Some woodland pics from a few weeks back – and am I ever gathering a collection of them, dang the 256 mb compact flash card; you’d think it gives one a blessed reason to take four hundred pictures or so, but really it becomes a veiled distraction.

Wildflower season is mounting steadily in the lower elevations of the Smokies. Plenty of yellow trillium easing into view:

The Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon river is a true test of one’s rock-hopping skills. The river here runs an elevation gain of around 2200 feet for a four mile stretch of the Ramsay Cascades trail which is some distance off in the forest. Large sandstone boulders close off deep green pools of very icy water; your legs go numb quick when wading becomes the only option:

On this trip Chris was introduced to the adventurous and muscle-pulling challenge of fly fishing the remote backstreams of the Smoky Mountains. Almost as much climbing as fishing, but that’s the purity:

The weather on this day was warm – very warm for mid-April; the kind of atmosphere that usually turns to booming thunder by waning afternoon. Not so this day.
Along these streams Cherokee medicine men used to listen carefully to the river trying to interpret its resonant sounds – a language, they considered it, of insight from the natural world attempting to reveal something speacial to humans. The river still speaks.

An actual Mexican adventure story would be great, but I suppose a quick sketch will do. I really don’t have Jimmy Buffet-style-crisis-moments very often; although when I do they vacillate somewhere between beachfront bar margarita swilling and stalking crafty gamefish along the sandy flats.

Either extreme would be perfectly suitable in my book…

It seems frum tha genral reactshun of folks round tha workplace that thars a perplexin fascinashun with tha large scale emergence of tha 17-year cicada. Ta me this aint muchuv an event or nuthin, I mean thars always a species or three of cicada round every year n all cept nobody fer the most part pays em no mind; but this year with thu Brood X tis all bout the vast numbers of the critters thats got folks all giddy with delight or in sum stage uv fear or anticipation.

Now iffin ye don’t know of what I speak here’s a lil sketch I done uv one all caged up in a mason jar that sumbody at the workinplace had brung in fer to show sum others who hadnt never seen one, or so they claim, yet i suspect they has but don’t recall it.

Here abouts in my litl area uv County uv Knox Tennassee i have yet ta observe the dinse swarms uv cicadas seen by others – hunnerts uv thousants uv em crawlin frum neath thu soil as nymphs ta take flight ta thu trees and make a bunch uv wingnoise to coax a mate into the stupor uv luv so thats they can soon depozit thair eggs an mediately up n die by tha millyens. Seems theysa swarmin just certain locashuns a bit moren uthers but I aint seen no brood xers with thair smallish bodies and telltale red eyes, and believe ye me im out n bout amongst the mountains and hollers plenty nuff uv tha time. But I like ta remind peoples that seventeen year isa long time and that twixt then n now has been lotta useless housin developmint and such pon lotta habitat that them brood xers likely ta have lived neath the ground at. Them poor bugs never made it atall and iffn they mighta survived low ground sumhow tis a shame that they tried fer sweet sunshine an only hit up gainst the basemint concrete uv sum condominyum.

Well such thoughts can be depressin, so i figger ill give thisn in tha mason jar a nuther chance even tho he aint mine to free he aint rightly the property uv tha one captured him neither. ill just consider him an autamatus bein same as me as i remove his tin foil barrier an fling him ta thu sky…

Well I wuz informed by Mr. Seibold yesterday that he found the diction contained in the hillbilly phonetic blog to weigh a bit on the nefarious side of the scales of proper bloggin etiquette. I allowed that he was likely correct and all about such matters, cause he is one prolific blog writer n all, but I was curious about eggsactly what rules dictate the proper bloggin etiquette.

But bein the good feller that he is n all he didn’t get too eggsasperated with my ignorance and he sez, “Boy, you’re misunderstanding me, I’m not saying that there are anywell defined blog etiquette guidelines of any sort, it’s all a recursive relationship that builds upon and defines continuously revised parameters,” he pauses for a second and I can hear the loud screel of a table saw, “but…um what was I saying?”

Now I was gettin awful cornfused but didn’t want to let on – on account of exposin myself as the poseur of grande poseurs – so I allowed that I was making sense of it right well and began an easy-like segue into other matters, but it was like he heard not a thing fer he picked up his train of thought like he’d never jumped track:

“Listen to me boy, it boils down to this: T-E-M-P-O. That is what your missing, that is your personal guidline, your Happy-Place, concentrate on unabated rhythm and you’re gonna be golden jimmy.”

Sweat was beadin up on the back of my neck and my breathin was gettin shallow, seemed i was havin one of them panic attacks same as what sent my aunt Lena to ward B of the looney house. I felt knocked senseless, the world was a puddle of mud now, Seibold had me on the ropes, clingin and scrappin for somethin to hold onto fer comfortin knowledge, but there was nuthin but a big black hole darker than Dubyas private reserve of oil that he likes to get nekkid and swim round in like some sorta modernized real to life Scrooge McDuck.

I had to bail the conversayshun so I started ramblin faster than a humminbird bout the toilet overflowin with sewage again and screamin like some meth-crazed banshee that i hadta get them little scrubbin bubble guys to help me else me and the little lady was gonna drown in some kinda horrible nashunal enquireer style death.

So I slam down the phone and take in one well deserved gasp of air. I reckon I couldn’t stand the bare truth no more, so i disconneckt the phone and commence to doin a bit of feeble, tempo-less art as such:

Homage to Julius the Free

Insekt in Search Pt. 1

The Arrival of Floating Rasta Head

Well to get on with thangs a bit proper I studied fer awhile on tha prospects uv makin’ an honest shot at the presidency as kindly suggested i do as much by Beth; but seein’ as ta how I have a condition that twould render me unable ta stand ta attenshun in front the amurikan masses fer the express purpose of good politickin and all – it’s sum kinda horrible stage fright that gives me tha shakes reel bad and i caint say one sangle word without stutterin along strangs of words and phrases so garbled that it makes it seem more like a furrin tongue instead of plain ol’ anglaish.

So with my feeblin condition in mind i’ve been a tryin ta thank up a good way ’round it, mebbe invent some new form uv courtin the elektorate, but tis no good. The vary nature uv guidin the amurikan peoples requires thu leader ta at least be able ta form enuff spittle ta proudly proklaim the pledge uv allegiance at a sportin venue or ta plausibly deny all uv yer evil transgressions ‘gainst liberty if one wuz perverse enuff ta defile tha honor uv yer appointed posishun.

But ima digressin, i’ve gots ta keep ta thu pointless artworks in makin my politikul statements, even tho my convicshuns dont think pon it much no more. Here’s a few:

Well, I noticed today that my collection of Smoky Mountain photography is reaching an elevated stage of fullness that is anything but parsimonious. Electronic folders bursting with hundreds of images designated only by the fractious prefix “IMG_….” ; leaving no sense of their depiction, only a relation from the general title of the folder in which they are nestled, waiting for a quietus from anonimity; a name, a specific name, ANY name to identify – but there are so many now: too many.

My fault, naturally, but I’ll leave it to memory and the hope of cerebral permeance to keep up with the specifics on each one; heck I don’t think that even Rain Man could remember all the details.

Sunday past was a decent trip to Mt. Cammerer, a peak in the Smoky Mountains, somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand feet. My father and I started with the spackling of dawnlight to try and avoid the ravages of humidity that thrust quickly upon a body in the denseness of trees and leaves and forest. It can be suffocating in the mountain lowlands and an early start is a minor displacement of the inevitable sweat-fest, especially as the sun melts through the canopy.

The single best method to maintaining partial comfort is to maneuver thyself in close proximity to a stream. Cooling breezes blow a bit of the stream’s chill in your direction. A momentary relief, but unfortunately Cosby Creek here is only encountered in the first few miles of trail pounding. The hike progresses away from it up the watershed, a pity, for the light breeze is soon missed and the echo of the stream fades to a delicate murmur the higher up the ridgeline you progress.

As the terrain began the steep rise that winds the path upward a crossroads trail signs prepared us for the abandonment of the current languor of brisk walking. Mt Cammerer 5.2 miles. It never sounds very distant at first, but once the grade takes hold and the forest wraps the shroud of humidity and I take extra time with sidetrips and crosscountry forays and the camera…that bloody camera; the time gets to tickin’…

After two and a half miles of switchbacks and verdant hemlock groves the trail reaches a saddle in the upper ridge known as Low Gap. This is the top of the mountain, technically, although it’s still rugged uphill to the peak. From this juncture the trail follows the Appalachian Trail west to Mt. Cammerer. Here’s a quick peek at a chunk of the AT:

Still almost three miles to the tower and I couldn’t shake a group of gnats feeling the need to perform kamikaze dives into the corners of my eyes. Thankfully nary a single little bugger struck ocular paydirt, else I would have trudged the next few miles with what would have felt like a canoe rolled into the recess of my eye. My shirt was drenched with sweat from the burdensome humidity. Northward a bank of clouds began easing in and we were enveloped in a white mist – cloudwalking the AT in an ethereal shroud of what was likely an acidic haze of pollution, for the Great Smoky Mountains are unfortunately one of the (actually I think THE) parks most burdened with pollution. Has to do with prevailing winds sweeping southward from Pennsylvania and Ohio carrying noxious air pollution from the industrial matrix thereabouts; once it all hits the Tennessee valley the mountains shore up as a natural barrier to hold it in place, doing themselves in at the same time. They say the clouds that float the highlands are like vinegar – overly enriching the nitrogen content of the soil and causing an accelerated erosion of the diverse flora and fauna. And it’s only getting worse.

These thoughts burden me much more than the trivialities of heat and gnats and slickworn treeroots in the trail. I felt witness to a slow death – a downright murder with no abeyance in grasp to reverse these effects save for the unthinkable radical culture change it would take – but that’s yet another tale…

Finally we made near the the journey’s pinnacle high in the thrashing scrub of mountain laurel and rhododhendron just beyond my father is the top of the historic stone fire tower:

Nearing the tower I was able to get a decent glance eastward from where we had travelled. The haze subsiding just enough to diffuse the sunlight through the hanging gauze:

And of course there’s the tower to mark the end of the trail. A splendid structure rebuilt about ten years ago to restore the original that has stood on this blustery peak since the late 1930′s when it was constructed stone by stone by the CCC.

Stepping on to the tower deck one would expect a grand view, although the limitations of the burgeoning storm were creating mere spots of observation through the clouds. I could almost see to the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I could absolutely hear the thunder waiting to buffet the tower and its deckshackled denizens. The wind began heavy swirling and soon there was nothing but thickened cloudbank in every direction; it’s a feeling of standing on a distant precipace of heaven and facing an eternal void, except in this particular void I began to see the sparks of lightning.

Soon the torrent struck, and fortunately for us we managed to clink up the rusted latch on the door and take shelter inside. At first the door felt locked, but how? There was no keyhole nor lock so a little hard nudge did the trick beautifully. And the electricity burned the air, and the rain slashed a small tree in every direction conceivable and we took it all in from the inside of the tower, surrounded on all sides by windows and I asked the padre, “Did you happen to see a lightning rod on this thing,” and he sort of laughed and said “No,” so I turned away slowly and prepared for death. 1.21 gigawatts baby, waiting to run the biometric distance from my head to toe, it had to be coming, had to be. But it didn’t, not even close; but a spectacular show indeed.

Allright, that’s enough for today, it’s getting too hard to make a decent entry here at work. Maybe someday I’ll listen to Chris and get the Internet at home…or maybe not – it would hafta help with spelling and content errors in the ye olde blog though…oh well….off to the forest (and an excess of more photos).

The past month-and-a-half has been a been a somewhat “trying” time for my weakening fortitude and faded resilience; but as the Chinese proverb says the tall, sturdy tree snaps more easily in the high winds than the flexible, shifting, high grasses (or something like this) – although I have found myself to be more in the mold of partially pliant river cane that can sometimes snap sharply (and loudly) in the face of medium winds, not being quite as pliant as the tall grasses – nevertheless aspiring for tall grass status.

Allright, I’m sure there is thinly veiled meaning here in a mode that doesn’t require abject butchery of a Chinese aphorism…. so for my own good I’ll stop.

Naturally there are always better tales to tell, except I don’t have any of those at the moment either; the empty whiteness of this blog text block is too much at times – therefore I’ll get back in the fold with a few photos. I can handle this fer sic now. So by my count,and the tenets of traditional wisdom, I’ve got about six thousand words worth of photography. wonderful.

Many days of summer I am often ambling the steep ridges and watersheds of the Cherokee National Forest to fish the most secretive trout in the most remote pools. A small backpack is all I need and I can bed for the night wherever I end up for the day. The gentle watercourse flows calm:

The deep hollows are thick with rhododhendron and hemlock; so thick is the canopy that the forest near the creeks is almost always soggy damp with a pungency of humus heavy throughout. A favorite forest zone for Narceus Americanus, a rather large millipede (around four inches in length average) common in many southern forests:

The rhododhendron can grow so thick that you’ve no choice but to start a slow crawl between trunks and around branches and against the ground so close that decayed leaves stick to your face. Through the years it has become very clear why the old timer mountainfolk called these areas of extra thick twisted brambles of rhododhendron “hells” – cause you’re can almost be sure that’s where you are, and amidst all the slow-going and scraped skin you’ve gotta keep one eye ahead and one eye below, ’cause this is snake country, and I’ve never found it pleasant to bound over a nest of Copperheads with absolutely nowhere to haul buttock except straight up vertical skywalking. This unidentified serpent is no Copperhead, it scuttled to the creek to escape me, and I managed a quick, shaky, zoomed-in snap before he deep-sixed himself:

While fishing one of the larger and deeper pools I had encountered the entire way I noticed something unusual. On a small slate rock protrusion from the ridgeside it saw it watching me. With shell half open in a sign of retreat I could tell that it was an Eastern Box Turtle. What I couldn’t tell as I waded closer, icy water knifing higher up my legs, was how this turtle had managed to get on this ledge – a third tier ledge just above the water; it could of fallen, but it would have needed a cache of luck to not have bounced into the creek. As the space between us shriveled it became obvious from the state of the turtle what my gut kept murmuring– the poor guy was dead. A bizarre situation, for one it’s rare to find a turtle corpse in the wild, lest it was a blanched shell perhaps, but also the peculiar placing was such a mystery I stood for a good while contemplating the ineffable until my legs were so numb in the creek a small motion almost toppled me. I took one photo of his saddened form before I left him to silently preside over his calm pool:

Awright already, I will end this session with two final photos I took a few weeks back (on honeymoon no less) when we experienced the first hurricane of the season (Alex) that smashed the North Carolina coast as we attempted to relax along the Cape Hatteras Seashore (Outer Banks). Fortunately it was only a Class 2 bad boy, and being the hillbilly that I am I decided to sit by the hotel window, sip a few beers and enjoy the ride (with a few sidetrips outside to run half nude in the searing wind like a frothing, rabid fiend, until a flying garbage can scared my dumb a$$ sober and inside I went and put I stayed…).

When it was all blown to sea, the island was wrecked, not horribly, but I did keep my eye on this trampoline that decided to become close friends with a telephone pole:

By the evening the sky streaked colorful foaming on the western rise, though the east remained dark as pitch for some time:

It has been a few months.

Quietly I return the phone to its cradle.

Sunday past was only slightly breezy in the early hours; a nipping wind rustling frost-stiff grasses sparkling hopeful predawn glimmers of a sky that would soon lay heavy a dense blue fever of monotonous hue breaking the seeping graycloud lethargy and forcing the malaise of late Fall into a hampered sidethought.

The destination for the morning was to take me in the neighborhood of fifty miles northward to the geography that formed the original passageway for colonial westward expansion: the Cumberland Gap.

The Gap itself is a rare geological break in the Cumberland Mountain chain of the lower Appalachians that is large enough to have been significant as a useful thoroughfare back when just ripping an asphalt road over a mountaintop wasn’t quite an option. Wide enough for herds of bison to weave through, the Cherokee walked silent paths through the Gap to the pastureland of southern Kentucky.

This is the land of Daniel Boone’s notoriety; in the early 1770’s he was the first to explore the vicinity and scout the tangles of endless trees. Following his lead settlers hacked their way through the Gap expanding the old forest routes into the famed Wilderness Road, haevily pounding their way into the pastureland of Kentucky in greatest numbers between 1775 and 1810. The Cherokee, it seems, were not pleased. (Shawnee, I think also, top-of-me-head.)

On this day the past trickled around my consciousness, competing with the rolling sound of a near creek pouring swiftly from a limestone cavern on the cliffside just behind where I stood in dead sunlight.
I struggled to imagine animal trails through the heart of the Gap, but could only hear the distant rumbles of Highway 25-E as it charged into the nearly mile-long, four-lane tunnel that bores its way straight through the mountain from Tennessee into Middlesboro, Kentucky. Completed in 1996 the tunnel was a means to both dispose of the old highway that once scrawled the distance through the Gap and a means to return the Gap itself to a “natural” state, manifest historicity, as maintained by the National Park Service, full of natural plentitude, devoid of mechanistic incursion. Why go over a mountain when you can tear right through it?

The incipient “forest” replenished to the Gap is beginning the painfully slow journey of restoration that will never be seen to us in this life. This gave it all the unauthenticity of a sterile city park replete with extra wide gravel walking trails; although numerous ridge trails coursed ruggedly following along old pathways from the Civil War, passing by rifle trenches filled in from a hundred and forty-or-so years of decaying vegetation and shifting hillside. At one ridge apex sat a small wood-top covered concrete pavilion marking the intersection of three states: Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, right here in the domain of the Gap, weathered blue signs facing the partial views toward the bright vistas of their respective states, a cupric colored USGS benchmark marking the exact point of convergence as it calmly erodes into history.

There are many more trails though, the Park lists around seventy or so miles of hiking to horse multi-use trails extending, I’m guessing to the northeast and southwest along the Cumberland Mountains. The road from the lowland trailheads twists severely up the Gap’s northeastern mountainside revealing a view from the Pinnacle, a touristy park and walk-yer-lazed-arse convenience pull-in that leads hungry observers to a panoramic overlook of a mostly southern expanse of distant, wavering terrain; a place of serenity belying its prominence as a military observation stronghold during the Civil War. To the northwest Fern Lake reflects lazy sunlight amidst the sagging peaks of the Cumberlands, slowly dripping the water bounty to the city of Middlesboro.

At the Pinnacle remnants remain of war past. The geology of the Gap made it a virtual fortress – Union and Confederate soldiers alike occupied the surrounding terrain; hoping to gain a significant advantage that never would be as worthwhile as perceived. Civil War cannons perch solemn on remoulded wheel-housings etched with countless insignia and initials of modern fools unable to respect the dead, history, or something transcendent of Self. Respect and Reflection are virtues barren and neglected by forthright omission in the seething idiocy of many that visit these places of dying importance. But we all too shall fade in rust and ash.

And as voices fade so do the inscriptions albeit sometimes more begrudgingly. I was enlightened to find along the high rocks of the ridgeline a carving, slight fading yet distinct, but remarkably a match of the date of the final Confederate surrender from the sign (PIC) above: September 9, 1863.

As I scraped away debris and plucked dead summer grass I could see the year emerge plainly and distinct in the west-falling sunlight: 1863 looking chiseled almost but ten years prior. The soldier’s name and regiment were there too but faded shallow; it was obvious from the rock that the date I had mostly unearthed had been protected as found, somewhat in a state of partial burial and recovery, for the carving was near a main trail and likely encountered by many over a stream of decades and I feeling somewhat the more serene given that my birthday is September the 9th although timed far distant – ahead exactly one hundred and eleven years from the time these marks were carefully laid in stone.

Although I hesitated to find significance, maybe a small divination, I decided that a little benign coincidence easily feeds my perplexion, especially giving a decent one in three hundred and sixty five shot or so of correspondence.

As I left the Gap that day I was filled more with imagery of people than I often get when in the Great Smokies; although the nature of the Smokies seems more extrusive in the capacity of anthropology, it is not as dynamic and has resisted a potentiality of change that almost condemned it to the human-wrought obedience of the Gap; but the Gap is very different and I haven’t the experience and understanding there to shape it in reflection just yet.

But the Appalachian microverse dies ill at ease here as it does throughout my land. Split-rail fences still stand defiantly against time and culture; waiting to be forgotten on high ridgetops; rottings to the soil-covered limestone and sandstone pinnacles that will far outlast the brash carvings of unaware humankind.

Well, I’ll keep the blogoverse simple; a few sketches on cardboard of Papa Hemingway. Pretty shabby, yeah, but quicksketches are thataway; i’m tired for the evening and slash out some art on the leftovers..errr.. well it’s mostly all i ‘ve got for painting…Christmas cardboard can be a source for multiple vignettes….or trash, depends on the disposition……

I’ve been wandering the Southern Highlands quite often these past few weeks to take advantage of unseasonably mild weather and vistas illuminated by the mellow winter sun.

Climb a peak at just the right moment and one can avoid the typical fourteen inches of snow piled throughout the upper elevations during this facet of the season; with pristine atmosphere begatting smogless visibility you can almost (but not quite) see the vague contours of distant ridges and hills hundreds of miles away with the visual clarity a Cherokee roaming these places would have enjoyed a thousand years ago.

There is no snow now, but soon. The temperatures are easing to lower digits again and the winds are swirling the returning winter grays. I’m ready for them.

Enough talk: here are a few of the photos I’ve clicked recently – they can say it better anyway….

Sunrise, Newfound Gap

Kephart Prong

SW View from Dry Sluice Gap Trail