The Legendary Big Five-Oh.

Well, I turned 50-years-old yesterday (June 28). Had my complete physical today and got a clean bill of health, (pending results of blood work). And I feel good. I’ve only gained back ten of the forty or so pounds I lost last year, so it’ll be easy to lose those. Last week, I hiked one of the toughest trails in the eastern USA, and did it without any trouble, so that’s a good sign for an old codger.

Strangely, I’m more physically active now than I have been since my high school days. I assume it’s partly due to the fact that I make more money and I have more vacation time than at any point in my life since those days of my youth. Every month finds me camping and hiking and traveling all over Appalachia where I bushwhack to waterfalls and bag various peaks that intrigue me.

My writing career is going pretty good. I’ve got a very cool deal in the works and I’m hard at work on my latest novel which has suddenly turned the corner so that I was able to work out a nagging problem with the plot. All in all, I have to say that the World is treating me pretty good right now. Yes, there are the obvious political and ecological nightmares that I have to acknowledge each day. But, for now, I find contentment in searching out the world of Nature that yet exists and celebrating that world by immersing myself in it.

So far, Fifty feel pretty darned good.

The Black Mountains have it in for me.

Western North Carolina is home to the Black Mountains, the highest range in the eastern USA. They top out at Mount Mitchell—6,684 feet above sea level (2037 meters for all of you outside the USA). I visit the range two or three times a year, and go on extended hikes there as often as I can overnighters if I can arrange the necessary time for that.

Over the years, the roughest hikes I’ve taken in the southeastern US have been those I’ve found in this compact range of peaks. Before this past week, the toughest of these trails had been the Black Mountain Crest Trail, which traverses the spine of the range over approximately 13 miles from the base of Celo Knob to the summit of Mitchell. It’s a tortuous route of ups and downs taking you steeply to the very mountaintops and down into deep gaps over and over, hitting a number of the tallest peaks.

But I’d heard that one of the side trails connecting to the Crest Trail was notorious for its difficulty. Setting up a base camp with my fiberglass travel trailer at the Black Mountain Campground (operated by the National Forest Service) in the shadow of Mount Mitchell, I decided to finally see just how tough the Woody Ridge Trail truly is. Early on Monday, June 18, I drove out of the campground and headed for SR1155 a few miles away. After one wrong turn (the map I had showed the trailhead on SR1157, which was wrong) I found the trail at the back of a parking area on the dead end of SR1156.



Loading my pack, I headed up the trail, happy to see the familiar signposts used on trails in the Pisgah National Forest. I do a lot of hiking in wilderness areas where trails are relatively unmaintained and not signed at all, and lacking a certain sense of direction, I’m always happy to see the NFS signage. In quick order I entered a very deep and healthy cove hardwood forest, left behind the stream at the trailhead, and began to climb.

At first, I figured the stories about the difficulty of Woody Ridge were overblown. It was steep, but nothing like I’d heard. The first ¾ of a mile or so were merely a steady uphill slog through a classic southern hardwood forest. The goings was quite pleasant and I was enjoying the woods, wondering what all the fuss was about concerning this trail.

At about a mile the trail met up with a logging road and took a sharp left turn up the ridgeline. Soon after this, I began to learn why the trail had its well-deserved reputation. After passing through a strange and very pleasant section that goes through an extended patch of grasses beneath tall hardwoods, the trail suddenly begins to tackle the steep ridgeline straight-on. There are none of the familiar switchbacks of most Appalachian trailways. You go forward and up, pushing and sometimes having to grasp nearby trees and rhododendron shrubs to continue higher up the peak.


The trail map I had listed the Woody Ridge Trail at 2.2 miles in length. Trying to figure my pace, I soon realized that not only had this map gotten the trailhead wrong, but also the distance of the trail. There was no way this was a mere 2.2 miles. After a couple of hours of constant uphill, some of it tough scrambling over expanses of exposed rock and the twisted root systems of hemlock trees (dying, of course, from hwa), I was nowhere near the summit. Once again, the Blacks were proving to be home to yet another of the toughest trails I have hiked.

Knowing at this point that the map wasn’t right on distances, I realized that I was going to have a longer day than I had thought when I’d started. This wasn’t a problem, as I had loaded about a gallon of water into my daypack, along with the emergency essentials I always take when I hit the trail. A longer day was not going to be a problem. But at 50 years of age, these steep slopes were taking a toll on my old lungs and legs. I pushed on.



Finally, I broke out of the changing forest (it had gone from strictly hardwoods to a mix of dying hemlocks interspersed with oaks and some spruce) onto an exposed ridge. I thought that I must certainly be getting close to the summit, and so climbed out onto a high boulder to get a better look at the heights before me. And I realized I was still a good 1,000 feet from the top. Putting my shoulders into the mountain, I headed on and up, stopping from time to time to catch my breath, wipe the sweat from my brow, and halting now and again to catch my breath.

Once again, the Black Mountains were kicking my ass.

Finally, after passing into the spruce-fir regions of the range, I was near the summit of Horse Rock, the destination I’d set for the day, and the peak nearest Celo Knob. I came out onto a cliff face where I dropped my pack as the only other hiker I’d meet that day arrived with two dogs to join me on the cliff. I chatted for a bit with the young guy—a local who lived at the base of the mountain—and to feed cookies to one of his friendly mutts. He soon headed back down, and I had the cliffs to myself as I rested and waited while cramps traveled the insides of my legs, doing their best to twist me into pretzel of pain. But I just lay there and kept my legs straight, enduring the pain and waiting for the cramps to pass while I drank down water and ate a few cookies and tried to get some minerals back into my system.


The stroll to the very top of Horse Rock was relatively easy from that point, with the exception of having to pick my way through the confusing maze of a spruce forest. There is nothing as confusing to me as having to find my way through a maze of spruce trees. Every trunk looks the same, and the uniformity of the trees and the rusty lay of old needles on the ground produces a daunting sameness that can get you lost in a hurry. I always move slowly and deliberately in these kinds of woods, having gotten lost in this forest type no less than three times in my life.

I then headed back down the mountain, and the Woody Ridge Trail reminded me every step of the way why it has its reputation. I steadied myself on steep slopes with my hiking staff, and halted my downward gait by grasping the odd rock and tree and shrub as I went down and down. Once more I was passing through forest zones, this
time in reverse order. Out of the spruce-fir region and into hemlocks and then hemlock/poplar mix and finally into the familiar and beautiful cove hardwood stands.

At about 4,000 feet or so above sea level, I made my mistake. Gazing up at the big trees, I missed the right turn on Woody Ridge Trail and instead took a logging road in error. It was only as I reached the intersection of this logging road with another that I knew I’d taken a wrong turn and would have to turn back and climb at least a thousand feet back to the intersection. Looking back up the steep slope I just couldn’t bring myself to climb back up the mountain to where I’d made the mistake. I looked at the intersection of old logging roads and saw one that led sharply to the right and figured that would take me back to a point close to where I’d left my truck.

Heading that way I continued to descend the mountain, passing out of National Forest lands and onto what must have been private property, for the forests gave way to a vast expanse of mountainside that had been recently logged to the bare ground. All around me were tree stumps and twisted snags of trees cut and run over by bulldozers and flatbed trucks. I headed into a deep valley and after picking my way down what appeared to be a graveled drive, I found myself in the parking lot of a small Baptist church. Stopping to drink down some of my dwindling supply of water, I pushed on and came to SR1154 and knew I had to take a right to 80S and then another right to SR1155 and then back to my truck.

The four-mile hike along the highways was rough. In the full sun I soon depleted my water and by the time I made my truck, I was feeling totally exhausted and dehydrated. I had four bottles of water waiting in the cab, and soon had emptied those. I sat for a while in the cab of my truck, running my AC full blast and doing my best to cool off. As soon as I felt able, I put my truck into gear and headed back to my campsite at the Black Mountain Campground.

The trails of the Black Mountains almost always get me in ways I don’t expect. I’ve been lost in them twice, have leg cramps almost every time I go, and yet I know I’ll go back. I reckon I just like a challenge.

Cat Karma?

Almost every writer I know has at least one cat. We had three. Cinnamon, our oldest, died after 20 years. Callie, our youngest, vanished one day. We don't know what happened to her. Sophie, our middle cat, and weirdest cat, grew very happy with being the only cat in the household. She loves it, in fact. Always quirky, she came into her own once she was Lady and High Mistress of the home.

Last week, a young stray cat showed up at our door. A very sweet cat that was obviously accustomed to lots of attention. She's quite affectionate. As she was hungry and rather disheveled, we bathed her and fed her and set her up a place in the garage. We don't want the cats mixing until we've had a chance to take her to the vet for shots and a checkup.

At any rate, Sophie is NOT HAPPY with the arrival of the new cat (we've named her Molly). Every time she sees Molly through the front door or the garage door, she puffs up and hisses. Hopefully, she'll be a lot friendlier once Molly is settled in for good.

For now, though, Sophie is not the happy cat. We've mentioned the concept of karma to her, but she's having none of that.

Life is short.

Life is short. The wilderness beckons. The hemlocks are dying. As I approach the age of 50, I struggle to see as much of Nature as I can before She fades.

The Hemlocks are Breathing their Last.

Well, I knew the day was coming.

In western North Carolina, and especially in the Great Smoky Mountains and points north and south, it’s all but over.

The hemlock trees are all but history in those areas. What we call “hwa”, the hemlock wooly adelgid, has pretty much run its destructive course and all but a handful of hemlock groves are now completely dead or barely hanging on.

As I said, I’ve know for some years that this day was coming, but it doesn’t make it any easier to take. I feel very sad about this, but also extremely angry. Our government could have taken steps to save these trees and their accompanying ecosystems from destruction, but it was more concerned with committing mass murder in Iraq than in preserving two species of tree.

The Carolina hemlock and the eastern hemlock species are likely doomed to extinction, much as we saw the demise of the American chestnut tree. Yes, there are banks of seed and groves planted far away to serve as a source of new genetic material if the day arrives when the adelgid on these shores has breathed its sap-sucking last.

But all it would have taken is the application of an available adelgicide on our hemlock groves to save at least some of them until biologists could come up with a solution to put a stop to the invasive insects that have destroyed our southern and eastern groves of hemlocks. But more hideous priorities took the monetary pie into which we might have dipped.

And so it goes. Mankind has its twisted priorities.

Dead hemlocks along the Cherohala Skyway. (Photo by Will Blozan)

The descent into Scot's Gulf.

Scot’s Gulf
By
James R. Smith


Gravity
and Young Man River
conspire
to part the thighs
of Mother Earth
And, O!
Clear pools, home to
trout
and from yielding stone
there is fertile ground,
poplars and
hemlocks
And oaks and pines and
thistles and laurel
and trillium
trillium
trillium

The wilderness beckons.

Cold, clear pools.

A carpet of green ferns along the forest floor.

Virgin Falls, from a cave, down the cliff, and back to the netherworld.

The old forests clothe the yielding slopes.

And, along the way, one is never alone...

...never alone...



...never alone.

Ernest Thompson Seton.

Every once in a while someone will ask me who was the greatest influence on me in relation to my writing.

I never hesitate. The answer has always been Ernest Thompson Seton.

I’m now almost 50 years old, and even by the time I was eight years old—when I first discovered Seton’s work—he was already largely forgotten by American youth. Between the time he began writing and the 1930s, he was one of the most popular American writers, not only for the youth at whom he aimed much of his work, but also quite popular among the general reading public.

Many of his collections and novellas were best sellers in their day, and his artwork was highly regarded and published worldwide.

For myself, I had to discover his work in the form of second-hand books I’d find in libraries and in the stacks in one or another of my dad’s used bookstores. I suspect that it was my mom who first suggested his work to me, but I can’t recall if that was actually the case. All I can say is that I discovered his books and that for about two years I pursued any of his works that I could find in my dad’s shops or in any of the libraries to which I had access.

Luckily, the elementary school that I attended in Decatur, Georgia had a number of his books on the shelves. I’d check them out and read them and go back to them time and again until such time as either my mom or my dad found a duplicate copy in the bookshop that I could keep as my own.

The most important lesson I got from Seton was illustrated in the title of the book that was his most popular, and which remains the most famous of those he released:

Wild Animals I Have Known.

At once, the title is a radical statement in and of itself. Had any writer before considered any creature other than a Man as someone? He could easily have given the book a less provocative title, but there it was. Animals were not things. They were, in effect, persons. They had emotions and desires. They were possessed of individual personalities.

I already knew this from having had animal companionship from dogs that had lived with my family. Each of these animals had personalities and qualities that I’d witnessed. Each of them were, in effect, persons to me. As a kid, I had no problem with Seton’s assurances to his readers that animals were to be known, if one were lucky enough to have the experience to make their acquaintance.

Sadly, Seton seems to be even less well known today than his fading fame at the time of my childhood. It’s a rare reader who knows the name if I bring him up in conversation, or when I answer that question concerning the writer who was my main influence.



If you wish to learn more about Seton, you can find out about him at the website for The Seton Institute. I heartily recommend his works, wherever you can find them.

Swimming With the Rest of the Bait.

There's nothing so humbling as thinking that you could soon be nothing more than something to be eaten by another creature. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go snorkeling in the Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys. After having explored the area adjacent to the walls of Fort Jefferson, I asked a park ranger where the best examples of coral reef were located. She informed me that if I swam out to the area between buoys three and five, I would be well rewarded for the trip out.











The distance to these buoys seemed to be about 1/3 mile,so I set out. My wife had bought a cheap underwater film camera for our day in the park and I took this with me, pausing from time to time to snap a shot. Along the way I encountered quite a lot of fish and some nice coral formations. Pretty soon I was approaching the first of the buoys indicated by the ranger. However, looking down, I realized that I was swimming just above a shark that was longer than I was tall.

I'm marginally familiar with shark species, and I seemed to recall that this individual was a member of a rather innocuous breed of shark. However, because he was so large and because I was swimming so far from shore and alone (no other swimmers had ventured out so far), I began to feel like not so much more than something to be eaten by a big fish.



Stopping just long enough to take a couple of photos of this shark (a nurse shark, I've been told), I decided to head back to shallower waters closer to the foundation of Fort Jefferson, where I was only too happy to continue my snorkeling adventure. The better part of valor and all that.

Landsford Canal

Landsford Canal State Park (South Carolina)

Taken along the Catawba River.

After a twelve-hour shift on Saturday, my wife and I (along with a couple of hiking/kayaking pals) drove to nearby Landsford Canal State Park. Our main goal was to paddle our canoe along the Catawba River to see the vast expanses of Spider lilies that grow in the rocky shoals protected within the borders of the park, and to see the historic site of the old canal and lock system that allowed barges to bypass those same shoals in Colonial and post-Colonial days.

The rocky shoals just before the Spider lily habitat.

The highlight of the trip was, indeed, the huge expanses of Spider lilies blooming under a clear Carolina sky, but we also managed to see river otters, gar, various turtles, herons, red-winged blackbirds, and about two dozen or more water snakes.

The vast expanse of Spider lilies.

We got a very early start on our trip, arriving at the park at opening at 9:00 am. This was a good move, as the annual Spider lily Festival was today, so the park filled to capacity while we were on the river. The water level was a bit low, which made maneuvering a canoe a bit dicey over the rocky shoals. But we had a good time exploring the river and viewing the lilies.

Well worth the canoe trip to snap this shot.

By the time I got home, unloaded and stored the canoe and cleaned up, the physical activities of the past two days caught up with me and I collapsed to my mattress to spend the next few hours in quite a deep and restful sleep. I ain't young enough to keep going at those kinds of levels and shrug it off. So much for biking the nearby greenway I'd planned for later in the day.

Snakes abound in this park.

I highly recommend a visit to the Landsford Canal State Park if you're interested in pre-Colonial engineering or American history. In addition, of course, to just viewing a slice of nature in the Carolina Piedmont area.

Red-winged blackbird.

Part of the old canal and lock system that bypassed the rocky shoals. (Based on a sixteenth century design.)

Global Warming.

It strikes me that those who deny that global warming has been caused by the effects of Mankind burning fossil fuels are similar to those who claim that the Holocaust never happened. In fact, most of the folk who claim "there's no such thing as global warming" are among the numbers who claim Nazi Germany didn't initiate or engage in the mass murder of Jews and Slavs.

Mother Earth is Speaking

Every day the news gets worse.

I’m not talking about the latest wires concerning any war you might want to mention. Or the most recent Internet buzz about political turmoil. Or anything concerning any societal debate currently garnering the attention of the populace.

What I’m talking about is the health of the Planet. Each time I take a look, the news is worse than the day before. There is no large scale improvement as the human race rapidly eats everything in sight and shits anywhere is wants and belches indescribable toxins into the very air we all have to breathe and befouls every waterway and aquifer on our continents and in the crust upon which we move.

There is a current meme flittering about concerning population growth. Whereas once there was well-founded fear in the rampant explosion of the human populace, now we are told that the economy will collapse without new youths to fuel various welfare options for the aged (whether public or private). This is, to put it mildly, corporate bullshit. Once upon a time, it was religious leaders debating the sins of birth control. Now, the monsters who sit at the heads of our bloated corporate monstrosities are preaching the new Gospel of continued population growth. They’ve taken the place of old Popes and Priests and Ministers to ensure that they have a constant supply of customers. Not to some church or temple or mosque, but to their own every starving, very gaping maws fed by our endless consumerism.

So what are we going to do? While our atmosphere rebels against us? While the Earth gives up the good fight? While our seas stink and die?

We seem to be doing nothing. There are few voices speaking up to put an end to the insanity leading to the destruction of so many of the creatures with whom we share this globe. The Great Apes are our brothers, but their homes will be felled and plundered just as surely as the homes of races trampled underfoot by more advanced societies. The idea that they are persons should not even be argued. The idea that they deserve their own nations and preserves where they can live unmolested and unexploited by Homo sapiens should not even be the subject of debate. Let them have their peace and their survival.

Around us, animals are fading fast. Tasmania is losing their precious devil to some mysterious virus that causes cancer to erupt and kill them off. The government there is desperately seeking a last refuge for the tenacious little scavengers. An island redoubt where uninfected individuals can wait out the plague that is wiping out the species.

In the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Caribbean, a virus is afflicting all of the species of sea turtles there so that massive growths form on their bodies and flippers and heads, causing the animals to be unable to swim or to dive or to even see. Some few humans attempt to gather up these tumor-afflicted turtles and to surgically remove the growths and return the animals to their habitats. There is a single turtle hospital in the Florida Keys devoted exclusively to this struggle. But one group cannot stem the destruction of every type of sea turtle. A reaction to a problem spawned by the warming of the Earth and the fouling of the seas is no solution to the base problem.

Mother Earth is talking to us. With each species that is smothered out of existence we are delivered a dark warning of a fate, which ultimately awaits our own species if we refuse to take heed.

Deny the corporate greedheads what they consider their due. Fight them. Slow down. Take stock of their lies. Struggle against these new liars who are bound and determined to destroy everything by exploiting our own individual greeds to feed the black holes of their corporate hunger.

Only One Question.

One Question
By
James Robert Smith

I’d perc’d my own coffee,
put it in a mug
and left
for work
the insulated mug on my
right
I took a hard turn
too quickly, perhaps
and the mug spilled
hot coffee
on my thigh.
IT HURT!
Driving on, more slowly,
I dabbed at the
coffee
with a handy towel.
I had only one question:
“Who would I sue?”

A Good Month!

April 2007 was a good month for me.

My family and I had a grand time on our long vacation this year. We always have fun on our trips, especially since we bought our travel trailer. This year we took two weeks and headed down to the lower Florida Keys where we camped at Bahia Honda State Park. The highlight of our stay was a day-cruise to the Dry Tortugas National Park. While one of our less visited national parks, it’s easily one of our most beautiful.

I’ve had two inquiries into the movie rights for my novel, The Flock. No one has made a firm offer, yet. Hopefully one of the producers will take on the project.

I also got my first royalty statement for The Flock, and the book has done quite well. We got the initial royalty check, which Carole and I have decided to spend on something frivolous, such as a big, flat screen TV. We’ll go shopping this weekend.

My second Amazon Shorts appearance also took place this month. "For My Father's Brother's Children", a collaboration with Taboo alumnus L. Roy Aiken is now available via Amazon.com.

All in all, this has been a really good month.

At the Hemingway House in Key West.

(That guy really knew how to live!)

Life is...Good?

Things were looking really good.

I mean, really, really good.

I can’t recall the last time I was this happy. From about the time I was just out of high school until I was almost 40 years old, I was self-employed. Sometimes things were okay during those years, but when you own your own (very) small business, you’re always under a lot of stress. When the money’s good (and sometimes it was) you have enough to take some time off and go on a vacation. However, you can rarely do that, as the business often requires your constant presence so that it will continue to run efficiently and profitably.

For almost the past ten years, though, the Federal government has employed me. I have great benefits and decent pay and wonderful vacation time and a 401k, and so on. Things have been relatively good. I have time to do things and to go places. My position is filled when I’m not there, and the government isn’t going anywhere and it’s not going to shut down if I take a couple of weeks off.

When I’m not working for the Postal Service I can either be found writing novels, or reading, or backpacking, or camping and canoeing in a state or national park with my wife and son. I discovered a couple of years ago that I had enough disposable income to buy a travel trailer and a truck to pull it so that it could serve as a base camp for my trips into various hiking locations and wilderness areas.

Last week I was especially happy. I was planning a long vacation with my family to the Florida Keys where we would, among other things, visit the Dry Tortugas National Park. I was really relaxed and looking forward to the trip.

And then something really wonderful happened. Something most writers would see as an excuse to jump for joy and go into rapture. The chance at the brass ring that most people dream about and few see. I won’t say now what it is that happened, but be assured that I’m on needles and pins and will be until I (or my literary agent) gets the official word.

I think of it as a Woody Allen moment. I should be really happy, but now I’m stressed. I was in bliss getting ready for a long vacation, and now my thoughts be sidelined by what might be, what could be, what may very well come to be. It’ll be nagging at me until I get the final word one way or the other.

Stay tuned.

While There's Still Time...

A few folk have asked me about the title of this blog. It has nothing to do with the old poison termed hemlock, but rather refers to my favorite trees:


The Eastern and Carolina hemlock.


Go see them while you can.

In several sections of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are stands of hemlock trees that were never cut when lumber companies were hacking their ways through our vast tracts of forest. These trees, while not on the order of California’s redwoods, are nonetheless impressive. To stand amidst them and look up at those evergreen branches, their trunks rising great all around, the ground carpeted in the redred rust of needles shed and coppering on the forest floor... Well, you have to go see it, I guess, to understand the experience. Words are not sufficient.




But if you want to see them, you’d better hurry.

A few decades ago, someone bringing Asian hemlocks to the area around Washington DC introduced a pest called the Hemlock wooly adelgid. A bug. Native to the Old World, this pernicious little whore is of a species that has no males. Like arthropod versions of the Tribble, they’re all female and all born with the ability to eat like a black hole and lay jillions of eggs that hatch into versions of their bitch mommas. America’s hemlocks have no resistance to them, and there is no native beetle to prey on the tiny bitches. So they have had their way with the hemlock forests of America’s east coast. The Park Service is doing what it can to stem the infestations, but it looks as if the hemlock is going to become as extinct as the American chestnut.

So. If you want to see these amazing stands of trees, then you’ll have to visit the Smokies within the next few years. After that, the trunks will still be standing, but they’ll be dead. I’ve asked folk who know where the most impressive stands are located in the park and I’ve been making an effort to see them over the past few years. Biologists are predicting the complete elimination of both the Eastern hemlock and the Carolina hemlock from our forests. If you’ve never seen a hemlock tree, you might not know how beautiful they are. They’re my favorite trees when I’m hiking and backpacking. Instantly recognizable. Always green, branches sheltering, growing very tall. I’ve seen hemlocks over 150 feet tall.

All around us, the Earth is telling us how sick it is. All around us. Our atmosphere is in turmoil, but those who control us claim otherwise. Our forests are sickening, but those who hold domain over them want to cut them down. Our wildlife is vanishing, but those who can help will not allow us to protect that life. The land itself is poisoned, but those who pull the strings won’t let us cleanse that land.

Do yourselves a favor and visit the hemlock forests of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Southeast before the only thing remaining of them are dead, drying husks that once were trees.

At Seven

At Seven
By
James Robert Smith

At seven years old
Your room is full of comic books
And Famous Monsters
And Creepy and Eerie
Magazines.

You gaze in wonder at
Creatures
Wrought by
Ditko
And Wood
And Frazetta
And Torres
And Crandall.

You wait for
Films from
Hammer,
RKO,
Universal.
Creatures that dwell
In darkness
From lost islands
Strange places
Other days.

And then.
At night.
Things come out.
October Country things.
That slither like
Fine silk
In the closet.
That crinkle like
Old pulp
On the shelves.
That blow
Not quite silently
Across your brow.

But there are rules
That keep you
Safe
You Seven-year-old.

Cover your eyes
And that which you
Cannot see cannot see
You.

Keep your fingers
And feet
From hanging over the
Abyss below your mattress
For they cannot
Invade that cotton
Territory.

And whatever
Whatever
Whatever you do.
Do not get up
In the night
In the dark
In the silence
Until first light
Brings dawn.

Only then is it safe
To read again
Tales by Archie Goodwin
Stories introduced by grinning
Ghouls and smiling zombies.
Only then is time
To watch
Wolfmen
And vampires
And Creatures from
Black Lagoons and
Things from Another World.
And time enough
For October Country
And tales etched on an
Illustrated Man.

Imagine

Imagine
By
James Robert Smith

Imagine being raised in a religious void.

There’s nothing there, in the past, no religion at all. Your parents have never said anything. You’ve never been to church or temple or mosque, that you can recall. And you’ve never been indoctrinated into any religion, at all.

You sing religious songs at school, from time to time. But “Jesus Loves Me” is just a song, because you don’t know who “Jesus” is. “Jesus Loves Me” might as well be “Don Gato” for all you know. Or care.

And then one day, in the third grade, you get a teacher who insists on someone in class getting up in front of the other kids before the day really begins, and reading a quote from the Holy Bible. This is the mid-60s, the days before anyone actually pushed a separation of Church and State. You don’t know what the Holy Bible is. It’s just another book, but with a black cover. Not as big as the dictionary, and surely not as interesting. But one day it’s your turn, and some of the other kids keep telling you to look for short verses. Something curt. Like, “Jesus wept”. But you can’t find “Jesus wept”, so you find something a couple of lines long and you read it.

No one discusses the verse. For God’s sake, we’re all only eight years old! The teacher, this Miss Goody, she just wants us reading a verse from The Book. For our own sakes. This is the same teacher who, when we’re singing religious songs with “Hellelujah” in it, won’t let us pronounce that final syllable, that “YAH” sound. ‘It’s a vulgar sound,’ she tells us. Just say “Hallelu”. So we drop the “YAH” and end with “Lou”, but we have to drag it out “looooooouuuuuuuuuu”. (And in my mind, I always added that “YAH”!) She’s a real hoot, this woman.

So now I begin to realize that there’s something out there called “religion”. And I realize there’s this thing people call “God”. And there’s this guy people call “Jesus”. And there are these nebulous jerks people call “The Twelve Apostles”. Like a group of some kind. Maybe like “The Dave Clark Five”. One kid in class walks around all puffed up with pride because he can name all twelve of them. I can’t name those twelve damned apostles, but I know the Beatles, and I know the seven original astronauts. I tell the other kids the seven original astronauts whenever they bring up the twelve apostles. This always succeeds in changing the subject pretty darned fast. Only one other kid in the class knows even six of the astronauts’ names. John Glenn and Gus Grissom are a lot more important to me than Paul and Peter.

However, the damage done, I start to ask about religion. The teacher explains to me about “God” and “Heaven” and, by golly, it all sounds pretty good to this eight-year-old. Then, a few days later, someone talks about “being saved”. I file that away, not wishing to display my ignorance. For, you see, I’ve been raised in a religious void. It’s amazing that my parents were able to do this. Just amazing.

This “being saved” stuff: it’s bothering me. What is it? I decide to ask my mom.

After school, I go into the kitchen. We have a sandwich bar in the kitchen, with bar stools. I nab me one of these stools and sit down at the bar. Behind me are windows that look out on the playground of my school where my third-grade teacher has begun to tell me about “God” and “Heaven” and “being saved”. (My parents are lucky, to live right next door to Oakhurst Elementary School and this son just has to walk out the door and about thirty yards and he’s in school each weekday morning.)

I’m sitting there at the bar. My mom’s just on the other side, where she usually is this time of day getting ready to make supper (“dinner”, we call it there in Atlanta). My head, as I say, is full of these cool thoughts of this loving “God” and this absolutely perfect placed called “Heaven” where you get to go when you die.

“What’s ‘being saved’ mean?” I ask my mom.

“Saved?” she asks, repeating me.

“Yeah. ‘Saved’. I heard it at school today.” She doesn’t ask me who told me about this, and I’ve always assumed she just automatically knew. I don’t volunteer it.

“Well, you have to be saved before you can get to Heaven.”

I sit there for a second. This doesn’t make sense. What about the unconditional love and all that stuff? Finally, I say, “You mean, you have to be saved before God will let you into Heaven?”

“Yes.” She goes on about her business of getting dinner ready.

“So, not just anyone can go to Heaven? Not everyone is allowed in?”

“That’s right. Not unless you’re saved.”

‘Damn! There are strings attached,’ I think. This is not right! At that moment, then and there, all the tumblers fell into place. All the circuits closed. All the switches flipped. That mother of all cornerstones, weighing as much as all of Logic, it went down with a solid and immovable thud.

“Then I don’t believe in God,” I told her. “I don’t believe in Heaven. It’s all a big lie, isn’t it?”

My mom stopped what she was doing (pouring water onto lentils in an enormous pressure cooker, as I recall). She wiped her hands dry on a blue towel, some green lentils clinging to her hands pink from hot water. “That’s right,” she said. “There’s no such thing as God or Heaven. Good for you.”

And that was that.

The next day, in class, the teacher asks whose turn it is to read from the Bible. I raise my hand. She points to me.

“I don’t want to read from the Bible any more,” I tell her.

“Why not,” she asks.

“Because I don’t believe in God,” I tell her.

Some of the kids gasp (some girls, smarter than most of us boys and realizing the implication). Most of the children don’t give a damn, because they’re only eight years old, for Pete’s sake. My teacher looks at me, then down at whatever workbook she’s perusing. And she says, “Well, Mr. Smith, you can be an atheist if you want to be.”

‘Atheist’. That’s a new one on me. I don’t ask her what it means, but I think I know. And there’s that dictionary sitting at the back of the room, by golly, and I plan to look it up as soon as I have a free moment.

Racist bastards.

For several wonderful years, I lived in a place called Gilmer County in the mountains of northeast Georgia. It was wonderful because I lived on 120 heavily forested acres that my parents had bought there. Our house was way down in a deep valley surrounded by old hardwood trees beside a spring-fed stream and our driveway was a mile long. Our nearest neighbor was two and a half miles distant. The nearest paved road three miles. The nearest public phone more than five miles away. This was the 70s, when there was only one option for phones: Ma Bell. They couldn’t figure a way to turn a profit by running that much line to our house, so they didn’t.

At any rate, I loved growing up there. I was so close to the hills and the trees and the wildlife I came to love. I even made a few friends there. But, largely, the people of Gilmer County were a horrid lot. It’s no wonder that James Dickey used Gilmer County as the template for the location of his monster-story, DELIVERANCE. And the people he wrote about in that novel…well, I lived among them, and he was not kidding, and he was definitely not writing in metaphor when he described those creeps.

But, because of the friends I did make in that place, and because of the beauty of the county, I still have some nice memories and some kind feelings for the place. So I found an online forum for the county seat of Gilmer County: Ellijayforum. I hooked up there with an eye toward finding out what had changed in the decades since I moved away, and what remained the same.

Sadly, what had remained the same is that a fair portion of the population remains (as then) hideously racist. Gilmer County was easily one of the most monstrously xenophobic places I’ve ever visited, and definitely the most xenophobic I’ve ever lived. A huge chunk of the native folk there are suspicious of every outsider, and distrustful of them to an almost pathological degree. And, of course, as the county then was 100% Anglo, the poisonous race hatred could almost be seen to be dripping from the rotted fangs of the inbred, mouth-breathing white boys.

At any rate, I started reading and posting at the Ellijayforums and quickly discovered that the place was crawling with the same racist assholes who had lived there when I was a kid. When I lived there, they would openly brag how they would (and did) murder anyone of color who tried to move into the county. Today, these same racist dogs have to put up with Hispanic citizens in their county, because the folk who run the apple orchards and other large businesses there want migrant laborers to settle down and fill the job vacancies. With the rich bringing in these new “coloreds”, the monster racists are left to gnash their green teeth and spew their venom. They soon were using the forum to scream about “the Mexicans” and the “brown-skins” and announce their “Minute Man” meetings.

Alas, the forum owner tried to clean up the board. Apparently they didn’t want the town to be known as a center of vile racism. But they couldn’t police the board fast enough, and so it was taken down, and now, this is what remains of it:

http://www.downtownellijay.com/forums/

Kind of a clever solution, but it’s sad to see them shut it down. So it goes. The bad guys can gather at the local Shoneys and Heil Hitler among themselves and commit buggery in the woods.



Let ‘em rot.

Afterlife.

I wrote this as a comment at another blog. Seems appropriate to post the brief bit here:

When I was in college just after high school, there was a retired Air Force pilot in one of my classes. He recounted how, during a heart operation, he KNEW that he was floating above the operating table looking down on his own body and the physicians and nurses.

A classmate said, "Man! You had an out of body experience!"

And the pilot said, "No, I had a goddamned hallucination, you dumbass.

I don't recall that pilot's name, but he remains foremost in my mind as a right thinker.

How to Embarrass Yourself

I am not known for having any tact. My lack of diplomacy often leads folk to think I'm a completely insensitive lout. This may be so, to some extent, but quite often my social missteps are just that: JRSmith stumbling along.

The following are a series of actual letters, the result being that I end up being a jerk. I have removed names and email addresses to protect the truly innocent. (And, yes, I could not possibly have made this up.)


06-12-2005

Folk,

The National Forest Website for North Carolina is the worst I've seen. Which is a shame, since the National Forests here in North Carolina have so much to offer and should have a superior Website to promote them.

I'm not sure what the budget is like, but the National Forests in other states seem to do a much better job of promoting the forests for recreation, and informing the public of the rewards of taking advantage of this valuable natural resource. I visit the National Forests in most of the states around North Carolina, and finding information on them is so much easier, and the information is provided in a simpler format that is also much easier on the eyes.

Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.



W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS
To
T-- S--/R8/USDAFS@FSNOTES
06/13/2005 10:43
cc
AM

Subject Fw: Website

Not sure who this is....

W-- G--, CGFM
Acting Administrative Officer
National Forests in North Carolina
Asheville, NC
Telephone ***-***-****

> ----- Forwarded by W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS on 06/13/2005 10:42 AM
-----
>
> Mailroom R8 North
> Carolina
> Sent by: V--
To
> Bogany W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS@FSNOTES
>
cc
>
> 06/13/2005 06:39
Subject
> AM Re: Website
----- Original Message -----
From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To:
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 12:55 PM
Subject: Fw: Website


We received your comment and I wanted to follow up with you; if you don't
mind taking a few minutes I would love to hear your suggestions for the
type of information you are looking for.

I look forward to hearing from you

T-- S--
Public Affairs Officer
***-***-****
>


"James Smith"
jsmith@
To
"T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
06/13/2005 04:38 cc
PM
Subject Re: Website


I don't have a lot of time just now, so I'll try to get my point across briefly.

To simplify matters, I would like to direct you to the Monongahela National Forest Website for a look at a superior method of informing citizens about the Forestlands they're looking for. This is one of the finest NFS websites I've used. One of the reasons my family goes at least once per year (and usually more often) to the West Virginia National Forest is because we can locate detailed information on their facilities online so easily.

Another good Website that I use often is the one for Jefferson/Washington National Forests in Virginia. This year my wife and I decided to stay at Beartree Recreation Area and were able to get a lot of information on that facility before we finalized our plans.

These are the kinds of sites the North Carolina National Forests need to have at work. I don't know if some college students at UNCAsheville are cobbling your Website together for college credits, but that's what it looks like. Frankly, it's graphically sophomoric, and trying to find information on specific areas in North Carolina's National Forests is a tough go at our Website.

Well, there it is, briefly.

If you want to look at the websites I mentioned, the one for Monongahela is
here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

And the one for Jefferson and George Washington National Forests is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

Mount Rogers NRA is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

And Beartree is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/gwj/mr/forest/recreation/campgrounds/beartree/index.shtml#top


I hope this helps. My wife and I had been planning a stay at Standing Indian
Campground, but finding information on that facility has been a tough go. The brief description on that fuzzy .pdf file along with two or three dozen other facilities was not a very good option for helping us make a decision. We had just about decided to head for West Virginia again, but are taking a chance and going blind to Standing Indian.

Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.


From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To: "James Smith"
Subject: Re: Website
Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:57 AM

thanks for the prompt feedback; actually I manage the website for the
forest but it is an "other duty as assigned" and I have no formal training
in area; guess it shows:)

I will be making a pitch next fiscal year for a position that among other
things can work on our web content; in the meantime we will keep chipping
away at adding content and improving navigation

T--


----- Original Message -----
From: James Smith
To: T-- S--
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: Website



----- Original Message -----
From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To: "James Smith"
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: Website


> thanks for the prompt feedback; actually I manage the website for the
> forest but it is an "other duty as assigned" and I have no formal training
> in area; guess it shows:)
>

Oy. Didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but being blunt seemed to best way to get my ideas across in a short amount of time.

My wife and I had just been so frustrated trying to plan a National Forest vacation in our home state. We have no trouble planning a nice vacation in Georgia, WV, or VA, but now that we've decided to spend more time in the National Forests here in North Carolina, we're having a rough time getting the information we need.

Good luck on talking them into getting a full-time position to handle the Website. I understand budgets are tight in all of the Forests and Parks. Alas. National priorities are ass backward.

Take care. Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.