Lodestone

So, it’s September now, and in seven days summer officially ends and autumn begins. At this border set by out planet’s motion around the sun, it is time to access Avalon’s Garden’s harvest.

Well . . . the flower gardens were lovely.  They always are. As for the veggie garden – well, maybe not so much. Many things did not even come up: herbs, collards peas pulled a no-show.  A few beets appeared but they were puny and never grew. Beans came up nicely, though, but their presence was noted by the white tail deer before I could cover them.  Still, I had a bean harvest. They were wonderfully sweet. You know, I never liked beans until I had them from our garden. So, I’m claiming beans as a success. Carrots, too.  They are coming along nicely though they are small. That might be my fault. I could have thinned them out better.  Summer squash are few; they were last year, too.

Alas the tomatoes! Something nipped many of the tops of the young plants. Those unmolested gave only pale fruits. Even the small cherry tomatoes plants that usually become overloaded with enough to overwhelm any appetite produced only a paltry amount.

Late August and early September storming didn’t help. I live in an area of Wisconsin that received a “biblical” amount of rainfall and some 17 tornadoes. Avalon’s driveway was left badly washed out, but three miles north acres of trees were uprooted, and power poles snapped.

So, I was lucky!

But, back to the garden. Things will change. Even Susan knew the vegetable garden was too large for a working couple. It occurred to her, too, that it may be too large for an older, nonworking, couple. So, as I work to put the garden to bed for the winter, I’m making some decisions about its size for next year. Currently, the veggie garden is comprised of sixteen 4X12 foot beds. Each bed is bordered with cedar planks that are at the end of a 20-year life corralling our veggies.  Though I need to repair them all, some have deteriorated beyond mending. I’m dismantling the worst frames and will let those beds return to quack grass and whatever else grows in this old pasture. I’ve already taken out two beds, lugging the planks out and putting them in a pile next to the compost bins. The target is to have ten beds, and in those, I’ll plant green manure.  To move things along in the compost bins, I’ve poured the bedding from my sister’s chicken coups that she has had to dismantle since she and her husband are going to become condo-folk later this fall.  All that great chicken debris is great stuff, and before dumping it into the compost bins, I sun warmed a trash can of chicken-poop-soup. That got poured out on the rhubarb that has folded back for the year and the asparagus that has gone full frond mode.

Never thought gardening would make me a chef of sorts cooking for the garden.

But, the flower gardens that are just now entering autumn bloom . . . those will remain just as they are.

Standing Indian Mountain – March 2010

The Cherokee were right. A winged monster does live here:
    an ice dragon.

Crested now headed down I enter a tunnel
    of bowed rhodendron
         their branches heavy with ice
              wrapped around their cold curled leaves.

Despite the clear sky and brilliant morning sun
      its light filtering through the reverant branches and strobing as I walk
            It is the wind
                   southwest born
                         my Wisconsin bones recognize
                              as the wintry dragon’s breath,
                                   and I shiver as I walk
                                        looking down, carefully navigating
                                            the tangle of roots and rock
                                                  that hazard the trail.

The sun, though, rules this day
     putting te dragon on notice its rein will be shattered
         by strokes of spring lightening and rain.

But, this dragon is defiant still,
     and I hear its breath rise
          in the humbled branches above me.

The icy sheaths
   on the sun warmed leaves
      crack – splinter.

On me
         around me
            the stuff falls
                 like shards of frosted glass
                     covering the foot prints I have been following.
                                   
             

Title: At the NOC

The Buddha

tells us all things

are empty;

nothing has independent existence.

At the outdoor center

           the Nantahala runs quickly by.

Not whipped white here

         though there is easy froth,

                 a promise of down river.

Two days ago

          I stepped over the rivers feeders,

                  drank from them

                         without knowledge of where

                                  they were hurrying to.

When I was twenty

              gravity played cruel tricks,

                         and I thought everything

                                was uphill.

I didn’t know life flowed

            down hill too,

                     and my life

                            and so many others

                                    came together and raced

                                              toward the yet unseen ocean.

Sometimes smooth, flowing,

           sometimes …

Down river

          beyond the foot bridge,

                     beyond the turn where

                                 quartzite bares its teeth,

the Nantahala seethes.

All of us together

             bound downstream

                         to something bigger,

                                     something unknown.

Every blog has a purpose and the purpose of this one is more obvious from the title than the previous entry.  Yes, the entries here will comment on an attempt at through hiking the Appalachian Trail.  The previous entry, the preface, is vague about that.  Beginnings are sometimes a bit vague on what is to follow.  To be fully honest with you, reader – this blog is pure whimsy, an indulgence by one who loves written words and fancies he can string a few together to an end that resembles art.  There is real work being done elsewhere, though, that is more substantial and carries more weight.  You can learn more about that by following the links in the Blog Roll on this page.

But before you surf away, I’d like to tell you a very short story – a love story.  It is about Percy and Lorena Winter whose tale spans sixty four years of commitment.  He, Perc – he liked to be called Perc – once told me of walking over a bridge near Charleston, West Virginia one sunny Sunday afternoon and spying his future partner walking in the opposite direction with some other girl friends.

“I knew right then and there, she was the one for me,” he said, smiling, the memory still clear in his mind.

For Rene (pronounced like Reenie with all “e’s” long sounding) it was turning down one suitor who had vied for her hand for a long time and to whom she was engaged. “One night I dreamed of walking out of a church dressed in a wedding gown – alone.  I knew then and there that Perc was who I was supposed to marry.”

 Their sixty four year commitment makes me a bit ashamed that I married their daughter, Susan, much later in life after two failed attempts of securing that part of the American Dream.  Susan would remind me here that that would have been very unlikely as she (she being “the right one”) still lived in West Virginia and I was in Wisconsin when we would first have been of marrying age.

 Sixty four years is a long time and there are certainly many stories that could be told, but I promised a short tale.  This tale comes at the end.  Perc, an avid golfer who shot nine holes twice a week right up to that end, went out to the links in November four years ago and returned home not feeling good.  A week or so later, he coughed so hard something inside tore.  He died a few days after Thanksgiving.

 Christmas was bound to be hard for Rene so Susan and I drove down to Charleston to be with her and help her sort things out.  I cooked and did dishes as Susan and Rene gathered important papers, and went over the banking.  Perc and Rene were not rich people.  They had lived comfortably enough in their small bungalow on the side of a hill, and there was enough to see Rene through for some years.  That much I knew already, but there was more to learn.  They had been generous with what they had.  Staunch Christians, they gave at church, of course, but they also gave regularly to secular organizations that sought to give services and medical help to those that missed out on the cornucopia that is America.  Giving didn’t stop there.  There had been no funeral for Percy Winter.  He had given his body to the university in hopes that it could be used to educate those that aspired to be physicians.

 I marveled at that, told Rene that that was a wonderful thing to do.  We were sitting at the table in the kitchen, I think, over after lunch coffee.  She folded her hands on the table and looked out into the room and took in a breath.

 “Well,” she said.  “We’ve always tried to do a little good in the world.”

 She said it so quietly as if those words were but a shrug to say “Of course, it’s what everyone does after all.”

 I felt myself smiling, my soul humbled to be there with Rene, to have played a round of golf with Perc, and to have been allowed to join their family through my marriage to Susan.

 To do some good in the world . . . to help take care of one another.

 The essence of those words – to care – are so central to all the world’s religions and all the great societies that have ever been that you have to wonder why we argue and fight one another at all.  And, we all have given money at one time or another to our churches, synagogues, temples and secular organizations like the Red Cross or United Way, but it is never enough to end suffering.  The needs of the world are great.

 To do some good in the world . . .

 I work at Northwoods Inc. of Wisconsin, a not-for-profit that helps people with disabilities and the frail in South Central Wisconsin by providing services and employment for them.  Every day I have the good fortune to work for and with people who have made caring about others a personal goal.  My career has been in communications and automation, 38 years.  I support the Northwoods computers.  It feels good to help out with Northwoods’ mission, but I want to do more.  If that sounds grandiose or self-serving, I hope you can forgive me for the truth is that I can’t do it alone.  I need help – your help.

I ask you to learn about Northwoods and “Where’s Craig” and in the spirit of caring, sponsor some of the 2,179 miles of my journey.

I may post here from time to time during the trip, but majority will be on the “Where’s Craig” blog since that is tied to this effort for Northwoods.

This walk is about more than just a stab at childhood fancy.   It’s more than a singular effort; it’s about what we can do together. So, let’s do some good in the world. 

Now go ahead, click away.  I recommend the “Where’s Craig” link on the Blog Roll.

When I was a boy, I found a book in my grandparent’s attic.  Its cover was dark, leathery, and it lay at the bottom of a box filled with many other books that didn’t attract me as this one did.  It was old.  It was about the exploration of Africa.

The pictures grabbed me of course: detailed drawings, some penned in color, others black and white, depictions of fierce predators, large lumbering elephants, and crafty alligators.  There was a picture of Henry Stanley extending his hand to Dr. Livingston.

But, near the beginning of this book, in the first chapter I think, there was a map showing the coast of the continent.  Harbors were marked in dark black ink and gray hatch marks followed the way of coastal hills, and blue ribbons traced the course of rivers.  But the thing with this map was that as you followed those rivers inland where they meandered around those mountains and through forests, the ink – black, grays and greens – dulled, faded into the page until the interior of Africa was only a blank page. 

And that thrilled me, that shell of a continent – its interior – unknown.

Of course I was old enough to know that that age of discovery was long past.  I only had to ride my bicycle through the heavy humid summer air, down North Second Street to the library and look at the globe on the table at the middle of the room and see Africa whole and known.

That book triggered within me a desire for adventure that persisted through all my childhood summers in Northern Illinois riding my bicycle to the other side of town.  That desire was further fed at summer camp in Atwood Park where I climbed out of the bus into Monday morning with hundreds of other children and we were divided into tribes that took Indian names, and we spent a week living in tents or camping under the open sky and learned the names of some of the trees, birds, and we canoed, hiked, and learned how fragile some of those things crawling and growing outside really were and that we needed to take care of them if we loved them.

And then we went home, went to school, moved away, and one day found ourselves in the middle of everything – without a map – alternating between euphoria and fear that we might fail.  Grasping and compromising we made our way into adulthood, jobs, families, and then one day we had children of our own.  And they grew too fast and left, sailing away with what little direction we could give all the while wishing, praying we could have given them better directions – a map.

One day as I sat alone in the living room, I happened to look down at my hands and caught myself wondering whose hands they were.  The flesh had lost suppleness, the skin hung around the knuckles, and when I flexed my fingers, valleys formed, like hills on the back of my hand their blue ridges marked by the veins that carried my own blood.  They were no longer the eager hands of that small boy in my memory who crouched in a dust mote sun streaked attic reaching into a forgotten box and who marveled at something as wonderful as an incomplete map. 

I realized then dreams sometimes die.  That made me sad.