Rainy Christmas

Every year at Christmas time, I make my way back to the family in Augusta, GA, which is about a four hour drive south of my home. This morning I awoke to thunder and a heavy downpour of rain. More rain. It just will not stop. I'm just hoping or a respite lasting long enough for me to get in a decent walk.

This year, I received one of the most awesome gifts ever for Christmas. When I was a kid, I used to go to bed with a radio. Handed down from my folks, it was one of those clock radios that had the flip display for the time. Once they got a digital display clock radio, they had no need for that clunker.

At night I would lay on my side, radio turned so the speaker pointed right at me, with the volume turned down as low as I could hear it. I would flip the switch to the AM setting and slowly turn the dial until I began to hit the signals from radio station transmitters. I remember hitting WLW out of Cincinnati, OH or WOWO from Ft. Wayne, IN; a station from Pittsburgh with the crazy call letters KDKA; WNBC in NY,NY.

I would listen to their music, imagining some kid my age living up north listening to the same program at the same time. Traffic reports, snow alerts in the winter, local news...all fascinating to me. I can even remember tuning in to one station from Cleveland and listening to the Cleveland Cavaliers, back when Jim Chones, Austin Carr, Walt Frazier, Bingo Smith, and Foots Walker played there.

Usually, I fell asleep, with a hand on the dial. Cloud cover, the earth's rotation, or whatever the reason, caused the stations to fade out at some point, leaving a churning mix of static in my ear as I slept. Sometimes my Mom would come in and turn it off. Sometimes she would come in and yell at me to turn it off, claiming that I wasn't getting "good sleep" with that thing blaring in my ear all night long! I thought she was just hassling me because she was a light sleeper. Now I know the importance of restful, quiet, dark sleep.

Since I have moved to the mountains, radio reception has been horrible. I have threatened Jennifer on more than one occasion that we are gonna spend money on satellite radio. Well, she solved that problem with my gift this year, a Logitech Squeezebox radio. People, this is the coolest thing ever. It is a radio that allows you to listen to any radio station in the world that streams its broadcast on the internet! The radio picks up the signals from a wireless router.

I can listen to NPR, clear as a bell. I can listen to UGA basketball games. I can listen to Car Talk whenever I want. It has a search feature that allows you to type in call letters, or cities, and it will remotely play all of your mp3s from your desktop. It's awesome. My mother even approves of it because it has a sleep timer that will shut it off after 30 minutes, once I am fast asleep.

And, yes, I have re-introduced myself to WLW, KDKA, and WOWO, many years later, using technology that seemed as far away as the stations I listened to as a kid. Again, I lay in bed, searching the dial until settling on a station. Thank you Jennifer for allowing me to capture, again, some of the spirit of my childhood.

In search of rime ice.

The colossal winter storm that dumped 1'-2' of snow from Virginia into New England just barely grazed us here in the southern Appalachians. In fact, it wasn't until the back end of the low pressure wrapped around us on Saturday night that we received a light dusting. Once the clouds lifted enough for me to see the ridge connecting Brasstown Bald to Young Harris College, I spied the upper half of the mountains bathed in rime ice.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia describes it as "a white ice deposition that forms when the water droplets in light freezing fog or mist freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, with calm or light wind. The fog freezes usually to the windward side of tree branches, wires, or any other solid objects." What it provides is an unreal environment of white. It's as though everything has been bathed in milk. I knew once I saw it on the upper slopes, that I was going to get up there to take some photos.

My dogs (hiking companions)are gone for the rest of the week, so I was going to have to do this one solo. For the past year, I have rarely hit the woods without at least one of them. Having grown accustomed to their presence, it was weird to take my stick and hike under my own power and speed. They also serve as a security blanket of sorts. I feel protected when I have them with me,tugging at each arm, taking in all the smells, using a greater sense of hearing than I have to alert me when there is a bear nearby (this occurred a few months ago on the Miller Trek Trail when we were heading down slope through a dense patch of underbrush. They just stopped dead in their tracks, both staring off the right side of the trail. I thought nothing of this until I heard the crack of a limb and saw a black mass of fur moving toward us. It wasn't big, probably a juvenile, but a bear nonetheless. We must have been upwind, because it just kept coming towards us. Rocket began to bay, and the bear turned a 180 and took off through the brush, much to my relief).

Even though I didn't have them with me, it was a much more peaceful hike. No arms getting jerked this way and that; No worrying about keeping them hydrated; Being able to leave the trail and bushwhack through the trees without getting leashes tangled.

I got a late start and arrived at the rime formation by about 5pm. With sunset at about 5:25pm, the stay would be short. I went through a roll of film, not sure whether the light would cooperate and give me some good shots. It was absolutely beautiful, even though it was a light layer of ice. The light is actually deceiving in that the ice reflects the filtered sunlight very well. When I looked down into the bottom lands and noticed street lights twinkling, it was time to head down.

Making pretty good time, ( who can't when it's downhill all the way?) I ended up being in the dark for the last 1/2 mile or so. I whipped out the headlamp once I could no longer make out the terrain under my feet. A good headlamp is a lifesaver and I can't believe that I have only had one for the past year. Prior to that, I either cut my hikes short, or stumbled out of the woods in the dark.

The pictures turned out pretty well, and I got in 3 hours of not sitting in front of the TV. A good hike while the Falcons were pulling one out in the last minute against the Jets. A pretty good ending to a cold, gray day.

Red headed Vultures

I hadn't seen a new bird, that I could list, since spotting a Great Egret near Beaufort, SC on September 7. Since then, it has been the same cast of characters...Carolina Chickadees, Carolina Wrens, Titmouses (the plural isn't Titmice, is it?), Eastern Nuthatches, Cardinals...etc, basically all of those that show up on my porch to eat the sunflower seeds and millet that I put out for them.

My drought ended yesterday. As I drove past the edge of a cow pasture in the Trackrock area, I caught a glimpse of some Vultures sitting on a fence hanging out with a couple of cows. Just before they were obscured by a hill, I saw a flash of red on their noggins. Immediately I knew I was in the presence of Turkey Vultures. I even put the truck in reverse, backing up to make the positive ID, which is pretty easy. In this part of the world, you either have Black Vultures (black all over) or you have Turkey Vultures ( black except for their red head).

I have been birdwatching since I was a little kid, tromping around the dusty fields around my home in Central Ohio. I still have the bird book my folks gave me for my eighth birthday. I've identified a lot of birds in the 36 years since then, but I never actually documented anything. I decided that this year, beginning on my birthday I would keep a ledger noting the species, the date, and the location of the sighting. I like having a list to work on. It's comforting in a way, to know that there is always something to work on....birds, state highest peaks...etc.

I was just complaining to Jennifer the day before that it had been a while since I've seen a new bird. Thank you Turkey Vulture for breaking up the monotony of a wet, cold, fall day. Thank you for keeping our highways cleaner. Thank you for devouring the carcasses, thus eliminating the potentially awful smell. Thank you for becoming bird #44 on my list.

Feels like it's raining all over the world

I can't say that I'm surprised to lose yet another walking day to the rain. It has been incessant in this corner of the world since late summer. In my field work I have heard many a native old timer claim that "This is as wet as I've have ever seen it in these parts". The ground is so saturated that even a moderate rainfall total causes us to be under the threat of flash flooding. Luckily, even though our property includes about 130' of frontage on Brasstown Creek, my home is located on high bluff, well out of harms way. It is quite a sight when it's flowing at full capacity, as you can see in this small clip.

The trails nearest to my home, where I usually take the dogs for a 60 to 90 minute workout, have become slippery to the point of being dangerous. Following proper trail etiquette and rule, I require the dogs to be under control with a leash. They don't always think of how difficult it can be to navigate down a 15-20% grade when the trail has turned to mud. Even without them, it's not unusual for me to slip and sometimes end up on my backside.

In a region prone to drought conditions, sometimes severe, I never thought I'd find myself wishing that the rain would go away, and stay away for a long time. I think I may be getting moldy.

Aches, pains, trails, and me.

When I hike, my knees hurt. My lungs can't seem to suck in as much oxygen as it takes to keep my muscles fed. My heart feels as though it may explode behind my ribcage. The room needed for my heart to expand and contract enough to feed my 300lbs+ body is stifled by the space my lungs need to reach full capacity. It feels like they overlap, as if they are fighting each other to the detriment of both. Even on a cold day such as this one, the surface of my brow is wet with sweat, or soaking my hatband.

Even with all of those seemingly unpleasant descriptions mentioned above, I have an intense passion for hiking that goes back to my youth (when I was spry, fit and healthy). For this reason, I moved to the mountains of North Georgia in November of 2006, and I have been exploring this region and its trails.

This blog has been created so that I can share with you my adventures on and off the trail and my efforts at reclaiming my good health. Along with trail talk, I have interests in a variety of subjects which I may hit on from time to time...politics, sports, music...etc. If I don't see you on a trail somewhere, I hope to see you here.