2021

When I was a kid I used to wonder what it would be like in the year 2000. Now it's 2021. I thought 2000 was scewed up, but 2020 proved to me that the system we live under is about as monstrous as it gets. These days I figure things will only get worse because the way it's geared it can't get better (there's no process for improvement).

Last time I posted here I figured I'd be logging in at the old blog more often. In fact, I was here less. Every day that I thought about sitting at the desk to post something, the time I spend here seemed unimportant, and so I stayed away. In fact, aside from writing, I almost never turn on the desktop. It sits quiet and cold and ignored most days. I'll work on a novel for an hour or two, then turn it off.

So it goes.

Since our trip to Kentucky things have been hectic. We had the whole holiday thang to go through. Unlike most cynics I actually adore the time from Halloween through New Year's Day. And even though I'm not religious at all, I'm with Andy Williams on Christmas. For me, both currently and nostalgically, it is the most wonderful time of the year. I was reminded of the reaction I got from a former friend when I told him that. He was horrified. Last I knew of that twisted loon, he had become both a Christian and a Hitler-loving neo-Nazi. (You can't make this shit up. If it was fiction, readers would think it was too outrageous.)

The Casita needs some work done on the water pump, so I haven't taken it camping since our return from Kentucky. I have an appointment to take it in for that, plus some other issues that need attention (windows resealed, new stabilizer jacks on the back, 'porch' light, etc). That's why I haven't been on any cold-weather trips in the travel trailer. When I get it back later this month I'll hit some parks in glamping style.

My son, Andy, landed a good job. Making the legendary "living wage". The job is a bit of a haul from where he lives and he needed a new vehicle for that so I bought him one. These days I'm economically able to do that kind of thing...so I do it. It's what parents do, I reckon. At least this parent.

With any luck, January will be the beginning of a much more active time for me compared to the last two months. Carole and I were planning vacations, but then the covid reemerged so now we don't know what's going to happen with that. We had planned a winter trip to Key West and a camping trip out to Dry Tortugas National Park, but that's off. Later in the year we wanted to go camping in Pennsylvania, but they have a 10-day quarantine regime set up for out-of-state visitors! If you cross the border to stay you have to quarantine yourself. That would essentially eat up the entire vacation. (Or get a covid-19 test. If it comes up negative and you can present the paperwork you're good to go. Only I'm not taking a virus test to go camping and sightseeing. Therefore, PA as a vacation destination is right out.)

As I said, 2020 was a messed up year, and not a lot is going to change soon for 2021.

 

 

Just after we got the tree put up and got the lights on. Carole and I both think this is probably the prettiest tree we've ever had. We got lucky.

 

Tree up and decorated, no presents yet.

 

Presents accumulating over the days leading up to Christmas.

 

Christmas morning.

 

 The last photo of the tree. It comes down today (January 2, 2021).

I bought this 2017 Santa Fe from my sister for Andy to get to and from his new job.

Yeah, I know. I'm a heathen, but I love the holiday season. I adore it when it's happening and I gravely miss it when it's over. I suppose I'm that rare person who looks forward to it every year. My two favorite Christmas songs are Andy Williams classics.

Elk and Mountain Panoramas

It had been over ten years since I had hiked to Charlie's Bunion in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Having hiked all around that Park, the Bunion remains one of my favorite places there, and still at the top of what I consider the finest views there.

Andy wanted to go to the Smokies to try to see some elk. Our original intention was to stay at a hotel in Maggie Valley which would give us easy access to Cataloochee which provides the surest opportunity to spot lots of elk. However, after I'd made the hotel reservations I discovered that Cataloochee is still closed off due to various factors which include road construction just outside the Park. There's another route in to Cataloochee, but for their own reasons the Park Service has also blocked off that route. I can't imagine why, unless they just enjoy not having pesky tourists around.

So, we altered our plans. Instead of a hike to see old growth trees in Cataloochee, we opted for the hike to the Bunion, and a stop at Oconaluftee to try to spot some elk since it's supposed to also be a reliable place to see them.

As things turned out, we had great weather for the hike, and we managed to spot elk at Oconaluftee. We had a final tally of five elk, but the opportunity for good photos were not as good as I'd hoped. Still, since I grew up in a South where there were no elk remaining at all, seeing even one is a treat.

Mount Kephart, which must be climbed to reach Charlie's Bunion from Newfound Gap.

The trail that goes around the Bunion is not for those who are afraid of heights.

The aptly named Sawteeth. If the Bunion is too crowded (as it was this day) you can head over to the Sawteeth which are just as spectacular, and usually without any people.

I took this from the top of the main summit of Charlie's Bunion. You can see people down below on the sub-peak.

They're not kidding.

The first elk we saw on Monday.

The last elk (a doe) that we saw as we were heading out of the Park.

Yum! Grass!

This doe was pretty big. In the early days of the reintroduction they all had radio collars. Now I see more elk with no collars. I've been told the herd is now in excess of 200 animals.

My Bradbury Days, My Bradbury Month

It is June, the Bradbury month.

Most people think of October when they consider Ray Bradbury. Not I. June is the month that I discovered Ray Bradbury. School was out and it was Atlanta-hot outside where I played in the sun most of the day, running through the green forests of Decatur, the suburban town where we lived. There were creeks everywhere. Full of salamanders and leeches, turtles and snakes. The old Confederate village had long since covered the cotton fields with streets of homes, but the green land was still all around us, a patchwork of forested yards and greenways snaking along the banks of the creeks that led everywhere, from neighborhood to neighborhood, endless journeys and new sights. My days of running, chasing, pursuing all that is fun--my hours of Creme-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes.

June was the month--school gone and twelve weeks of vacation begun--when my mom had brought home a book to give to me: THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. So, through Alice Kurtz Smith, that book, that author, that voice found me. Before THE OCTOBER COUNTRY grabbed my breath, I already knew who Bradbury was because of my mother, and because of the lazy days of June.

June is Bradbury for me. It is the month of my birth. June is when I married Carole Henderson. That first month of summer is when my son came into the world. June is when I first put my feet to a long backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail, only seven years after I held THE ILLUSTRATED MAN in my eight-year-old hands, thus continuing my love of the green around us, of Mother Nature.

I have always thought of this month--this 30 days of warmth and sun, of golden light, of sweating skin, of dusty ground, of green stains on my denims as I cracked up on my Stingray bike careening down hills overgrown with tall grass; it is long day's adventures following creeks, catching crawdads, skipping stones, barreling into the neighborhood drug store to see if the latest issue of Star Spangled War Stories and the War that Time Forgot is on the shelf. June--hours from morning until night spent mainly out of doors, coming home only for lunch, maybe to read a short story or a Jack Kirby comic book, and then out again, chasing friends, riding bikes, wandering the blocks to see what is what.

Bradbury Month, I tell you.

Bright and warm. Sunny and damp with threatening rain, dark clouds, playgrounds. June is romance just a few years later. Sitting by a lake, holding my soon-to-be-wife. Later still, June is cradling my tiny son in my arms, never ceasing to lift him up and hold him just so until the day he no longer wants me to carry him around and then those later June days I just watch over him, and smile, my June boy.

The month of June. The days of Bradbury. The song that speaks long after that first encounter, that chilling, disturbing, amazing, June voice. My month. Bradbury days.

Mead Road, the street of my childhood, my Bradbury neighborhood, my Illustrated Days packed with color, and life, and love.

A Decatur forest. A Greentown place.

2010. Me, and Bradbury.

"The Loess Hills"

"The Loess Hills"

By James Robert Smith

My son and I were driving back east after two weeks in South Dakota and Montana. We had already ferried my wife to the airport in Sioux Falls so that she could fly back home ahead of us while we pulled the travel trailer across most of the country.

That same day my son and I were on the Interstate cruising along, not necessarily enjoying the scenery in Iowa, but finding it interesting all the same. We were driving through a section called the Loess Hills. As I drove and as my son sat I did what I always do because I have read too much and have a big mouth. I explained to him about the geological origins of those damned hills, so he had to sit there and listen to me explain about continental glaciers and rock flour and vast deserts of soil being tossed aloft and carried hundreds, even thousands of miles by westerly prevailing winds to be deposited in layers two hundred feet thick and now revealed as plateaus and hills made of fertile dirt without a rock in sight.

To our left as we drove relentlessly east was a big verdant green wall, the tremendously rich soil delivered in the wake of the glaciers, fertilized by millennia of colonizing grasslands and enriched by the dung of hundreds of millions of roving bison and extinct giants like mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, and countless other creatures long since exterminated by the indigenous peoples of North America.

Blah blah blah.

It was getting late and we really needed to find a state or county park where we could pull in, hook up the trailer, and get a good, quiet night’s sleep. The sun was still in the sky, but it never helps to linger over such concerns. We did not want to have to pull into an Interstate rest area for a noisy night adjacent to some rattling semi with its generator running to feed the demands of a freezer. Nor were we attracted to the idea of an evening parked in a shopping center or hospital trying to get a few hours of rest.

The GPS device I was using could detect no county parks. We couldn’t even find a private campground that was not cheek by jowl with the howling Interstate. “Screw it,” said I, and took the next exit, aiming our truck/travel trailer rig for the looming wall of those loess hills of which I had read so much but never seen. We were going to climb to the top of that giant mound of fertility and find a campsite in a nice park and be done with it.

The truck pulled us up--200 vertical feet to the top. It almost felt like we were climbing the foothills of the Appalachians, but not quite. In short order the engine stopped laboring and we were on the summit of this vast, undulating, emerald barrier that stood above the plains below, the big Interstate highway appearing as a beige ribbon on the flatlands. We couldn’t even hear the whine of those tens of thousands of tires.

After climbing those slopes we expected to see it dropping off on the other side. Not so. The loess had been deposited not like a tall set of hills, but rather like a fantastic plateau of richness that stretched on to the horizon. We had merely been introduced to it by way of its leading edge. There we were, atop the sweetest stack of grass-friendly soil on the continent. Wonderful dirt that had birthed vast, almost unending vistas of wheat and alfalfa and maize that had fed and fueled the invading swarms of Europeans since this frontier had been wrested from the native peoples through murder and deprivation.

These were thoughts that tickled along the corridors of my brain but which I decided not to inflict upon my son. Instead, I asked him to see if he had cell phone service and could locate us a park while I drove. He tried, but had no luck.

At the next intersection I hung a hard right, taking us further east, paralleling the big federal highway hidden to us by trees and giant fields of green corn growing as high as that elephant’s eye, as promised to us by Oscar Hammerstein. (Or was he talking about wheat?)

“What are we going to do now?” Andy asked.

“I’m just going to drive until we see a sign for a state park or a county park with camping. Then we’ll pull in and rent a space.” It was a sure thing, a piece of cake, a walk in the park.

We drove on. No parks. We passed by lots of farms. Almost everyone seemed to be growing corn, but we saw other crops, too; all of it ridiculously green in the August sun, those fields bursting with vitality.

“Try your phone again, or ask the GPS if it can locate a park.” Andy did that, but no luck.

We pushed on. Not through the big muddy, but along an idyllic two-lane state road, emerald to our left, gorgeous green to our right.

Soon, it was crowding six o’clock, about the time when most state and county parks were closing their offices and sending everyone home for the night. Occasionally we passed a pickup truck or a big sedan, or they passed us. People, but no parks.

“It might be the rest area for us tonight,” my son finally said, foreseeing defeat.

“Maybe not,” I told him. We had just passed a city limits sign. Another small burg on this interminable hilltop of farms and fields, trees and cornstalks. Maybe they had a park or a private campground.

I slowed down. The town came out of the green to meet us. We saw houses off to the right and left. They were like something out of Ozzie and Harriet. We saw a mom and pop grocery. And a malt shop as we slowed to meet the speed limit of 25 miles per hour. A malt shop. Such as you'd see in an Archie comic book.

“Look at this place,” Andy said.

“Uh huh,” I nodded. The town was small. What we sometimes call a postage stamp town. One street light where we caught the red and had to stop. It was quiet. We saw a group of kids, their blonde hair shaved in similar crew cuts. I swear to Almighty God, they were wearing crew cuts. Flat tops. Three of the kids were riding Stingray bikes. I shit you not. One of them waved to us as they passed. Yeah. Blue eyes and perfect teeth.

The light changed and I pulled forward. There were five teenage girls walking past the local grocery store. They were wearing sun dresses. Fine hair, all of them in pony tails. One of the girls was wearing a ribbon in her hair about the same color as the blue sky in spring after the rains have fallen for the season and the soil is just beginning to give up some of its hoarded wealth to those endless rows of corn.

“Fuck," I said.

“Place looks like it stopped aging in 1958,” Andy told me, enough of those old TV shows under his belt to know what he was talking about.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

So I hung a right at the very next state highway intersection and we were once more moving at 65 miles per hour, the tires on the truck singing that drone as we headed to dark where I knew I would pull into a rest area and snag four hours of sleep, my travel trailer vibrating from the powerful rumble of some generator growling away to power a refrigerator truck.

It seemed better than risking our fading luck in that little bit of blonde, blue-eyed weirdness up on the hill. Because something told us it was not a dream, but the alternative.

One of My Favorites

My family and I took two vacations that stand out above all of the others. The best we ever had was our two-week trip to Yellowstone National Park. But our second favorite was a long excursion in our travel trailer down the length of Florida for about an eight-day exploration of the Florida Keys.

And the most fun of any single day was our trip out to the Dry Tortugas National Park many miles off the coast of Key West. The Dry Tortugas NP is one of the least visited of our National Parks. It consists mainly of water and reefs with only a few islands where you can walk around. But the main reason it is so lightly visited is that you can only get there via boat or floatplane. Being working class folk, we chose the less expensive method of getting there by taking a fast catamaran from Key West to Fort Jefferson on the main island.

I didn't really tell Carole and Andy what to expect, only that they would love the trip and that they would see something they'd enjoy immensely. So I stopped at the office and bought three tickets for the catamaran trip out to the Tortugas. As I recall, they ran $70 each, but this included a very nice lunch that was served on the big catamaran.

Carole and Andy thought that they were in for a boring day out to see yet another fort out in the middle of nowhere. Neither of them was very happy as we waited on the waterfront in Key West very early in the morning to board the ship.

But once we got there they were amazed. As with most people, they did not realize that you needn't leave the States to see thriving coral reefs. The main island where one disembarks is surrounded by one of the finest living reef environments in the USA. The ocean is crystal clear and thriving with life. We spent most of the day swimming, snorkeling, and walking around the island (the pre-Civil War fort occupies almost all of the dry land), and bird-watching. When it was time to go they were sad to leave.

Following here are a number of photos I took, most of which I think I have never posted online. This was back in the days before underwater digital cameras. So what I did was stop at a shop where I bought an disposable underwater film camera. Surprisingly, it took fairly good images. Not the best quality, but better than I had expected before I snorkeled out into the ocean, eventually swimming out about 1/3 of a mile before turning back.

I swam through a number of schools of these small fry. It was fun.

This was a section of brick wall that had tumbled off of the fort no telling how long ago. Long since coated in coral accretions.

Another curious fish. Note the coral-covered bricks behind him.

This is the critter that made me turn around and swim back to the island. It's a Nurse shark. I knew at the time it was a Nurse shark and that it was basically harmless, but just the idea of being in the water with fish that big scared me. So I chickened out and went back to Fort Jefferson. This fish was six-feet long, but he was actually afraid of me. I got the impression it was trying to bury its head in that outcropping of coral in an attempt to hide from me.

Good Old Linville Gorge

One place where I sometimes visit to escape from the city is the Linville Gorge Wilderness. There are days when I can even get away from crowds there. But you have to visit it on days when the weather is unpleasant and when it's not on a holiday. Being one of the most easily accessible wilderness areas in North Carolina with some of the most spectacular scenery on the east coast makes it a very popular destination with everyone from casual sightseers to hard-core backpackers and rock climbers.

One September day my son and I headed over there to do some day-hiking. We hit the Chimneys, look around Table Rock and then headed over to Hawksbill Mountain. For some reason, after all of my previous visits to the Gorge, I had never climbed Hawksbill. I would always have other destinations in mind and just never got around to bagging that peak. But on that day Andy and I marked that one off the list.

Finally, we drove past a trailhead to a well known waterfall to take a look. Then, as always, we had to head back home.

Andy at The Chimneys, looking back at Table Rock.

The day condensed into a few minutes of videos and photos.

Mountain Bridge Wilderness

Andy, Carole and I took a brief trip to Jones Gap State Park. We had a picnic, played in the creek, and I went for a short walk in the woods, exploring the Mountain Bridge Wilderness. It's not that far from home and relatively isolated. As soon as I walked into the forest I left all of the people behind. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were no other people in the woods and I seemed to have the whole place to myself. I saw wildlife (a whitetail doe and a wild turkey hen). I got one fair photo of the doe but the turkey would not cooperate and I was unable to get a photo.

It was my second trip to the park. I'd like to go back when I can hike into the wilderness and spend a night and a couple of days exploring the place.

We found a nice picnic table by the creek.

The park office and store. Very nice!

Sunlight through the trees.

Not a very good picture, but the best one I could manage. I always am pleased when I see any animal in a wilderness where they are not accustomed to rubbing elbows with humans.

I liked the weird geometry of this tree and boulder.

A vast slide on the very steep slopes of the mountain.

Tomorrow I will have video of the park.

Badass Bison Bull

In 2010 I took my family to Yellowstone. One day my son and I went to go on a hike while my wife stayed at the lodge. On the way back from the hike my son and I got stuck in a bison traffic jam. The Park rangers had halted auto traffic while the bison herd took over an entire lane (they were not "crossing" so much as using the road). I looked in the rear view mirror to see the alpha bull walking toward us. I am not exaggerating when I say that he was the biggest animal I have ever seen in the wild (not counting pilot whales). When I first spotted him he was passing a big tour bus, and the the top of his shoulders were as high as the windows on the bus. It was like seeing something out of the Ice Age. "Look at that monster coming our way! Get his photo," I told Andy. So my son picked up the SLR camera, rolled down the window, and poked the lens out in the direction of the gigantic bull bison.

Apparently this pissed off the bison because when he drew up parallel to us, he paused, turned his face toward my son, and went "BAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" His giant blue tongue stuck out of his giant bison mouth. The sound vibrated through the car. My son was suddenly and instantaneously in my lap.

He did not get a photo.

This is not the bison bull from the story. This one was a midget by comparison.

Off to Glacier!

Well, Andy and I are all but ready to pull out. Carole will fly out to meet us in a few days and we'll pick her up at the airport halfway across the continent. Then we'll all head up to Glacier National Park. A trip one year in the making.

Taken shortly before we left for a road trip in 2008. Essentially the same rig we still use, save for more mileage.

Boids!

I went to visit my sister Nancy and her husband, Arnold today in South Carolina. They live out in a rural area in a nice neighborhood with a small lake. We ate a very tasty lunch and then went out in the yard to observe any small critters that might happen by. A few did. Notably hummingbirds, what I think was a Northern flicker, and a great blue heron that showed his skill and nabbed a nice fish while I watched (but was on the far side of the lake, so the photo of him with his catch is a tad blurry).

I love watching hummingbirds. But they are tough to photograph.

ZOOM!

Don't blink!

I was surprised at the size of the fish this heron caught. Keep in mind that this is one of the biggest Great blue herons I have ever seen. This particular bird is HUGE!

This is a really ingenious bird feeder made to confound squirrels. This flicker was also having trouble trying to figure out how to negotiate its mysteries.

The front of the house with Arnold.

There were scores of these baby toadlings around the lake. They were oh-so tiny!

Andy, Nancy, Arnold, and Carole relax beside the lake.

We pause so that Arnold can take a family photo.

The back of the house. Andy went swimming, but Carole and I did not.

Rivals at the nectar source!