On a Late Winter Day

 Shila and I had been planning to get out for a hike one mid- February afternoon, but it was so gray and dreary that we slogged away at cleaning our respective houses instead.  Hours after we'd decided to scratch the hike, I saw a broken sky coming and called her. "We've got a broken sky. Not much light left. Let's just get out and drive around and look at clouds, cover maximum territory."

She was up for that! She raced up from town and we piled into my Subaru with Chetty. We sought out several dirt roads that I'd been driving by for a couple of decades and had always wondered about. I wanted to find out how they all connected. 

The first one we took led to a fabulous dairy farm. I have since learned from helpful Facebook friends that the white bags that I had surmised might contain spare rainclouds, saved for a dry summer day, actually have silage or haylage inside, fermenting away for the cattle to eat. I prefer to think of them as cloud storage, so I will.

 Instead of fretting that they were spoiling my photos, I decided to love the giant white plastic bags. They sure looked cool in this panorama. Please click on it to embiggen.

Shila and Chet and I lingered as long as we could in a small German churchyard, where the stones were all auf Deutsch. 

The clouds stuck together, the wind turned sharp and the temperature plummeted. We had barely worn enough clothes. I love these hands and the fonts on this stone. Also, this is a classic Chet Baker photobomb. Does he see dead people? 

 The font and the image on this monument get me.  GATES AJAR GONE HOME. They remind me of my new friend Bobby Rosenstock's amazing work at Just A Jar Design Press here in Marietta.

We fled from the biting wind and gloomy skies of the German cemetery, turning onto a very strange road, knowing not where we'd end up. As I drove, the terrain began to look familiar. "I think I know where I am!" I said.  Sugar Run...the name was so familiar, I'd seen it before, so I knew it would come out on a road I drive. Sure enough, we came out at a bizarre backwater of trailers, shanties and outbuildings where, as far as I can tell, large numbers of junked cars are generated to be spread for miles through the surrounding countryside. Geesh! We broke out onto some familiar rolling hills and the sun did, too. We had trees to visit in the last light of day. 

I have long since fallen in love with this row of white ashes, only to find them losing their bark this winter. Emerald ash borers are devastating our forest. Hey why not? Everybody else is. So, knowing these ashes are doomed, I take their portraits at every turn, because they will probably be gone a year from now. I call them the Samba Dancers. I particularly love the one who leans way out over the road, shaking her thing. All good things must pass, I'm told.

Just up the hill from them is my wee sassafras, the one who reaches and reaches without finding anything to stop her questing twig-fingers.

That crazy branch starting at the middle of the right side of the trunk and meandering its way into the sky makes me smile every time I see it. The other branches lean away from it as if they know it's crazy, and maybe a bit dangerous. It seems not to care that it could soon spoil the proportions and outlines of its mother tree. That branch is going for it.

The sun peeked out from behind its cloud-curtain and slammed golden light into the scene, throwing some branches into relief. I realized, looking at them from another angle, that the two branches on the lower right were going a bit wacky, too. That whole tree has got it going on. That sassafras is feeling itself.

Stepping closer, I looked over the hill and found a new scene beyond the little tree. 

I'm going to walk back there someday, see where it goes. 

How lucky can you get, to be able to seek out such landscapes whenever you please?

Just down the road is my Cold Mountain sassafras.  The scene looks like something from Antietam to me. A place where the rifle balls flew so thick and fast that what few trees remained standing had their branches blown off. It's timeless.

I love it in every light. Big clouds coming up behind, well, that's fine, too. 

Shila and I shot cloudscapes all the way home. There's another Civil War scene on our road, but this time the big oak belongs to us. That's a good feeling, to know that nobody's going to cut that tree but you, and you're never, ever going to lay a blade on it. This oak has some interesting branching, too, some lower limbs that are a bit out of proportion to the rest. I think that's what makes it beautiful.

Back home by the mailbox, the best was yet to come. Creamy sunset clouds and more white plastic. Plastic never looked so good, as Hodge has observed.

The light was bouncing from the clouds to the puddle to the plastic and back, and the hayrolls were floating somewhere in the middle of it all.

Another successful photo-expotition had come to its conclusion, by far the best three hours of that February Sunday.

Five Hour Energy

There was a fluky little 60's song by the Small Faces called Itchycoo Park, with the refrain, "It's all too beautiful..."Sometimes that sticks in my mind as I move through these landscapes, helpless to stay home in the morning. How can I stay inside when the chicory is showing the knapweed, with flowers the color of faded underwear, what blue means?

When the sun finally peeks out and slams silently across this hayfield, turning it into a Landseer painting? It's all too beautiful. I want to paint it. But I settle for grabbing it in click after click, taking it home in my pocket, and sharing it with you.

Today we'll do a six mile run, beyond the church, then back to it.

I've been upping my mileage because it feels good. I try to run at least 4.5 miles each morning. Then sometimes more. Nothing hurts. I've shrunken. It works. It keeps me on the earth. It looks good on Chet, too. That's a 9 1/2 year-old dog there, with a shiny tuxedo and a waistline, trotting smartly. Dogs last longer if you get out with them every day.

As I go, I often pick up litter. It ticks me off that people litter, but I do like to read the labels on what the litterbugs are eating and imbibing. Without exception, they throw bottles, cans and wrappers of things I would never consider putting in my mouth. I like a good IPA, but Bud, Busch and Miller Lite? Life's too short. Ding Dongs, Little Debbies, Slim Jims, Dr. Pepper. The wrappers that get thrown in our hayfields and ditches do not come from health food. And as a latent anthropologist, the litter I find tells me a lot about the segment of humanity that's tossing it.

I found this one interesting. I've always wondered what makes up Five Hour Energy. Let's see...You could run every morning, and feel great throughout, and be full of good thoughts and energy and have 30 beautiful pictures in your pocket when you get back, or you could just tip this neat little bottle into your cakehole.  8,333% of your MDR of Vitamin B12, 2000% of the MDR of B6. That sounds like a good idea. I tried taking normal B vitamins when I was in my 20's because some doctor said it was a good idea, and I broke out in zits and was jittery as a flying squirrel. Not a big believer in vitamin supplements. I think you just pee your money out. I believe in food. 

Oh, and in addition to your just sublethal B vitamin overdose, it's got caffeine comparable to 12 ounces of the leading premium coffee. We don't have to tell you how much that is. Is that like 12 oz. of Starbuck's darkest roast? A couple hundred mg of caffeine? Dunno, but go warned: it just might cause nervousness and occasional rapid heartbeat. Oh, and there's the Niacin Flush to watch for. I'll pass. If I drank this stuff I'd be up until sometime in 2015. You don't put caffeine on crazy.

 I open the top and take a furtive sniff. It smells like a wildberry urinal cake. 

W. T. F.?? People drink this stuff?

Yes, let's drink this. And then toss the bottle in the ditch when we're done. Ready for our day, and we've added our little touch to the landscape while we're at it.

 I gather the trash and hide it at little waystations, then pick it up later when I pass by in my car. 

I like this landscape as it is, unenhanced. I see paintings everywhere I go, in fleeting atmospheric changes, the skeins and veils of mist, the mackerel sky and the old asphalt shingles. In the simplicity of a shed, built innocent of flair or grace, but settling into a grace all its own as it ages.

In the pitted patina of its beautiful latch, edges shining with age.

There is so much to see.

Suicide note of a dusky slug, Arion subfuscus, the last loops of his slow cursive reflecting the morning sun. He will write no more on this good asphalt.

Heading Home in Flat Light

We move on. The light has changed, flattened as the sun has gone behind a layer of clouds. It reveals the landscape without shadows. Flat light can be the best for flower photography, for many things. I love it for bird photography. No dark branch shadows bisecting my tanager, thank you.

The mist that decorated the holler earlier is gone now.

As are the mackerel clouds of morning. I'll go back this way. The roof of the Toothless Lady peeks out over the hay.

 There she is, a cup plant (Silphium) standing guard, showing its lovely perfoliate leaves and bud a-coming.

In the flat light, her ravaged form shows up even better, set off by the smoky blues of breathing plants. I'm told that the blue of distant hills is caused by the haze of hydrocarbons,  byproducts of photosynthesis.

Artists call the blueing out of far horizons "atmospheric perspective." Things get bluer as you go farther away. I remember my painter friend Jim Coe, who has actually had schooling in painting, complimenting me on a landscape. "You're organizing your greens very well." I still love that, though I had to ask him what he meant at the time. He meant that I was dulling out my greens appropriately as they moved from the foreground to the back.

Flat light reveals the Toothless Lady's contents, amongst them a Barcolounger and a galvanized washtub. 

It's time to go home, in flat light, over these rumpled hills.

Field daisies, red clover, and crown vetch. Not a one of them native, but lovely nonetheless, especially in this light, at this hour. Black dot on curve: leading the way.

For No One

 Earlier, I used the pronoun “who” in referring to old barns. These buildings are alive to me. The Toothless Lady waits, late for the sky.

 She didn’t burn down when the farmhouse did; she’s still standing on the hillside with only a singlewide for company now. She kills me, she with her sky window and her great gaping mouth, the piles of household junk that populate her once-useful interior. I hope I don’t see the day she falls in. But fall she will, and I must treasure her while she’s with us.

We come to the farmstead, which has been mowed just yesterday. I’m always a little abashed that this “abandoned” farmstead is often better kept than our lived-in yard. I’m glad the owner still does all that, grateful. And yet as I walk the paths with Chet, Paul McCartney’s voice begins to sing “For No One” in my head. A day later, he’s still there.

I’ve never been here when the peonies are blooming. Ohhhhh. The landowner mows around this peony, as she bows her head in sorrow at the state of her friend House. Coiffed in vines, squirrels running through.

  

The roof of the wellhouse fell in this winter in a storm when a branch landed on it. I could still get a drink of water, but it'd take some work and clearing away. I've no doubt that thirst will be a strong motivator on hot summer days. I'll get it cleaned up, and let him wonder who did it.

An old hydrangea, doubtless once a stunning blue, hugs the siding. 

Anybody home? Apparently not.

This is my road, my place on the earth. One of them, anyway. There are many places I love, but the ones I can get to on foot are dearest to me.

Speaking of dear to me...that little black dot up ahead, trotting into the mackerel sky. That's dear.

For DOD on his birthday, June 18, 1912. Imagine. 

Running on Sunday

It is a most inviting road, hills and all. I really love running it early on Sunday mornings. On this morning, no cars pass us at all. We're all done by the time church traffic starts up.

We run past the pond where Fergus the bird-eating bullfrog met his personal grim reaper, a great blue heron.  

Field daisies are making constellations, Milky Ways of flowers.

I do love the tonsured look of this hill, half hayfield and half pine plantation.

Cattle turn to stare. 

The hay is high, and needs cut. Yes, that’s what they say around here. I’m starting to like it, that dropped infinitive. Very occasionally one will even issue from my lips. I already use “holler” for “hollow” and “run” for “creek” and don’t even think about it. The place is leaving its stamp on me.

Liam waits for me at the corner, stretching his long boylegs to pass the time. My boys have no trouble outdistancing me.

 He turns back, and I go on toward my abandoned farmstead, my musing place, to the barns who are my muses.

The big sky on this route thrills me every time.

 Chet and I continue on up the steep hill to the next farmstead. I see the same red maple branch I photographed last September, as its leaves were just blazing to orange. Oh. Hold that thought. I love autumn most of all, but this spring, ohh this spring. Let me live every day of it, seeing and smelling it all.

So says Chet Baker. He smells the meadow, the trails of the voles and rabbits.

 

Something about the way my iPhone camera handles landscapes lends a surreal edge. Planned or not, I'll take it. And I now understand why Tim Ryan shoots and shoots with the camera I had the audacity to make fun of. It's a camera, all right, and perhaps its greatest virtue is that it's always with you.

Making these images helps me appreciate the beauty all around. Capturing them and sharing them somehow lends a grandeur to the landscape that I am never tempted to take for granted. It's good.