Flower in ivy.
Bumblebee, Clifton Virginia.
Goose, Occoquan River.
Waterfall, Occoquan River.
Wildflower, Shenandoah National Park.
Fall colors, Shenandoah.
Shenandoah National Park.
Sumac, Shenandoah National Park.
Dried seed pod, Shenandoah National Park.
Fall colors painting the mountainsides, Shenandoah National Park.
Zeuglodon, ancient whale.
Me and my childhood pal, T rex.
I almost hate to post this one. It might get someone in trouble. But fuck it. If they had the balls to pin it up there, the least I can do is acknowledge it. This was in the office of the National Park Service in the Dept. of the Interior Building just down the street from the White House, currently inhabited illegally by that unelected shithead, W. Moron Bush. The poster says: "Protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge". Right on!
Sophie says she'll hold down the blog until then!
(From the St. John Beach Guide):
Columbus Day
In the ship's log and in his diary Columbus made the following observation concerning the Taino: "They are a very loving people and without covetousness,"…"They are adaptable for every purpose, and I declare to your Highnesses that there is not a better country nor a better people in the world than these."…They are so ingenious and free with all they have that no one would believe it who has not seen it; of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it…"
Statue of Christopher Columbus located in the Plaza Mayor in the Old City of Santo Domingo. Beneath Columbus the Cacica, Anacaona is depicted beneath Columbus and immortalized as the first Indian to learn to read and write. Anacaona was captured in an act of trickery whereby her village was burned and all the inhabitants slaughtered by troops under the command of Nicolas de Ovando, then Governor of Santo Domingo. Ovando was under orders by Columbus to wipe out the remaining unsubjugated Tainos who were beginning to rebel against the Spanish. Anacaona was subsequently hung in a public square in santo Domingo
Father Bartolomé de Las Casas, who wrote extensively about the Taino culture and their interaction with the Spanish invaders, sailed to the West Indies with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. The Spanish fleet also carried more than 1500 adventurers, former prisoners and ex soldiers with battle experience in the wars against the Moors of North Africa.
Father Las Casas wrote:
“...God made all the peoples of this area...open and as innocent as can be imagined. The simplest people in the world, unassuming, long-suffering, unassertive, and submissive. They are without malice or guile...Never quarrelsome or belligerent or boisterous, they harbor no grudges and do not seek to settle old scores; indeed, the notions of revenge, rancor, and hatred are quite foreign to them...They own next to nothing and have no urge to acquire material possessions. As a result they are neither ambitious nor greedy, and are totally uninterested in worldly power...They are innocent and pure in mind and have a lively intelligence…
“It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold...The pattern established at the outset has remained unchanged to this day, and the Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress, tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly.
“They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual's head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers' breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: 'Wriggle, you little perisher.'
“They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honor of our Savior and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it...The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.
“It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures 'howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep. He gave orders that the prisoners were to be throttled, but the man in charge of execution detail, who was more bloodthirsty than the average common hangman (I know his identity and even met some relatives of his in Seville), was loath to cut short his private entertainment by throttling them and so he personally went round ramming wooden buns into their mouths to stop them making such a racket and deliberately stoked the fire that they would take just as long to die as he himself chose. I saw these things for myself and many others besides.
“...It is reported that the butcher-in-chief arranged for a large number of natives in the area and, in particular, one group of over two hundred who had either come form a neighboring town in response to a summons or had gathered of their own free will, to have their noses, lips and chins sliced from their faces; they were sent away, in unspeakable agony and all running with blood...”
In the United States of America and in the Caribbean, Columbus Day is celebrated on the twelfth of October.
CHAPTER THREE
Martin Braun had the phone to his ear before the third ring was but a nagging memory. He made an effort not to sound as groggy as he was, as if he had already gotten six hours of sleep and not two. But the plain truth of the matter was that he couldn't bear sleeping alone, and every night he faced a struggle to find the moment that would bring slumber; it was coming later each evening. "Hello?" He squinted at the digital clock on the bedside table, trying to read the crimson numbers without his glasses. What asshole would phone him at 3:30 in the a.m.?
"Martin." It was Amy, the companion missing from his bed, and from most of his day-to-day life. He still loved her, even if she no longer held such affection for him.
He sat up, his bare legs dangling over the edge of the thick mattress, pale skin hissing across clean sheets. "Amy? Are you okay? What's going on?" Martin's hand was a white-knuckled vise on the receiver, the plastic pressing too hard on his ear.
"Don't worry, Martin; I'm fine. I've just got a bit of an emergency here, and I had to call you." True to form: Amy was calm and businesslike even in an emergency at an ungodly hour. Her voice was even, although Martin could detect a bit of breathlessness beneath the words.
"You're upset. What's happening?" Already, he had the lamp on; his wire-rims perched on his thin nose, his eyes casting about for the location of his slacks.
"Well..." She paused, and Martin waited, wanting to hear what she had to say. He had never known Amy to be at a loss for words. He wanted her to ask him back home; but he knew she never would. At last, she continued.
"Someone knocked on my door about twenty minutes ago."
"Who the hell would knock at your door at three in the goddamn morning? Is somebody bothering you over there, Amy? I'll be right over!" Yes, he would come rushing over to kick ass and to save his woman who would fall into his strong arms and ask him to never leave.
"Martin. Martin! Calm down." She waited until she could hear his even breathing from the other end. "I went to the back door, and a little boy was there. I think he may have gotten lost in the woods, or something. And he just happened to come out here in the back yard, so naturally he came to my door and knocked."
"Lost?" He sat again, his legs once more dangling over the mattress. The bedsprings didn't utter so much as a squeak; he'd yet to break them in. “Is he alone? How old is he?"
"Yes, he's alone. At least, no one came up to the door with him. Unless you want to count that big redbone hound of Bill Sothern's."
"What? Big Sammy?"
"Yes. I think that's the one. The one Bill's so stuck on."
"I think the feeling's mutual there, hon." He heard her giggle, then cut the sound short, for there was the hint of hysterical hiding, just barely.
"I shouldn't laugh. The poor child was almost frozen. I got him into a tub full of hot water and got his temp up to normal and his extremities looking pink and healthy. But he may still have some problems from the exposure. He was soaking wet. Must've crossed the branch out behind the house." And his clothes. His clothes were like tissue paper, she wanted to say. His shirt and his pants all but came apart in my hands, she wanted to add. But she said nothing about these things. Not yet.
"How old is he?"
Again, there was a pause as Amy held her breath and, uncharacteristically, her tongue.
"Amy?"
"I think he's about five. Five or so."
There wasn't a sob from her end, but Martin felt one growing in his chest. About as old as Tommy was, you mean? About the same age as our own little boy, you say? Kindergarten age: like our son, if he weren't dead? After a while, he cleared his throat having decided to hold up his end of the conversation. "Did he say who he is or how he got lost? Do you recognize him, at all?"
"No. I've never seen him around here, Martin. I don't think he's a local kid. Can't say why, really. Just a feeling.
"And he hasn't said much of anything." He called me 'Mommy. "He, uh, he's sleeping right now." I put some of our boy's clothes on him, Martin. You know I've kept them. I'll never throw them away; the one silly thing I allow myself. "And I'm thinking about calling an ambulance. Do you think I should?"
And still she hadn't asked him to come to her home, although it had once been their home. Martin's new place was only two blocks away.
"Wait for me to get there," he told her. "I'll hurry on over. Maybe we can just take him to the hospital ourselves.
"And we need to call the police. I think that would be best. Maybe they already know who he is. His family must be worried..." He couldn't hold back the sob. "They must be worried sick."
Before he could let her hear the tears, Martin hung up. He sat there on the side of his lonely bed, his head at his knees, crying until he'd let out a little more of the great reservoir of grief that yet remained after two long years.
***
They debated sensibly on the points of taking him over the mountain to Dalton, where the hospital was bigger and better--where there was more than one hospital, in fact. But Amy was an RN at local Methodist right there in Jasperton. And she felt fairly certain that there was nothing physically wrong with the child beyond a certain exhaustion and some minor exposure, which she had already taken care of. Nevertheless, it was the wise thing to transport the boy so that a physician could look him over. They took Amy's wagon, she sitting in the back seat, with the child, to watch over him and to hold the boy. She sat, eyes front; his small blond head was in her lap. Absently, her fingers felt through his golden hair, tracing haphazard patterns on his scalp. Trying very hard not to let them, memories of her son began to trickle through; threatening to break the flinty dam she'd built to hold them in.
She recalled a time when, reading Dr. Seuss to Tommy, he'd fallen to sleep, his head in her lap just so.
"Martin." She said it too loud, so that her former mate tensed at the sound, his breath sucking in through clenched teeth.
"What? What is it?" His first thought was that the child had stopped breathing.
"I...I think Dr. Welch will be on duty." She did not look down at the boy.
"What? What the hell are you talking about? You almost scared the shit out of me the way you yelled my name!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to blurt like that. I was just...I dunno." She did not want to look into the face of the child; the features might too closely resemble those of one she'd never again see.
"Bullshit, Amy. That's bullshit. Don't bullshit me." Martin clenched his jaw and glared at the road, watching the verge of town hissing past, looking for the entrance to the hospital. It was coming up, and he slowed to make the turn. "You're just thinking of Tommy. That's all. It's nothing to be ashamed of, and you just need to go ahead and admit it.
"I do it all the time."
"So I've noted."
He actually bit his tongue as they pulled up to the emergency entrance where a male nurse waited for them with a wheeled stretcher. Opening the door for Amy, the nurse nodded to her and spoke.
"This our little patient, eh? Just looks tuckered out to me." He offered his hands and made to lift the frail bundle.
Martin and Amy climbed out, helping to transfer the lost boy to the mattress. It was then that Martin finally noticed the blue and red strobing of the lights atop the ambulance and police cars parked nearby. "More excitement," he muttered.
Glancing back at Martin as she followed the other nurse and the child through the doors, she spoke to him. "Par for the course, Martin. It's all routine around here. Probably just another drunkard into some trouble."
"Not hardly," the other nurse said. "Not when the drunk in trouble is a cop."
"A cop? Who?" But the nurse shut up when he noticed Chief Brace standing inside the door, his jaw set and his eyes staring like two small, blue marbles. The wheels of the lorry jounced atop the grimy metal strip at the doorway and he hurried past the scowling policeman, taking the patient down the hall and into the glaring white.
Stopping there where the officer waited, Martin watched the retreating trio fade around the next corner, then heard as a curtain he could not see was drawn across a polished bar. The next muttered voice was a doctor he also could not see; but he wondered how well the physician knew his wife. Damn and hell. Tommy's death and their separation hurt more than he wished to say. But at least he had the guts to admit it to himself. Not like Amy. He glanced up at Chief Brace, and saw that the man was staring back at him, no smile on his hard, stubbled face. There was gray forming on the cop's temples; and Martin noted as he always did the bare nubs of fingernails that the policeman had bitten down to the quick and beyond, raw red edges alternately glittering red or browning with crusted blood near each fingertip.
"Who's the kid?" Brace's voice was rough--a gravelpit of sound from a throat made raw from the twin bad habits of screaming and chain-smoking. His subordinates often gawked in wonder, as he would yell at them, his filterless Camels somehow clinging to one lip or the other, but never falling out or spewing forth like the fine spray that anointed their cowed expressions.
"We were hoping that you'd know," Martin told him. " Amy found him at her back door tonight. Lost or runaway. We haven't talked to him yet.
"Do you have any missing children reports sittin' on your desk from the past day or so?"
"Nope." The cop's hand went for his breast pocket, but fumbled there as he recalled that he was in the emergency room and there was no smoking allowed. Even he drew the line there. His hand went on past to his mouth, though, and he amazingly found a hard nub of tenacious epidermis which came loose between smoke-yellowed incisors. There was a quick thp! as the morsel exited his thin lips and angled for the floor at light speed. Martin heard it impact on the gleaming surface, but he did not look to see where it landed.
The civilian waited for more communication from the cop, but nothing else spouted forth. "What will you do, now?"
Brace's eyes were slightly glazed, staring off someplace Martin could not see. "Hm?" He finally uttered the sound after some five seconds had passed.
"I said: 'What will you do now?'"
"I'll plug in a description of the boy at the VDT down at the courthouse and we'll see what comes up. We'll know who he is real quick." Brace cleared his phlegmy throat. "If there's been a report filed, that is. If no one's filed a missing child report, it might take longer."
"Surely the boy will tell us who he is." Somewhere, someone cried out for her 'goddamn Darvon, dammitall'.
Brace grunted, then cleared his throat again, but did not swallow. "Maybe. Maybe not."
"What do you mean?"
"If'n he run away, then why the hell would he tell us how to send him right back to the same damn place he done run from?"
Martin looked upon the police officer as if he had imparted some great gem of common sense. "Oh. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that."
That's why I'm a cop and you're a damn fool. "Don't you worry about it any more. It's our problem, now."
"Yeah. I reckon so." Martin cleared his own throat, shuffled a bit and looked about for a place to sit down. "What brought you down here, anyway?"
"Some shit." He said nothing else. At that point, Martin drifted toward an uncomfortable looking couch that had once been dark blue, but which was now fading to an organic black bruised with what he hoped was the brown of spilled coffee and not something less pleasant. He heard the twin doors that led to the cold outside hum open, and looking that way he saw Chief Brace stomp out where he began to inhale the filterless Camels, one after another.
He fell asleep watching the officer sucking the cancer sticks. Another nail. Another nail. Another nail...
since I bought my first digital camera. In all of my camping and backpacking and hiking I've encountered quite a number and variety of Erf's critters. Sometimes they behave and sit relatively still so that I can photograph them.
copperhead snake that I came very close to tramping upon. This was on one of the trails in Hanging Rock State Park here in North Carolina. I'd hiked a very long loop and was on my way back to my vehicle after a hot day of hiking the humid mountains there.
The thing about this particular snake is that it's colors were extremely vibrant. I'm certain that it had just shed its skin and I was seeing its 
new countenance in all of its virgin glory. The snake, realizing that I had appeared, quickly sped off, before I could snap a decent photograph. It's one of my regrets as a haphazard photographer.
over on a grassy shoulder on the Blue Ridge Parkway, an enormous turkey
came out of the forest and actually poked its head up high enough to look into the cab of my truck where I was sitting. I tell people about this, but no one believes me. He was the largest wild turkey I've ever seen. Of course, by the time I'd nabbed my camera, he'd fled into the woods on the opposites side of the Parkway.
stunning November afternoon. But he was running away from me far 
too fast to get a decent shot, and he vanished into those black forests for which the mountains are named before I could even consider getting his picture. The really good critters are moving at a rapid clip, so it's very hard to prove to others that you ever saw them.
he mornings on my day off, drive for several hours to the 
place of my choice, go on an extended hike, and then drive back to Charlotte as night fell. Now it's late 2008, and I rarely do that anymore. Why?
the same. I ca
n drive leisurely to our destination, recuperate from the drive, exhaust myself hiking and climbing, then return to our temporary abode and hit the sack. I'm looking forward to the day when I can retire and not have to worry about such things, but I don't know when this will happen. Not too late, I hope.
Two humans experience a new perspective.
We begin the hike in a typical cove hardwood and hemlock forest. I haven't hiked this trail since, but I assume that most of these trees--hemlocks--have now died. 
Sam, as usual, waits for me. 
The remains of old forest giants along the trail. Nursery logs for their progeny. In this case, alas, merely a graveyard for stillborn hemlocks.
A pair of trailside giants waiting as they're slowly starved by tiny pale vampires from Japan. 
We round a bend in the trail, and discover the lower ebb of Winter's touch.
Above us, and to the left of the trail is a side path leading up to Rainbow Falls...
...which merely trickles and offers up frozen sheets and a frosty stare as we gaze up at her.
We press on, climbing into that rarest of thing in the South: true high country.
These funky little snow donuts were funny. These were kind of small...about half a foot across. But some were really big--maybe two feet across. You could follow the trails and see how they formed: dollops of snow would fall from evergreen limbs on steep slopes and start rolling, eventually becoming something like tires until gravity or lack of slope would topple them over.
The clouds began rolling in on the big mile-high peaks above us. It began to get really cold. Even the rhododendrons bowed their branches and curled their green leaves inward, huddling against the chilled winds.
The snow got deeper and deeper. Someone had preceded us on their way down the peak after the previous night's snowfall. But we saw no one.
I stand on the summit. The wind whips; my face and hands are ruddy with the bite of the cold. My lungs are filled with the sharp blades of winter frost. My feet are deep in snow, the flakes dance around my head and slash at my lips. All around me, the high country is frigid and pale and silent but for the howl of the gales that lash the black-green spruce and balsam. I am very happy to be here.
Rime ice plays tricks on my eyes, makes an illusion of motion, imparting the kinetic and chemical madness of its physical creation like a magic trick wrought by some majestic sleight of hand. I nod approval and turn my back on this cold and ancient summit.
