wildlife – Spotty West Goes East

June 22, 2025

You really know you are in the south when people inquire about the status of your eternal soul. I have answered a question and settled a long-brewing debate for the time being, but it’s not about that. The question has been how am I going to get the lumber for a cabin using the wood on my land.

The debate was between pulling logs off the land to get milled by a professional or milling the lumber myself with a chainsaw. The first will be faster and easier on my body and will likely result in a superior product but it will involve buying or renting expensive equipment and a greater impact on the forest. With a chainsaw and Alaskan Mill I can make lumber where the trees fall.

I might end up doing it the faster way, but for a project that is still more in the dream phase it makes more sense to ease into it with on-site, forest milling.

To do this I bought another chainsaw and ordered and assembled an Alaskan Mill. The Alaskan Mill is basically a metal frame to guide the chainsaw down a rail screwed to the log. It allows the chainsaw to make smooth, even cuts and turn logs into usable building lumber.

I’m more than a little intimidated with the chainsaw I bought. The Stihl 500 is heavier and twice as powerful as my Stihl 251. I take some consolation in the fact that the smaller chainsaw also intimidated me when I first got it. The general wisdom is that you’d be foolish to not be wary.

I had trouble sleeping the night after I bought the larger one. It helped to stop stewing, turn on the light and watch some Youtube videos about it.

You can expect to see pictures and hear more on the process after I practice on my first log later this week.

Another of my purchases was a farm jack. I have a notion that I might be able to lift logs with it and put them on stands for milling to save my back from bending over too far.

I don’t know exactly how I will engineer this but I think it’s possible. I had a good conversation with an old farmer in the hardware store and he had lots of good ideas beyond his most frequent suggestion that I really should just buy a tractor. Still he didn’t give up on suggestions about how to use the jack until he asked me if I went to church and if I’d been saved.

This is always awkward. It seems to happen in the south more than other places I’ve lived. I told him I’m atheist and don’t subscribe to those beliefs hoping this definitive statement would end it quickly. Of course this may have just sweetened the pot if he thought he might get extra points for such a hardened case.

He went on a bit about the big guy on his throne in heaven and I started to get that aching feeling that I really wished he’d stop his pitch. Instead of fighting it too much I waited for the next pause and tried out an abrupt change of subject. Lo and behold it worked. We were even able to continue our conversation a bit more. He talked about Snatch Blocks and Clevis Hooks and other things I know nothing about except that the first step to learning is often just hearing the names.

After shopping there were several hours of sunlight left and I decided I had time to go to the land and do a little more brush-pile clean-up. I’ve decided not to burn but move the five large piles into the woods to rot.

After telling the man at the hardware store that I’ve never seen a snake on my property I saw my first one that evening. Strange how things seem to work that way — or is it because snakes are often on my mind when I talk about the forest the way sharks are on my mind when I talk about the sea?

There were several hours of sunlight left when I made it to the first brush pile to start work. These are mostly pine branches that are matted with wet needles from the recent rains. As I reached for a limb I startled a large black snake coiled on top. It immediately uncurled and slipped into the pile. Of course, it startled me a bit too but I recognized it as non-poisonous.

There are no all black poisonous snakes in North America. The often black Cottonmouth, aka Water Moccasin, has a yellowish belly and from my experience seeing dozens as a kid in Texas, they tend to be tapered and fat in the middle unlike this sleek serpent. Anyway, my land isn’t the habitat for Cottonmouth who like a year-round water source nearby.

I got out my phone and leaned it against a tree to be ready in case of another appearance. I kept my eye out as I worked to see if the snake would slip out of the pile somewhere.

It was disruptive, pulling on the pile, stuffing branches into the rolling trash- tote I bought to accommodate long limbs. I figured the snake would wait until I was taking a load into the woods and then slip out through the weeds, but then again, it might just hunker down. After all, what does a snake know about human intentions around clearing brush?

When I got to the bottom layer of the pile I took the load I had into the woods and came back. I took a glove off and held the camera while I pulled a big log from the pile that I thought the snake might be under. Nothing.

The wet, matted branches lift like shelves and I toed one up with my foot and there it was. I believe it would’ve stayed there and watched me had I not been both unbalanced and surprised and dropped the cover back abruptly. Finding a snake you think might be there is the same as going into a haunted house. You know to expect something scary but it doesn’t keep you from freaking out when you open a door and see a mad clown holding a knife. Besides, black snakes have been known to bite when cornered.

Had I been more careful lifting this bottom layer with a rake pole or stick I might’ve gotten a better shot. When I lifted the mat again it was done with staying put. The race was on. It headed toward the next brush pile and I got four fuzzy shots.

I won’t go so far to say that our human endeavors are anti-nature. We are nature. But, had I approached that brush pile with my powers of observation leading the way instead of my desire to get to work I might have gotten a clear photo of the beautiful creature curled on top.

My best guess is that this is a Black Racer but it could be a Rat Snake. A closer sustained look would have helped.

I’m more inclined to see a deer while hoeing the trails than using the weed whacker or while swinging an axe instead of firing up the chainsaw. There are costs to efficiency and speed. Even the plants I want to keep pay the price. I find myself cutting down cedar saplings and ferns simply because my eyes can’t keep up with the speed with which I swing the trimmer.

After seeing the snake for the second time and getting my fuzzy photos, I went over to a pile of logs to sit and take notes. As I was quietly getting my thoughts together, a hawk swooped by and landed on a stump 15 feet away.

“Hello there,” I said astonished.

It was a greeting that might be appropriate sitting at a city cafe when a friend walks into view and stops at the nearby cross walk. For the hawk however it was like, shit, who are you? She immediately took off.

Nature requires a certain formality. My introduction to both the snake and the hawk were forward to say the least.

The same day I saw my first snake I got my first tick…of the trip. Yes, I’ve had plenty of these, maybe 15 over the course of being out here (if I don’t count the raspberry picking episode with my nephew where we each got about 10 all at once and saw them creeping everywhere across our clothes toward open flesh).

The number of ticks I get each trip is getting smaller and usually it is caused by a lapse in protocol. In this case I was working with my short-sleeve shirt untucked. (My bare arms where sprayed with Off which does seem to keep them away.)

Ticks still freak me out more than any other animal for the obvious reason that they are gross, blood-sucking vampires that bore their ugly heads into your flesh and because they can carry potentially devastating, disease-causing organisms. The Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete carried by the Black-Legged, aka Deer tick, causes Lyme Disease. They can go into a cystic form that researchers believe may allow them to lie dormant and unaffected by antibiotics until they reawaken later to cause havoc.

I found this tick on my belly as I undressed to shower. It was fastened but came off with a steady pull that left it holding a tiny bit of my flesh in its jaws.

I dropped it in the sink. It landed on its back bicycling its eight little legs in the air. I rushed out of the room with a towel around my waist to get my phone. Pictures are important to identify the species and potential, associated disease.

The phone wasn’t in my room. It wasn’t downstairs. I tenderly hoofed over the gravel to the truck in the garage and couldn’t find it there either. I asked my Aunt to use hers.

This all took less than three minutes and when I arrived back upstairs the tick was gone!

Freak out time! In slasher movie this is the part where a high, screechy note is played on the violin. The killer was just standing behind you. You turn quickly. It’s gone.

Shit!

Now there was a deadly parasite loose in the house. I scanned across the floor near the sink using the phone’s flashlight. I moved items and searched the top. I aimed the light down the drain and in the little overfill hole. Nothing!

I figured maybe is slid into the drain. Ticks don’t seem great about walking up inclined, smooth surfaces. I ran water for a few seconds and then ran it another 30 until it was hot and then ran it some more. Agh!

Surely it fell down the drain.

The next morning I went to brush my teeth, my memory of the sanguivore present but dulled by sleep. I casually scanned the surface again and then my eyes popped, jolted awake.

There it was flagging at the top of the liquid soap dispenser! That little fucker had somehow crawled out of the sink in the three minutes I was looking for my phone. This was equivalent to a sprinter running the length of a football field.

During the night the little mole-mimicker had found one of the highest points and resumed the position to grab hold of its prey.

I think this is an American Dog Tick. They like humans too.

Without disturbing it I got my phone in the next room and took a picture. Then I scrapped it in the sink. I tried mashing it with the bottom edge of a glass before remembering how unmashable they are.

I opened a sink drawer and found some long toenail scissors and cut it into little pieces. Then I washed it down the sink for real this time. I ran the water, unreasonably, abhorrently long, letting it get hot, piping hot — letting it stay hot. I was the final victor in the slasher movie where I’d been stalked. I imagined myself in the final scene. I would be yelling down the pipe, screaming, out of my mind — “Are you dead yet fucker? Are you dead?”

Ugh. I don’t like to say it but I hate ticks.

It’s taken a while but I’ve gotten over an incident with my nephew about 17 years ago when we visited the land with my mom, Sharon and Linda and saw wild raspberries growing all along the dirt road to the falling cabin. Anthony and I got out of the car to pick raspberries and about a minute into the activity looked down and were covered with ticks. Nary a tick was seen when I got these a few days ago. So delicious!

Southeastern Five-Lined skink next to the shed

String-trimming (a more delicate way to say weed-wacking) is so much easier than hoeing the trails.

This rotted tree stump had this layered-set of concentric bark rings at the bottom as if the tree rotted or was eaten from top to bottom carrying the more hearty, resistant bark with it as it went down. Who knows how it happened? Other theories?

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

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.