Jack Thyen on the left. Me and Boone the dog in the middle, Andy Kunkle on the right with his back turned. This was a great little beach and swimming hole along the Linville River. Just over the bank up in the trees is the best campsite I've yet seen in the gorge. I'll have to go back there in the summer and camp.
I took this one along the Rock Jock Trail. A lot of the trail travels through forests totally ravaged by the fires in 2007. These fires were so intense that they were able to even burn the rhododendron and consumed the peaty soil. It's going to take decades for the forest to recover from those fires.
Andy Kunkle and his dog, Boone in Split Rock along the Rock Jock Trail.
Remember the old saying about not looking down? I kept looking down and it freaked me out so much that I hauled ass off the balanced rock. It was just too scary. I'd asked Jack to take three photos of me on the overhang, but I chickened out as he took the third one.
Sometimes I can scarcely believe that I'm lucky enough to live in a state that has this kind of scenery. This is Table Rock Mountain as seen from Dogback Mountain. Believe it or not, you can actually walk to the summit of Table Rock. Doesn't look like it can be safely done, but the trail's not too bad, from what I've heard. I've yet to hike it.
This strange little waterfall was right beside the Rock Jock Trail. I was very thirsty at this point and feared running out of water (which always results in me getting severe leg cramps). I was tempted to drink deep here and save my bottled water, but one is always fearful of giardia and other microbes. So I passed. Alas!
Andy and I discuss camera batteries as I take a video of part of Daffodil Flats.
More tomorrow...
The Critter Philosopher
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Try it again and I swear on the very fabric of reality that I'll end you.
Today I went for a very long hike into the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area with two friends, Andy Kunkle and Jack Thyen. I'll post more about the trip later. For now, here are a few photographs with brief descriptions.
One of our hiking goals was this place: Daffodil Flats. Only one family ever lived within Linville Gorge. This was where they lived. The single thing that remains to indicate that a family ever resided way down there in the bottom of the wildest gorge in eastern North America are the daffodils that rise up every early Spring to show that, once upon a time, there was a woman here who planted daffodils around her homestead.
Maybe the queasiest thing I've ever done on a hike. I know it doesn't look like it, but I was standing on a rock overhanging a vast vertical plane of empty space. If I'd slipped off, I would be very dead now. I told Jack to take three quick photos before my nerve ran out. The third one is of me retreating from the spot before I got too goddamned dizzy to stand still.
If there's a more rugged place in eastern North America, I've yet to either see it or hike in it.
For some reason, I am reminded of my siblings when I review those photos.Alas! (Photos taken at Rock Island State Park in Tennessee a couple years ago. These black vultures were hanging out along the river, scavenging for carrion and crapping wherever they felt the urge.)
In a far more pleasant observation than my extended blood relations--I fixed the computer. I don't know much about the damned things, but sometimes I find myself faced with having to crack the machines open and see what the instruction manual says. So I ended up making a small purchase and doubling the RAM and restoring the system, and now the machine is cranking along just fine. Thus saving me a few hundred dollars for, I hope, at least a couple more years. We'll see.
Kitty cats! They climb on shit! Your clothes are all picked and torn! The furniture has CLAW MARKS! Everything that is smalland light and easily batted is chewed. Kitty catscuddle beside youwhen you sleep. Their noses are wet and cold. Wake up! Feed me! Be my friend! Wrestle! I like kitty cats. One must.
Well, I'm planning a hiking trip for the first time in a very long time. On Saturday I hope to be scrambling around in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area. It's been pretty much exactly one year since I've been in the gorge. One of the most spectacular places I've ever been, so I'm looking forward to it.
The Animal Philosopher
They were wrong: You really can choose your family.
Well, the old desktop system at home is going wonky. I've seen this before. I don't think I've ever had a computer that lasted for more than four years--generally they start to break down after about three. So the desktop at home has had what is, in my experience, a normal lifespan for a small home computer. We're going to have to buy a new one.
So I've been very busy over the past few days backing up various files before the machine completely shuts down. With no time for blogging. Fortunately, I have my laptop and my novel writing has continued unabated.
The Animal Philosopher:
The strangest thing about love is this--when it's gone, it stays gone.
He could scarcely believe what they’d done. The worst part about it was that they had discussed it right in front of him. He’d listened to every word of it. The entire time he’d felt a hideous emptiness in the pit of his stomach while Rick and Leeza had talked about what they were going to do.
“We can’t take him with us,” Rick had said, in a flat, matter of fact way. In such a tone that BC recognized—one that meant he would tolerate no discussion on the matter. Leeza knew it well, and knew well enough to keep her mouth shut when her husband spoke with that voice.
“We’ll leave him food,” she said, merely suggesting it, knowing that to argue it would be to risk a verbal lashing, if not an outright beating. “And water. He’ll need water. For a few days, at least.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rick told her. “But first we need to finish packing the car. I haven’t heard any cars on the street for two days. I think we can make a break for it, now.”
Indeed, the neighborhood had grown very quiet. Over the previous weeks the country had grown increasingly unstable. Even the normally unemotional talking heads on the news shows had grown increasingly strident, saying and doing things on the air that were quite strange, displaying emotions that verged on hysteria and madness. Late in the game, the TV stations had all been militarized and men in fatigues, with shaved heads and hollow cheeks and burning eyes had taken over the job of doling out information. The last real news either of them had seen was a series of short pieces about the crews of civilian technicians and soldiers who’d been sent out to shut down the nation’s nuclear plants. So that there would be no runaway nuclear reactions if they were suddenly left unattended.
Rick had explained that one to Leeza and the children, Little Rick and Maya. Both of the kids were far too young to comprehend what Rick was telling them, but he was of the impression that if you spoke plainly to kids, that they would eventually understand what you were saying, no matter how abstract the idea. “The fuel rods have to be separated and removed,” he told them all. “That way, if the pools of coolant were to somehow empty, the heat of the nuclear reaction won’t run wild and start a meltdown, resulting in the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere and into the groundwater.” Leeza had nodded and the kids, eight-year-old Maya and four-year-old Little Rick had stared at their father, thinking of toys or lunch, knowing that not to feign undivided attention was to risk one of his long monologues, or perhaps a beating.
“Did you get the water bottles packed?” he asked his wife.
“Yes,” she told him. “Six gallons on the floorboard and four more in the trunk. I couldn’t fit anymore of them in the trunk.” She’d made several trips into the back yard to quickly provision the auto. In a strange bit of fortune, their decrepit hatchback had looked far too listless to steal in the final days when all Hell had broken loose. One of their neighbors, a college professor who lived one street over, had termed those last rabid hours “Payback Time”. For three days it seemed the nation, from end to end and coast-to-coast, had raged red. Not only had they to contend with the roving groups of undead who plodded about, killing and consuming all they found, but their fellow citizens, too, had degenerated into mad, frightened, killing machines.
“It’s Payback Time,” Ned Waters, their friend and sometime visitor had told them. Ned was a college English teacher and shade tree philosopher. “The Black Nationalists are killing anything Caucasian that they can find. White Supremacists are slaughtering everything darker than Jessica Alba. Baptists are killing Jews and Catholics. God save the Yankees who moved down here for the climate.” Indeed, the city was a symphony of racial and religious and regional hatred that succeeded in tearing apart what was left of law and order.
“Even my next-door neighbor is acting creepy. When he comes out at all, it’s generally to say something nasty to me. You know…he thinks I’m gay!”
Leeza allowed herself to laugh to quickly at that, but even Rick joined in, seemingly without suspicion at her sudden and uncharacteristic outburst. Generally, she didn’t laugh without his permission.
The last time they’d seen Ned, he had come over with three magnums of wine (his last) and they’d all sat in front of the little battery-powered television watching the sixth in a series about the heroic men who had shut down the last of the active nuclear power plants. The three adults cheered the heroic workers who danced across the tiny black and white screen. They drank a toast and a toast and a toast and a toast and on to these brave fellows until the three adults were puking drunk.
And while Rick slept it off, the teacher and Leeza had found a quiet place in the pantry where they screwed like cats for two hours, Ned leaving months of pent up emotion and semen deposited in his host’s shapely Eurasian wife. Before Rick woke up, the teacher was gone, leaving behind half a bottle of Merlot, a satiated woman, and the terminology “Payback Time” for Rick to repeat endlessly. Rick liked the term for these strange end days and kept repeating it until it sounded right.
But in the half a week since they’d last seen their friend, the neighborhood and the city had grown very quiet. Their windows had been barricaded since the outbreak of the plague that had brought the dead to life. Their doors were securely locked and reinforced. Their pantry was growing empty, though, and they knew that they’d have to make a break for it very soon. There was room for them all, but they’d decided to leave BC to fend for himself.
“Stop looking at him like that,” Rick commanded Leeza. “We don’t have room for him. He’ll be more trouble than he’s worth.”
BC ducked his head at that one. That one hurt.
“And don’t tell the kids that we’re leaving him. We’ll get loaded up in about an hour. Make sure the coast is clear. And then we’ll be out of here.” Rick took that instant to lower a slat of hardwood nailed across the living room window to peer out into the yard. It was still early in the afternoon and the sky was clear. It wasn’t particularly hot, yet, but he knew the nice weather would break soon and that the house would become a hotbox that would be intolerable now that there was no electrical power. They still hadn’t been able to figure out why the water was still working.
Outside, the neighborhood looked a mess. It was surprising how fast the vegetation had grown up and things fell apart. Yards were choked with knee-high grass and weeds. Limbs and garbage all but filled the sidewalks and streets. A windstorm from a week previous had blown all manner of things to the earth. One never appreciated the mechanics of a society until it was all but gone. Down the avenue, he saw a movement and he froze. Leeza noticed—Rick had all but stopped breathing.
“What do you see?” She asked.
“Zombie,” he whispered. “About half a block down.”
“What’s it doing?”
Rick looked through his makeshift peephole, his green eyes glaring out. “It’s looking around,” he said. “I think it’s trying to figure out where to go.”
“Is it alone? Do you see any others?” She buttoned her blouse up to her neck and knew that she’d throw on her black coat before they left. She’d seen those things bite through fabric so easily. Her rule when venturing out was two layers, sometimes three.
“No. Just the one. But it’s moving this way. It’s looking this way. It…” Rick was silent.
“What is it, Rick? What’s it doing now? Are there more of them?” She didn’t want to think of the possibility that they’d be found out by a group of them this late in the game, when they were almost ready to leave for good. It wouldn’t be fair!
BC was alert, now, his attention on every word that was being said. He wanted to peer out of the peephole, too, but knew that Rick would never allow that.
“It’s Ned,” Rick said. “It’s Ned and he’s going to come here. You know how they are. They come back to what’s familiar, if they can.”
Leeza’s hand went to her mouth. She was thinking of her liaisons with the college professor, so different from her coupling with her husband. Her girlfriends—before Rick had run them all off—had asked her how she tolerated Rick. Not just his attitude, one of them had said, but his breath! His breath is horrid! He was arguing with me and breathed on me! I thought I was going to vomit!
Although she didn’t like to admit it, she’d married Rick Nuttman because she’d been so desperate. She’d never had a problem attracting men—she was very well built and her half-Asian/Caucasian features were pleasing to most. But no one wanted to make a long-term commitment. Until Rick had come along. Before she could talk herself out of marrying him, she’d gotten pregnant with the first, with Maya. She wasn’t even sure their daughter was Rick’s. She looked even more Asian than Leeza did, and she suspected the girl belonged, genetically speaking, to her second cousin—a young man named Tran whom she’d seduced not long after she’d met Rick.
And so she’d accepted Rick Nuttman’s proposal. And a few years later Little Rick had come along. By then, Rick had chased off all of her friends and most of her family. By then, she was too well cowed to leave him, despite the fact that most of the time she was the primary breadwinner. Rick was too busy pursuing a career as a musician or an artist to bother with working a full-time job. And he refused to take work as a laborer, assuring his wife that soon, very soon, he’d land work as an illustrator, as a painter, as a musician. They continued to be very poor. Such had been life when the dead had begun to rise.
Rick continued to peer through the opened slat in the window. “He’s definitely coming this way. He’s wearing the same yellow shirt he was wearing when he was last here,” he said, whispering, as if his now-dead friend might hear. “Someone shot him,” he added.
“His neighbor,” Leeza said. “Ned kept saying that his neighbor was taunting him because he thought Ned was gay.”
“Shit,” Rick whispered again. “Shot him in the back. I think the bullet exited his chest. Lots of blood on the front of his shirt.”
“Oh. Poor Ned.” Leeza began weeping. “We. We’d better get out of here. Let’s get out of here before he gets to the door. You know how it goes. He’ll start hammering on the door or the side of the house and pretty soon the whole place will be filled with them.That’s how it happens! We’ve seen it happen like that!” She was losing her cool. Behind her, Maya was beginning to whimper.
“He remembers. It’s like they said. They remember shit from when they were alive. He’s coming back here because he enjoyed talking to me.”
At that, Leeza began laughing, and it was all she could do to contain it.
“Get hold of yourself, Leeza. He’s only about one hundred yards away. Past Mr. Magruder’s place. Even shuffling like he’s doing, he’ll be here in a few minutes. We can’t chance him bringing others with the racket you know he’ll make. I don’t know if we can hold out that long. Especially if the weather turns hot again.”
“Let me get the kids bundled up. We’ve got time for that. The car’s loaded. All we have to do is get in it and run.” Her attention was then immediately on her kids. “Help me get another shirt and pants on them. Find Little Rick’s gloves,” she reminded her husband.
“I think you’re overdoing it on the clothes thing. I’m not going to cover myself like that. Slows you down. Gets you too hot.” But he had Little Rick in his lap, helping him put on an extra shirt and putting on another pair of baggy pants over the sweats his little boy was wearing. Rick preferred his son—the boy was blonde and had only a hint of his quarter Vietnamese blood; the kid might almost pass for white, truth be told. Not like his sister, at all. Only Maya’s intelligence made Rick know that the girl was his kid, despite her features. She just physically took more after her mom, he figured.
Leeza had mentioned the layering to her husband before, without arguing with him. That was how she had learned to treat the man. Suggestions were sometimes effective, but arguing only brought on his anger and caused him to exhibit his vindictive nature. He had a talent for cruelty, she’d found. She’d suggested that an extra layer of clothing would protect them from being bitten if they were to come into contact with one of the undead. After a while, he’d agreed that this might be the case, but that he wasn’t going to do it for his own reason. At least he wasn’t forbidding either the children or Leeza to layer. She knew that if she’d treated it as a confrontation that is precisely what he’d have done.
“Hurry,” she said to the children, holding their hands as she went to the back door in the kitchen. “Everything’s in the car, except for us. All we have to do is open the door and make a run for it.”
Rick was beside her, then, holding an art portfolio in his left hand. She looked down at it. “What’s that? Why are you bringing that?”
“I can’t leave all of my illustrations,” he told her. “They might have some value for us. We might be able to trade them. Or barter them.”
Leeza bit her tongue. There was really no room for that thing in the car. Not when he wasn’t going to take BC with them! She said nothing.
“Mom? Isn’t BC coming with us?”
Still in the den, BC sat and looked at them, his eyes pleading, but no other sound or movement. He’d already heard and understood what was going to happen. He would stay. They would go.
“We’ll come back for BC,” Rick told Maya. “We’re going to go and stay somewhere for a few days and come back. BC will be okay. The bathtub’s full of water for him and he has plenty of food in the pantry. We left it open for him. See?”
“Rick. Please! We have to go. Now!”
Without a word, Rick reached out and shoved back the timber blocking the door. He gripped the brass knob in his sweaty palm and pulled the door open, hinges creaking in almost an ominous joke.
And Ned was standing there, filling the door.
“Fuck,” Rick exclaimed, even as dead, blue hands reached out surprisingly quickly to grip his left shoulder. There was a moan and the thing that had been Ned Waters, Professor of English at the University of South Carolina used the fleshy anchor of Nuttman’s upper arm to lever its unfeeling bulk inside.
“Fuck,” Rick yelled again. He fell back, and the zombie’s grip only intensified, the greater bulk of the zombie precluding Nuttman from tumbling to the floor. As it was he only partially collapsed, his knees buckling, but his arm firmly in the grip of the dead man. “Get him off of me, Leeza! Hit him with something!”
They had no guns, of course. They’d been far too poor to buy one before the outbreak, and had been unable to locate one in the few moments they’d taken to search the abandoned homes nearby. Leeza stepped back, pulling the children with her. She pushed them into the den, just a few paces away, safely with BC, and then she was searching for one of the makeshift bludgeons Rick had created for her. But she’d left it in the children’s bedroom. “Damn it,” she said, turning to see if Rick had been bitten, yet. One bite, she knew, and he would be infected, and suffer a fever-ridden death before rising again as one of them.
But not only had the dead thing not attacked Rick, it had released him, and Nuttman was scuttling away to the far side of the small kitchen, upsetting a stack of dishes placed on the floor when Leeza had been picking out some things to load in the car. Ned’s dead, filmy eyes were locked not on Rick, but on Leeza. It stood in place for just an instant and then began shuffling her way. Its mouth opened, lips peeled back in a permanent rictus, tongue a dry and purple thing down low in the mandible. It wasn’t Rick Ned wanted. It was Leeza. She screamed, but her husband seemed less able to aid her than she had been able to help him.
The thing that had been Ned, her sometime lover, shambled forward. That, Leeza realized, was the most horrid thing about them. How single-minded and implacable they were. Once they’d made what amounted to a decision, they rarely deviated from whatever course of action dictated by the reptilian part of the brain that still operated.
Leeza had retreated further into the den; the children cowered in the small bedroom that they shared. Rick continued to crouch in the kitchen, searching for something with which to strike the unliving thing, but unable to locate something appropriate.
Ned’s undead corpse loomed over Leeza. He’d been a big, fleshy man and he towered above her. His hands reached out, and the germ of the urge that had brought him there was immediately replaced with a stronger urge:
To eat.
Just as one blue-black claw grasped for her long, dark hair, something hit Ned from the right, actually toppling the zombie. It was BC, who had his fangs deep in the soft meat of the thing’s stomach. And even though BC was only fifty pounds, his jaws held tight, his neck muscles were powerful, and he twisted his body so that his mass was able to unsettle the zombie, who fell heavily to the hardwood floor with a meaty thud.
“Leeza! Grab the kids! Hurry! While he’s down. Run!”
Rick didn’t have to repeat himself. As he raced for the car, not so much as turning to see if his wife and children were on his heels, he was at he car door and unlocking it. Only when he heard a crackling noise from the back yard was he aware of two more of the undead shambling slowly toward him, eyes staring, mouths open, low moans exhaling from rotting lungs. At the sight, he actually did freeze, the key in the door. But the arrival of Leeza and the kids broke him out of the shock.
“Open the door, goddamn it,” Leeza screamed. “Open it and let us inside!”
Rick quickly opened his door, slid into the driver’s seat and unlocked the passenger side doors. His wife shoved the children into the back seat with the blankets and food—she could buckle them in later. With no little anger she grasped Rick’s art portfolio and slammed it toward the rear of the car, hoping that she’d be able to crush everything in it, but knowing that was unlikely. It wouldn’t be for lack of trying, though.
Once they were all inside, the children now screaming, Rick inserted the keys into the ignition and started the car. Despite its outward appearance, the car had a good engine—Japanese reliability ensures that, he liked to say. The pistons rattled slightly and as he gave it the gas, the car moved forward, Rick turning a hard right that took them very close to the pair of zombies reaching for them. But he left them behind.
The last sight they had of the little house they’d all shared for the past three years was of seeing the Ned zombie shuffling out of the back door; BC herding the thing away from them with carefully aimed lunges and nips.
And then they were gone, weaving around stalled autos, downed limbs, blown trash. They were looking for salvation.
Sometimes Sophie is really scary looking. She's our resident crazy cat. She's almost totally bugfuck. No one ever sees her in person but the immediate family. We're the only people who have seen her, so maybe she's just a figment of our imaginations. Whenever anyone comes over to visit, she's nowhere to be found. No. Really. She hides. But she exists. I'm not kidding. She does.
I had today off. So I slept in very late and then drove over to Terrell NC where my Casita trailer was waiting for me at Terrell Camping Center. If you have a travel trailer or other RV and need it serviced, these guys are the place to go. They are extremely honest and do great work and their fees are more than reasonable. Plus, they're the friendliest folk I've encountered in the RV world. I highly recommend them.
My rig as I picked it up. You can see the thing I really enjoy about my Casita trailer. It's so compact! My truck and trailer together take up less space than most single RVs. This is why I'm able to take the trailer to very remote camping areas in our National Forests.
I picked up the trailer, took it back to my wife's old home place where we store it, and got it back into shape by loading the bedding and testing out the systems. The leak that had prevented us from using the trailer has been completely fixed. After filling the onboard water tanks I tried out everything and then drained the tanks. And I even took a nap in the trailer--the first time I'd slept in there for far too long. Yeah, I like my travel trailer.
Me and the Casita, safe at home.
When I got back to town I went to run a few errands with my son, Andy. He wanted to hack off some of his hair, which was good news to me. He didn't get it cut as short as it should be (in my opinion), but he doesn't look like Jesus of Nazareth any more. After that, we went to eat at a Japanese restaurant called Shiki that we'd never tried. Pretty decent food, so we'll go back there. We had habachi steak and had sushi rolls as appetizers. The sushi was so delicious that we're going to try a sushi meal when we return.
Andy, just before entering the barber shop.
Dude! That was the best you could do?! The woman has clippers, man!
They should have called this movie SUCKEN. Because it sucks. It sucks big, soft, wet chimpanzee shit.
I got to watch this movie for free. Thank Jove, or else I'd definitely have had to kick someone squarely in the ass. Someone would have had to pay. Either the person who talked me in to seeing that steaming turd of a film, or the producer, or the director, or the screenwriter, or even Liam-fucking-Neeson. Yeah, if I'd paid, I'd have had to look him up and put my foot up his ass.
Liam, you better have a gun if I ever run into your washed up self.
If I hadn't been so pissed off, I probably would have laughed at some of the unintentionally funny crap in this movie. By now, I'm sure most of you know the basic story that they leak out to get your stupid butts into the theater to watch this crummy movie:
Liam Neeson's daughter goes to Paris (a hotbed of terrorist activity if ever there was one) where she is kidnapped by white slavers (from the former Soviet Union) to be sold to evil fucking Arabs. So between the Europeans, the Slavs, and the Arabs the authors of this shitty waste of time have managed to insult roughly half the Caucasian population of Mother Earth. Two-thirds if you consider that they tried to sucker most stupid white American males to see this hunk of buzzard vomit.
(Psst! Liam! This script sucks ass!)
So when she gets kidnapped one of the kidnappers takes the time to pick up the cell phone she was using to talk to her father, Liam Neeson, who was on the other end several thousand miles away in the good ol' USA. And Neeson then spends several hundred words explaining to the kidnapper what a badass he is and how, if they won't let his daughter go, Neeson will leap across the big pond and come and kill the kidnappers.Okay. Yeah. You've figured out the rest of the movie.
Big spoiler here: Neeson does go across the big pond where he miraculously finds the bad guys and kills them all, including the Arab sheik who ends up buying his daughter. Man, that Arab was mighty stupid. He paid $500K for the rights to a skanky American teenager when he could have had a lot better for a handful of sweaty fives at the corner of Trade and Tryon. Yeah! Five HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars! I know what you're thinkin': "Bob! $500K ain't what it used to be!" Well, that may be right, but it will sure get you a HELL of a lot better piece of ass than Liam Neeson's skinny teenaged daughter. Oh, well. This movie was so damned stupid that I had to keep punching myself on the jaw so that I could stay dumb enough to sit through it. And I am ashamed to say that I did sit through it. Call me Clem. The film also has Famke Janssen in it, and she plays the bitchy ex-wife who left the heroic secret agent Neeson to bang a multi-millionaire. Now, normally, I think that Ms. Janssen is one of the prettiest babes on the globe. But she looks like dried leather in this movie. What the Hell??!! Either they uglied her up to make her less appealing, or she has (as my late brother-in-law Eddie used to say) been rode hard and put up wet.
Hurry and open the box. Famke Janssen is getting dowdier by the minute.
So it goes. At least me sitting through that piece of shit has done some good. It has made me write this down on the Internet so that you dear readers can spare yourselves the same experience.
Sunday was a good, lazy day. We started it by sleeping very late. I always sleep late after I've had a five-day work week. It was Carole's birthday, so we drove over to the mall near her mom's house to meet up with her and Carole's aunt for lunch at Mimi's Cafe. Mimi's is a chain restaurant, but pretty good. We had a decent meal and it was A-OK.
The waitress took this shot of me and Carole. They gave Carole a slice of chocolate pie since it was her birthday. And I swear that dessert in front of me was not mine. It was a three-dessert platter which I shared with Carole's mom and aunt.
After that, we drove a short distance to her mom's house. I can only take so much of the female chit-chat and I have to hit the outdoors. So I mucked about in the yard for a while. Carole's dad planted many dogwood trees when he was alive, but they're getting old and dying off, now. One of the nicest ones fell over this past Monday after the heavy snow caused it to break off at the base. We need to start planting new dogwoods, as we've lost about four in the past year.
It just fell over from the weight of the wet snow.
The base was as rotten as a Republican's heart.
Still feeling antsy, I jumped in my truck and drove a few miles to Latta Park. It's a large county park with plenty to see and do. If it had been earlier, I'd have loaded the canoe and gone paddling in Mountain Island Lake. As it was, I just took it easy and went to gaze at the park. The set piece is the remains of the namesake Latta Plantation. It's a restored farm complete with barns, tobacco houses, root cellars, etc. They charge admission to that, so I was content to stand outside the fence and take photographs of it from a distance.
Latta Plantation
The house and immediate yard.
They have a guide dressed as the lady of the house, in traditional garb.
She came out and walked around the lawn, looking very ghostly from my viewpoint.
My wife's dad dug up three hemlock trees along the North MillsRiver in the Pisgah National Forest some decades ago. He took them home where he planted them in his back yard, hoping to keep a little bit of the mountains close to home where he could look out his window and see them and, some day, walk beneath their branches. Frank's been gone since 1990, but the hemlocks are still there. One of the trio died, but the other two did extremely well in the moist, but well drained soil of his yard. Both trees are approaching fifty feet in height these days.
Ironically, they were very lucky to have been dug up as saplings and transported to Mecklenburg County by Mr. Henderson. If you go to North Mills River these days, all of the hemlock trees are dead. They all became victims of the sap-sucking little whores, the Hemlock wooly adelgid. So these could very well be the only hemlocks remaining on Earth who originated along that particular river.
I enjoy these trees. One thing about hemlocks is that they form a natural shelter. The limbs droop down and if you enter their reach, you can stand beside the trunk of the tree and find yourself in a kind of room. Above you and around you will be the sheltering green needles of the hemlock tree.
Alas, this is now a rarity here in the eastern USA. But I can still enjoy the experience beneath the pair of hemlock trees, saved from oblivion by an enterprising young man more than four decades ago.
As I get ready for another year of hiking, camping, canoeing, and backpacking, I figured I'd list a few very cool places where I've spent time here in my adopted state of North Carolina.
Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wilderness Areas (side by side in the Pisgah National Forest).
Granny Burrell Falls, Panthertown Valley, Pisgah National Forest.
Tuckaseegee River, Panthertown Valley.
Sauratown Mountains, Hanging Rock State Park.
Along the Dan River.
Stone Mountain State Park (the one in North Carolina, not Georgia).
Bull Elk, Cataloochee, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Kings Pinnacle, Crowder Mountain State Park, Gastonia North Carolina.Big Cataloochee Mountain, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
On our last extended trip we discovered a bad leak in the onboard fresh water system. After much searching about, I located the leak (in a plastic pipe). However, I couldn't fix it due to the fact that to remove the bench under which the leak was located, I would have had to remove the fuse box that's accessible beneath that bench. And my knowledge of such stuff is just way too limited. Yes, I could have removed that fuse box, but damned if I'd know what I was doing when the time came to rewire it.
Additionally, there were other more minor concerns with the trailer that I needed to address. The hot water heater worked fine on gas, but only made warm water when I used electric. There was a valve to drain the fresh water tank that needed replacing. The wheel bearings needed to be checked. I wanted a cover for the fresh air vent, plus new end caps for the hollow bumper and a new sewer hose. So the best thing for me to do was to haul it in to a shop that had done work for me in the past and who were very reliable and friendly.
Yesterday they called to tell me that the trailer was ready for pickup. They replaced all of the damaged and worn parts that I'd pointed out to them, and did all of the repairs. Total cost for labor and parts was well under $200. I was very happy. Now all I have to do is find the time to go and pick up my trailer. Probably early next week will be my first opportunity for that. "Don't worry about running out to pick it up," they told me. "Your trailer doesn't take up much space."
I'm very much looking forward to hooking up the Casita. We're heading down to explore first magnitude springs in Florida that we've never seen. Just a few more weeks and off we go!
Today while I was at my regular lunch spot in a local restaurant a young kid walked up to me. He was about 20, maybe 21 years old. He was rather thin, beard and mustache much like my son, Andy.
"Hello," he said. "I hate to bother you, but I'm very hungry and haven't eaten anything for a while. Could you, maybe, buy me some food?"
I was stunned. Yeah, I've run into my fair share of panhandlers, but this guy looked like he meant it. As it happened, I was broke. I had absolutely no cash on me, and I told him so.
"Well, thanks anyway," he told me and tottered off. I saw him stop at a few other booths, and the folk in those shooed him away.
Goddamn it, I figured. "Hey, kid. I'll get you something to eat. Let's go order." We got in line. The place has two restaurants in it. The one in front where I generally eat serves pizzas, sandwiches, and salads. The one on the other end is a Bojangles and serves mainly fried chicken. He chose the Bojangles. When it got his turn I told him to order whatever he wanted. He went for the two-piece meal. It ran five bucks. "That's all you want?"
"Yes," he told me. "Thanks so much. I appreciate it." He looked like he was at the end of his rope. I don't think he was accustomed to begging for food. Maybe he was. I don't know. But I felt sorry for him. I paid with my check card and retreated.
For the rest of the day the image of the kid kept coming back to me. Of the other customers refusing his request for food. For food. I'd initially refused, too, so I'm not making any judgment calls. It's just that the thought of a young person walking around hungry in this country seems totally insane. He seemed like a nice kid and reminded me, as I said, of my son. I wonder if he has family. I didn't ask him.
I kept crying all day. Every time I'd stop and think about it, I'd start crying. I hope he has family. I hope he has folk who love him.
The roads are in bad shape today. In fact, the route to the park where I wanted to hike is clogged with traffic due to accidents. I could probably figure another route to the park, but who knows if I'd face the same problems? So I'll hang out at the house today with Carole and just take it easy.
The snow storm was okay. It was fun watching the stuff coming down last night. At times it was truly heavy. I think we ended up with about four inches of snow here in the neighborhood. One funny thing is that it's still cloudy out (almost 11:00 am) when we were told the clouds would have cleared out by now. Of course the whole storm didn't quite follow the script we were given by the weather service. It started later than predicted and the temperatures didn't fall quite as much as they'd thought. We stayed just above freezing until very late in the storm. Else we'd have had more accumulation, I figure.
At any rate, we did have some snow. A decent amount that makes for pretty photos, but nothing to freeze commerce in its tracks. (The previous political administration seems to have done that for us.)
If you listen closely, you can hear thunder just as I'm turning off the video. I wish I'd left the camera on a few seconds longer. Thunder during a snowstorm. Cool.
Arriving home about 7:30 pm. Storm was just kicking in.
They've promised us snow. NOAA has been predicting a kick-ass winter storm for the Charlotte area. I'm patiently waiting. I like the snow, as I only have to put up with it on rare occasions, and most of those by choice (trips to the high country). But I do want to see a decent snowfall today and tonight. Currently, it is, as they like to say, pissing rain. I mean really, really raining. It's coming down in sheets. If it was snow instead of rain, we'd have a couple of feet.
My plan is (if it does actually snow) to drive to a nearby state park and hike around in the fluffy stuff. We'll see what happens. They're calling for upwards of more than half a foot of snow, which would give us the heaviest snowfall for this area since 2004. We'll see.
Series of photos from the last time I went hiking through a decent snowfall: March 05, 2005, to the summit of Mount LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Jack Thyen on the left. Me and Boone the dog in the middle, Andy Kunkle on the right with his back turned. This was a great little beach and swimming hole along the Linville River. Just over the bank up in the trees is the best campsite I've yet seen in the gorge. I'll have to go back there in the summer and camp.
I took this one along the Rock Jock Trail. A lot of the trail travels through forests totally ravaged by the fires in 2007. These fires were so intense that they were able to even burn the rhododendron and consumed the peaty soil. It's going to take decades for the forest to recover from those fires.
Andy Kunkle and his dog, Boone in Split Rock along the Rock Jock Trail.
Remember the old saying about not looking down? I kept looking down and it freaked me out so much that I hauled ass off the balanced rock. It was just too scary. I'd asked Jack to take three photos of me on the overhang, but I chickened out as he took the third one.
Sometimes I can scarcely believe that I'm lucky enough to live in a state that has this kind of scenery. This is Table Rock Mountain as seen from Dogback Mountain. Believe it or not, you can actually walk to the summit of Table Rock. Doesn't look like it can be safely done, but the trail's not too bad, from what I've heard. I've yet to hike it.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Try it again and I swear on the very fabric of reality that I'll end you.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Try it again and I swear on the very fabric of reality that I'll end you.
