story.
He is a plasterer. Not a drywall man, but a real plasterer. He was called out to a job first thing this morning and hitched there, but the lead was called off to another site and there was nothing for him to do. So he is heading home late in the morning, not a dime richer and hoping tomorrow will work out better. I surmise a lifetime of working with alkali is responsible for the condition of his hands.
He exits the car and thanks me once again. I had spent four, maybe five minutes with him, and it was like stepping back into the 18th century; his trade, his description of his work, his self-reliant demeanor, his generous attitude. But mostly his ancient Virginia accent, with its distinctive bending of vowels that still maintains here and there, mostly in those low places close to the saltwater. It is the still-living language of the English who came here sometime between the founding of the country and the Civil War, and it is beautiful to hear it being spoken in a land where we have lost almost all marks of regional distinction.
He is a plasterer. Not a drywall man, but a real plasterer. He was called out to a job first thing this morning and hitched there, but the lead was called off to another site and there was nothing for him to do. So he is heading home late in the morning, not a dime richer and hoping tomorrow will work out better. I surmise a lifetime of working with alkali is responsible for the condition of his hands.
“We're working on an older hoese, maybe from the 1830's. The original lintels over the windows were made of plaster, but they've rotted oat over the years. Instead of rebuilding them with plaster, we're building them up from cement. The final finish we'll do with plaster, so they look right.”
“The hoese has walls that are two feet thick, ceilings ten, twelve feet high. The lintels themselves are eight feet up, so everything we do, we gotta do from either up on a stepladder or on scaffolding. It's tough. And there are a lot of windows...” he trailed off and gestured out the window. We had arrived.
He exits the car and thanks me once again. I had spent four, maybe five minutes with him, and it was like stepping back into the 18th century; his trade, his description of his work, his self-reliant demeanor, his generous attitude. But mostly his ancient Virginia accent, with its distinctive bending of vowels that still maintains here and there, mostly in those low places close to the saltwater. It is the still-living language of the English who came here sometime between the founding of the country and the Civil War, and it is beautiful to hear it being spoken in a land where we have lost almost all marks of regional distinction.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
Missing Beast
Gaaah. I'm stuck here for the fifth day as a pedestrian in this dystopian stripmall flatscape, with perfect weather and a ragged inability to get a good night's sleep. I really think an hour or so of quality time with Beast would go a long way to smoothing the rough edges of my tired-out brain right now.
If I was gonna be stuck here for very much longer, I'd track down that place I looked up that rents bikes and pay for an afternoon's worth of riding in circles.
And it's weird: even the BMW riders here don't wear helmets and they aren't in Aerostich suits. Go figure.
If I was gonna be stuck here for very much longer, I'd track down that place I looked up that rents bikes and pay for an afternoon's worth of riding in circles.
And it's weird: even the BMW riders here don't wear helmets and they aren't in Aerostich suits. Go figure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
