Switched At Birth

Full Circle

I feel like the little boy I saw in a television commercial once who announces, "I'm leaving, now!" He inches toward the door, and periodically stops to look back to see if anyone is noticing his imminent departure. "I'm leaving now!" His mom watches this small scene play out, smiles and goes to him with open arms. He runs to meet her. "I'm back! Did you miss me?"

This is the account, recovered from a lost post, of one of the times I took a blog sabbatical, only to return the next day! It was posted originally on October 13, 2004.

Something happened today.

Our front door was open to the cool autumn air. I peered out, and felt suddenly rooted to the spot. "Look, Buck, look! Oh, God, it's so beautiful!" Buck walked toward me. "What is it, sweet baby?"

We walked out on the screened porch. It had been emptied of lawn furniture in anticipation of Luke the Power Washer coming the next day to remove Hurricane Ivan-etched dirt.

Buck saw it, too. The bright orange sun ball melted into the tree line and a young doe stood in silhouette in the darkening landscape. She looked at us, motionless.  We didn't move, either, and the sweet fragrance of the mint I planted just by the wind-lost screen door wafted under our noses.

The beauty is back. It never went away, only temporarily my ability to see it. The brokenness is all I could see, and my words dried up.

There was rain yesterday. It settled the dust and my spirit. And so, with heartfelt thanks to you all for your kind expressions and best wishes, like the little boy, "I'm back!" Shortest sabbatical on record.

I bought a flat of tiny copper penny violas yesterday, a dozen candy corn orange and yellow marigolds, eight blue-colored snapdragons, two tiny globe-shaped miniature thujas, several decorative kale plants so ugly they are cute, two strawberry plants and a glamorous blooming red bromeliad.

Buck and Harold worked all day with chain saw and tractor to cut and drag off the trees busted up by September's big storm.

Bell South called to confirm our phone is working properly. "On, no, it's not," I said, over a loud buzzing noise on the line."No?" The nice young man seemed puzzled. "Are you at the pole on the street?" I asked. "Oh, no, I'm downtown," he said. "Well, if you were at the street, you would see there is a tree down with a tangle of phone line woven through it, snapped off from the pole." 

"Ah," he said. "We'll send someone."

Our house plan. The old trees. Blooming wild flowers. A pond about to be dug. A grand piano -- the special gift from my love that I would never have dared to dream of even alone in the deep dark night under the covers. Books. Writing. A garden. Moonlight swims. The fragrance of an old-fashioned rose garden.

Hurricane Ivan's wind-driven fingers vandalized this freshly painted dream canvas.

The ugliness made us feel like running away. Everywhere there is rubble. Everywhere holes punched in our community and those nearby; trees knocked down, ripped and shredded. Even now, with convoys of workers filling up trucks with storm debris fifteen hours a day, it is dangerous to travel on many roads. Twisted sheet metal is pushed into road edges, mixed in with fallen trees, chopped up branches, sodden mattresses, drowned appliances, mildewed rolls of carpet and moldy upholstered chairs.

It is unremittingly ugly. For now.

We joined friends for dinner Saturday night at McGuire's Irish Pub, a Pensacola institution. It survived, unlike my favorite retail store, Joe Patti's Seafood, which is closed until further notice. Another couple was invited to join us for dinner, but one of them fell ill during the day. They are staying in a motel for now, their Bayshore Road home totaled. Can you imagine riding out the storm, as they did, climbing ever higher until precariously balanced in the attic, clinging to one another as the water rose and the wind screamed, picking up heavy furniture collected over a lifetime and reducing it to toothpick-size bits? Believing you are about to die. Our friend's illness may be a post-traumatic event stress syndrome. There's a lot of it going around.

Our house plan is almost complete. The fellow drawing it is an expert in roof trusses. He is needed to help get roofs back on businesses and homes, a necessary first priority. Even when our plan is complete, subcontractors and building supplies will still be scarce as hen's teeth for some time to come.

We have pondered what to do for the next year or so. Whether to abandon our dream of Longleaf Preserve. Whether to move back to North Carolina or to Colorado or to Pennsylvania or to Point Clear, Alabama.

When we walked again today over the cleared roads, I involuntarily exclaimed. "Look at the trees. Wow!" this time, I wasn't thinking of the poor demolished old ones, but the little ones, planted over the past two years. They were jumping up in the sunshine.

Here's the deal. We have a chance to buy a house just down the road that will give us the space we need to have all our stored stuff sent down from the warehouse in North Carolina and give us the comfortable stretching out space to plan carefully for Longleaf's restoration and the expansion of our permanent home there. We're looking into it.*Note from the future. . . we stayed put in the existing cottage and left our furniture from the North Carolina house in storage until construction was complete. It spent almost two years in storage. You can imagine how happy we were to finally have all "our things about us."

I don't want this web log to be just a personal journal. I want to work on learning to be a better story teller and a better writer. I'm going to be working on that in private screeds, rants, and reveries -- not here. Maybe something will come of it. What I want to do in this space is to tell the story of Longleaf and my life with Buck.

And about that sunset. Damn, it was beautiful.

Yaupon Tea

 

Sometimes I complain about the ubiquitous, tough yaupon bushes when one of their branches whips back in my face or legs to remind me of a childhood switch. (Mother made us cut our own.) Fact is, the yaupon is a generous food source for deer, squirrels and birds. And don't be put off by the scientific name: ilex vomitoria. Hurling may occur if you eat the berries, but tea brewed from the dried, ground tender young leaves is full of caffeine and tastes remarkably like black tea.  Uh. . . so I read. Maybe I'll try it next April, when there are new leaves.

This photo was taken as part of a Christmas/New Year's walkabout right at the end of 2003. The following slide show album is a recreation of that walk. Most of my earlier photo albums that had been organized on Typepad were lost when I impetuously zapped the original Switched At Birth in June of 2005. Luckily, I have copies of the photos on discs. They are in a state of anarchy, and not always easy to locate, but I'm hard-headed and persistent. There are lots of choices now for preserving photos and embedding slide shows. It's much easier than the old method, which feels like hunt and peck.

Harbinger of Spring

 

Joy is wandering through transitional woods on a cool, sunny afternoon; to see tiny grasses emerge and pine seedlings planted last year like green beacons through the gray-brown landscape. Wild blueberries grow here: tiny navy blue ones and the large types that look cultivated. I do not know their proper names, only that this photo of blueberry blossoms is a promise of spring and sweet berries bursting in my mouth.

Yet another in the "lost post" archive restoration series. My sense of urgency to complete the archive has increased. Imagine the photos, words and videos from Longleaf Preserve as exhibits in a public forum. . . This post was originally written on February 19, 2004.

Deer Track in the Sand

 A variety of soil types coexist here at Longleaf. They range from rich and loamy to full blown swamp. Acres of iron rock and clay turn the earth rusty red. But in some spots, it is so sandy, were it not for brown dirt unearthed by this deer's hoof, it might look like she was picking her way through sand dunes on a beach.

Another restored post from the lost archive. Original from February 19, 2004.

Sunbeam on Sporing Moss

 I walk in the cold, unwelcoming chill of a damp winter afternoon. A ray from the unseen setting sun shoots down through the tree canopy to add a green gold glow to this patch of moss. Serendipity.

This is another "lost post" archive restoration entry. It was originally written on February 21, 2004.

Intruders

Thursday morning. Just slightly over 200 feet in front of our house. Did you know that when the county wants to take an 80 foot by 2000 foot chunk for a major road right out of the heart of that land you call home, that Longleaf pine preserve within a hundred acre wood with your dwelling on one side and the natural spring on the other, they have the force of law to come out and hack their way through the line they want before you even get to fight about it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the crew left late yesterday afternoon, Buck and I picked our way through the tunnel they had cut.

Sweet Maggie on the Green

There is a spot in our woods where lush grass grows. The roots stay slightly damp, but a broad open area in the tree canopy lets the sun in to warm the blades. Every time we go there, Maggie runs into the tall grass at full speed, then jumps around in the grass like a dog with pogo stick legs. I'm sure she smells creatures in there, but she has never emerged with anything. Looks like fun. 

In this same area, squirrels have turned a tree knocked down by Hurricane Ivan into an al fresco dining room. See here what's left of a pine cone dinner. 

The wild turkeys have grown so bold (or comfortable), they are walking right down the middle of the road. This turkey track is embedded within a truck tire tread. Looks like an arrow, doesn't it? 

Post restored from lost archive. Originally written March 17, 2005.

Tools in the Toolbox

I am seeing woodpeckers high up in the standing snags in one particular neighborhood of the woods. It is a circular cul de sac, formed by a convergence of fire line paths. To my naked eye, they look rather dull colored, except when they fly. Then, I see white patches on their wings.

I have taken a few pictures of them, but without a telephoto lens and more knowledge than I have, the birds remain dull colored and incognito in the morning light.

Buck reminds me that we have a fine pair of small Leica binoculars. He finds them for me, unzips the case, unwinds the cord, and drapes them over my neck. "There, now. Go out and identify your bird."

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.

The contrast between my naked eye's ability to see and the reality brought in close by those binoculars was staggering. The birds' color blocks were so sharp, they looked like paint by number birds.

We all have forgotten tools in our toolboxes. Scratch around. Never know what you'll find.

A lost post restoration, originally written May 17, 2005.

"King of the Hill!"

 

I spilled part of a bag of birdseed near my neglected weed patch herb garden this weekend. A hillock of builder's sand nearby has briar vines snaking across the top, mute testimony to some forgotten thought.

The "gang of ten" deer that patrol the perimeter spy the bird seed. I watch them for more than ten minutes as they sneak up on the small pile of seed. This is a group of six does and yearlings and four spotted fawns. At one point, a fawn climbs the sand pile. "King of the hill!"

A fat dove sees what is happening and reclaims her turf. The deer are spooked by this feathered shrew. They fly white flags, and quit the place for deeper woods.

 

Optimism

Tiny gnats stick to the beads of sweat between my nose and lips. My jeans have streaks of black soot on them where I have been pushing through dead yaupon stalks from an old prescribed burn. That soot is on my hands and under my fingernails, too. My lips are too chapped to whistle up Maggie. Besides, she has taken up a position in the shade under the pick-up truck. These hiking boots have gotten heavy. My arms are sunburned! I'm thirsty!

Is it time for lunch yet?

 

Buck is the one doing the toughest work, pushing the metal dibble into mostly hard ground, pushing it down with his foot and wiggling to make a space for the seedlings. My job is to carry around a sack full of trees, bend down and slip one into the hole he has made. Sometimes, his first thrust hits iron rock, or a hidden stump. "Umph." The recoil hits the heel of Buck's hand first, then travels up his wrist and forearm, all the way to his shoulder.

Going back to the truck to refill my sack with little trees, I begin to fantasize about life in a fancy city apartment where I would dwell in pampered comfort, flitting between day spas and chic boutiques; or perhaps the desert, where there are neither pine trees nor allergens; or a treeless plain of some sort, either on Earth or some other planet.

I read somewhere that only an optimist plants a tree that they may not live to see achieve full growth.

My sack replenished, I turn back to that other optimist, standing at the ready, orange metal dibble glinting in the sun.

. . from The Lost Posts Archive.  I'll leave it here for a week or so, and then slip it onto the proper virtual shelf, which is April 16, 2004 12:53PM.

Kathleen (Hill Country Mysteries) -- when this "lost post" was first published in 2004, you left the most wonderful comment. You said:  "The ones you planted will probably grow fuller and faster for the love that slips off of your hands as you put them in."  Those seedlings today are as tall or taller than I am (5'4"), so I think you were right!