Southverve

There is mud-water today and flecks of light coming off the clouds onto the surface, the Ohio River bending to Pennsylvania one way, to the Mississippi the other.  Here, one slice, the cool winds blowing northeast against the current.  The sun on the water leaves pools of white in shelves of ice slivers, but it is autumn, no where near that cold, and therefore a trick of the sun. 

A teenager a little further down the brick wall we sit on to watch, eat, read — he lifts his younger brother, stands him on the brick and says, “King of the world.”  We are all kings here, lucky for this day from this place as if we are on top of a mountain.  Below, a long shadow takes over the white pools, a long cloud falling behind the sun or maybe it is the sun falling and the cloud rising into vanishing.  

It is a day of exchanges.  Sun to cloud, river to light.  The boats turning to catch shadows.  But the boats are even slower than the sun and come away empty into blinding ribbons of current.  Or they are overtaken, all of us, by the shadows.  

These clouds move like glaciers would if they were above us drifting, refusing to sink down.  No we are more like glaciers, thick with water, weighted to this point of the earth watching the afternoon shift and break us free from ourselves.  But I like to think of the clouds as glaciers, free of gravity, moving wherever they want.

An airplane, tiny, slips through the white clouds that turn and curl around themselves, vanish into the sun.  I have to close my eyes because the sun is too bright.  To open them is to see the slipping and falling away of the world.  I wait for the sun to fall behind a cloud, the wind to cool my face.  

When the sun returns, it sears orange behind my eyelids, all that holds me is this warmth.  The clouds break apart, reattach with their own gravity like swirls of river water finding edges of current, swirls of sky streaked by blue and yellow and bright fragments where I place myself under again and again into this world.

It was a tough week for my family.  My sister had surgery, and everyday I got in the car and drove, drove toward work or the river, drove and drove, kept looking into the water and beyond it, always beyond it, somewhere further south where she was having her surgery and hoping she would be okay.  If I could dive into the water or wheel into the sky.  If I could make that jump and live to tell it.  In those seconds not a death, not terror, not a slipping and falling, but flight.  If I could do that and find her okay.  If she would be okay.  

All week, I kept a friend’s music with me.  She gave me bluegrass violins and mandolins I had not heard.  A gift.  Always like this when I hear new music I love.  It sweeps through me like well water sunken two hundred feet under mud and rock, drilled through and brought back up cold, then down again slipping into the lungs, building a river out of the soul.  The water like music like air across the Ohio leaves you thirsty.  Drink and drink.  Never enough to fill you. 

Where is that point where music becomes water becomes air into blood?  Your compass stops turning, points you to the river, to your sister, to one concern.  Day after day, I waited and slipped from myself into the possibility of flight, hoping she would be okay.  

And she is.  My father called to tell me.  So I walked away from the river and back to my car.  I’m still trying to relax.  But the music stays on.  I can’t turn it off.  I don’t know what to do with it now.  It pours and pours into my body.  Somewhere it must be slipping out of me because there are only so many branches and arteries walled inside this skin.  I wonder what the river carries away when it leaves, and where it’s going and will I ever travel far enough to recover the pieces.

I’m on my porch in Cincy, and today the wind is firing down from the north, cold, the first signs of autumn here after a week of rain.  The rain has left half the sunflower heads in my garden black with mold and white webs.  I cut them from the stalks, turned them up on the deck to dry in the sun.  One head is full of striped teeth, sun flares tucked into its core that will not rot.  These will be planted next spring. 

It is late September, but part of me thinks the north wind is actually calling from my father’s farm in Georgia, that same wind I walked through and wrote of this summer that connected thunderstorm to thunderstorm, brought rain and lightning over my brother’s fields.  As I wrote in an earlier blog, the wind through the pine needles in South Georgia is the beginning place of the wind itself.  

It has now slipped over the world, covered it whole, and found me on this porch waiting for its return.  I know if I walk from these steps, allow the wind to lead me far enough away, it will carry me to next summer and I will again be in my brother’s fields.

I want to direct your attention to a New York Times article by Paul Krugman on the rapid changes in our climate. He’s right: Every day that goes by, every day that we do not demand and push for changes to our current environmental polices, we risk damaging our future and the future of the planet. Here’s the link.

This Sunday night at eight you can listen to an interview I did for the show Cover to Cover with Jesse Freeman of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Just go to this link and click on Listen Live.

(Below is the final blog about the hike to Brushy Mountain in June)

We keep going.  The hike always becomes this – keep going no matter how tired until you reach the top of something.  On this day, it started with the four hour drive from Cincy to the trailhead in the Smokies and up.  Already there have been two haunting moments – the flight down the mountain my son talked about and slipping behind the loud rush of Grotto Falls. 

Now the path winds up the mountain until we reach Trillium Gap and a sign splits toward Mount LeConte or Brushy.  We always take Brushy Mountain trail.  The path here is basically a creek bed, a tiny rill of mud with moss on either side.  The air is thick with humidity because of last night’s rain, and if not for the elevation, the humidity would be unbearable.  

In the last stretch, the rhododendrons lean over, some still blooming pink in late June.  We try to walk on the moss banks and avoid the mud rill as much as possible.  The moss is incredibly spongy, and at any moment, you think the ground will give way. 

Then the canopy opens, and we are at the crest, surrounded by laurel with tiny white-pink blooms, just beyond, the peaks of other mountains.  The trail winds around and we lose each other – Dylan is somewhere up ahead with his sketchbook, and Jana behind us taking pictures.  

Along the white blooms are bees and sandfleas.  I go to an outcropping and yell, “Here.”  Just that one word.  It hurts the back of my throat as the echo becomes distorted, vanishes.  No one answers back.  But still I breathe easier, having made it again to the top of Brushy Mountain.  

In the distance are the blue fanned ridges of three mountains; to my right a mountain with a gray cloud perched on top, and below, a long line of stick trees that have lost all there needles.  Why that side of the mountain while other places flourish?  It is like this in all of us.  As pieces of us die – old skin, simple cells, the cutting away of memory – other pieces of us live on, thrive, recover, exist. 

I look down and think about what my son said of flight, the kind he wanted, a flight that does not end us along the endless branches of trees, but instead carries us and carries us.  

“Here,” I yell a second time as if one sound can lift the world and me with it.  Even the dead branches.  But where to?  Where is this lifting going?  There is no other place.  We’re at the top.  And yet yelling the word reaffirms and grounds, the same as it releases and lets go.  Freedom is that contradiction.  Always.  My wife tells me my thinking is too binary.  But to yell at this spot on this mountain that holds me and let’s me go, becomes something more, as if all the world is suddenly uncontainable and yet shouldered by mountains with a loneliness that gnaws inside us, freeing and as vast as our own sound carrying across the sky.

On my last day in Georgia, I climbed Blood Mountain with my mother.  The trailhead is just north of Dahlonega and part of the AT.  Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was at how much the mountain reminded me of the Great Smokies – especially a canopy of rhododendrons near the top that was much like Brushy Mountain off Roaring Fork.  

As we ascended, we came across a sour orange smell – I don’t know which plant it came from – but it was the same smell from my June hikes in the Smokies.  Smell, I’ve discovered, is my strongest sense for memory and location.  Every time I’m home at Swamp Hollow, it is the smell of pine straw and swamp-mud and, of course, cow manure that my kids hate and make awful faces at and say, “Gross” whenever we’re in a field of my father’s cows.  But for me, it’s home, familiar. 

It was a day of low clouds on Blood Mountain and half way up, the mist spread through the pine and oak branches like the cool mist that comes from exhaling in winter.  My mother stopped for small purple flowers and red flowers she especially liked.  I took pictures of the white light cutting through leaves, around the wet boles.  And finally at the crest, the two of us sat on a sheet of rock and looked out into the mist.  

I had been told by a friend that the view from here was amazing, but all there was to see was mist, the low clouds, a blur of whiteness.  It made the immediate rock and trees more prominent, and I thought to myself, this place, this moment is all we have.  

All week my mother talked of her belief in God and heaven, that place that exists only after death.  And I talked about our moment here – this life, this earth, the people we love now.  

Just beyond Blood Mountain was Slaughter Mountain and Springer and pathways to Desoto Falls and Neels Gap leading home.  But what was beyond the mist did not matter.  What mattered to me was that my mother and I were sitting on this rock, catching our breath after a long climb, a little dizzy, our legs and backs aching, resting.  Soon we would head down and restart time in another direction.  But before that moment and the moment after that, was this moment, all that we had and needed.

Wanted to thank everyone at Joseph-Beth for putting together the reading last night and wanted to thank all of the people who came out.  I’m back in Cincy, and the southern book tour is done.  Through the fall I’ll continue to post blogs about the trip, and then I’ll take a break until next summer’s journey south.

I’m heading back to Cincy after a day on Blood Mountain in Georgia and will be reading and signing books at Joseph-Beth this Thursday night, September 3. The final stop on the summer tour.  If you’re in the area, come by.

At night, when a wind comes through, the pines bend around the stars. 

Over and over until the black and sway of the world begins to lighten, making everything under the eyelids of sleep white, whiter until the sun’s insistence wakes you. 

Straw catches on top and brown leaves all summer.  Underneath, spiders take the corners, wait for mosquitoes; the shell of their bodies drop to the bed.  

If the rain is long and sustained enough, it will find a path through, drop slowly and steadily, creating its own time. 

I’ve seen the glass iced, separating the angles of the sun. 

I’ve seen it sweltering with condensation. 

In the clearing always, the needles curve to the light, returning the shape of the sky to us.

As my father and I walked to the old town, I kept my head up and back, so much that the stars were dizzying and I couldn’t at times keep straight to the road.  Next week in Cincinnati, the sky would be pink with light only a few stars could burn through, and the moon could make it through, and that would be all of the sky. 

My father’s cat followed us, and he threatened it and stomped, but the cat kept in the ditches and called to let us know it was there or maybe to make sure we were still there as we slipped from the dirt road to old town, my father telling the history of the houses we passed. 

He told me who lived in them now, who lived in them before and what happened to the families – almost always a death or scandal.  But some of them had simply disappeared.  He didn’t know where they had gone.  Some of them were in their living rooms, exhausted, the blue TV light in the window.  These people chose to never come outside and speak for themselves, but my father knew of them and what they had become. 

It was a warm night and the wind slipped around our ankles, the crickets calling one another in waves.  We returned to the dirt road and the few lights of old town gave way to the black, again, the wide stretch of stars.  I wanted to stare at them until I had them all in my view.  How many? I wondered.  Impossible to count.  Would they be here when I came back next summer? 

My father’s cat was still calling, but further down, nearer our farm.  And my father stopped and looked up.  No more histories to talk of, just the sky, all we could see and know.

Look for volunteer peanuts along the plowed edges.  Volunteers come up first and are usually ready in mid to late August.  The runners set down by a seeder and lined in rows have a few weeks yet. 

Pull up four or five plants, shake off the dirt, and throw them on the tailgate with roots exposed.  Make sure the peanuts tangled in the roots are mature enough, the pods filled out, ready for boiling.  My father always eats a few raw ones.  

Snap them.  The dulled shells are the ones to get; the pale ones still too young.  Toss into a boiler. 

At home, wash in the sink.  Fill the boiler up three, four times and swish the peanuts around, empty the mud-water, repeat. 

Draw enough water to cover and place on stove. 

Add salt.  Estimate.  My father pours it in from the Morton container, about he says, three tablespoons. 

Bring to a boil.  His is a copper pot, turning green in splotches around the lid.  When it heats up, it rattles. 

Let boil 10-15 minutes.  

At ten minutes, taste. 

At eleven minutes, taste. 

At twelve minutes . . .  if cooked too long, they’re mushy; not long enough and they’re too firm.  We turn the eye off at twelve minutes and remove from the heat. 

Let peanuts sit and cool for an hour, let them draw the saltwater through the shell.  

Taste until the salt is right, and it’s what you want.  

Drain. 

Eat.

Just wanted to thank Laura and Linda and Teresa at the Blue Elephant for having me out to read and sign books.

I’m heading to Atlanta for tonight’s reading and book signing at the Blue Elephant, Wednesday, August 26 at 7:15. If you’re in the area, come by.

It is cool this morning, but shouldn’t be. Cool mornings don’t happen in South Georgia until late September. It is still August, but the Atlantic storms have gone west and northeast. What has been left in the vacuum, a dry wind sluicing down from Canada.

And it is beautiful here – the trees, the expanse of sky and land – but in summers the weather is so hot and the humidity so sticky, that it’s difficult to enjoy. You have to hurry through the landscape. This morning with my run over, I’m walking the field road that turns by the cotton my brother planted in spring. The cotton is blooming now. The road leads to an irrigation pond and in the dry breeze, in the coolness, something unexpected happens – the beauty of this place becomes sharper and lingers.

As if to make the point, out on the pond, in the center, perched on a dead limb, is a crane. Its gray wings are striped white and black and spread out to catch the wind. Its long neck is hooked outward as it makes a deep caw. It, too, cannot believe this morning, and like me wants the wind to rush down in wave after wave.

I walk on the bank, then out to the short dock, then by the red-green lilies and into a pasture where I want to move the town’s old depot and restore it. At the moment, the depot sits in another field on my father’s property. I size up the spot the house will eventually be, then back to the pond with its stand of sycamores and pines.

Out on the pond now, the sun bends the current, blinds me. Not like the quick flash of lightning. The reflection here is unending and I have to close my eyes. I don’t want to. Don’t want to walk home like you wouldn’t if you found by accident, a place and a moment this full of life.

Want to thank Vera and Suzi and my pop for setting up the book signing in Pitts this past Sunday. I’m heading out tomorrow to Atlanta for a book signing and reading at the Blue Elephant. If you’re in the area, come by.

Just wanted to thank Annette Wise and Michael Mallard and everyone at the Plains Historical Society for having me over to read from Snakeskin Road last night at the Old Bank Cafe for their inaugural Chautauqua. Today I’m signing books in downtown Pitts.

All night there has been sheet lightning from the tropical storms and hurricanes that keep circling Georgia, heading further north or west – Claudette, Bill – none have come here directly, but the remnants of clouds and rain stirred out of the Atlantic and the Gulf form sheet lightning, wide reflections of light that flash up whole quarters of the sky. If you’re driving 280 or walking the sand roads of my father’s house, it’s like watching a distant war.

Used to, when I was younger, and in the middle of a dry summer, I kept waiting for the sheet lightning to close in. We needed rain, and somewhere, someone was getting doused. All night, the lightning played across the sky, a trick of weather. The next day, the ground was dry as the last day, the sky empty-blue and still and parched.

I used to wonder what it would be like to run the black sky in that way, along those sheets of light. As soon as one flash ends, another starts up and rumbles, and you, running, have to catch the next flash and the next, chasing.

Tonight is no different as my father and I come home on 280. Except for the rain. This time we have rain, and I want to be up there in the relay of flashes until I’ve covered the whole expanse, breathless, blinded, ready to sleep and fall into the black sky.

Just wanted to thank Phil Streetman for having me on his show today on local channel 55. I’ll be doing some local events this weekend: Saturday, August 22 I’m reading in Plains, Georgia at 7:30 in the Old Bank Cafe for their Chautauqua, and on Sunday, August 23 I’m signing books at my father’s store in downtown Pitts at 2:00. If you’re in the area, come by.