Blogging: Year Ten

I was minding my own bidness this morning, answering a few emails, when my friend Wheatley emailed to congratulate me on my tenth blogaversary.  Well, that was a pure surprise to me because I wasn't even close to remembering that. The only other person I know who's been blogging consistently for ten years is Floridacracker. He's got me beat in posts and longevity, but not by a lot. Every once in awhile he has to marry off a daughter and gets a little distracted, but he keeps popping up like a rubber duckie, giving us a glimpse of the real Florida. When he does, it doesn't feel so lonely out here. And there's Murr, turning out the good stuff from Portland, perfectly twirled, jimmies on top, like some kind of brilliant delicious ice cream machine.

I don't mean to omit anyone. Have to tip my hat to Birdchick, who got me into this in the first place, asking me to guest-blog in December 2005. To which I replied, "What's a blog?"  There are a lot of good bloggers out there, some great ones, too, but most of them seem to have moved on to other media, other stuff, to life itself, not describing life. I'm all for that, in theory. I just can't seem to do it. I would have been a great shepherd, or lighthouse keeper. Put me in a pretty place, give me something to do (clean the salt spray off the lens, birth a lamb or trim a hoof) and man, I'll hang in there for you. A decade. Huh. Well, you have to stay somewhere, and here's mighty fine.

In December, 2005, Phoebe was 9. Liam was 6. They were little kids. Chet was 1, a wasp-waisted pup. I was 47. I didn't own a cell phone or a telephoto lens. I shot everything with a tiny Olympus point-and-shoot that went KCHZIRRRRRR! when you turned it on and KaCLOP when you took a photo. Good grief. I'd love to be 47 now, and know what I know now. You can keep the Olympus.

 But we aren't given to know anything, really; we can't know that ten years later we'll still be faithfully keeping this thing, this weB LOG, having learned all the ins and outs of what to say and what not to say; when to rant (never); when to reveal our deepest, most vulnerable side (never); what to write about. Only the good stuff, thanks; there's enough sadness and bad news out there to paint the globe matte black ten times over.

And keeping it to the good stuff  turns out to be easy for me. Every day, I see and photograph things that I'm still, ten years later, dying to share with you. Holes in the landscape, sky eyes, mirrors on infinity.

What does dawn look like from inside the cornfield? Well, let's climb that hill and see. Who'd ever know that just behind this incredible scene, one of my favorites from this year, a highway project has eaten an entire woodland, all the trillium and Jacob's ladder, the box turtles and foxes and turkeys, gone. 

In this picture, there's only the good.

Blogging fills a hole in me somehow. I'm a compulsive sharer. I'm reminded of that on the now rare and much-treasured times when I can climb the tower with Bill or ride, hike, or run around with my kids. And it's all, "Look at the light!" or "OMG the Three Graces today!" or "Wait 'til you see this sassafras in winter!" "Turkeys!" "Redtail!" "Come down to the greenhouse, there's a flower you MUST see!"

Today, Creole Lady threw out one last blossom for Phoebe to see before going to sleep for a few weeks. 

She's tired, having bloomed hard for a month now, and the fickle solstice sun has failed her. 

This blossom, right at the top of the plant, hung head down, and I found sweet nectar spilling out, and no bee or hummingbird to take it. 

Well, I'll share it here. That way, it won't go completely to waste. We have witnessed it.

I'm grateful for you, the readers, who've stuck with me and want to catch the nectar, see all that great, sweet stuff that would otherwise (horrors!) go unshared. The southeast corner of Ohio, I'd wager, is not a place many would yearn to visit, yet you and I know that its treasure is everywhere, just for the noticing. I love this place with a passion that surprises even me. 

I wonder, if life had dropped me in a city, I would be able to love it like this. I kind of doubt it. I worry sometimes that I'm turning into a recluse, because my favorite times seem to happen when I'm alone, and then I go out for a run and some (more) solitude and wind up yakking for 45 minutes with some person or other I've gotten to know on my dirt-road routes, and breathe a sigh of relief. Nope.  Reclusive, maybe, but not a recluse. Whew. And they seem happy to see me. So, apparently, not a weirdo, either. Always good to check now and then.

You help with all that. You're out there reading, and you're out on the dirt roads with me, too, appreciating these landscapes, these trees, these skies, the animals I've come to love.

Beauty.

Hannah.

Nostrils. My girls.

Buddy. Ohh, Buddy. So much there I can hardly get my arms around it.

The Animal I Love Most. Who is just a little older than this blog. Amazing. All of it, amazing.

Having found a porkchop bone somewhere, and going to find a place to bury it. Got a stick in the bargain.

After the bone burial. December 23, 2015. And of course, I had to wash his face and rinse his eyes out. Twice today. He was in a thing-burying mood. Bill calls him Frost Warning, for his white eyebrows. And just this week, I think, Chet's eyelashes went white. His winky has always been white, glory be! And we love him more than you could imagine, with all his quirks and oddities and that wonderful energy and silliness, still shining so brightly.

Though I almost never read back through it, I'm thankful to have this record of a life lived in the hills and hollers. I sense that, should it survive and remain accessible (always a question with online information), my kids will go back to it to remember how things were and how they looked, what we were doing. Maybe they'll show it to their kids. It's a book, a real-time history such as no scrapbook could ever match. I catch Liam mining the archives all the time, looking up his birthday posts. For that, I'm thankful. It gives me a catch in my throat to see him looking up his own history. And I've used it when I'm at a loss for a subject for those ever-approaching column deadlines, and I know that there are books and books written here that I'll never have time to assemble.

Creature of the moment. It's tremendously difficult for me to write about anything but what's happening now, what I'm feeling and thinking now. For that, blogging is the perfect outlet. I know that some get impatient with me for not spinning travelogues of my insanely cool trips to Central America and South Africa, but the truth is I can't do it while I'm traveling, and when I get back with ten kazillion great photos, all the things that are happening in my little Ohio home, right now, always seduce me into that long embrace with the land right under my feet, now, with the clouds floating over my head, now, with the deer walking lightly into the clearing, now. I think I know him...and I look back in my blogposts, and yes, yes, that's him! Ellen's child! And what cotinga or monkey or eland could be more wonderful than that?

I did 64 blogposts upon returning from the trip of a lifetime to Guyana, and I still wonder how the hell I pulled that off. I want so badly to do it for South Africa. Please know I'm trying to get to it. It's all too wonderful, too big, and oh look at that cloudscape! Hanging out clothes at Christmas time. It's all too beautiful.

I'm grateful to still be here, and endlessly grateful that everything on me still works well and (usually) doesn't hurt. That I can still cover 7 miles in a morning, and Chet, 11 years strong, is still out in front of me, his finely turned legs ticking along like oiled clockwork. I never tire of watching him trot. I know it won't always be so, and it makes me hang on all the more fiercely to him, to the land, the people and the creatures that I love.

I got lost, as I often do during the holidays, when the mercantile world rings and clashes, shrills and jangles and tells us over and over and over that everything's MERRY and BRIGHT, that we'd better not pout, we'd better not fight, and asks us over and over and over if we're ready? Are we ready? Is everything bought and wrapped, cooked and prepared? Hark how the bells All seem to say Throw cares away! Ding-dong Ding-dong that is their song! Gaily they ring while people sing Songs of good cheer Christmas is HERE!! 

Again. Louder. Again. Even louder. And again.

Enough. Too much.

 And a friend said, "Why don't you just go find a warm place and sit, and see what the Universe brings you?"

photo by Shila Wilson

I replied, "Sitting has never worked for me. I have to put some distance between me and what's bugging me. Otherwise, my mind looks for obstacles, flattens itself against them."

But I knew he was right; that getting out was the answer. It's my go-to. And I had my wonderful kids both home to turn to, and I told them to suit up for a December day in the mid-60's. We were going to go put a few miles on our chassis, find a good piece of sky.

And I did find a warm place, and I sat down to see what the Universe might bring. And the sun popped out and the cloudy sky cleared.  I heard a whooshing noise, and two beautiful healthy smart funny big lanky UFO's hurtled down from the stratosphere and landed, right in front of me. FLOOP! Blessings.  And I was ready.

I got the shot.

                           Here's to ten years of good times. I promise to keep them coming.

December 24, 2015                                                                             Post # 2047