The cycle of life encapsulated in a day

On this very warm late-March day, I stood in the woods and listened to the snap, crackle'n'pop of growing things under the dry leaves leftover from last fall.  It's eerie, that sound.  A continuous crackling that you'd think must be something moving under those dry leaves, but there's no motion to be seen. It's new life, and one of the most definite, and the most subtle, signs of Spring I know.

On the way home, I drove past a committee of about two dozen Black Vultures congregated on and around a mound of gravel in a field next to a creek, up the road from the old train station at Point of Rocks. I've written about vultures before, they're one of my favorite creatures-- creepy, ugly, with some seriously disgusting habits. But they help to keep the world a cleaner place, removing the detritus of death. And that bunch I saw today, some sitting there glossy and black and hunched while others were stretching their wings so wide the individual feathers at the ends were splayed like fingers, were like something out of an ancient Egyptian frieze.  Beautiful and majestic and symbolic of more than just death.

The vulture goddess Nekhbet. Image borrowed from here.

No metaphor

Witnessed an intense drama today.  Heading up the hill where the trail curves up from the creek into the woods, I stopped at the old bench to catch my breath and have a sip of water.  In a patch of sunlight beyond the other side of the trail, I don't know how many dozens of feet from where I sat, in an open area between the trees a few times my height above the ground, I noticed a large dark butterfly fluttering fast but not going anywhere.  As I looked at it, my eyes gradually focused on the faint strands of the web in which it was caught.  I couldn't quite see the whole thing, but it had to've been a damned big web, because it was a very big butterfly.  Amazing, too, how strong a spider's web is, because that big butterfly was putting up a crazed struggle to break free.  I got up from the bench and walked down the trail a bit to a point where I could see it better.  From that angle, my eye was caught by something a ways above the web-- a little blob that was illuminated bright acid-y, lime-y green by the sun.  Hanging on an anchor-line that I couldn't see was the spider.  After another minute or two, the butterfly suddenly stopped its flapping and hung suspended at the bottom of the web with its wings spread wide. The spider began to crawl down the anchor-line towards the web, which the butterfly must have felt because it began its violent fluttering and pulling again.  This routine of rest, advance, response went on one more time before the spider reached the center of the web.  The spider stopped there, the butterfly stopped as well and hung deathly quiet for a while, then suddenly went crazy again and I watched as the spider turned back and began climbing back up the web, back up the anchor-line, back to the spot where I first noticed it.  Even when the butterfly stopped and hung for the longest minutes yet, the spider just sat, as if it knew it wasn't yet time.  I wondered how many other people would stop to watch something of this sort.  How many would even realize what was going on?  At a glance, all you'd see was a butterfly fluttering.  How many would look long enough to realize it was trapped?  If you didn't focus your eyes just right, you wouldn't even see the web and the spider, just the crazily flapping butterfly and the trees of the woods beyond it.  I looked up at the spider again and began to think of patience, of how wonderful and powerful a thing it is to have, and how simultaneously horrible and frightening it can be if you're the butterfly trapped and panicking to be free.  But perhaps that's anthropomorphizing a bit too much.  Finally, when the butterfly went into convulsive flapping so violent that it caused the spider all the way up on its anchor-line to bounce around in the air, I turned away and headed up the trail.

This is not a metaphor for anything. It's just life.  Just something I saw.


 

Well, it's Easter morning now, and there's no one else around...

There's a mountain near where I live.  It's a small one-- only 12 or 13 hundred feet or so at the summit--  a monadnock created by the slow erosion of the land around it.  Most folks think of it as a single peak, but it's actually a curved string of peaked ridges.  Most people also don't seem to be aware that it's private land, despite the explanatory signs posted at the entrance and parking areas, nor of the fact that they owe a debt of gratitude to the graciousness and foresight of an early-twentieth century industrial magnate.  That man, the magnate, bought the mountain and much of the land surrounding it back in the 1920's or so.  He built a couple of mansions on it for himself and his family.  Before he died, he established a trust to maintain the land for the "recreational and educational use of the public".  The foundation that's supported by the trust has done just that-- building a trail system and overlooks, and monitoring the environment of the mountain and the wildlife that exists within it.  It's an extremely beautiful place.

What I thought was my first time on the mountain was a bit over 20 years ago.  I was still in my high school punk rock phase, with buzz-cut hair, Converse sneakers, and ripped blue jeans, and had just moved out of my parents' house in Virginia into my own apartment in Maryland.  I spent much of my spare time in the car, driving around exploring my new territory, discovering not only the lay of the land but also an abiding love for the semi-rural back-roads I found at the edges of the suburbs.  One day, one of those back-road drives brought me to the mountain.  Being in an exploratory mood, I parked at one of the overlooks near the summit and wandered onto one of the trails.  As I went along, it began to feel somehow familiar.  Flashbacks from buried memories began popping into my mind's eye until recognition finally dawned-- I had been there before.  At some point in my childhood, I remembered that my parents had brought my Girl Scout troop to that same mountain for a hike along that same trail.  Childhood in general and Girl Scouts in particular had not been a thrill for me, so I'd not held on to the memory.  But I got a kick out of the synchronicity anyway. 

And I fell in love with the mountain.  The beauty of the woods, the pastoral views from the summit and overlooks, and the solitude-- Combined with the new-found freedom of living on my own, the things I discovered on the mountain opened a new chapter for me and it wasn't long before the Converse sneakers were replaced by hiking boots.

Unfortunately, the population of the D.C. suburbs exploded not long after.  As the suburbs expanded and began to encroach upon the area around the mountain, a whole lot of other people began to fall in love with the place, too.  The picnic areas and trails began to be overrun.  It got to the point that you could sit at the summit and hear radios and loud voices in the parking lot at the base of the cliff.  So I stopped going there.  Began driving further out and finding other places that hadn't yet been discovered by the masses.  Though it didn't take long for those places, as well. 

At this point, I'm constantly on the lookout for out-of-the-way wildlife management areas, tucked-away nooks in state parks, or any old abandoned road I can explore in solitude.  But one day I wandered back to the mountain via an old road that comes in from the back, all the way around the other side from the main road that heads up towards the overlooks.  One of the longer hiking trails swings down and crosses over the old road and there was, at that time, just enough space for a car or two to park along the side.  Amazingly, the spot was empty.  So I figured, what the hell?  I'd visit the mountain for old time's sake.  To my surprise, I only passed a few other folks on the trail.  I've learned since then that it's a matter of timing--  early morning, late in the day, crappy weather--  and of sticking to the newer trails on the backside of the ridge, away from the main summit. 

So, on this Easter morning, while the majority of people were either hunting for salvation in church or for colored eggs in the backyard, I was out in the woods at the mountain, by myself, hunting for a skull.  I swear, there are times when I feel like the kid in The Sixth Sense-- He saw dead people everywhere, I see dead animals everywhere.  Along the side of the road, out in the woods, if there's an animal carcass around, chances are I'll see it.  The one I was checking on today was one I'd seen late-fall/early-winter of last year.  I'd wandered off the trail looking for a spot to sit and take a break, only to find a recently deceased white tail deer lying a dozen feet from the fallen tree I sat down on.  A buck with four-point antlers.  I won't deny it, I coveted the idea of that skull and antlers.  It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.  Funny thing is, much as I love skulls and bones, I'm almost phobic-ly squeamish about decaying flesh.  And skulls are surprisingly rare finds for some reason.  I couldn't tell you how many headless skeletons and carcasses I've found in the woods, way out-numbering the handful of skulls I've found. Where do they go? Can't all be hunter's trophies, because most of the time I'm in parkland where hunting is prohibited (doesn't stop the occasional poacher, of course).  Are they found and taken by people like me?  Dragged off by predators so the brain can be picked out and devoured in peace? I dunno, but they are definitely a rarity.  So I made plans to come back for this one, after nature'd taken its course and stripped it bare and clean.

Wandered back a few months later to check on it, but it was still half-covered with skin and tendon.  Well ravaged, though.  The hind legs were still attached to the torso, but the front legs had been strewn several feet away, and the lower mandible was lying behind the carcass.  The skull, antlers still attached, had been dragged down to the edge of a nearby small stream. Still not clean enough to pick up and bring home, though. 

With all the snow and rain the area had through the end of winter and beginning of spring, I figured the thing had to be bare by now.  So I headed out this morning along the blessedly empty trail, back to the fallen tree by the little stream.  Found the carcass almost in the same state I'd last seen it, now almost entirely clean, except for... the head.  The thing was gone, antlers and all.  I crossed the stream and tromped around through the trees, scoping the ground for any glimpse of white bone.  Nothing. Where the hell could it have gone?  The largest omnivorous and carnivorous wildlife in this area consists primarily of raccoons and foxes and neither of those seem big enough to drag a skull with antlers through undergrowth.  There've been rumors of coyotes coming in closer to the D.C. suburbs, but I've not heard of any being seen near the mountain.  And the foundation that maintains the area has posted signs warning visitors to stay on the trails (signs I ignore, obviously) because of a black bear and cubs in the area, but those signs have been up for a few years now and the bears have likely moved on.  It crossed my mind to wonder if some other explorer like myself had also found the thing and beaten me to it.  I ended up baffled but resigned. 

It got me thinking, though, as such things always do.  The sight of the white rib cage and spinal column surrounded by little white wildflowers was striking.  Some might consider the image morbid, but to me it was a beautiful contrast between decay and growth, a gorgeous reminder of the cycle of nature that we forget about in day-to-day living.  All around me in the woods were indications of that cycle--  The sun shining through new leaves, casting a green glow on tree trunks that were bare, dreary grey and brown just two months ago.  Along the trail, little baby ferns were unfurling next to violets.  Puddles created by all the recent rain were full of tadpoles.  But winter wasn't over long enough ago for me to forget that it'll all turn back to grey and brown in another handful of months, as the cycle continues and the tender growth now bursting forth dies off. 

This is the most profound sort of thing I've learned from the mountain-- that life is a series of cycles, but that in the end we all come to the same state as that headless deer.  It's a good thing to remember when we feel that life is a constant battle.  The problem is often that we don't pick our battles wisely.  So many of the things we fight for and against are really just us banging our heads against a wall.  And no matter who we're fighting against, both we and they will die and come to that state.  What difference do so many of those trivial battles make against the knowledge that we all will end up in the ground, our decaying remains becoming food for new life?

Unless, of course, we decide to have those remains turned into a vinyl record instead.  

My sister thanks you, and I thank you. Goodnight.

I may or may not write more about this later, still processing how I feel about it.  In the grand scheme of things, it's not monumental.  It's not even a surprise.  But the emotional impact this band has had on the people who connected with their music is a special, special thing.  This announcement is gracefully worded, yet so utterly sad in its finality...

The White Stripes would like to announce that today, February 2nd, 2011,
their band has officially ended and will make no further new recordings or perform live.

The reason is not due to artistic differences or lack of wanting to continue, nor any health issues as both Meg and Jack are feeling fine and in good health.

It is for a myriad of reasons, but mostly to preserve What is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way.

Meg and Jack want to thank every one of their fans and admirers for the incredible support they have given throughout the 13 plus years of the White Stripes’ intense and incredible career.

Third Man Records will continue to put out unreleased live and studio recordings from The White Stripes in their Vault Subscription record club, as well as through regular channels.

Both Meg and Jack hope this decision isn’t met with sorrow by their fans but that it is seen as a positive move done out of respect for the art and music that the band has created. It is also done with the utmost respect to those fans who’ve shared in those creations, with their feelings considered greatly.

With that in mind the band have this to say:

“The White Stripes do not belong to Meg and Jack anymore. The White Stripes belong to you now and you can do with it whatever you want. The beauty of art and music is that it can last forever if people want it to. Thank you for sharing this experience. Your involvement will never be lost on us and we are truly grateful.”

Sincerely,
Meg and Jack White
The White Stripes

A fellow Stripes fan summed it up best on her Facebook profile by quoting the way Jack ended so many of the band's shows:

"My sister thanks you, and I thank you. Goodnight."

Vandals chop down famous Nevada shoe tree

Read about this in the news today: 

U.S. Highway 50, billed as the “Loneliest Road in America,” lost one of its landmarks last week because of vandals.

The 70-foot cottonwood tree known as the “Shoe Tree” one mile east of Middlegate was cut down sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning.

I passed the Shoe Tree during my cross-country road trip several years ago.  It was by far one of the coolest things I saw on that trip.  Such a shame that someone apparently didn't feel the same way and chose to destroy it rather than let it be.  

 

Another jackpot

Found this little beauty out in the woods yesterday.  Same place where I wandered a few weeks ago, but in a different area, away from the junk piles and remnants of old human habitations.  This was deeper in the woods along a little-used, partially overgrown trail, sitting on a moss-covered log as if someone had left it there just for me...

 

Raccoon.  It's missing it's right incisor and one of the front teeth on that side keeps slipping out, but aside from that it's in perfect condition. 

Am I greedy for snatching it up and slipping it in my pocket, rather than leaving it there the way the person before me did?  I'm not much of a collector, but this is definitely the sort of thing I covet.   

Bring out your junk and we'll give it a home

Back when I first heard the album Icky Thump a few years ago, Rag and Bone was one of the songs that hinted to me that there was something about The White Stripes that I should be paying attention to. For whatever reason, the album as a whole didn't reach out and shake me up at the time, but earlier this year the switch finally flipped and the lightbulb came on.  Months after diving into Jack's extensive catalog of music, this tune's still one of my favorites, a raucous gem of subtly clever humor. Behind that charmingly lively repartee lies a metaphor for the way in which Jack and Meg created the magic of the Stripes-- by taking what they perceived as cast-off musical styles and making something beautiful out of them.  In a twist on the old rag-and-bone men of England, they took everything from blues to garage/punk to Scottish reels and more, and produced an amazing amalgamation that still leaves fans staggered even though it's been years since the band's last performance together.

This song came to mind today because I spent the afternoon wandering old trash piles out in the woods and reflecting on the different tack that nature takes with our discarded junk.  Many of the parks and wildlife management areas in Maryland consist of land that was once settled and farmed.  Seeing as how farms are spread out and separated by fields, there were no communal public garbage dumps in those days, so each farmhouse had its own dumping place tucked off in a corner of the property.  As this land was sold off to the DNR and M-NCPPC, no one went out to clean up, which means you never know what you might find as you come around the bend of a trail in some seemingly untouched natural area. 

So I headed out to one of these places today, one that used to have a dirt and gravel mud-pit for parking, but that now has a paved lot with designated spaces and that gets a lot more use as a result.  With more people tromping the trails, there's more recent garbage.  I tsk'd a few times at the sight of a plastic water bottle here, a Red Bull or Coors can there.  Funny, then, how a hundred or more mossy old bottles and rusty pails and tubs strewn through the undergrowth can be such a source of delight.  It's the sense of discovery, I guess, and the wondering about the lives of the people who left this detritus so many years ago.  The first dumping ground along the trail seems to be the oldest, consisting mostly of brown bottles and clear glass jugs and jars of various shapes and sizes.  In one spot, in between the roots of a beech tree, I found the necks of three root beer-colored bottles seemingly growing out of the earth.  And here and there I'd kick up the symbol of a feminine spirit, in the form of thicker white glass cosmetics jars.

Farther back in the woods, past the caved-in remains of what seems to have been a coal kiln, is an apparently more recent trash heap, at which there are fewer bottles and an abundance of faded Colt 45 cans, along with rusted water heaters and bed frames, and moldering pieces of what used to be clothing.  It's obvious that a few more decades will leave this pile looking more like the other, as the old appliances decay, the cans settle into the dirt and leaves, and the undergrowth takes over.

Up the hill and around the bend, I came face to face with a beautiful box turtle crawling through the pine needles in what's left of the foundation of a house.  The turtle looked fresh and new, with gorgeous golden markings against the deep brown background of its shell, the light yellowy-orange skin of its neck and legs, and the fierce, darker orange of its eyes.  All that's left of the house are scattered chunks of brick and cinder-block, and two vine-covered cement steps.

While someone like Jack White or the old English rag-and-bone men might take abandoned stuff and turn it into something new, nature indifferently treats these items as the inanimate objects that they are.  Instead of being given a continued life, they're taken over by the cycle of life around them, by the earth, trees, vines and shoots that break through, cover, and consume them.  They're dissolved and absorbed, and the world goes on.  It's an interesting and humbling lesson.   

A couple of things I rescued. The bottom of the brown bottle is embossed with a design patent number and "La Choy Food Products Archbold Ohio". The jar has a Grecian key pattern about its middle and the single word, "Woodbury", on its base. I've no plans to create anything out of either of them, they're lovely and interesting as they are.

Jackpot!

Through all the years that I've been getting out in the woods to hike and explore (couple of decades now), I've wanted to find a relatively intact animal skull.  When the mood strikes, I get off the established trail that everyone else follows and bushwhack just for the sake of exploration.  Over the course of all this wandering, I've collected things such as vertebrae, half of a lower jawbone, the bleached shell of a turtle, and my favorite-- a single three-point antler apparently shed by a very young buck.  I'd actually gotten to the point that I stopped bringing home bones because, well, people think my home is weird enough already.  And I've come to like the idea of leaving them for someone else to find, imagining that person inspecting them the same way I do, wondering about the animal and how it met its end, perhaps pocketing it to take home to their own collection.  For some reason, though, it's very rare to find a carcass with a skull anywhere nearby.  My assumption has been that some scavenger always drags the head off somewhere to get at the delicacies inside.  Whatever the case, today was the day I've been waiting for.

It was achingly lovely today, perfect for a bike ride, with a glorious blue sky and a soft breeze, sticky young leaves on the trees and colorful wildflowers scattered throughout the grass beneath them.  I spent much of the ride cursing the fact that I'd left my camera at home, and perhaps if I'd had it with me I might've snapped a few shots of my prize and left it where I found it.  Or perhaps not.

At one point, I stopped at one of the old aqueducts along the C & O to take in the view of a creek meandering towards the river.  At the end of the aqueduct, a narrow footpath crossed the dry canal bed and headed off into the woods.  In the spirit of wanderlust, I tipped the front of my bike down the bank and followed it.  As I pedaled between the trees, a flash of white passed through my peripheral vision and made me wonder "Could that have been...?"  I stopped and dropped my bike in the trail, walked back a few feet, and sure enough it was.  All by its lonesome, with no other bones in sight.

I actually giggled once as I headed on down the path, when I glanced down and saw my shadow with the silhouette of the antlers sticking out of my backpack behind me. As I said this morning, sometimes it's the little things that make a day worthwhile.

Farewell to a hero

Anyone who follows the Fat Cyclist blog most likely knows by now that Susan Nelson passed away last night. For those folks who have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the story as of 2007. And things went crazily downhill from there. For long periods, Susan would seem to be stable, and then they'd get horrendous news like this. By the time Elden posted this recent update, it was apparent that Susan's battle was drawing to an end. Even so, the news this morning was a surprise that left me in tears at my computer.

As I commented over at his sister Jodi's blog, Pistols & Popcorn, Elden's posts about Susan's battle have served so many times to help me regain perspective when I've lost focus due to stressful situations. I'm so very sorry for what they went through, for what he and the kids are going through now, yet at the same time I'm incredibly grateful that they had the courage to share it with all of Elden's readers. He and Susan will always be my heroes.

Farewell to Yr

What is it about madness that so fascinates? Is it a tentatively acknowledged fear that the grasp on sanity is tenuous? Or is it an attraction to the honesty of insanity, the letting go of our internal guard in exchange for freeing the deeply buried urges inside of us?

A couple of decades ago, perusing the crammed shelves of a used bookstore, I picked up a copy of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The story of Joanne Greenberg's experiences (told through the character of Deborah) is stunningly eye-opening, with stark descriptions of the patients' characters and behavior, and of the treatments they received, off-set by the intelligently sharp wit Greenberg possessed even then. One passage that's always stuck with me takes place after several patients gang up on one of the ward attendants and Deborah is called upon to explain what took place:

"Well... Hobbs came down the hall and then there was the fight. It was a good fight, too; not too loud and not too soft. Lucy Martenson's fist intruded into Mr. Hobbs's thought processes, and his foot found some of Lee Miller. I had a foot out, too, but nobody used it."

... Deborah knew why it was Hobbs and not McPherson... Hobbs was a little brutal sometimes, but it was more than that. He was frightened of the craziness he saw around him because it was an extension of something inside himself. He wanted people to be crazier and more bizarre than they really were so that he could see the line which separated him, his inclinations and random thoughts, and his half-wishes, from the full-bloomed, exploded madness of the patients. McPherson, on the other hand, was a strong man, even a happy one. He wanted the patients to be like him, and the closer they got to being like him, the better he felt. He kept calling to the similarity between them, never demanding, but subtly, secretly calling, and when a scrap of it came forth, he welcomed it. The patients had merely continued to give each man what he really wanted. There was no injustice done, and Deborah had realized earlier in the day that Hobbs's broken wrist was only keeping him a while longer from winding up on some mental ward as a patient.

That's it, right there. Experiencing the insane is to walk the fine line between Hobbs and McPherson. When I found out that I lived only a handful of miles from the sanitarium at which Greenberg was treated, I was of course elated. The place was Chestnut Lodge, in the historic district of Rockville, MD, a huge Addams Family-ish building set on 20 or so acres of huge old white oaks (the chestnut trees after which it was named fell victim to blight many years ago). In its time, the Lodge was world-famous for its treatments. A few decades later, those same treatments would bring it notoriety, as the doctors there clung to ice-packing and electro-shock, along with psychoanalysis, while the rest of psychiatry turned towards chemical treatment.

For years I would drive by and peer at the building through the foliage, wondering what went on behind the windows on the upper floors. But I never went there. Even after the hospital closed and the building sat empty, I never stopped the car, never got out and wandered under those trees to see what the place looked and, more importantly, felt like up close.

As it sat empty, a developer bought it and the grounds and began to build luxury homes behind the main building. The Lodge itself was apparently to someday become million-dollar condos, which would bring an end to it being a hangout for the homeless and partying teens.

And now it's gone. At 3:00am this past Sunday morning, ninety-five firefighters responded to a call that the building was on fire. The condition in which it was left apparently made it ripe for burning, and it ended up nothing but a shell. When I finally had a chance to drive by this evening, demolition had already begun and all but the rear portion of the building had been reduced to piles of bricks. But I snagged some memories of what was left, and finally spent some time close enough to see through those mysterious windows, and to wonder, for one final time, about the people who had once passed through those rooms.


Edit in 2020: Since Photobucket has become glitchy and won't display linked photos properly anymore, click here for the full album of including the images below.

The hardest thing is rendering a moment moving too fast to endure...

Today's weather was the most schizophrenic I've seen in a long time. From dense, milky fog in the morning, to thicker stratus clouds and drizzle, to blue sky and fluffy mixed cumulus and cumulonimbus, to being pelted with rain under a sky mixing all of the above. At one point, though, I managed to hurriedly park the car along route 340, then dash across heavy traffic and run out onto the bridge just in time to catch this before the clouds shifted and it faded away:

Click image for larger view


Look Alive

The hardest thing is rendering a
moment moving too fast to endure
But you abide and smile wide 'cause
I want to remember this for sure
Give me guns and politics and
I'll just make a mess of it, y'know
Give me art as sustenance and the
wiser, wider part of me will show

A picture says with sight
what we can't say with words
But you've been walking eyes-to-feet in dark sunglasses
A picture will survive
So smile and look alive
The camera lens is opening, a wider angle is yours

Every empty one of us have methods
to quell the madness of this place
But yours have bled and are running south
like dollar-store mascara down your face
You can take that wait and all that fuss and
I'll just get the best of us, y'know
Give me love not suicide
and the wiser, wider part of me will show

A picture says with sight
what we can't say with words
But you've been walking eyes to feet in dark sunglasses
A picture will survive
So smile and look alive
The camera lens is opening, a wider angle is yours

Look alive
Smile, smile and look alive

Out from the woods: Yet more random babblings

Got out on the bike yesterday for the first time in five months. I left the computer at home, and my intention was to just ride easy with no care for mileage, cadence, or speed. It started out well enough, easy as I'd intended, turning the pedals at a smooth, loping pace. But then it became... not quite hard, but... effortful. I can blame part of it on a slight wind that kicked up periodically (always a cross-wind, never a tail-wind, of course), but the rest? So many of last year's rides were like this, easy one moment, the next a concerted effort to keep the cranks turning smoothly at the same rhythm. I've begun a series of doctor's appointments to check out everything from my asthma to the heart flutters I experienced last summer and fall. There's got to be something at the root of this fatigue, whether it's my heart, my lungs, diet, poor sleep, the beginnings of inherited fybromyalgia, I want to find the deficiency and correct it.

So this morning I woke up feeling sluggish and out of it, not to mention sore in the saddle area. Not getting on the bike today, how about a nice, easy hike instead? Almost thought I was too tired even for that, but I finally forced the car in the direction of one of the many local trails and headed out. By that point I felt absolutely no desire to exert myself, but wanted badly to be out in the woods under the vibrant blue sky. After wandering probably less than a mile, I found a good spot and plopped my fatigued ass down by the creek, where my mind turned to a series of thoughts that've been fermenting in the vat of my brain over the last few weeks.

Between my own gradually increasing physical limitations (fuck it, let's call a spade a spade-- middle-age is slowing me down) and recent synchronistic reminders of Ego (it's a big subject, so it gets a capital 'E'), a bit of Baudelaire struck me that I may as well share...


Carrion

Remember, my soul, the thing we saw
that lovely summer day?
On a pile of stones where the path turned off,
the hideous carrion --

legs in the air, like a whore -- displayed,
indifferent to the last,
a belly slick with lethal sweat
and swollen with foul gas.

The sun lit up that rottenness
as though to roast it through,
restoring to Nature a hundredfold
what she had here made one.

And heaven watched the splendid corpse
like a flower open wide --
you nearly fainted dead away
at the perfume it gave off.

Flies kept humming over the guts
from which a gleaming clot
of maggots poured to finish off
what scraps of flesh remained.

The tide of trembling vermin sank,
then bubbled up afresh
as if the carcass, drawing breath,
by their lives lived again

and made a curious music there --
like running water, or wind,
or the rattle of chaff the winnower
loosens in his fan.

Shapeless -- nothing was left but a dream
the artist had sketched in,
forgotten, and only later on
finished from memory.

Behind the rocks the anxious bitch
eyed us reproachfully,
waiting for the chance to resume
her interrupted feast.

-- Yet you will come to this offence,
this horrible decay,
you, the light of my life, the sun
and moon and stars of my love!

Yes, you will come to this, my queen,
after the sacraments,
when you rot underground among
the bones already there.

But as their kisses eat you up,
my Beauty, tell the worms
I've kept the sacred essence, saved
the form of my rotted loves!

(as translated by Richard Howard)

Somehow, that's both alarming and comforting to me. Alarming when I think in the short, egoistic term, as it reminds me of the decay within that will only continue to make physical exertion more and more difficult. Comforting, though, when I let go of ego and realize that we all come to this. No matter our beauty, intelligence, physical prowess, or lack of any thereof, the one thing that unites us all, the greatest reminder of our sameness, is the way we end. The thought is humbling and reassuring, albeit a bit morbid in its inspiration.

I have no idea for a subject line...

One of my cats died this morning, so I'm just going to babble for a bit to get things out of my system.

Up until the point of my finding him, it had been a very normal Saturday morning. The brats woke me up before 5:00am, I got up and watched a little tv in the dark until they calmed down, then went back to bed for an hour or two until they woke me up again, then I got up and fed them. After their breakfast, they went into rambunctious kitteh mode, chasing each other at top speed throughout the apartment and generally making a ruckus. Then things calmed down a little and I decided to make some breakfast for myself. At some point around then, either in the bathroom before or the kitchen during, I remember the boy cat rubbing against my legs and me reaching down so that he could squeeze between my leg and hand as he made his rounds of my feet. He's a long, lanky boy, almost skinny to look at but solidly muscular to touch. With his thick velvety grey fur overlaying that muscle, he's the personification of sleek. But perhaps I should be using past tense and saying he 'was'.

So, anyway, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and curled up in my chair in front of the tv. While I was sitting there, the girl cat jumped up and settled herself on the back of the chair behind my head. Things were quiet. When I got up, I noticed it was strange that the boy wasn't curled up on top of the scratching post behind my chair. That's usually what happens-- When I settle in somewhere, they both soon come and settle in nearby. But he wasn't in the room. I put my stuff in the kitchen and headed to the bathroom, as he sometimes curls up and naps on one of the rugs in that room. He wasn't there. Strange. So, I headed into the bedroom, even though the only time they spend in that room is either when I'm trying to sleep or when they're playing Kitteh Speedway. I came around the bed and found him lying under the bedroom window with his head and shoulders up against the wall. The fact that his bowels had voided made it immediately clear that he was dead. When I moved closer, I saw that his eyes were partially open and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. Other than that, he was in the same sort of position that he would often sprawl in on the living room floor after play, with his long legs stretched out and his tail curved up towards his back.

I kind of freaked. I was in some weird state between frozen and hysterical, stunned but knowing that the sobbing was going to start any moment. So many thoughts went through my head, first of all being that my beautiful boy was dead. He was absolutely one of the most beautiful cats I've ever seen in my life and I loved to just sit and look at him. And, aside from the crazy rambunctious moments, he was very mellow and self-contained, only occasionally, quietly seeking affection (unlike the girl, who's in my face regularly, trilling and chirping for me to spoil her). The moment this morning when he rubbed against my leg was one of those instances. I didn't pick him up then, but for all his self-containment, whenever I did pick him up he would let loose a deep, loud purr while I stroked him. The feeling of all of this was the first thing to go through me when I saw him lying against the wall.

After that was the more practical issue of what to do. I closed the bedroom door to keep the girl out and called the vet for advice. Really, I knew what needed to be done, but this is the first time I've had an animal die this way. As a kid, we were always distracted and sent off to play when any of the family pets died, so I only had peripheral experience of death. And the other cats I've had on my own both became sick and died via euthenasia. So beyond the shock was the issue of my own experience with handling a dead creature. For all my fascination with death (call it morbid or pragmatic, it's probably a bit of both), I have a serious aversion to dead bodies. I was practically a basket-case the winter a few years ago when mice gained access to my apartment and were one by one turned into mincemeat by my previous cat. Having to clean up their little carcasses flipped me out and left me practically sleepless with the dread of future occurences until the problem was resolved. As I was sobbing on the phone with the vet and, then, with my mother, I wondered how I would deal with having to lift and wrap up Alec's dead body.

After hanging up the phone, I sat on the living room floor and bawled. I must have sounded horrific, because the girl cat arched her back, puffed up her tail, and backed away from me. I finally calmed down and comforted her a bit, and it crossed my mind to wonder why she hadn't sensed Alec's death before I found him. Had it been that sudden? That led to the other course of thoughts that had been running through everything else-- How? Had he become rambunctious again, launched himself across the bed, hit his head on the wall, broken his neck? Had he messed with one of the electric sockets in the bedroom? Had he somehow ingested something in my apartment that I didn't know was fatal to animals? What the fuck had happened to him?

I finally gather myself up enough to become focused on what had to be done. I gathered up paper towels and an old towel and went back into the bedroom. I was torn between wanting to kneel there and look at him to remember that moment and all the moments since I brought him home in January, to fix his beauty in my mind, and to prolong the suddenness of his death. Cleaning him up and driving him to the vet would finalize everything, he'd be gone with no chance of reprieve, no chance that I was imagining all of this and that he'd suddenly stretch his long limbs and raise his head to look at me with sleepy eyes. But his poop was beginning to smell. At the very least, I had to clean that up. I also had no idea how long before rigor mortis would set in. Better to deal with him while his body was pliant. Surprisingly, the squeamishness I expected wasn't an issue. Perhaps because he was my beautiful boy, perhaps because I was so focused on dealing with things, I don't know, but spreading out the towel and gradually shifting his long, limp body into the middle of it was easier than I expected. Wrapping him up was another matter. I'm not kidding this cat was long. I didn't want to handle him too much, trying to fold up legs and all, but I got him wrapped and began to pick him up, only to find that his tail was hanging out of the towel. So, onto the bed and tuck that in, then out to the car.

The folks at the vet's office were great, ushering me into an exam room as soon as I got there. The vet gave him a quick check for any obvious cause of death, but there was nothing. His neck was fine, there were no burn marks in his mouth to indicate chewing on an electrical cord, nothing. According to her, sudden death of this sort in cats is most often due to heart failure. It's possible the crazy kitteh shenanigans this morning were too intense. It's also possible he had an underlying issue that had never been apparent. They're going to do a necropsy over the weekend and let me know what they find out. After that, they're going to create a paw print for me of one of his crazily long-toed big feet, then he'll be cremated and returned to me. I surprised myself again by unhesitatingly stroking his dead body and leaning down to kiss him. It was so very hard to leave him there and go home to only one cat, knowing I'll never see him again.

Olive, on the other hand, doesn't seem to realize anything's out of the ordinary. She's been in my face perhaps a bit more than usual for attention, though that's probably also due to the fact that I'm reaching for her every time she comes near. But she doesn't seem to be looking for him. As I was inspecting the electrical cords and sockets in the bedroom, she walked across the spot where he had been lying when I found him and barely stopped to sniff. They weren't super-duper bosom buddies, there was a natural sibling-ish competitiveness between them (though they weren't related), but I don't know how she'll adapt to being a lone cat. I'm sure she'll love being the sole object of my attention, but she's way too energetic and playful not to have a kitteh companion, especially when I'm not home. So I've already begun wondering how long until I'll have to begin looking for a new second cat, and what I'll have to deal with in adapting her to a new 'friend' at her age. Acclimating a pair of 4 or 5 month old kittens to each other is one thing. Once they've hit a year and have a sense of territory, though, it could be much more difficult. And her and Alec's personalities just so perfectly complemented each other, him being so mellow and quiet, and her being frisky and chirpy. This will be something to occupy my thoughts over the coming days.

On top of all this, I've been dealing with a fibbutzed computer this past week. I'm currently logged on in Safe Mode to access the 'net and get this all out. Which brings me to the other issue I faced in conjunction to everything else this morning, the drawbacks of the solitary lifestyle I've chosen. It was different when my famly was just 45 minutes away in the next state, but since they've moved to Florida the fact that all of my closest relationships are hours away keeps being driven home to me. While on the phone with the vet, I was asked if I had a friend or neighbor who could help me wrap up Alec's body to bring him in. I had to answer no. I know a few of my neighbors and am cordial with them, but I don't consider them friends. My closest friends, logistically speaking, are the women I cycle with, but I don't feel close enough to any of them to impose something like this on them. I considered calling one long-distance friend just for a shoulder but, again, I don't know if our relationship has progressed to the point of me blubbering over the phone to her. So, I turn to this, the electronic journal that allows me to spill my guts to long-distance friends, acquaintances, and whatever strangers happen to stumble across it. If I had a concrete belief in God, I'd be thanking him/her/it for the intarwebs right now. But now that it's all out, time for me to try to stop crying and figure out why my PC keeps freezing during startup. Wish me luck (on both).

More impermanence in WV

Went cruising in West Virginia again today and took the road past the burned down trailer. The center of the yard's been cleared, with all the junk ranged about in an assortment of piles. I pulled over to take a closer look and found myself under the nonchalant scrutiny of a handful of feral-appearing cats perched on the nearest scrap pile. And yes, the basketball hoop is still there.

At the upper edge of Harper's Ferry, across the railroad tracks, is a rutted gravel road that runs along the edge of the Potomac River for a mile or two. Just before reaching a small creek that feeds into the river, two abandoned trailers sit along the edge of the road. (Has anyone ever figured out just what it is about WV and trailers?) The spot seems to be popular with local fishermen, as the river is wide and flat at that point, before breaking up into rapids as it flows through the chunks of what used to be Dam 3. Once the road crosses over the creek, it splits. To the left, it becomes paved and turns into Engle Moler Road. To the right is what's left of the upstream end of the old gravel road-- closed off by a wire gate, yet apparently still occasionally traveled somehow. I felt adventurous today, so I parked the car and took a meander along that old section of road. At first the only thing creepy about the walk was the sudden bank of grey clouds that had covered the sun, but I added to the ambience by humming the tune to "Duelling Banjos". The first strange finding was a fire ring perched right smack at the edge of the water, stacked with blackened, still-smoking logs. Granted, those logs may have been smouldering for days, and the river was high from recent rain, but I couldn't help wondering why someone would build a fire right smack on the edge of the water. A bit further on, I spied something white hanging from a tree limb a bit off the path. Now, I've spent a lot of time in the woods, and I'm frequently asked whether I get scared hiking by myself. Actually, I'm much more comfortable and feel more secure in the depth of the woods than I do in some of the neighborhoods near my home. But the sight of something human-related and out of place in a spot like that puts me on edge. Shot gun shells on the ground don't phase me. A white plastic grocery bag hanging from an out of reach tree limb, weighted down by a dark, unidentifiable lump in the bottom of the bag, does. Suddenly, the innocent abandoned road along the river felt a little too "Blair Witch". It was good to be out tramping around and exploring, though, so I pressed on, visions of snotty, frightened teenagers and Ned Beatty in his tighty-whiteys alternating in my head. Another few dozen feet along and there suddenly appeared to be a structure of some sort in the trees ahead. Sure enough, it was the ruins of a once-whitewashed stone house. Near a tree on the other side of the road was a faded stop sign. Beyond that was an old speed limit sign that read 15mph. The area then opened out into what may have been someone's front yard, though the road appeared to continue on the other side. Just off the center of this area was a fountain of sorts. Someone had rigged a pipe from a spring in the rocks uphill from the river, run it down the hill, under the open area, and up from the ground through a hunk of concrete, where another section of pipe was connected to divert the water into an old drainage pan (such as you'd use to change the oil in your car). The pan was set on top of a grating that was balanced across the open top of an old metal barrel, and the water overflowed from the pan and through the grating into the barrel in an eerily artistic way. After circling this jury-rigged fountain, I followed the pipe up a set of crumbling stone stairs and through the foundation of an old building to its source at the base of a small, jumbled cliff. At some point in time, someone had obviously not only installed the piping, but also maintained the source of the spring. Small bits of screen had been installed to protect the water from falling leaves and debris as it flowed down various crevices in the rock. As I turned to head back, I narrowly missed stepping on a big pile of shit. I didn't inspect it carefully enough to identify it as animal or human, but it's placement was puzzling. I mean, what intelligent creature craps so close to a water supply? (Various beer cans scattered nearby might provide a pertinent clue to that question.) I hung around for a bit, peeking into the nooks and crannies of an overgrown garden and then, when I'd had my fill of being creeped out, pointed myself back downstream for an uneventful hike back to the car, leaving the place behind just as others before me had done.






(Note: I hope that anyone reading this got the references to Deliverance. I'd hate for people to think that I normally go around imagining Ned Beatty's tush.)

Impermanence in WV

Had a surprise on today's drive. After breakfast in Shep'town, I set out to cruise some back roads I first explored a couple of weeks ago. At one point along this curvy little set of roller-coasters during that October drive, I had to slow down for a young boy of 9 or 10 who was playing basketball in the road. As he moseyed off the blacktop, I glanced at what I assumed was his home. There in the midst of farmland sprinkled with nice, somewhat aged, little single-family homes, was a stereotypical West Virginia trailer-cum-shack, complete with junk-strewn front yard. At the edge of the yard, apparently for the kid's entertainment, they'd erected a basketball hoop facing out into the road. Having been the only obstacle to an otherwise smoothly flowing cruise, the boy stayed on my mind for a while that afternoon.

So today I'm flying along the same road and remember that, not sure exactly where, but somewhere, I'm going to need to watch out in case that kid's out in the middle of the road again. Cresting a small rise, I recognize the spot and am taken aback. Not only is there no boy with a basketball, but the trailer/shack is nothing but charred black bits pointing up at a roofless sky, in the middle of all those piles of junk.

And the basketball hoop is still there, on top of its pole along the edge of the road.