The Elk

When I was a kid back in the 70s learning how to backpack and venturing into the forests on multi-day trips I would read of the animals who used to inhabit the Great Smoky Mountains before the arrival of the European colonizers. All sorts of animals who survived the Pleistocene extinction event were still present there, many of them through the 1700s and into the 1800s.

And I used to wonder what it would be like to hike through the Smokies and encounter things like timber wolves and fishers, bison and elk, mountain lions and beaver. From time to time I would hear some people talk of reintroducing some of these creatures into the Park, but I never heard any concrete plans to do so.

However, eventually, the Park Service did create and implement an action that resulted in the reintroduction of elk. They chose Cataloochee Valley to be the initial site for this and began to bring in and acclimatize the big deer. I will never forget the first time I drove into Cataloochee hoping to spot some elk and doing exactly that, seeing a couple of big bulls at the edge of the forest and the field, standing there on the verge where I was able to snap a few grainy photos with my first digital camera back in 2005.

I still enjoy going to Cataloochee to spot the elk. It remains the best place to see them, as the core of the burgeoning herds still call it home. I speak to people who encounter them in other parts of the Park, so they are spreading out. Eventually, I hope they begin to move out in all directions as the population increases and that they will spread into other parts of the southern Appalachians--perhaps even to my home state of Georgia. That would be something to see.

In meantime, it would be nice to see the return of some of the other great animals missing from the ecological web of the southern Appalachians. The fisher has been successfully reintroduced to West Virginia. Maybe they could naturally return to the Smokies.  Perhaps mountain lions could come back to the southeast. While it would be great to see bison also come back, the facts on the ground there would make it difficult. The Park is surrounded by suburban sprawl and I doubt that local people would agree with having to deal with such a large animal parading through neighborhoods and onto streets and lawns. But it would be grand.

This guy was in charge. He had a couple of scars on his right flank, probably from past duels.

A couple of cows.

Whenever I see elk herds or whitetail deer herds in the Park, I also see flocks of wild turkey.

On the move.

The bull was concentrating on courting this particular cow. I suppose she was the one most open to mating.

The herd here was large. Dozens of elk, mainly cows.

The big bull tolerated a couple of young spike bucks in the field. Not sure why, unless he didn't look upon them as anything approaching a threat.

Sweet Story

I have said it before, but to me it always bears repeating--many animals feel compassion. In fact, I am convinced that lots of animals have the same depth and range of emotions that humans feel.

This past week Carole and I camped at Standing Indian Campground. We both really enjoy that place and were keen on returning since the last time we tried it was closed and gated due to a government shutdown. So we reserved site #16 and commenced to setting up camp.

One thing that we had purchased for our camping trips is a picnic shelter called Clam Quick-Set Shelter. We'd heard lots of good things about these contraptions and all of the positive commentary are true, as far as we're concerned.

Our Quick-Set Clam Shelter 

So, we set it up and within about half an hour we noticed that a small bird (a junco?) had come in through the door and was trapped inside. We tried to get it to fly out by having Carole hold the net door open and with me trying to coax the tiny bird out that way. But she was having none of that and insisted on trying to fly through the netting at the back of the shelter.

The little trapped bird.

When I realized that the little bird wasn't going to go out the way it came in I decided to try to catch it in my hands and carry it out. This was surprisingly easy to do since she (he?) was exhausted. I carefully cupped the little critter in my paws and carried her out.

Now, here's the cool part. As I opened my hands to free the bird I noticed that a small flock was waiting on the other side of the shelter, lingering there in the hope that their panicked companion/family member would somehow escape. As she took wing, so did the assembled flock; and they all flew off together.

Fragile cargo.

Addressing the Pipe Dream

No. We can't terraform Mars. We can't even keep our own planet livable. Why the hell do idiots think we can make a hostile environment accepting of our limitations? It's bullcrap. Total bullcrap. Mars is utterly inimical to life. It is cold almost beyond comprehension. It is magnitudes more arid than the most inhospitable desert on Earth. The soil is toxic. That's right--the freaking soil is poisonous. Mars also has only 1% of our atmospheric pressure, and it has no magnetic field to protect life from solar and cosmic radiation. The idea of creating a comfortable and inviting environment on a cold, arid, dead, poisonous, inhospitable chunk of barren rock is fantasy. Not science-fiction, but fantasy.

Hell...we can't even get there. The nations who could try are so impoverished from feeding their wealth to the privileged elite that there are no funds to even develop and initiate a system by which we could send humans to Mars.

The whole scheme is worse than a drug-induced hallucination.

Mars. Where it's so cold that CO2 freezes into a solid. Yeah...people are going to live there.

Opportunity Missed

When I was a younger man I went out of my way three times to meet Ray Bradbury. I won't belabor the obvious again, but it was Bradbury's magic touch of poetic emotion that took me on journeys to hear him speak and to share a few words with him.

But, on one of those occasions (in 1986) I was surprised to find that another guest at the writers gathering was L. Sprague deCamp. As with Bradbury's fiction, I had grown up reading the stories of deCamp. In fact, his stories probably influenced me more than those of Bradbury. He was--to my way of thinking, these days--a finer and more accomplished author than Bradbury.

But, although I had many a chance that long weekend, I never once talked with deCamp and only went to hear him speak a single time, and that one on a panel with Bradbury in attendance. And, of course, the fans showered the lovable Ray with questions and attention, and barely paid deCamp any mind whatsoever. So he had only a slice of opportunity to speak and to impart his accumulated years of authorial wisdom.

One thing that I remember about him in that panel is that he was dressed like some kind of European out to explore Africa (this was in super-hot and humid Atlanta, after all). He was wearing khaki shorts and shirt and even had (at least this is how I remember it) a pith helmet. In my now forty-year-old memories, deCamp was a small man, and his wife accompanied him everywhere. Whenever I saw him, there she was. Catherine Crook was an amazing woman and writer herself. I later found out that he only survived her by six months in the year 2000 when they both died at the age of 92.

There are many stories by Bradbury that entranced me as a kid. But I can say the same of deCamp, even if only a few of his yarns come to the fore of my aging brain. It was mainly his greater body of work that left a stamp on the gray matter, rather than many individual tales.

But two of his short works that I read as a child are foremost in my mind and I think of them often, even when I'm not writing. They are "The Gnarly Man", and "Living Fossil". The first deals with the immortality of a Neanderthal and the deceit of modern humans; and the latter with human extinction and the rise of a species of South American monkey that rules the planet. I cannot stress to people how important these stories have been to me over the years. They are both based on themes that have always fascinated me and which influence my thinking practically, scientifically, politically, and philosophically. And neither of them seems to have any overt reason for existing on any of those points, except peripherally. And therein lies the mark of a truly talented author.

I have replayed my near-encounter with deCamp for decades. Of course I wish that I had spoken to him, if only to tell him that his stories and novels meant a great deal to me. That would have been enough. But, of course, I did not do that. I was there to meet the treacly Ray Bradbury, and that is what I did.

One thing that remains stuck in my mind is that during the panel--after the fans had ignored him for long minutes--deCamp finally got a chance to get a word in and he referred to Bradbury as his "competitor". At the time I thought that was a poor choice of term and that he probably meant "colleague". These days, I know better. He meant what he said. And these days I am sad because in just straight terms of drooling, vacuous puppy love, Bradbury won that sad competition.

Of course I also realize that deCamp wasn't a contestant in that kind of race. All he wanted to do was produce fine work. Let the gawkers have their hero-worship. I'll just stand aside and admire L. Sprague deCamp.

L. Sprague deCamp and Catherine Crook.

Idiocy Beyond Description

I joined and was visiting a National Park fan site. After a short while a large percentage of the members began advocating for the privatization of our National Parks. I left and erased the board from my computer. You can't argue with that kind of stupidity. And I am just weary of even seeing such insanity.

I descend Mount LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. March, 2005 just after a heavy snowfall.

One morning on Pray Lake in Glacier National Park, August 2015.

OZARK

One thing that I do like about modern television is the diversity of material available via cable and satellite. There are all kinds of crazy things that one could only dream about in the days when a few networks controlled the medium and social norms limited what could be created.

A series I watched last year and am currently enjoying is OZARK. A project of Jason Bateman, it's pretty darned good. It stars Bateman as Marty Byrde, an accountant who got mixed up with a Mexican drug cartel and who was plunged into a seat-of-the-pants scheme so that he could save himself and his family from execution by that same cartel. Laura Linney co-stars as his wife. I generally have not liked her performances in the past, no matter the project. But someone realized that her often false and wooden portrayals would work perfectly as Marty Byrde's wife, Wendy. And they were right--it does work. It's the first time I've actually appreciated her acting.

Bateman and Linney as the Byrdes.

But the supporting cast is what stands out to me, even shining through a largely contrived plot that often pulls tricks out of its ass (such as a minor character having the key to dealing with the Kansas City mob). It's hard to pick out which supporting cast member is turning in the finest job, and I find that I cannot play favorites on that point, so I won't even try, and will instead just go down the list.

Julia Garner is an actress of whom I had never heard. She portrays a white trash youngster who is directionless until she falls into the web spun by Marty Byrde. Under his wing she discovers that she has scheming talents she didn't realize. Uglied up beyond belief, there was something about her that I found beautiful, and when I finally saw photos of her without the horrible makeup, clothing, and hair--I have to admit that I was not surprised to discover that she is, indeed, quite beautiful. I don't know where she learned to do her southern accent, but it is spot-on perfect. Stunning, actually. Because I figured her for a born southerner.

Julia Garner as Ruth Langhorne. What a great performance!

Lisa Emery portrays Darlene Snell, a kind of monster and the co-owner of a heroin-producing outfit that she runs with her husband. Again, she comes off as a truly hideous person, both physically and (often) personally. And once more I was a bit surprised to find that underneath that bare, horrid character is another beautiful woman. She nails the creature so artfully that it has risen to the surface to hide her true self.

Lisa Emery as Darlene Snell. Don't worry, she looks at everyone that way. Whether she's marked them for death, or not.

Jason Butler Harner plays the sadistic FBI agent Roy Petty who is completely and utterly obsessed with nailing Marty Byrde as the laundry man for the drug cartel profits. I had previously seen his work in two films--The Changeling (directed by Clint Eastwood), and Kill the Irishman. In the former he was, as here, an obsessed and irredeemable monster, and turned in an unappreciated job as that vile creature. His turn as agent Petty is as a gay but totally psychotic bastard who can, and does, break all of the rules to catch his target. As in The Changeling wherein he played a pedophile serial killer, he is completely easy to hate.

Jason Butler Harner as douchebag FBI agent Petty.

Peter Mullan is an actor I must have seen previously because I have watched some of the movies in which he appeared. But in none of these was he so prominent. In Ozark he is Jacob Snell, the head man in the heroin outfit that he operates from his land holding in the wilderness on his property. A gruff, bearded, good old boy with a soul-killing gaze and the temperament to slaughter anyone who gets in his way, he is the voice and face of the wolf running point at the head of the pack. 

Peter Mullan as Jacob Snell

Pretty much all of the acting in this series is far beyond average. The scripts are excellent ,with the exceptions of reliance on fantastic chance from time to time. Still, it's classic pulp fiction, so you have to expect that kind of thing. What I did not expect was a series to be so uniformly excellent. But I find that I'm often being surprised by such developments from cable and satellite offerings these days.

Oh, yeah. You can watch this on Netflix.

Rock Creek Recreation Area Campground Review.

A brief review of the Rock Creek Recreation Area campground.

This was our second trip to this campground and recreation area. Located near Erwin, Tennessee, it's one of the finest National Forest campgrounds we've ever visited. The sites are room and almost all of them are surrounded by big trees and are very shady. The sites have electric, but no water hookups. You can fill your onboard tank from water spigots throughout the campground loops, or from a potable water hose near the dump station.

On this trip we were hampered by very heavy rains for the first two days. Drenching downpours of steady precipitation that dumped about four inches of rain over two days. It kept us from doing much in the way of outdoor activities so we ended up exploring nearby historical sites which is something we try to do anyway. And this area has quite a lot see in that respect. So we were not bored.

Each campground loop has its own bathhouse. Each house has a men's and women's section, and each section has a toilet stall, a sink, and a shower stall. The showers were good with excellent water pressure and warm water.

There is a good amphitheater where entertainment or ranger talks are sometimes held, but nothing was planned there during this stay. The last time we were there we listened to excellent bluegrass music being performed.

There is a ridiculous wealth of hiking to be done from, and around, the campground. Waterfalls seem to be almost everywhere. Even though the rain kept us from doing as much as we wanted, we still had a great time, and it remains one of the best National Forest campgrounds we've ever visited.

The campsites are very roomy and private. Lots of trees and shrubs separate you from most of your neighbors.

We opted not to use our awning because it was raining so hard the first two days we were there. The rain was so severe that we didn't want to risk damaging the awning.

We love these little kiosks. It allows us to put our camp stove under cover where we can cook, and also store items safe from the rain. We prefer to cook outside even though our Casita has a stove.

This is the last time we'll use our old-style picnic shelter. We're going to buy one of the modern Clam-type shelters this month and donate this old clunker to Goodwill. It works well, but is a pain to erect.

This is the campground bathhouse. There is one of these on each of the three loops. Each bathhouse has a men and women's restroom, each with a toilet, sink, and one shower stall.

Big bathrooms, but only one of each stall. Could be problematic when the campground is crowded.

The showers use two pressure buttons to turn on the water. The water does not stay on very long (maybe 20 seconds) before you have to press the buttons again. Two nozzles, upper and lower. The water pressure was good and the water was warm, but not hot.

When the CCC built this pond it was a bit larger. It was also much deeper--eight feet. Stream fed, with a little cascade tumbling into the pond. It also used to have a diving platform. However, later administrators decided to reduce the depth to only four feet and to remove the diving platform. Lawsuits, I suppose. It's a very nice pond where you can take the kids wading and go swimming. Lots of space to lounge on the shore and to picnic if you wish.

Not as deep as it used to be, but still a fine place to pay and relax.

Another Trip to Rock Creek!

We're just back from a trip to Rock Creek Recreation Area near Erwin, TN. It remains one of our all-time favorite National Forest campgrounds. However, this trip was tempered with torrential rainfalls, and the fact that our formerly reliable truck suffered an engine-destroying event that ended with us having to be towed back home from Tennessee.

Still, we managed to have a good time and we made more good memories than bad ones.

Easy fords became tough barriers.

Upper Rock Creek Falls, the goal of my hike.

The view at "the Beauty Spot" on Unaka Mountain Road.

Our campsite.

I had to wait a day for water levels to subside to make the hike after three days of torrential rains.

Cardinal Grateful

Years ago when I was a letter carrier for USPS I went into an old two-story apartment quad. On the second floor there was a female cardinal that had gotten trapped inside. She had been flying into the window so many times she'd worn a patch of feathers off of her head. (I noted that her skin under the feathers is black.) I carried a towel with me and was able to toss it over her. Then I carefully carried her in my hands, shouldered the door open, and released her. I recall a man walking past as I opened my hands and she took to the skies. He kind of just stood there and gawked.

For the next half an hour or so she followed me down the street, landing on twigs and tree limbs whenever I stopped. I paused a few times to talk to her. I have never had any doubt that she was thanking me.

Not the cardinal I rescued, but one in the backyard of the condo where we lived in Matthews.

Closing in on Retirement.

Eleven months until full retirement. I've been planning for this for decades. I won't be rich, but I'll be relatively comfortable. I'll be able to travel and do as much camping and hiking and backpacking as I want to do. No house payment. No large debts. I might buy a newer truck to pull the trailer. We'll see.

I just have to make it through the next eleven months.

The shorter the time gets, the more frustrating the waiting becomes.

Dang it! I can't even recall the name of this spring! I'll be doing a lot of kayaking come my 62nd birthday.

I'll be camping in the middle of the week, avoiding the crowds. Woo HOO! Also, I'll get National Park camping at half off!

SHAZAM!

This movie looks like it could be fun. People some time back lost sight of the fact that comic book superheroes were created to entertain children. It's cool that some adults get a kick out of them, but this silly shit was made for kids.

Chance the Gardener Lives.

I cannot stand group-think and the selling of mass market crap. One of the people who pretty much embodies everything that I hate about politics, religion, and propaganda is the man everyone knows as "the Dalai Lama". His very existence as a person of so-called 'importance' grinds on my every last nerve. He says nothing of lasting value, and each of those things are obvious and to varying degrees of either practicality or of nonsense. The Hoi polloi eat that crap with a ladle.

At any rate, whenever anyone mentions him or presents me with one of his quotes or asks me to watch a snippet of video of him droning, this is what I see and hear. He is, in effect, the Chauncey Gardener of philosophy. The absolute worst.

(I got yer Dalai Lama right here!)

And Ellison...

I went to see Harlan Ellison speak a couple of times. I never met him face to face, but over the years he surprised me with phone calls on three occasions. It was always nice to hear from him. The first time he made me guess who the stranger was who had phoned me. At that time I did not know his voice, having never heard him and not thinking for an instant that Harlan Ellison would bother to phone me. Exasperated, he finally had to tell me who he was and that, of course, struck me dumb.

He was a great American writer. His work has influenced most writers of my generation and he helped fuel and direct the righteous anger of many a young person. His stories have amazed and will continue to do so in years to come. We can miss him, but we still have his vast body of work.

The first time I saw this photo from an interview with Jason Brock, the words that popped into my head were "Jeffty is Five". Go look for that story. Read it.

Summer Cleaning!

Carole and I have two camping trips planned for later this year. One at the end of summer, and one in late October. We've already reserved our spaces, both in campgrounds we've stayed before, but haven't seen in years. We visited the first one in 2004, and the other in 2011.

We just had a new water pump put on the Casita and the furnace needed a slight repair (only a simple gasket). We'll need the furnace for the trip in October, I'm sure.

At any rate, I'll post details of the trips once we've returned. I hope to do a lot of hiking and hit some nice waterfalls on both trips. We're very much looking forward to the trips because we haven't really had time to go on any decent camping trips at all this year.

While I scrubbed up the outside of the Casita, Carole did the inside. Casita Girl will go back under the cover and wait until we head out later this summer.

It was hot today! 95 degrees. I tried to park the Casita in the shade!

Carole used the pressure washer on a couple of the rugs we keep inside the Casita.

She was cleaning up good!

I had to use the ladder to scrub the roof and the AC shroud.

On Tuesday I'll give the trailer a wax job, weather permitting.

A Child of the 60s.

One morning when I was a kid--maybe nine years old--I was in our back yard with a pal of mine when another kid we knew came walking toward us from the property line at the very rear of my parents' yard. It was actually misty that morning and he appeared from the fog like a figure from a spy movie. The kid was wearing a trench coat tied at the waist. No one I knew had a fucking trench coat and it looked cool as shit. And he had that goddamned fog--like it was tailor-fucking-made. My pal, Britt and I just gawked. The

other kid walked right up to us. He had a briefcase in his hand to go along with that damned trench coat. He even had a hat.

"Look what I got for Christmas," he told us.

He held out the briefcase. A Man From U.N.C.L.E. briefcase.

He opened it up. It was packed with cool-ass secret agent shit. It had a gun with a silencer. A snub-nosed revolver. A goddamned grenade. Walkie-talkie. An U.N.C.L.E. badge...other cool-ass shit.

"Damn,' we said.

After letting us stare at that shit for a while the kid closed the briefcase.

"Let me borrow it," I said.

"Yeah, let us borrow it," Britt added. "We'll just play with it and give it back to you."

The truth was we barely knew the other kid. He lived one street over and we rarely even saw the guy. He was just trolling the neighborhood to rub in what a cool-ass score he'd gotten for Christmas.

"No," he said.

"Aw, Come ON! Loan it to us!"

"Yeah," said Britt.

The other kid eyed us nervously and backed away with his hat and trench coat and briefcase. Several steps and he turned on his heel and made his way back the same route he'd walked in on. The London fog had burned off--it was just Atlanta January mist baked into a figment of our imagination by the sun.

I considered tackling him from behind and taking that goddamned briefcase. Maybe even the fucking trench coat, too. But I didn't.

To my memory, neither I nor Britt ever saw that lucky bastard again. He doesn't know how close he came to losing it all. Or maybe he did.

Damn, it was a sweet score.

I Don't Believe in No Ghosts!

With apologies to William Friedkin and David Lynch.

Truth? Fiction? Who can say?!

I Went Hiking

I went hiking today in a part of South Carolina where I haven't been in a long time. I logged six hours driving (round trip) and eight hours hiking. I hit a number of waterfalls I wanted to see, but to me the most impressive thing were the forests I hiked through. I had forgotten that this area of Sumter National Forest has some amazing stands of hardwoods.

At first I thought this was a buckeye tree when I spotted it from the trail. But when I got down to the base of the trunk and looked up I could see that it's a Tulip tree.

I stitched this shot from four photos of the tree's trunk. One thing about Tulip trees is their tendency not to taper as much as other hardwoods.

The Mad Ones.

My new book BEAUTIFUL BOY is coming out some time this year. I'm not sure of the exact release date, but the principal edits are done.

Working on the edits made me start thinking of my writing career. When I was a young man all I wanted to do was write. Almost everything else took a back seat to my desire and need to write. If there were other things to do, the act of creating a short story or a novel took precedence and so that is what I would do instead of anything else.

These days, though, this is not the case. I am an outdoorsman and enjoy kayaking, hiking, camping, and (especially) backpacking. Now when faced with a choice of working on a new novel or plotting a short story, or planning and executing a backpacking trip or a jaunt to go kayaking on a lake, I will choose to be outdoors, out in the sun, or climbing a forested mountain, or taking photos of waterfalls and wildlife.

When I was a kid I would look at the careers of many of the authors I admired in those days. And one thing generally struck me: their careers seemed to end well before they got old and died. I began to wonder if there was a burst of creative energy that lasted only so long and no longer. Yes, there were exceptions--folk who wrote for many decades. But most writers seemed to be active for only ten to fifteen years and then...nothin'.

I haven't, by any means, stopped writing. But I sure as Hell don't write obsessively as I did as a young man. When I do write I take my time and budget the hours and work with all due consideration. I used to think of myself as one of those "mad" folk that Jack Kerouac talked about:

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

That's the way I was when I was writing. Mad and burning and obsessed by the world around me and focused on the fantasy of characters and situations whirling around in me ol' brain.

Maybe that fire is burning out. I don't know. All I can say is that often I would much rather be standing on the summit of a mountain that I labored to climb instead of sitting in front of the white screen putting down the words that once drove me crazy with desire to transfer to paper.

I think that I'm still one of the mad ones. But in a different space.

Yeah...I know where I'd rather be.