The Goldfinch is an exceedingly cautious bird.  Those who come to our thistle feeders have a predictable habit of turning to look behind them.  The timing seems to be in their nature, because all Goldfinches do this just alike.  Seed . . . seed . . . look around . . . seed . . ..  And so it goes, and so it goes.  The Goldfinches obviously do not wish to become casualties.  I wonder if they are nervous and fearful, or if this is just a monotonous habit.

I have observed through my binoculars (or long ago my rifle scope, sorry) the cautious behavior of groundhogs.  Like Goldfinches, they also have a predictable pattern.  Their routine is head down and graze . . . sit up and look north . . . head down and graze . . . . sit up and look east . . . head down and graze, etc.  They will sit up and look for trouble four times, facing four directions, and then repeat on and on.  Also they will always keep track of the direction to their nearest groundhog hole.  When startled, they know exactly which direction to run.

Another bird does it differently, and that is the Chickadee.  The Chickadee is also a very cautious bird, but the strategy is totally different.  The Chickadee sits in a safe tree nearby, picks a good time when the coast is clear, swoops in to the feeder and immediately grabs a seed, then gets the hell out.  The Chickadee takes his prize to the shelter of a well-leaved tree, sits on a sheltered limb, and eats it there.  If all went well the bird will return again and again, but always making and entire round trip for one tiny seed.

You wonder how great is the threat to birds.  We know there are cats around.  And sometimes raccoons come for food, which an unsuspecting bird might become.  And there are snakes, and there are the predator birds we call raptors.  I am not sure what else.  It appears, though, that bright as their colors may be and sweetly though they may sing, life is dangerous for the birds and caution is needed.

But the Grackles don’t seem to believe that this applies to them.  The Grackles just swoop in like they own the place, take all they want, stay as long as they please, and never look over their shoulders.  Maybe nothing would want to eat a Grackle?

Wrong.  We were sitting on the deck one afternoon.  Out of the sky fell a hawk who smacked a Grackle dead in one stroke and only a puff of black feathers left behind.

I guess no matter how you choose to face it, there are no guarantees.

I was hiking on a lakeshore trail in a nearby state park. Ahead was a small wooden bridge across a stream. Several good steps and you would be across this bridge. But crossing it on this early morning, I noticed something that brought me to a stop. Someone had written something there. I imagined it to be the hand of a young boy. But instead of “fuck you” or “parents suck” it was something strangely different.

“I love you!”

As I walked on, I began pondering this message. It was not addressed to anyone. Usually you would expect a name attached. “I love you, Mary!” Or Jane, or Sally . . . someone with a name.

Was the boy shy? Did he want to leave the message anonymous, so he could point it out to any girl he brought and claim it was to her? Or could his love have been for another boy, and no girl at all? Or was this message more of a wish than a reality? He felt love, but his love had no name to attach to?  Or could he have just been happy on a bright, sunny day and in love with life and with everyone?  I kept wondering because there were all these possibilities, and no way to tell for sure about any of them.

However, I vote for the bright, sunny day.  A day with an exclamation mark beside it.  A day when love was an overwhelming feeling that had to be written down, even on a bridge.  A day when it was free and unbounded, including all the world and the entire human race.

I know this sounds like nonsense.  I know such writing was not placed by the head of the local chamber of commerce, kneeling down on those boards in his business suit and tie.  It is nonsense for sure to him.  This is the work of a child, we assume.  It must have been a child, we assume.  Thus we make it childish and foreign to our practical lives.

Sometimes on televised football games the camera shows a person in the end zone holding a sign saying “John 3:16″–the location of a verse in the Bible.  The person wants us to get a Bible and read that verse.  He believes it will do us some good.  Perhaps it will for, if I recall correctly, this passage begins “God so loved the world . . ..”  So in this theology it is god-like to love the world, but that is in theory.  It seems that the majority of god-fans don’t see it that way.  Their god loves their particular portion of the world–their country or tribe or religion or ethnic group, or whatever.

Speaking before a fundraiser for his political party, Newt Gingrich recently declared: “I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!”  In this view it is every country for itself, and may the best country win.  Or it is every race or language group for itself.  Or it is every social or religious group for itself.  And so we always at war, one against another.  So it goes, and so it goes.

Human love, if we have any, tends to narrow down, not broaden out.  We love only certain classes, races, political persuasions.  We love children and relatives only if they behave themselves and treat us as they should.  We certainly would never love an enemy.  Our loved ones are the loving ones, meaning those who love us.  Thus does love amount to no better than a practical selfishness.

I know the author of the inscription didn’t have all of this in mind, but it’s what I think about every time I cross his bridge.

Adirondack Shelter

The park lies astride two lines on the map: the Tennessee/North Carolina state line and the Appalachian Trail.  The trail held the most interest to me.  Along the trail there were camp sites with rustic Adirondack Shelters like the one pictured here.  They were made of logs and very solid.  They were open on one side and that’s where you built your fire and did the cooking.  A good spring was always nearby with cold, running water.  If I could add up all the nights I spent in these shelters it would be measured in months.

As boys, our scoutmaster taught us that staying in these shelters was both a privilege and a responsibility.  He said that the next hikers behind us might get in late or arrive in the rain.  We must leave some good dry wood and kindling.  We must leave the place clean.  And some left-over canned food would be a good idea too.  We must think of those who would come after us, and we must leave things for them as we would like to find them for ourselves.

Being a serious and thoughtful young man, I took these instructions to heart.  I felt satisfaction when I left a shelter in good order.  I felt guilt if I did not.  I rarely failed to leave things the best I possibly could.

I have hiked in and found shelters exactly as I would have left them, and I have found them trashed and without a stick of dry wood.  On those occasions I would wonder what kind of people had left things in such a mess.  Had no one ever told them about their responsibility?  I supposed they must have been from somewhere far away.  People who had not been raised right.

We pulled into such a shelter late one day in a solid downpour.  We were tired and soaked and cold and looking forward to a warm fire.  As my buddies huddled and rested, I went back out in the rain with my double-bit axe.  Across on the ridge I found a dead chestnut tree.  I knew there was dry wood inside.  I chopped and chopped and brought back logs to split under the shelter.  After considerable effort I got a hot blaze going.  The next party would find a nice stack of that wood all ready to go.

Why do I think back on this and feel that same kind of guilt as crude oil floods the Gulf of Mexico from an exploded oil well off the coast?  The fact that we are drilling for oil a mile deep and far out to sea highlights the fact that we have already plundered all of the underground oil that is easily within our reach.  We are going for the last of it, no matter the cost or the consequences.  For those who come down the trail behind us there will be none left, but who cares?

I once pulled into an Appalachian Trail shelter and found that people needing firewood and unwilling to climb the nearby ridge and fell a dead tree had taken apart and burned the entire outhouse, excluding the seat.  The seat sat oddly by itself in full view of the world.  Like the mountains in West Virginia that are stripped off to get the last of the coal and then left behind as so much waste.

Waste is the word for it.  The land, the trees and plants, the air and water, the buried resources, the wild living things that fly and run and burrow–we are wasting it all.  Those who come after us will surely wonder what sort of people could have done this.

Malcomb was both fascinated by this sight and distressed because none of his friends had seemed to notice.  But the man with the ugly foot was close to him and looking his way, so he pretended not to notice.  Then the man turned his back and started to the hair dryer nearby.

The man had noticed Malcomb noticing.  Being a swimmer who often appeared shoeless and pantless in pool locker rooms, he had encountered the curiosity of young boys in the past.  His most memorable occasion was once when a very small one went and brought his older brother in for a look, then went back and tried to get his mother to do the same.  So he did know what was up when he heard Malcomb loud whisper out, “Hey Jason . . .!”

Anticipating something of the sort, the man at the hair dryer turned quickly.  He caught Malcomb pointing and giggling, and the two made eye contact.  Malcomb looked away quickly hoping he had not been detected but knowing he had.  Any remorse was unapparent.

I thought about sticking my foot in his face and inviting him to take a better look.  I actually considered doing this.  Then the expression “boys will be boys” came to mind.  Then I began an internal conversation with that expression.  Boys should be taught better, I said.  It’s one thing to laugh at someone who makes a fool of himself, but another to laugh at something a person had absolutely no control over.  Such as the color of his skin or the fact that sometimes when they give out right feet a man gets a bad one.

View from our deck

Due to my recent hip replacement, I am not in snow shoveling form and my wife Karen is handling this task.  I have lived in the DC area since 1973 and never has the snow shoveling task been like this year.  We measure our snows now in terms of feet, not inches.  Inches are hardly worth mentioning.  In our subconscious we do realize there are parts of the country for whom winters like this are normal and expected.  But they are not us.

Were it not for those who go out in this mess to plow our streets and answer emergency calls and take doctors and nurses to the hospitals and climb power poles to replace transformers and downed power lines and pull slid-off-the-road cars back to the road and haul them off if needed and find where trees have fallen across the roads and chainsaw them into pieces and haul them off and drive ambulances through unploughed neighborhoods to get to stroke and heart attach victims and many other things I can only guess at, we would be lost and desperate.  (The previous sentence is intentionally complex and confusing because that’s the way things are now.)

Karen was out with her snow shovel awhile ago and a snow plow came into our court.  It made a couple of rounds and then I heard conversation.  Karen was telling the driver what a good job he was doing and how much she appreciated it.  I was amused but not surprised.  This is the same wife who gave our mail person a $40 cash tip just before Christmas.  She has given other things to such people in these situations.

How did our weary snow plow driver react to this appreciation?

Well, he made numerous additional trips around the court with an emphasis on our place.  Karen was still standing with her shovel and watching.  He used his big machine almost like a shovel, carefully getting as close as possible to curbs, cars, driveways, and mail boxes.  This saved a ton of hand shoveling.  When he finished and started out of our court, Karen thanked him again with an excited wave.

There are fellow citizens in these situations who take a different approach.  They holler and complain loudly about snow piles left behind and lack of service for all the tax money they pay.  They make angry phone calls and write angry letters to county officials.  They get their blood pressure raised and faces all red, feet stomping, irritable with their spouses for hours afterward.

I like Karen’s approach the best.  Most times it actually works better, and not just for snow plow drivers.

It gives you a funny feeling to be running along and have them fly over you and spray you. But I kept on running. And after while I came upon the woman who was directing all this.

She had a balloon way up in the sky on the end of a rope, and was sitting in her car with a radio, talking in the sky with a helicopter. I noticed she had all her car windows rolled up, hot as it was.

She saw me coming and got out of her car as if something important was up. She met me in the road and I thought maybe she wanted directions to somewhere else in the neighborhood. Since I run these streets all the time, I could have helped her for sure.

But instead of that, she had serious advice. She said, “It’s not a good time to be out running, because we’re spraying.”

And I said, “Well, it’s not a good time to be out spraying, because I’m running.” Then I ran on.

We each did our own thing that afternoon, because they kept right on spraying and I kept right on running. And I’m alive to write about it now these many years later.

So I guess no harm was done to me, and certainly not to them.

People who try to tell you what to do may have a balloon and seem official, but think twice before you mind them. Afternoons were made for running.

Shuckstack Fire Tower in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Until motion caught the corner of an eye, and short hairs raised up straight along the back of my neck.

Damn! Holy shit!

Life slowed down to frame-by-frame speed as I tried to get the legs to move or jump or something at least, which they finally did.

I landed some distance away.

He was coming after me, no.  He was watching me, yes. Coiled up tight with his tail raised at one end now and his head at the other.  Long tongue flicking out, eyes shiny as black beads.  I felt behind for the hunting knife in the tooled leather holder on my belt.

Maybe I could draw and throw that thing like Tarzan.  Pin his head to the ground with perfect aim. Or maybe quick as a cat I could fake him with one hand then grab him just behind the head with the other as he struck and missed. A kid of high school age will think such thoughts.  And then go hunting for a forked stick.

Found one.

The heart is pounding as I approach.  All twelve of his rattles are buzzing like bees in an angry swarm.

I wonder if John Wayne or any war hero would be scarred like me.  Crawling along somewhere in a field, bullets kicking up the dirt, shells exploding, buddies dying.

But the dying I worry about is right here in front of me now.

He does not like my stick at all.  He keeps jerking his head around and away as I try to aim it.

Yes . . . oops . . . no, there . . . again now . . . yes!  And now I have him pinned and must try to do this.  With my knife I used to slice bacon only this morning.  Slice off his head and begin to steady my nerves.

I have learned since then that we should not be killing rattlesnakes.  There may even be a law against it.  But I did not know that then, and it probably would have made no difference.

The North Chickamauga Creek Gorge

When I lived there the local name for this place was “Chickamauga Gulf,” or just “The Gulf.” It was totally wild and remote, as much of it still is. The view of it on the topographical map serves to show its twists and turns, but can’t portray how steeply and ruggedly it is cut into the mountains it drains. Being adventurous, I often laced on my boots and hiked, climbed, and rock scrambled the gulf. And when I learned to fly a small plane . . . well, I’m ahead of my story.

When you live in a small town and fly a small plane, people sometimes ask you to “take them up.” I loved doing that, especially with people who had never flown before. I once landed in the cow pasture of a farmer who lived on the land his ancestors had farmed for generations. But he had never see it from the air until the day I took him up. I knew it was an experience he would remember the rest of his life. We soared and circled like birds on the wing. His excitement was unquenchable.

But once there was a young boy who showed no excitement whatever. In fact, he appeared bored by the prospect. His grandmother had arranged this ride and he made sure I knew that he had flown a lot and this was no big deal for a guy like him. At first I thought I’m make a quick loop around the airport and deposit him back where he came from. But then another idea came to me.

I climbed and headed out across Walden’s Ridge toward the shallow beginnings of North Chickamauga Creek Gorge, chatting nonchalantly about unrelated matters. I had done this several times before, always

The plane that made this trip

alone. I tried not to show my own increasing tension and to mirrow the young man’s bored demeanor. We eased down above the treetops and then the white water of the creek and began to follow the snaking turns. Then we were below the trees that topped the gorge on either side, and banking sharply left and right as on a crooked mountain road. As the gorge got deeper, we flew down lower to where you were looking up at the cliffs on either side–if you could get a view at all.

This had the intended effect. Holding on for his dear young life, his words, in approximate order, were “Hey!!” and “What are you doing?!” and “Are you trying to kill us??”

He did not wet his pants as far as I could tell. But I think it was close.

We had only a short time together that first night.  But at home, later on, I knew I must be with her again.  Soon, I hoped.  The next day I came up with all sorts of reasons why this was a very good thing, a thing I deserved, a thing that gets offered and you have a right to.  A thing that might go against your upbringing, sure, but also against the stupidity of social restraints we submit to.  Restraint be damned.  I was ready for this.

As you might guess, we began to meet when and where we could.  She was intoxicating.  The more I was with her, the more I needed to be with her more.  I constructed all kinds of excuses and occasions.  I found myself planning my days around chances to be with her.  For when I was with her I was new and different to myself.  I was freer, funnier, wiser, manlier, braver–everything.  And that was intoxicating too.  I loved her, yes, but also I loved what I became in her presence, under her spell.

Now and then I would ask myself where this was headed.  After all, I did have a job, and a wife, and two children, and a reputation to uphold, and a church I went to, and work to do around the house that I paid less and less attention to.  I paid less and less attention to everything, actually.  And people may have noticed this, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to think about it.  I went on paying more and more attention to her.

For years I did.

Finally I did ask myself where this was headed.  In my sober moments, I realized that I was not in control of this relationship.  It was in control of me.  I was spending my life covering up, making excuses, and offering apologies.  I was no longer the free and funnier man I had been.  I was a man caught in circumstances of his own making, whose life had become unmanageable.

Six years ago, in great desperation, I told her I had had enough and could not go on.  She thought I would change my mind, and that surely we could see each other occasionally and be friends.  But we had tried to do that over and over, and it never worked.

I walked into Joe’s office, closed the door, sat down, and told him my story.

“I have to make a change,” I said.

I did not forget her the day I made this change.  I missed her terribly.

For a long time I was more of a wreck without her than I had become with her.

But I did not waver, and have not until now.  “One day at a time,” as they say.  As we say.  We alcoholics.

Dog on duty in Iraq

The trainer I talked with said the thing that makes a bomb dog’s day is to do his job well and have the trainer tell him he’s been a good dog.

But it has to be the trainer telling him that. Anyone else tells him “good dog” and he says “well who the hell are you?” He has one master, and what this master says about his work is the only thing that matters to him.

It must be hard working every day as a bomb dog. You have to work alone and make your own decisions. There’s no such thing as calling a fellow bomb dog over and asking him to take a whiff. Ask what does this smell like to him? Have a conference on it like the umpires do when they throw down their yellow flags. They huddle together and decide why they did that. But a bomb dog has to make his decision alone, and in a hurry.

And speaking of in a hurry, it would be easy to get heavy-nosed while in a hurry. But a bomb dog can’t get heavy-nosed or he won’t be staying on the bomb squad long. His trainer wouldn’t appreciate it either. Instead of “good dog” he’d be hearing something else. Or most likely hearing nothing.

When you’re in an explosive situation, the first thing you have to do is stay light-nosed.