June 1, 2025

This was about a month ago. The back yard turned into a jungle. The California poppies popped and Sasha had more sniffables to sniff.

I set off a chain reaction of tears at the end of school Friday. It was nearing two o’clock and I had already said goodbye to my last group the day before because, at the moment, I had to do a photo shoot with the principal and 12 former “English Learners” now reclassified “Fluent English”. Tuesday is the last day of school but I won’t be taking groups again. Classrooms will be too busy ending the year.

All I had to do was get this group of first graders out the door: Jocelyn, Marina, David, Alex and the only non-Spanish speaker in the group, Hanh, whose home language is Vietnamese. 

I was letting all my students know I wouldn’t be returning to the school next year, that I’d been reassigned to three new schools in the district. It wasn’t my choice, but I wanted to say goodbye, give each of them a hug and wish them a happy summer. 

Most of the groups I told at the beginning of our last meeting before we started playing bingo as an end-of-year celebration. A few students wanted to play chess so I sat them near me and monitored their game in between calling out numbers unless I was freed up by a student who wanted to be the caller.

For some reason, I didn’t tell my first grade group that I wouldn’t be returning until I had them lined up to leave the class. That was a mistake. More than any of the others, my youngest group could have used the games as a buffer. 

As soon as I told them I saw Hanh think and register my words then turn her head down and away. Her long, dark hair covered her face as she began to cry. Her best friend Marina then started to cry followed by Jocelyn who was at the end of the line. It was like watching dominoes fall except the boys just turned down their mouths. 

I tried to console them and tell them about the great teacher who was taking my place, but that didn’t help. At the same time I reminded myself that I’d seen this chain-reaction-crying among first-graders before and tried to convince myself that it didn’t hold a lot of stock, but at the end of the day it did. 

I love these kids. 

Alex who has great number sense but has to be encouraged to not roll around on the floor and sit in his chair and FOCUS. He has his own nurse at the school all day because of his type 1 diabetes that is monitored with something like a pager that he keeps in his pocket, holds in his sweaty hand or spins around on the table top until I take it from him. 

Marina who always gives me a hug at the gate on the Wednesday mornings that I have duty. She arrives with her ten-year-old brother who gives me a hug too and is also in one of my pull-out groups. Both arrived in the United States a few months into the school year and they’ve gone from saying nothing to speaking short sentences. 

Jocelyn who holds her arms out and flutters her hands down next to her sides when she is excited to say something. It’s a sort of energy release that I sometimes find myself mimicking unconsciously. 

David whose seems to hold his breath when he speaks in a raspy, airy voice that sometimes squeaks when he begins his litany of, “Teacher, what that?” at least ten times every session. 

And of course Hanh, whose parents gave me a $30 gift certificate to Target for Christmas — a practice that is common at more affluent schools but rarely happens at this title-one school that sits beside an eight-lane highway on the eastern outskirts of the bay area. Hanh who writes as neat as a fifth grader, knows all her numbers, letters and letter sounds. Hanh who is beginning to read and enjoys being sly and can push anyone’s buttons because she’s smart and is going to figure things out with or without my help. 

At day’s end I walked to the front of the school in search of the principal again to discuss a kindergartner mistakenly reclassified using a DIBELS reading score instead of an i-Ready. It was 2:35 and Vera, the jolly but perpetually tired noontime supervisor, was sitting on a bench near the front gate. 

“Mr. Robertson, what have you done? Why all these kids coming by here in tears?”

“Really,” I said? “They’re still crying? I just told them I wasn’t going to be here next year.”

“Yeah, they still cryin’! Jocelyn is sitting there in that car. You need to go over there and talk to her.” 

I approached the passenger window and waved to her mom. She lowered the shaded back window and there Jocelyn was buckled in and crying with wet cheeks that still have some of that kindergartner baby fat. Her legs barely made it over the edge of the back seat. I repeated my reassurances. But what can you say?

Going back inside the gates here comes Marina with her mom, walking toward me and the exit. Marina’s face was red and the tears were streaming as she held her torso stiff to catch her breath. But what can you do?

The mom stopped as I knelt beside her. This pain of loss is inevitable. We all get hurt. You don’t know when it will hit you. For me it was several days before when I was driving home with my first load of boxes to relocate. It came out of the blue. Moving again. New people to get to know. People lost. Only the memories. 

A month ago I spoke on the phone with Aunt Linda. I hadn’t talked to her in a while and I wanted to check in. On Tuesday I’ll be flying to Florida to meet her and a bunch of my cousins at the Gulf Coast beach where they’ve been renting a house for more than a decade. This will be the first time I’ve joined them there. 

Stewart was in his chair next to Linda. I could hear him commenting on our conversation, Linda occasionally passed on what he was saying. Sometimes he gets on the phone with me and says hi. We had a nice conversation a few months ago during which time Linda took a shower and returned before we were through. This time we didn’t talk. 

A few hours later I got a text from my Uncle Johnny. Stewart was dead. He’d gotten in bed and Linda was in the bathroom getting ready to climb in next to him. When she got there he wasn’t breathing. She called an ambulance but it was too late. He was already gone. Gone too quick.

What can you do? What can you say? He will be missed. 

There will be an empty spot in a lot of hearts. I don’t think they ever get filled we just learn to live with the emptiness—with the wind that passes through. 

The memories win out in the end.

https://www.stevensmortuaryinc.com/obituaries/Stewart-S-Oakes?obId=42256707#/obituaryInfo

January 19, 2025

I have a new routine to write when I’m fresh in the morning and look at news when I’m tired at night. I get free library subscriptions to The NYTimes, The Washington Post and am currently paying one dollar for a year-long trial subscription to the SF Chronicle which has automatic renewal at a much higher rate. I bet they hope I forget about that but I won’t. That’s what calendars are for. I probably should support my fellow writers and just pay, but there’s a reason they are free—or close to it—and who am I to try to figure it out? 

Together with these three newspapers there is more news than I can look at. I’d be better informed if I substituted one of these papers for a more radical doomsday-type publication and added in a more conservative Tennessee newspaper but my gut is probably going to churn no matter what news I take in. 

The Post and The NYT usually have similar headlines. The writing is good in both. The NYT usually sends me three or four breaking news emails every day in addition to The Morning and I have to ask myself how much news can break? 

The SF Chronicle seems to have lots of strange gaps in their reporting that often makes me ask “okay, what happened?” but it’s local(ish) news for me even in Concord and I should probably pay attention to that. 

I’ve also decided that with all the crazy people in Trump’s junk drawer (Jillian told me people are calling it that instead of a cabinet), it’s probably best not to get worked up every time Broken Stapler #1 says they are going to invade Greenland or Dried Up White-Out says we need to stop requiring vaccines for children in public school. I just can’t be a yo-yo all the time on their rubber band.

This is my 2025 pick for book of the year (although it came out in 2022). The story is so compelling. It’s heartbreaking at times but there are lots of wait-for-it moments when the soul sings.
My favorite MLK jr. book that I’ve been reading to students for years. Warning: You will likely cry with joy at the end. Fantastic illustrations.

—————

I’m feeling better about the prospect of getting a cabin made. It’s been close to five years since I’ve been exploring this land and it feels, for the first time, like I’m finally getting a good map of it in my head. 

For one thing,  I found a good place where I can stage logs and then take them out to the road for cutting with a portable mill. I’ve passed by this spot a thousand times walking the trail the 170 yards from the proposed cabin site to the shed where I store tools. It’s flat, close to the road and largely free of any big trees. I think I never considered it before because it’s directly across from my nearest neighbor’s house and in the summer it’s overgrown with vines that offer a visual barrier that I like. 

The neighbor’s chickens were scratchin’ around next to the road and stepped into the woods when I approached them.

Now, as I’ve gotten to know my neighbors the idea of having complete privacy from the road doesn’t feel as important.There are plenty of spots on this 25 acre lot where I can get that. 

Most distant and remote is a little valley on the other side of the central hill and between the next hill which becomes the neighbor’s property after it tops out. This little valley—more of a holler—is almost completely absent of woods. If there were flying fairies, quidditch tournaments or witchy broomstick games this is where they would be played. It would be nice to have a cabin here, but there is no flat spot. Where the hill ends, the next one starts. The valley is a V not a U. A cabin could be built on the hillside with supports like you see in the Bay Area’s Oakland hills but my joy in this place is about the absence of human intrusion not dreaming of what it could be.

A pretty winter weed that I’m too lazy to try to identify right now. It’s probably something obvious.

A while back I named the machete as the most valuable tool in my kit. That remains true even after making trails through the ever-encroaching wilderness. When I go back in six months there will be vines and saplings trying to take over again.

With this in mind I’m offering up another tool that tops the list and was most useful on this last trip. I threw a pair of $15, fleece-line gloves in my luggage at the last minute. I figured they might come in handy if it gets very cold, but that wasn’t why they ended up being so valuable.

It was the extra thickness that offered protection pulling up Multi-floral Rose. I got plenty of practice on that patch of land that I’ve decided is the perfect staging spot for bringing out all the logs to be milled. This species of rose is very aggressive and next to Poison Ivy the most prevalent vine on the land. It grows in clumps that extend out in an exploding firework shape. It grabs hold of your clothes like blackberry bramble and a thicket of it is not something you want to take on in the summer unless Aguirre, the Wrath of God and other Werner Herzog movies inspire you to go into nature and do the most difficult thing you can think of. 

Winter is definitely the time to clear Multi-floral Rose. The leaves are gone and you can see where every shoot is heading. Though it still has live green vines, most are brown and dead and if you are lucky, as I was, the soil is soft with recent rains. Some of the clumps I could pull out on my first effort, gathering most of the vines in my hands and leaning back. Any that gave trouble, I’d dig around the edge with my shovel and lean back on the handle to break roots and get some uplift on the ball. This preparation was usually enough. The next time I leaned away with a handful of thorny vines imbedded in my gloves the remaining roots would start popping like a kettle of corn and soon I’d be holding the whole explosion of plant in the air, triumphantly carrying it to a neighboring pile.

The log-staging area I mostly cleared of Multi-floral Rose

The gloves also made it easy to pull up all the Loblolly and Winged Elm saplings on the PCS. It was rare that I had to use the machete on a sapling in this area. The ground is covered with pine needles and moss of varying shades of green and grey. Beneath this is about an inch or two of topsoil followed by white shale and clay that becomes increasingly hard to dig into about six inches down. During wet weather it is a miniature flood plain with much of the water washing off the knob behind it. The moss and top soil make it spongy. 

Shale and clay earth just beneath the PCS surface
Ground moss collected from the PCS
I used the harvested moss to line the rock stairs I put in last summer. I’ll see if it lasts but I don’t know why it wouldn’t. The stuff is pretty hardy and there was some in the stair area before I brought all this extra in.

The poor quality of soil on the PCS is probably why there are only a few species of trees there — Loblolly, Cedar and Winged Elm. Oaks which start out with a single, deep tap root definitely don’t like it. I imagine the shale is too difficult to penetrate. Those other species have roots that spread wide and shallow—at least in the beginning. I’ve no idea what the root system looks like for some of the older, surrounding pines that top out well over a hundred feet. I imagine when a tree grows that big it must start to have powerful roots that can make their way into deeper territory. 

Ideally, I would have a well here on the PCS pumping water directly into the house, but I don’t know how much water makes it through the clay. Neighbors, Chuck and Rhonda, across the road, are roughly at the same elevation and hidden behind a small knob. They told me they hit water at 150 feet but drilled to 200 and take water from that level. 

They came by on the day I was cutting up some fallen trees near the road. They arrived in their new, gleaming diesel pick-up and put it rumbling into park. Michigan natives, they had a retirement home built here five years ago and are still adjusting to it. Chuck misses the snow but they have a daughter who lives nearby in Knoxville with her fiancé. Ever-friendly, Chuck invited me up to their place to say hi. I told him I may take them up on that. I’ve been a few times before. Rhonda said, “I’ll give you a piece of pie!”

The next day I called them when I started to get hungry and asked if it was okay if I took my sandwich up and ate it while I visited. 

“We have food,” Chuck exclaimed in his cheerful voice that made it sound like the introduction to a Broadway song. 

“Oh, thanks, but I made this sandwich and I better eat it,” I said.

“Well, you like coffee,” Chuck asked?

“Sure”

“Well, we can give you some of that.”

We talked more about their water while I was there. Chuck gave me a glass to taste and it was exactly what I would want in drinking water—pretty much tasteless. 

Their aging dogs Fatty Mattie, a standard poodle mix  and Waggy Maggie, a black lab are slightly mis-nicknamed since Maggie is a bit plumper than Mattie and Mattie is a bit more waggy than Maggie. At any case it was nice to get my hands on some dogs, missing Sasha so much in the short time I was in Tennessee. The feel of a short shorn standard poodle’s curls is a textural delight.

The old bridge is holding up, but growing a carpet of Turkey Tail Mushrooms which I scraped off the underside of oak logs. I don’t want to help the Mycelium network to advance the bridges ultimate failure.
A Google search indicates this is a Japanese Holly, an invasive species. I admit that I’m not as concerned as a should be about invasives. This is a pretty plant and the only one I’ve found on my land. It is part of a big, lush bush at the base of the hill at the back of the PCS. I used the dark green as a backdrop to film the falling snow that didn’t stick. I’m quite fond of it and will keep it until convinced otherwise.
Numerous trees helped break the fall of this 120 foot, 30-inch diameter Tulip Poplar. Evidence includes skid marks down the side of another big poplar and a Loblolly Pine that snapped 12 feet from the ground. A free fall directly onto the Sheridan cabin would have probably meant its demise. Maybe the structure would have failed without the brace I put on the opposite side and a pole on the inside. My work to do that may have been a mistake if I wanted to have an easier way to disassemble it. 
The tree now laying on the ground is so beautiful and straight. It would be a waste not to use it for lumber. I’ll have to think about how to deal with it next summer. This one is not near the log staging area. It’s on the other piece of land. However, the closest neighbor has said I can use his tractor to pull cut pieces out. He also has a non-automated mill he will let me use. By non-automated I mean it is the kind I would have to push the saw through.
The top branches of the fallen poplar are big enough to be sizable trees by themselves.
An eight foot crater was left where the tree fell exposing lots of rocks for harvesting.

There were numerous wet-season creeks that I saw on the land for the first time on this trip.
This place holder was on the back of every seat on the American Airlines flight I took home. Was this the idea of a radical literacy advocate bemoaning the state of our video-saturated world or did they just want to make sure you didn’t put coffee cups and snack wrappers in the magazine pockets?

January 12, 2025

As is always the case, the few things I had on my list to do on my latest Tennessee trip grew into a thousand things in my head. 

What I did do was rake a thick layer of leaves off the new gravel driveway. I figure it’s best to minimize the rate at which a layer of topsoil will eventually overtake it given the number of trees and the fact that I won’t be there every week to uncover the grey rocks.

There is a pile of shoved up dirt at the end of the driveway the bulldozer made to grade it. This has become my de facto compost pile. I added all the raked leaves to it. Between wagon loads I threw shovels of dirt on top to weigh them down. I also carved out a channel on the downhill side to make an area for water to escape the driveway. I’ve no idea if this is useful as there are plenty of opportunities for water just to seep into the ground or flow out in all the lower areas, but this type of engineering comes from my earliest childhood instincts to play in the dirt. I don’t think we humans loose that. Same with water. I imagine I’ll enjoy gazing at the ripples of a stream and dragging a toe through a placid pond as long as I live. It’s why I like going to the land. Just to play. 

While I was messing around at the driveway I moved a small cedar sapling about three feet away to get it out of the range of car tires. I dug up another from the proposed cabin site (hereafter abbreviated PCS) and planted it in line with several others. There are now four or five cedars lining the drive. I’ve no idea if they will turn into big trees and if those big trees will be full and gorgeous. All I know is I like the smell of cut cedar and I like the beautiful red wood which has nothing to do with why I’m planting them there. Ta boot, I’ve noticed is seems to be a crapshoot whether a cedar is beautiful or scraggly and most of the cedars on my property tend toward the latter. 

The driveway and seventy five yards away at the PCS are where most of the cedars grow. In other places, notably on the west side of the property and around the falling cabin on the other property are numerous large cedars in advanced states of decay laying on the ground like dinosaur bones—evidence of a time when they played a more prominent part in this world. I’m not sure if a blight took them out or changing climate or changing composition of soil. Maybe they just all grew and aged out at the same time. Their placement is random so I don’t think they were planted. Most of the cedars I see in this area of country line fields and roads and I suppose were planted (or kept) there as hearty trees, live fenceposts and windbreaks. This lining-along-the-edges is what I’m doing without having researched it or even given it much thought. It’s a wordless tradition passed on by a common landscape template.

The tiny cedar I moved out of the driveway.
This may be the largest cedar on the property. There is no old growth cedar.

I didn’t end up doing a burn. More reading about why winter burns require a state permit convinced me to wait until summer when there is more moisture in the surrounding trees and less chance of them catching fire. I also had the feeling that the heavy, cold air would keep most of the smoke in the valley and that while all my neighbors probably burn wood they prefer it going out their chimney than coming in the front door. 

I spent a substantial amount of time further clearing the PCS back to the base of the knob—the high hill that will be in my backyard. I was anxious to get out to the land each day but because of jet lag I didn’t make it there before noon except for the last two days. I didn’t feel bad about it. I’m physically exhausted after four or five hours of hard labor and the sun sets early in the winter. By then my back is aching and I’ve become very sluggish—particularly in the case of chainsawing for a few hours. The chainsaw is heavy and so are the chaps. In fact, it’s debatable whether the chaps that protect my legs add safety or not. I stopped wearing them after the first day. They tire me out quicker and I’m more likely to do something stupid when I’m tired. 

Most of the clearing was of Loblolly Pine and Winged Elm saplings just a few inches across with a few larger Loblollies thirty feet tall and not more than five inches across. I won’t cut any of the cedars until I’m sure what the footprint of the cabin will be. I transplanted a few larger ones to line the trail going to the memorial stones. Two I dug up with a ball of earth slicing through any long roots with my shovel in the process. Two others I pulled up with most of the roots intact. (The soil was a wet bog making it easy.) I’m curious if either transplanting method works although I didn’t do a good job labeling which tree was dug up and which was pulled out and by the time I get back this summer my memory will fail. If any are alive I’ll be happy and it will pay to learn which method is successful for the next time.  

Winter is definitely the time for clearing but still with all the tangle of vines and saplings it didn’t take long to make a real obstacle course at which point it was important to turn the chainsaw off and clean up. All the small stumps I made were trip hazards enough. The more tired I became the more I stumbled. I can cut the stumps to about an inch above the ground but any closer than that and I risk getting the chainsaw in the dirt which quickly dulls the chain and makes sawing more difficult and hazardous. Stopping to resharpen the chain is about a fifteen minute project. I can do it in the field but it’s best to do it back at home. Eventually I may not have to watch a YouTube refresher course every time I go to Tennessee. 

It’s important to keep the chainsaw steady when sharpening the blades. Instead of buying a vice I can keep the chainsaw from moving up or down by pinning it under a couch at Aunt Linda’s using a hammer through its handle.
This handy 3-in-1 chainsaw file keeps two round files proportionally at the correct distance from a flat file and allows me to sharpen each chainlink of blade with one hand and use the other hand to keep the bar from moving left or right.

There is a fairly large and straight Loblolly that only has a slight lean that I’ll remove for space for the cabin and which I may mill for lumber although I’ve not researched its qualities for building.  I also don’t know how much lean a tree can have before it effects the grain and causes warpage in the milled lumber. Mostly I’m considering all the large, straight Tulip Poplars for framing and Oaks for flooring and siding. (Maybe I can use Oak for roof shingles but I don’t know if that’s a thing.)

I’ll remove other big pines that aren’t taking up PCS space but lean in a direction and have a reach that might be catastrophic to the structure. The winds were high while I was there and on a day when I was working on the PCS my neighbor said she listened to a tree of mine come down across from her house for what she said was several minutes. The next day on a hike to the top of the knob I found it on the way back down. 

( The way the trees swayed in the wind reminded me of wave action and the way plant life can move underwater.)
This is the pine my neighbor heard falling. This webbing of wood is helping to keep it from going all the way down.
I used the panorama option on my phone camera to get in the whole length of the hanging Loblolly Pine. There is a lot of potential energy at work in there keeping it taut.

This was a fifteen foot tall rotted stump that I came across coming down from the knob. It was really fun to push it over. It landed with a satisfying, heavy thump and slid about thirty feet down the hill.

All the clearing I did on the PCS added three more burn piles. This time I stacked all the larger logs to keep out of the burn. I’ll eventually use them for my own fire place or more likely cut them up and put them on the road for free firewood.

The PCS as seen using the pano feature on my phone

One day I saw the neighbors boys, Nate and Charlie, working in the valley across from me. The older boy, a freshman in high school who I’d only met once before, was driving an ATV with the younger, Charlie, a sixth grader,  on a wagon hitched behind. 

They were dissappearing around a stand of trees and coming back with full loads of firewood. 

I’m debating how many trees, if any,  I want to remove for a clear view of the valley and Clinch Mountains. A cabin on this spot won’t be visible from the road below but someone could stand in the upper part of the field or behind the tree line and see my structure. The question is how much do I value a feeling of privacy versus having an unobstructed window on this usually serene, pastoral mountain view?

While the boys were collecting firewood, I went over to some fallen trees up the natural embankment near the road and sectioned off two foot logs. I’d been wanting to clean this area up. When I saw the boys go around the stand of trees on their property again I waited for them to cut their engine and then yelled, “Hey Charlie.”

My voice echoed through the valley. It took a moment then I heard echoing back “Yeah?”

“When you guys finish there, come back over here on your way back.”

Again there was a lag until I heard,  “Okay!” 

It felt good to hear that distance—the voice confirming what the eyes can’t see, to know of space that a city or even a small town can make me forget. 

When they came back I asked Nate if he’d like the logs of the fallen tree. Nate is quiet and what I would describe as cautious.

“It’s pine,” I offered before he could answer. “I don’t know if you want it. Another neighbor told me he doesn’t burn it because all the creosote in it can cause a chimney fire.”

Nate looked at the logs and thought for a few moments more. His demeanor reminded me that I might do well to nurture a less impulsive side of myself. 

“We’ll take it,” he said. Then the two boys began loading up the logs as I walked up the side of the bank and began throwing more down. 

The car windshield on my second to the last day in Tennesseee. It snowed one day but was too warm to stick. The temperature was dropping into the mid-twenties at night but warming to the high thirties in the day.
Aunt Linda sent me this picture two days ago when freezing temperatures stayed. I was sorry to miss it.

December 29, 2024 — Somewhere in the Air

I’m heading east to Tennessee. I’ve boarded a plane and I’m sitting on the rainy runway at SFO. It’s still dark at 6:56 a.m. The sun won’t likely be coming up as much as faintly glowing behind these clouds that are low and grey and closed in. I’m guessing we will be above them in the near future breaking through to a strikingly sunny world that appears to be opposite this place below. 

I don’t know how many times I’ve started a blog on a plane or in an airport. This part of a trip rarely makes it to the final draft, but I’ve had such a hard time writing anything I want to publish lately that I’m likely just to let it be. What’s that saying, perfection is the enemy of progress? This new year I’d like to embrace imperfection—my own and others.

There is a “particular issue” that the captain has announced “needs to be looked at” so we are getting a late start.  I’m all for issues being looked at. 

Getting on a flight for me is a bit like being one of those thousands of thirsty, dehydrated wildebeest looking at the water and knowing there is a very large crocodile in there that will eat one of us. It is a sad fact that flying results in plane crashes and that plane crashes rarely end well, but it is the price we flyers pay to get from here to there in a rapid fashion. 

Statistically it is still much safer than driving but, to me, pondering the moments of terror before a plane crashes bears a closer resemblance psychologically to being caught in the jaws of an aquatic carnivore. I think we’d all rather take our chances with a car spinning out of control.

It did not help that this morning I read about the Korean airline crash that killed everyone on board except for two people in the tail section of the plane. The tail section, I’m guessing, is the best place to be. I don’t know the physics but I imagine tail sections are light weight and once they are separated from the heavy engines and wings they probably act a bit like a parachute. 

Under normal circumstances the tail end doesn’t offer the best ride. Every bump has the feel of riding a broncing buck as it flexes and pops. It is also, of course, the section that takes the longest to get out of after landing, so generally, it’s less desirable 99.99 percent of the time. 

I’m sitting above the wings and engine on this flight. It’s smoother here, but this is where these planes usually rip in half. Mine will at least be a quick death. 

Four days ago I read about the crash that happened in Kazakhstan. Almost half the passengers lived. I wrote this poem about it: 

If I’m lucky I’ll have 3,500 more breakfasts. If I’m very fortuitous 7,000 or more and hopefully without surviving an airplane crash.

Anyway, It’s probably best if I just move along to my Tennessee plans. Better not to harp too much along this line of thought. 

I’ll visit family of course. As for the land, I really only have a few things on my list—more clearing of the potential cabin site and a burn of the brush pile I made last summer. It’s probably best to wait on burning any new piles I make. They’ll be less smoke if I give it a chance to dry out. 

This sign will replace the Fairyland sign for the next year. Fairyland is a fairytale inspired theme park in Oakland that I took my 1st grade students to half a dozen times over the years. The park changed the sign in conjunction with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust to recognize the ancestral caretakers of the land—the Lisjan Nation—and reinforce the park’s commitment to amplifying Indigenous voices and stories within its programming. I have a desire to learn more about the people who were on the land I’m caretaking.

No local burn permits are required in Grainger County. However, the state requires burn permits except in the summer months. This is counterintuitive to me. I would have thought it’s safer to burn when it’s cooler but apparently it is dryer in these months and therefore more prone to start an unwanted fire. 

I recently went on line to get the permit. It was wonky. I couldn’t figure out how to put in a date or the location. Of course, I don’t have an address just a parcel number. Finding the location involves using a zoom function that feels as awkward as trying to pinch a small piece of egg shell out of a bowl of raw egg whites. I just ended the pain early and clicked enter to see what would happen. I was issued a permit for a piece of land that looked to be a dozen or so miles away from mine. I didn’t see any way to cancel it.  

My guess is the state doesn’t take these permits too seriously. It is probably a way to collect data and a way to quickly issue a No Burn notice in the case of weather events or conditions that would make burning particularly dangerous. 

Anyway, at least I now know that I can register for a permit on the day I need it and I’ve had some practice using the site.

I picked this book up at school. It’s a great read. It’s the first in Wilder’s series of autobiographical stories. A friend said it’s a book hailed by “preppers” (people who prepare for disasters and end time scenarios). Certainly it is useful for anyone interested in homesteading. The detail Wilder goes into makes you feel almost prepared to smoke deer meat, make cheese or tap your maple trees. Apparently the series has negative stereotypes of Native Americans. I didn’t run into that in this first book but I wouldn’t be surprised since the U.S. government had a full scale war going on against Native people at the time when Wilder was a girl. Sounds like these books have plenty of teachable moments for any educators who would like to take them on. I have a friend who would like to do a parody of these books she loves. They do feel ripe for something to contrast the clean-faced, Michael Landon tv version.

Environmentally, burning is not the best thing to do. It would be better to wood chip all the brush and spread it out in the forest. But how do you get a wood chipper? Can I rent one and how would I get it up the little hill to the flat spot where I have all the brush and trees chopped down?

This sort of thinking further leads me down the path of getting an all-terrain vehicle. Of course, buying an ATV and using the gas or electricity required to power it would likely negate several times over the environmental benefit of wood chipping all the brush I will ever produce. Where would I store an ATV anyway? Do I build a secure shed at the end of the new gravel drive way? Do I see if I can store it in my aunt’s garage? In that case, can you legally drive an ATV on the roads to get it from point A to B or would I need a trailer and the use of Stewart’s truck to haul it? With all that, wouldn’t it be time to get my own truck? 

You can see how the dominoes begin to fall and this is just around the thought of wood chipping some brush? Building a cabin will entail a massively larger set of details.

And to that…about three months ago I had a fall bouldering at the climbing gym. It was a sideways fall onto my right side and I stuck out my dominant hand to brace myself. With a locked elbow my arm became a pole shoved into the socket. I stood up feeling a pulsing, but not unbearable, pain in my shoulder and told the people around me “Well that’s a good way to break your arm”. 

After some self-massage I continued to climb for a while. I still have good mobility. I kept going back to the gym and playing tennis (serving underhand) before it became apparent I needed a longer rest. I went in for X-rays a month later. Looking at the black and white prints the doctor showed me something that he said may be a hairline fracture in my collarbone. He said it should heal on its own in six to eight weeks. He even said I could continue climbing if I was careful. I did that for a while but without fail I inevitably moved in a way that resulted in a sharp pain. So I’ve basically stopped all activities that involve any unpredictable motions with my right arm. I even stopped throwing frisbee for Sasha with my right hand and taught myself to throw with my left. I’m still not as good with that side but much better than I was. It’s felt like being six again and first learning to throw. It’s a good reminder of what it takes to build coordination—lots of practice. 

A week ago I passed the two month mark for my shoulder to heal on its own. I haven’t seen much improvement. I scheduled an appointment with a physical therapist for when I get back. I hope I might be able to get some advice on how to help move the healing along. 

This is all just a long way to say it is increasingly unlikely that I’ll build a cabin in the least environmentally-impactful way. At my age and with slow healing injuries like the one I’ve got, I’ll likely require considerable help from machinery. 

Of course the least impactful thing I can do is to not build a cabin at all and to not jet off twice a year to visit this land or my ancestral people. Perhaps writing about these quandries is a sort of carbon offset along with my commuting by bike and the solar I’ve put on my house. I don’t like to think of my life as some sort of accounting tabulation and I’m kind of agnostic about karma or someone with a quilled pen and ledger at those imagined pearly gates. But how can we love life and not look at ourselves as caretakers? I’ll have to just balance things the best way I can.

I was happy to come home one day last month and see the street filled with these bike sharrows. This one is right in front of my house. This was the last phase of the new sidewalk and street paving project that is happening in my neighborhood.

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We’ve been flying in that sunny, strange, high altitude world for a while now. The cloud layer gave out past the Sierras and picked up again above the midwest. I have a two or three hour layover in Philadelphia before getting on a smaller plane to Knoxville. The goal is to get this piece posted in that time and set up a landing for whatever I happen to get done while I’m in Tennessee. If I can learn to throw left handed I can learn to be okay with the imperfect and whatever that means in terms of my writing. Hopefully some of you are still with me on this journey. 

October 12, 2024

Two Italian-American companies are putting in new sidewalks on my street. Sposeto is doing the sidewalks. Ghilotti is doing the accompanying roads. Taken together the names make me feel like I’ve walked into an Italian creamery. The job they are doing is sweet. The sidewalks have beautiful lines and are clean like a newly frosted cake. The project is moving along quickly. The whole neighborhood is smiles as we see our tax dollars at work. 

Concord is a town in what is increasingly less of an outskirt of the central Bay Area. But it is on the edge of country and I often relish the knowledge that I can drive west of here and quickly be in an area that feels like amber waves of grain. If you walk around my neighborhood you occasionally come across a fenced in yard that upon further inspection is really more like a field. At the back of one nearby is an old metal windmill rising up between patches of prickly pear cactus. 

My street is half of a large oval. It starts and stops on the same street it curves off of. It’s what’s left of an old horse race track that existed in the late eighteen and early 1900s. The green park around the corner where I take Sasha for walks was the centerfield where the winning horses were given their ribbons and where fans sat around picnic baskets to watch the race. 

The margins of the street were all gravel until this new sidewalk started to appear. All told, a peek into a backyard field strewn with piles of junk and blackberry bramble could give a deceptively country feel. But walking in most directions you will find that soon enough the squabbling of scrub jays and mockingbirds is replaced by a yawling white noise as you reach one of the main thoroughfares that flow cars like red blood cells through an artery.

A good portion of the 125,000 residents that live here are commuting in the direction of Oakland and San Francisco. The ones that don’t get there by BART train are doing it in their cars. 

Recently I’ve started walking Sasha in different directions to try to accustom her to the sights and smells that surround us in case she ever gets loose. She is skittish around loud noises so it’s hard to walk her along one of the busy roads but I hope that she will build up some tolerance. I’d hate for her to run hairy scary into traffic for being too freaked out. 

On our walks I have her sit at cross streets and wait with me to look both ways before we cross. I’m not sure if she’d do that on her own but I want her to know that where a road crosses you have to be extra careful. 

On a recent walk Sasha and I stopped by a Little Free Library  nearby and found a copy of Mo Willems’ We Are in A Book. I almost never find used copies of his books much less free ones. This title along with Should I Share My Ice Cream is probably the most popular of his twenty something titles. 

We Are in A Book is funny and profound. It gets you thinking about mortality and what it means to exist. For several of my last years teaching in Oakland another first grade teacher, Ms. Sandoval, and I would act out one of these two books at the school’s annual Family Literacy Night. It was always a hit and we’d have a fifteen minute show within each of the three thirty minute rotations. Several times we got donations of Mo Willems books to hand out. It was so fun! After doing this for a few years we had it down and could get the show up and running with only one or two rehearsals. Ah, the excitement of live theatre!

——————-

I want to tell you about another fantastic book I recently finished. It was recommended by my old friend Elijah. It’s about the Mississippi city he grew up in and where I went to school from 8th grade through my first year and a half of college. It’s called Hattiesburg, an American City in Black and White. 

There is certainly something extra special about reading the story of a place where you walked and grew, but this book is also extraordinary because of the way that the author, UNC history professor, William Sturkey, shows the power and framework of Jim Crow.

Sturkey is particularly effective because he manages to resist any discernible ax grinding despite having black ancestry. He lets history itself be the flat stone that makes indisputable facts sharp and painfully apparent. 

The book helped me understand better how a boy like myself raised in a liberal, artsy, educated household could not be immune from racist beliefs. It helped me understand how Hollywood may have got it right spiritually and mentally (if not physically) when they sometimes showed southern black communities with white picket fences and children dressed in clean, starched and pressed clothes. And it helped me understand the depth of a brutal social construct that I always felt as a coiled threat beneath the gentle surface of southern hospitality.

Without trying to explain what I mean by all those statements, I want you to know that Hattiesburg is both horrible and hope-filled as it looks at the resilience and determination of black people in a Jim Crow southern town. These are the people that went to Washington to try to get their right to vote enforced. It explains some of the humored looks I got from a few elders when I stepped into the black neighborhood that started across the railroad tracks behind my house,  a naive but sincere 18-year-old trying to register voters to support the Mondale/Ferraro ticket in 1983. I had no idea who I was talking to. 

It was also fascinating to make a connection with a previous book that I’ve recommended: “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood” which bemoaned the loss of old growth Long Leaf Pine forests throughout the south. It turns out that Hattiesburg was founded and built as the hub of a vast network of lumber mills cutting down those forests. The mills ran continuously for fifty years bringing prosperity to hundreds of thousands of people from the 1880s up through the Great Depression until the last of those great, majestic pines were cut down just like the fictional Truffula trees in Dr. Seuss’ story The Lorax. 

Hattiesburg, the book, also ended any misconceptions I had of white Mississippians who tried to wear the banner of proud, self-determined, state-rightist who remained independent of outside influences they thought would sully their whiteness.

The town was established post slavery and grew quickly because of the help and investment of northern industrialists and the mass of low-wage workers. After cutting down all the trees it survived the Great Depression, holding on by its fingernails with federal relief and recovery funds. Then leading up to WW2 Hattiesburg was renewed as an economic hub with the federal renovation and expansion of Camp Shelby which housed and trained up to 40,000 soldiers at a time. 

Throughout this era blacks took the lowest wage jobs available to them and during the depression only received federal and NGO relief when it somehow made it past the hands of local authorities who made sure whites got more than their share.

Eye-opening indeed was the extent to which white southerners held a burning cross in one hand fighting off what they saw as  federal encroachment while using the other hand to collect federal funds. Socialist-minded Franklin Roosevelt got well over 90% of the Mississippi vote in all four of his presidential elections…and almost all of those voters were white because of exlusory voter registration practices. 

In Hattiesburg the racist registrar of voters regularly used the question, “How many bubbles are in a bar of soap,” to exclude blacks who needed something harder than the state constitutional law questions or reading tests required to gain their voting rights.

The unexpected story is the community pride and the black town that grew up next to the white town with its own set of businesses and its own set of leaders.  The unexpected story is the way people not only survived but thrived. Even for those who moved away they remained connected to Hattiesburg. Chicago may have been the most popular destination. The latest issues of The Chicago Defender newspaper were regularly passed around until they were worn out and news stories about Hattiesburg regularly made it into those Northern black-owned and operated papers. 

Anyway, there is so much more to say about this book but it is better read. 

—————

Before I go, I want to show a few things that I left out of my last blog post concerning work on my Tennessee land way back at the beginning of July. (I’ve really missed getting a post out sooner.)

These are the steps I put in to help make the walk easier up the small hill on the main trail that leads to the proposed cabin site. This work is what had me battling the horse fly. (Yes it was usually just one at a time but that was enough.)

Lower Hill Steps
Upper Hill Steps–I had a bad start on these. I was making the gap too wide between steps–trying to go cheap so to speak. I had to remove the ones I set and start placing them closer.
I got some good advice from a neighbor to keep up with the clearing of the flat spot for the cabin. I plan on burning these piles when next I visit. I may have to get a burn permit if it is winter time. Strangely, burn permits aren’t required in the summer. Apparently trees pull the sap into their trunks in the winter and are more flammable.
This is the underside of some Winged Elm leaves (still on the branches) I threw into the burn pile. I love their color. I thought these trees had some horrible disease because of the misshaped branches. Turns out that’s just how the Winged Elms fly.

July 1, 2024

I was very curious to look up the mouth parts of the horse fly when I came back from the land yesterday. This little animal has been high on my list of annoyances and for this trip at least has replaced ticks, poison ivy, snakes, and bears (in that order) as my number one fear. (I’m adding red bugs, aka chiggers, into the third position after recent dermal outbreaks that I mistakenly thought were errant spots of poison ivy—of which there are some of those too.)  

I debate whether to even put bears on the list. I only do because there is a moment’s jolt of adrenaline when I hear a footstep in the forest. For the most part I’d enjoy seeing one again—as long as it isn’t a frequent occurrence. My fear has been more acute in California when I’ve camped in a zipped up tent and don’t have a ready means of escape and easy visuals of what’s coming.

Until this trip, horseflies have barely been on my radar. It could be that this season had a high birth rate or perhaps it has something to do with my behavior. I’m sweating profusely and largely staying in the same place building stairs out of heavy rocks on the steep part of the main trail. The horseflies, along with regular flys, seem to be attracted to my sweat. But whereas regular flies lovingly mop up the salty liquid right in front of me—like a restaurant worker cleaning a table— horseflies, generally speaking, speed around attempting to find a landing place outside of my eyesight.

Horseflies aren’t interested in your sweat or, as it turns out, your flesh—despite how it might feel. I had always assumed that they enjoyed chewing up a chunk of meat like a Texas oilman and that their mouth parts looked something like a grabbing claw. It turns out, they are actually cutting a hole to slurp up your blood not taking a chunk out. 

To give a clearer visual they could be renamed Edwina Scissors Mouth (only the females do this). From what I understand, they have at least three sword-like blades. One is serrated and another, sharp and thin, is used to pry open the hole made in your flesh by the first. These appear saber-like while a third, double-edged and symmetrical like Excalibur, is plunged in the widened hole and has a channel in the center which allows the injurious insect to draw your blood into its body. 

I don’t understand, evolutionarily, why horseflies are as loud as those annoying little motorcycles that seem to be so popular today with grown men who ride around with their knees up around their ears. It doesn’t make sense why the horsefly wants to give their victims a heads up. Perhaps with their harassment the mammalian body produces some yummy, high-energy, fear-induced chemical that is released into the blood stream and gives one’s life juice that extra kick these flying daggers are looking for.

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I thought it was a swarm of bees like the ones high in the flowering pepper tree in my backyard in California— loud but mostly invisible for the leaves. I kept passing the sound just off the main trail without bothering to look. The second day and perhaps the fourth time passing I stopped to really hone in. It wasn’t bees but flies and they weren’t high in the trees but four feet away, just above the ground.

My heart leapt into my throat. If I didn’t say it out loud, it was loud in my brain, Oh, a new-born, baby fawn! 

I immediately wanted to reach out and pull its little body into mine, kissing every white spot on its small back and every inch of fur between the big wet eyes and black nose. 

This feeling was made more acute having, coincidentally, just moments before received a video on my phone of my housemate’s dog Sasha who I miss terribly and who we often call bat-eared, fawn-bodied, kangaroo. 

The phone, buried in a side pocket along my leg had begun playing music. I retrieved it and looked at the screen. It was one of those auto-generated, Google collages of personal photos soaked in heartstring-pulling-music.

I don’t know how these videos happen—when or why. They just appear at random. They often hit an emotional home run but sometimes stitch you together with a person you barely know or painfully remind you of a dead romance. 

This was one of the home runs. It was all Sasha photos fading in and out, appearing and melting away along with my heart. 

Of course I didn’t grab up the fawn which would have been a terrible violation of nature akin to snatching a kid off the street. No doubt its mother was somewhere about. It was curled into itself, eyes open but why wasn’t it moving? Were all the flies there because it was nearing death? 

I inched closer and it startled. 

I began to coo to it, “Hello beautiful baby.”

I crouched down and took pictures. When I rose to back away it made a panicked cry and with difficulty stood. 

I cooed again, “It’s okay baby. It’s okay.” But I couldn’t entreat it to stay. It began to walk away slowly on wobbly legs. I felt bad for disturbing it. 

I watched the new-born creep between the trees navigating the rocks and uneven ground with unsteady footing. In about forty feet it disappeared in the dense trees and brush and I turned back to work. I checked a few minutes later and saw it pass in an open space twice as far as it had been and still moving steadily onward. 

I was worried. I called Stewart and asked him if it would be okay. Would the mother be able to find the baby? He assured me that the mother could smell her child. Later, another woodsman confirmed that they will call to each other and that in fact, any female mamma deer would come to the babies aid. 

Thinking back to the day before, something strange now made sense. I’d been walking on the main trail from the shed and I saw the large white butt of a deer leaping away from me and then making a noise that I can only describe as a sound like a rope being pulled violently through a wooden hole. 

It was a sound I’d never heard from a deer and it made me want to follow it to find out more. I left the main trail onto the one that goes to the memorial stones. I moved carefully between the overgrowth I haven’t had time to cut back.

Intermittently I heard the sound repeated , “Vrip, Vrip”, moving higher up the knob. I saw the deer flash between trees. The sound kept rising but I had no interest in following it into the steep bramble. I turned around, got back on the trail and passed the spot where I’d find the baby the next day — the spot where I think the mama was trying to lead me away from.

I’m guessing the fawn was born here and that the interest from the flies was in the birthing fluids which at the very least, probably made a nice coating on the babies fur. 

——————

In the course of my discovery about this land, I end up doing a lot of theorizing. Learning is changing one’s mind when more information comes along and I’m rethinking my thoughts on those piles of stones. 

A couple of friendly blog readers reintroduced the idea that these piles may have been made by people to farm the land. I’d dismissed that early on in my theorizing with the knowledge that this land was not good for farming. There are few dry weather water sources and almost no level surfaces. But whose to say the rocks weren’t piled up to make walking/hunting areas easier to navigate or to stockpile stones for future wall building or other construction projects? 

Now when I think about the massive boulders being torn apart by age and weather, I look at the piles and wonder why they don’t fit more like puzzle pieces instead of being stacked…and wouldn’t I see more examples of boulders with a central core and shucked off pieces all around it? No, I think these piles of rocks were put there by humans—at the very least to avoid all the ankle twisting that they can cause. But when and by who? 

A reader sent me this link from a reddit conversation on rock piles:

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Here are some photos of the work progress that’s been made so far.

The driveway is in thanks to a great recommendation for Jesse’s Lawn Service and Landscaping, Bobcat and Excavating. Watching someone good at using these machines it’s easy to see how the idea of transformers came about. Machine and person become one.

Jesse jumping down from the steel Bobcat cage which has saved him from falling trees in the past.
Driveway done.

I’ve upped the level of maintenance on the main trail and taken the hoe to it. I’ve debated getting a heavy duty weed wacker like the ones used by professional landscapers. I lived for five years in my house in Concord before I used the dishwasher. Now I don’t wash anything by hand that will fit. Maybe I’ll return to the slower way when I retire. Will I hoe these trails for five or ten years and then submit? Right now I like the quiet work and don’t want the intrusion, expense or environmental cost of more machines.

Stewart let me borrow his truck for a second load of rock for the stairs I’m putting in. This time I had help from cousin Parker, Linda’s high school age grandson. Moving and seating these rocks has been by far the most strenuous work I’ve done. I’ll show the progress of stairs on my next post.

I’m not just moving rock. I’m also attempting to transplant some Christmas Fern and Cedar saplings. We’ll see if they make the transition. Summer may not be the best time for moving plants.

Sometimes I find trees along the trail that seem to need a helping hand. This one was overrun by multiflora rose which can produce a vine the size of your arm. This is a before and after shot. I have no idea how much freeing a tree of vines benefits it, but it stands to reason that it does.

Plants: The moss below wasn’t on my land but a neighbors who I just met and who graciously took me for a hike with her two old dogs all along the nob ridges. Carol lives with her husband Jack two houses down in a wonderful home hidden from the road with a big wrap-around porch and a 180 degree view of mountain.

Belwort
Ginger
Raspberry

Animals: The bristle fly on the left was very scary looking and I knew nothing about it. I walked with it for a hundred feet before gently brushing it off my belt. It is harmless to humans but if you are a larva watch out!

The little one on the right is a walking stick. I’m just guessing this was a young one since it was small–only about an inch. But who knows? It may be a species that maxes out at that length.

The neighbor took a shot of me with this enormous splintered oak that probably went over in a recent windstorm. We could smell the wood fifty yards before we saw it. It was like being at a lumber mill.

She also photographed me with the memorial stones when I took her on a tour of my land. The area is in need of tending although I like the look of it being kind of wild. I want to go back to nature but it would be a nice treat to make someone curious enough to pull back some vines in a wild place to discover what is written below.

Oakes Daylilies celebrated its 25th anniversary with its annual Daylily Festival. Retired now from the family run business, Stewart sat under a tent with Linda handing out catalogs and talking with customers old and new. The business started informally with his father over 40 years ago and now it’s run by his son and grandson. Four generations of flower growers! There was food, music, free day lily bulbs, landscape painters and a common love for a flower that brings joy to multitudes.

I’ve mostly been going to bed late and getting up late. If I can put in five hours of work on the land I’m doing good. If nothing else, I now have a driveway and a pretty good trail from there to the old shed. If I never get a cabin built at least I’ll have that wonderful walk and a place to get off the road.

Here’s the view from behind my Aunt Linda’s condo. I happened to get up early one morning and walk outside. I’ve much to be thankful for.

I hope you have a good independence day. Do not despair. Let’s remember what it means to be independent and free to think. Let’s remember the important principal of separation of church and state–that we respect all religions by not raising any above the rest in our public institutions–that we strive to be a nation with dignity for all people. Please use your voice. Speak out when something is not fair…and vote whether that means holding your nose, voting your conscious, voting for a partial ticket, voting for a third party — just vote. Democracy at it’s best isn’t easy. There is no single solution and as all my vegan friends say, “there is more than one way to peel a carrot and if it’s organic it may not need peeling at all.”

(Okay, no one says that.)

June 19, 2024

I thought there might be bodies buried on my land, burial mounds made by the ancient people who once hunted and farmed around here in Eastern Tennessee. Or, several years ago when I saw one for the first time—before I realized there were dozens of these rock mounds—I thought it might be a cache of buried treasures. It was the kind of fanciful thinking that happens before you’ve done any investigation or given something a deeper thought. 

As recently as last week, I was still perplexed—so much so that I decided to dig into one. I was looking for usable rocks anyway. The mounds provided concentrated pickings for the step-sized flat stones I was looking to build stairs with. 

Rock mound I started to “get to the bottom of”
I bought a child’s sled at the Farmer’s Coop to help slide these big stones out of the woods.

Most of the circular mounds are seven to ten feet across. All are on the rhombus-shaped property, not on the other side of the road where I may build a cabin. 

I’m not sure what my plan was when I picked a mound and started to dig through fallen sticks and leaves. A few inches down this turned into a raft of loamy soil held together by thousands of roots and fine vines. I could pull away big chunks of the raft and throw them to the side revealing dozens of small, dark caves formed by the pile of rocks underneath. 

Before I cleared the whole top off the mound it became apparent to me that if I dug through the rocks I would only find more rocks until eventually I hit the ground. The prospect was not entirely uninteresting, but for the purpose of finding flat stones for stairs it would be a lot of work when I could simply go about, as I had been, to other mounds and simply pull the best ones from the sides or tops without doing a lot of digging. 

My reasoning about why the mounds might be here was quickly being honed by the hard work it was taking to get to the truth. Perhaps some sort of work-avoidance-bias was at play, but my back was beginning to protest the mind’s fanciful sparks in favor of its more logical leanings.  

Joppa Mountain sits directly behind this land. It is the southern most subrange of the Clinch Mountains that run 150 miles northeast into Virginia. Fifty feet away from where I’d parked Stewart’s truck on the pitted, rough gravel drive between my property and my neighbor’s the slope bends dramatically upward. My best guess is that at some point in ancient time these piles of rubble were enormous boulders that broke loose from the top and came bouncing down the mountain bowling over trees and anything else in their path.

Then nature did its work. Thousands of winters and summers, rainstorms, leaf storms, duff and ice, trees and vines all found purchase in each crack and cranny slowly cleaving part from part. What was once one became many. 

The logic behind this is that there are massive, picnic table-sized boulders yet untouched which sit as neighbors among the mounds. Their smooth tops don’t catch the leaf litter and twigs so easily as the mounds. Are these newer boulders or ones made of tougher material that is not so easily broken down? Did a single geologic event send all these boulders flying at the same time or has the mountain been sending them down on regular visits over thousands of years? For that matter, what proof is there that any of them tumbled from high? Couldn’t it be that they rose through the ground where they are or that the ground receded to expose them?  Farther away, across the road, there are broken rocks dispersed throughout the soil but none of these big boulders or heaps of rocks. That, to me, lends to the theory that the boulders tumbled from the mountain top.

I never thought I was very interested in geology but in using the land and in my small efforts to change it I find I want to know more of the secrets it holds. 

It’s very likely there are no human remains here. It might be easy enough for me to find out about the burial traditions of the ancient people who occupied this land and clarify what to look for. It is less likely that there are buried treasures unless you include all the things I don’t know about this place. That’s a treasure of a different sort. 

Here are some photos of recently spotted flora and fauna:

Red Salamander
Tulip-tree Beauty Moth
Stump Blossom
Red Admiral Butterfly–He hopped on my arm and rode with me for about a half mile in the truck.
Bank Haircap Moss

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I made fried okra last night. I saw these beautiful baskets of fresh okra at a farm stand and I thought I’d give another go at frying some up. Last summer I wasn’t so successful. Growing up, fried okra was a fairly regular thing at my house and almost a staple at my grandmother Knott’s. 

My mother used to say she couldn’t boil water when she met my dad. I wonder if the thing that inspired her to become a good cook was the same thing that makes me fry okra when I come back to Tennessee. It’s a way to connect to home. 

I don’t seek out okra in California. True, it’s not as prevalent in grocery stores, but you can find it in the bay area without looking too hard. I suppose surrounded by the sights and sounds of my roots I want to plant myself deeper here. Otherwise it doesn’t come up much. Around winter holidays I crave the family’s cornbread sage dressing, but I have failed in my two attempts to make it. 

I have a scrawled recipe of the dressing folded over on an eight by eleven piece of scrap paper in my copy of Joy of Cooking. It’s the notes I took from my mom over the phone twenty-five years ago when I was living in a studio apartment in the Tenderloin. She would have been in Sevierville then—30 miles south of where I am now, close to the place where Dolly Parton grew up. 

“I don’t have a recipe,” she said.  “I just do it.”

“Well can you explain it to me?” I asked. 

“It’s all about the cornbread,” she said.

But it wasn’t. I can successfully make the family’s hard-crust cornbread but I can’t seem to work out the dressing from the ingredients and directions she gave me.

I don’t have a family recipe for fried okra but I knew it was nothing complicated. Out on the land yesterday I took a break from trail blazing to look some up. I sat on a cut log. Wifi is working better out there, but it’s slow. Between each stage of data loading I listened to the sounds of the midday forest—an absence of chirring, a breeze stirring in the tree tops, a bird call, something scratching in the leaves, silence. It hasn’t been as hot here as the forecast warned, but the kind of work I’m doing is still wearing me out. 

A grid of pictures with the recipe names and number of ingredients came up. I picked the one that had the fewest: egg, corn meal, wheat flour, salt, cayenne. 

On the way home I was too tired to stop at the store and, anyway, I didn’t want to buy flour if there was some in the cabinets. It turned out there was corn meal and flour—buttermilk corn meal, in fact. I already had the eggs.

I substituted black pepper for cayenne and mixed the dry ingredients (1 ¼ corn meal to ¼ flour in a paper grocery bag), cut up the okra, soaked it in egg for ten minutes and then shook it up together. It came out great. The key was not being chintzy on the frying oil. There needs to be at least a quarter inch in the pan. That’s how I failed last time. I probably also tried to fry too much at at time. It’s better to do two batches. Oh, and if you like it closer to brown than golden like me, fry it a bit longer than called for. 

June 12, 2024

I’m sitting in bed at my Aunt’s senior condo in Corryton, Tennessee. Linda and Stewart picked me up at the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville last night. When I got to the condo I unpacked and for the first time switched to the small room with the double-bed instead of staying in the master bedroom with the king-sized one. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this before. There is too much real estate on that big bed. If I end up in the middle and wake up thirsty I can’t reach a glass of water on the night stand. It’s like being parched in the middle of a desert. If I want to check the time on my phone, I might as well commit to getting up and making a cup of tea as swimming to the other side’s night stand.

On the drive, Aunt Linda told me, “the place is exactly as you left it.” That’s true except for the little piles of desiccated bugs in numerous spots along the laminated hard wood floor, around the front and back door, and under the kitchen cabinets. The bugs are attached in strings of spider webs like buoys. Pull on one and all the others come trailing along.  Each pile is the domain of a single spider no bigger than my thumbnail. Some piles are abandoned and others still have the resident arachnid moving quickly (or in some cases slowly) to escape the raft of buoys swept into the dustpan. 

The bugs appear to be Armadillidiidae (aka roly polies) that have had all the fluid sucked from them and crunch under the foot like tiny, dark, round croutons. I wonder how this many roly polies make their way into the house? I never see a live one inside when I’m here. Do the spiders put on tuxedos and invite them in with a big smile saying, “Come into my parlor?”

Beneath the pile of corpses are lots of tiny white dots that appear like flicks of correction fluid. To the touch they feels like hardened paint. The first time I encountered them I got out a putty knife to scrape them up. That was before I discovered they’re water soluble. They disappear instantly with a damp rag. Is this spider shit? Sometimes smears of light red are mixed in. I suppose this is the blood of the prey. 

I unpacked my suitcase into the empty dresser and relocated a bookcase across the room to access a plug behind it. There are plenty of plugs in this room but this one suits my computer best. It seems that in their effort to make computers lighter and promote the cloud-world Apple is trying to get rid of holes on its machines. Mine has two of the same kind, both on the left side so if I can find a plug over there it makes for a more seamless, wired experience. All the better if I can also exit my bed from the right.

Today I will go out to my land and ponder the small efforts I can make toward a more seamless experience there which means a walk in the woods without spider webs in the face or ticks questing at the tips of leaves in hopes of attaching to my clothes. That means hacking away at the jungle to keep it at bay.

Eventually the seamlessness might encompass a cabin door with barely a sill to sweep my foot over, a fire place with logs piled up and kindling crosshatched beneath a grate awaiting a match, a full bookshelf illuminated by a lit lantern, a comfortable reading chair, a nice loft bed. 

For now, it’s enough to dream of these little things, to go out to the woods and play, moving ever so slightly in that direction. 

I’m happy to report some progress. My driveway permit was approved last week and the county installed the required double-walled culvert pipe that I purchased over the phone from the local Farmer’s Coop. The permit for a driveway is the only thing I needed approval for and once the county approves it they are the only ones who can install any required drainage–and every driveway needs drainage. You are at the counties’ mercy for this one thing and it won’t happen without them. I could build a 16 room “cabin” and they wouldn’t care. They don’t care about building codes or sewage or burning piles of trash. It’s all about making sure that water doesn’t pile up on the road.

After putting in the permit many moons ago I was loosing patience. A week before the end of school I called the highway commissioner’s office and spoke to the secretary there for about the fifth time.

“They’ve been so busy with these downed trees. That’s all they’ve had time to do lately,” she explained in a wonderful sing-song voice. 

The slow way she said downed trees I could almost see them falling. 

“Yes, but it’s been two years since I put in my permit application and I just want to know what is going on and if there is something I need to do to make this happen.” 

I told her I don’t have any place to park on the land and how I need a place to unload things and how I’m going to be building a cabin, etc, etc. 

She found my application. I heard her shuffling through papers. 

“Here it is sitting right on the desk,” she said.

I told her that I would be calling every day until I found out about the progress of my application.

“Well you go right ahead and call sweetie. We don’t mind talking to you.”

Jillian who’d overheard my conversation from the other room congratulated me on not loosing my cool. And then I didn’t for the next two days when I kept calling. 

My appeal won out. The secretary mentioned a worker in charge of putting in the drains and he called me for better directions to find my proposed driveway. I was at work and almost didn’t answer. The caller ID said Morristown, TN and I hadn’t known anybody there since I was in a British bedroom farce in that town after my stint at trying to open a restaurant with my mamma almost 30 years ago.

I didn’t hear from him for another week so I texted him last Thursday and instantly got back a message that said, “Installing as we speak”. I leapt for joy.

Then this picture came through after his crew finished putting in the pipe:

Was it time or persistence or kindness that got the job done? I think the best answer is yes.  

All’s swell that ends swell.

April 6, 2024

I made good on my intention of getting rid of my motorcycle. Last week a seventy-one-year-old man with 45 years of riding experience drove off on it. A small lump formed in my throat as I watched him ride away. Otherwise, it felt good. I couldn’t have asked for more. The buyer wasn’t likely to kill himself. He was mechanical so I knew he could take care of the Silver Spaceship. Also, his age reminded me that getting back in the saddle again was not outside the realm of possibility. 

Here I’m preparing to leave on my 2015 cross-country trip. The trip is why I bought the bike.
I went on the northern path and came back on the southern.

I used the Bay Area’s home-grown Craigslist to advertise the bike. They now charge five dollars to list vehicles. I balked at the notion at first. I have always associated Craigslist with free advertising. When a place popped up for me to enter a credit card number I wondered if it was legit. I looked this new protocol up online and confirmed they’ve been charging the fee for vehicles for about four years. It makes sense. Five bucks may be enough to keep some scam-operators from operating and it’s not too much to ask for selling something worth hundreds of dollars. 

My reluctance was short-lived for another reason. While I would have difficulty answering Marie Kondo’s question Does it spark joy while gazing upon one of my shirts, if I think about Craigslist or, another favorite, Wikipedia, I can answer a definitive yes! Craigslist has been a source of joy since my earliest days of internetting. 

I listed my 1991 Honda for $1700. That price is on the low end for these motos. The ST1100 is one of the best old bikes out there. It’s powerful, reliable, and a smooth, comfortable ride on the highway.  There were cracks, breaks and holes in some of the panels that cover almost the entire bike but that’s to be expected for a 33-year-old motorcycle. The sun breaks down plastic. Mechanically it was near flawless. 

In 2018 I took all the plastic fairings off the bike to give it a thorough cleaning and a good look. It was an all day job. Somehow I still failed to grok that the engine is liquid cooled. (See that black rectangle behind the front fender? Duh. Radiator!) After the cross country trip and riding it for another five years I’d never added coolant. I found out the hard way when the last remnants boiled away in steam on a trip to Napa in 2020. I stopped before any major damage was done. The Silver Spaceship got its one and only ride on a tow truck back to Concord.

As soon as I posted on Craigslist immediately got a slew of low ball offers with sloppy grammar and syntax that made me feel their desire for a quick deal all the more poignantly. 

“Hi,  Let me know if you consider taking $900 for it, this Sat.”

“Nice bike that I will love to give a home but I  am quite strapped and only have 1100.00 to work with at the moment.”

And the best of the worst:

“I have a 2002 Toyota Sequoia that needs a small amount of mechanical work with air bushings and things it’s a great running condition the motor and tranny or a flawless it’s got some higher mileage on it but I’ll be willing to trade straight across need a bike to ride out to LA tonight would trade my SUV and probably most of the mechanic tools inside of it to get the motorcycle so I can head out to go to my girlfriend I was waiting for me program in LA county you can call me at 831-xxx-xxxx ASAP tonight would be better thank you”

After a bunch of these I was getting a little depressed. The bike had treated me so well in the more than eight years since I bought it from its original owner. Did it really have no more value than this? Should I drop the asking price to $1500? I was including a leather jacket, riding jeans with armor knees, the shop and owners manual, a tank bag and two helmets—all old but serviceable. 

I had already dismissed the idea of parting it out. I could get more money that way but it would be a lot more work taking it apart. Also, this felt akin to sending R2D2 to the junkyard. You don’t do that to an old friend that has years of life left in it.  

I thought on this for a few days and finally decided to leave the price. If nobody bought my moto then I’d just keep it. I didn’t have to take it to the city anymore and lane split across the bay bridge or allow the 20-year-old in me to accelerate to sixty in four seconds. I know how to ride safe. It could just be my cruising bike for April Sundays and midnight August nights, for country rides and smooth open highways and perhaps, for the rare woman who will swing her leg over and lean back onto the rest. 

It felt karmic—like I had just needed to get my head in the right place—when a few hours later I got an email from Lou who wrote a nice note that included these words: “Have cash, don’t want to insult you with ridiculous offers.”

I was pleased that someone else recognized the value. 

Bike and accoutrements as advertised on Craigslist.

I don’t want to co-opt anyone’s ancient belief system but I do feel that inanimate objects live and have a spirit. It feels authentic to give value to things, even things that are seen as trash. All properties have usefulness. It’s easy to see value in an old motorcycle that mechanically works well, but it’s there too in a sun-denuded water bottle matted with grass clippings and dirt on the side of the road. 

I wonder what kind of world it would be if human’s primary goal was to seek value in things and help guide them to a place where that value can be realized? What if we could bring that same feeling of value to our human relationships? What kind of world would we live in then?

I hope that Craigslist person got down to L.A. to see their girlfriend and to begin their program—if that’s what they were trying to say. I hope they didn’t have to give up their tools to get there. The value of things increases exponentially with access to tools. Materials and their possibilities take on a whole new meaning.  

My feet and hands post 2015 cross-country trip.

March 10, 2024

I bought these tennis shoes a few years ago to play with a friend. They were the cheapest that felt halfway decent. I figured the low price was because they were so plain, white, and uncool. Plain white tennis shoes have gone the way of the wooden racket. I don’t have a 20th century, colonial-cotton, hip, tennis ensemble but I got them anyway.

I started using them regularly when I joined the Pleasant Hill Tennis Club about eight months ago. It sounds fancy but it’s actually just six outdoor tennis courts at the Pleasant Hill Middle School that our club uses for mixers and adult league competition on Saturdays. For sixty bucks a year it’s a good deal and I can go play tennis every Saturday morning. 

I’ve been pondering spiffing the shoes up for a while and decided to make peace signs on the tops. President Biden’s State of the Union speech helped to put a little fire under this project. I thought his speech was very good and I liked that he was directly confronting the Republican ideology of revenge and fear adopted by the former president. I particularly like that he spelled out a return to higher taxes for the very wealthy. 

His powerful words that described Putin’s assault on freedom and democracy as a world threat had me rethinking my stance on the war in Ukraine. At the same time I kept thinking and keep thinking to myself there has to be another way.  I know there is. 

There is another way for Ukraine and Russia. There is another way for Israel and Palestine. There is another way for the countless wars and disputes on every continent of our planet. 

Do I know the way? No. 

We’ve all heard the slogan, “War is a lack of imagination” and I know with all my heart that this is true. 

John Lennon and Yoko Ono said, “War is over if you want it,” and I imagine almost everyone, even the most optimistic heard this most-Christian-of-Christmas-songs created by non-Christians and at some point said to themselves yeah, that’s easy to say, John and Yoko, but doing it is another matter. 

Here again, I have to agree…except, not firing a gun, not firing a mortar, not pushing a button to drop a bomb from a remote-controlled drone is a simple act. It only requires a difficult decision and I’m not going to act like I know how a person can make it. 

Is it mere coincidence that two WW2 movies are up for best picture? I saw Oppenheimer. I’ve not seen The Zone of Interest.

Oppenheimer deals with the making of the atomic bombs that decimated two Japanese cities killing an estimated 200,000 people. The moral dilemma of making this weapon and then using it is addressed but not the focus of the movie. It does, however, succeed in making us all a bit more culpable by showing the thousands of individuals who were necessary to make this package to deliver mass death. 

The Zone of Interest is about the family of a Nazi administer of Auschwitz. They lived privileged lives right next to the murder factory, only separated by a wall. The movie trailer makes is look like a true-life horror story. The personnel of Auschwitz killed 1.1 million people. 

It seems impossible to rationalize what was being done at Auschwitz and any of the other slaughter assembly lines created by Germans. It seems like some sort of self-hypnosis would be required—something beyond what we think of as the rational mind. I imagine The Zone of Interest attempts to show that. I want to see it. 

Is it a coincidence that “War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko” is nominated for best Animated Short?

In the United States we managed to rationalize our decision to annihilate all those people in Japan— they were the aggressors, the bombs put a swift end to a war that would have taken more lives, remember Pearl Harbor, etc.

It’s easy to rationalize continuing to arm the Ukrainians. This is mostly between warriors and most of the civilians killed are Ukrainians. The belief that Putin won’t stop just with Ukraine is espoused by Biden. The number of animals killed, the decimation to wilderness, the poisoning of land and water, the loss of infrastructure and untold human labor hours laid to waste don’t get that much air time. 

As for the soldiers, how often do we see their stories? Who are they? What forces made them choose to be there? Did they choose? Were there other options? 

In the early sixties my parents lived in an apartment in New Orleans next to a very depressed man who later killed himself. He’d been an airman on one of the planes that dropped one of the atomic bombs.

When are we going to stop treating Peace like something cute to do when it’s convenient? When will we start treating it with the full force of our imaginations? When will our majority Christian nation start acting Christian and actually invite this Christian god to truly bless America and bless the whole wide world with it?

I’ll end up voting for Biden simply because: though the Trump camp is against funding the war in Ukraine (I don’t know their stance on Israel), I know that Trump’s leaders are not opposed to war. I know they will gladly ravage innocents. 

Biden isn’t our savior. He is just a fire stop to put out the flames and give us time—which we could start today—to use our imagination. 

I invite you to convince me to not vote for Biden or tell me how Biden can be persuaded to change his stance on war. How could these wars be ended?

Imagination idea #1—planeloads of leaflets offering relocation, free education/ trade school training, citizenship and an equal or greater salary for a year to any soldier who wants to stop fighting and cross “enemy lines”.