Essays |
Ozarks, a slight return (in the numbering of the days)
The Ozarks stand above me to the north. The great rumply
guardians from that Missouri invasion that no one fears. I do not actually live
among the hills myself. I live just east of the Arkansas river valley on a
slighter hill, a hummock really that rises rounded above the valleys to the west
and south of me. As I have said before, this home lumpiness is called Round
Mountain. Aggrandizement at its finest. We live on almost the exact top dome of
it, with my trees, my intermittently filled hardwood swamp. Across the river to
the west are the Ouachitas. But head anywhere northward and we enter the old and
worn Ozarks. In the minds of geologists, the Ozarks and Ouachitas are not one
great category. They have distinct appearances, ages, vagaries and warps. The
Ozarks run on up into southern and middle Missouri. They are certainly Palezoic.
Translation: damn old. Before the rise and fall of all the dinosaurs. Before the
first bird. Far before the blink in time that we, the upright thinkers have come
to dominate. Deposited on ancient sea bottoms and lifted and rumpled up to be
worn down by time and tide to what they are now. I live at about 560 feet upon
my own hummock. These mountains range from my level to close to 2000 feet in
places. Nothing is cutting too far into the ozone but the landscape is still
holding a deep and finely aged beauty once you wander amongst its rivers and
valleys down at flower level beneath all its trees.
We are there now, for a week away, in these Ozarks. A
small township next to a very large dammed lake. We have been to this hidden set
of cabins many times. We have been here through three different owners at least.
With the current ones being somewhat more industrious than their predecessors.
The husband of the pair being a Swiss trained chef. Both being dog lovers and
cat adopters. Through them all, we still love coming to stay at this simple
place, that now has a restaurant chef far above anyone in the neighboring five
counties or more. We meander our way slowly from our home and arrive at mid to
late afternoon. We had been weaving through small thunderstorms on the way, our
luggage protectively bagged in the back of the truck. We stopped to do this
hastily at one overlook stop while large raindrops taunted us. Once arrived and
checked in and out on the back deck that overlooks the lake, a booming storm
finally catches up to us. The temperature, which was already 5 or 6 degrees
below our home temps, falls rapidly in the new breezes and wetter darknesses. I
shelter under the small dormer at the back door and keep the room open to the
world. Feeder bands of rain track and curtain across the lake to our north. Hail
begins to bang on the metal roof and bounce across the deck. Pea sized and then
marble sized, it is a pleasure to watch it try to whiten out the pine needles
and the sparse grass below us. The storms move east to west, heading off towards
the north edges of Mountain Home and then into Missouri if they stay together
long enough.
The sun breaks out on us and
over the lake afterward. Shearing bands of sunlight beam and step across the
water. The birds quickly resuming what they need to be doing: making more birds.
Hummers and thrashers made from the light. Through several steps of course.
Where these hummingbirds hid in the driving hail, I don’t know. It must be a
lesson learned early in a short hummer life. Or perhaps most hummers living but
a year or two, never see ice fall from the sky.
Hail
being a true apocalypse when you weigh barely more than a quarter. I’ve heard it
sometimes kills pheasants in Kansas and Nebraska. Birds that weigh pretty close
to 400 times the featherweight rank of a hummer. Pretty sure a hummer weighs
less than a pheasant’s severed head. Though I have not tested this comparison
directly. Frankly, I’m sorry I brought the image up. It does seem, though, that
the Ruby-throats plunge into the dense row of honeysuckle behind our cabin for
everything else: for general cat sightings, for the shear comfort of the
nectar-filled shade. In the rain and afterward the thick scent of honeysuckle
wafts up in waves, now and then surprising you with its power. Then it
dissipates again. This is certainly the densest floral nectar bank in the
immediate area. I surmise the females are even nesting down inside this density.
They seem to appear out of nowhere, moving from suckle to suckle, avoiding the
sight of any lurking males. Especially the one dominator who likes to perch up
on the power line above the whole flower world and watch for trouble. Or make
trouble. Most of the day, it seems to me, he is a busy, busy boy.
Cedars to our left. Hickories across the road straight
north, the closest of a whole fall off slope of trees running down to the lake
shore. A catalpa, a sugar maple behind us along with a mix of pines to our
right. One giant pine cornering the southeast point of our cabin and looming
with its great cache of pine cones. I habitually peel off some wide plates of
its outer bark when I stand close and stare at it. It has layers and layers of
these bark sheets. This pine tree likely being older than I am despite their
rapid growth. Everywhere I go, I watch for trees that seem older than I am.
Compared to trees, I am often an infant. Which can be comforting and daunting at
the same time. There is a large slow-growing Red bud at the next cabin over. I
never have any idea how old Red buds are. Though the one in my yard is about
five I would say and maybe nine foot tall with a three inch trunk.
I
quickly assess the whole sonic landscape from my chair on the deck. Cardinals of
course, with one close and just west of us. A Brown Thrasher who sings near and
frequently and may be nesting in the honeysuckle bank as well. Thrashers like
these low and dense places. Jays are making their way back and forth from our
trees to the ones down the hill and across the road. There is a singing Orchard
Oriole who seems to range mostly to the northeast. Distant cuckoos, some
constantly passing and far off Crows, both American and Fish,
brachyrynchos
and
ossifragus. Mockingbirds up the road to the
east and the west.
Early morning, I leave before anyone is up. Out at dawn
and headed southeasterly across the White River to the Sylamore forest lands. I
find a trailhead parking area that first morning just by chance. It is not
mapped. I whip in there with the woods still dusky dark. I was looking for
somewhere to hear some of the Ozark nesting Worm-eating Warblers. They do not
nest in my own home woods. I did not hear any of them in passage this spring and
never have really. I found one once in my front yard in the fall in the rain,
sneaking quietly through. It is an odd little warbler really. It likes deciduous
woodlands and steep slopes with patches of dense underbrush. I have never seen
them anywhere but the Ozarks and on Mount Magazine in the higher Ouachitas. They
nest on the ground and their song is a sizzling vibrato. Several of our warblers
do nest on the ground. I have never found the nest of the Worm-eating. They tend
to have roofs over their well-hidden nests of skeletonized leaves, so you must
see the birds in the process of building, going into the nest to make such a
discovery. And now is the time. Hal Harrison, the author of Field Guide to
Birds’ Nests, my forty-year-old but reliable standby nest book, never found one
either.
I step onto the trail and after two steps a large,
hawkish sized bird loops up from the trail just in front of me and flutters
over to a pine stump that is about six feet tall and just six inches in
diameter. It sits up there, wings folded, balanced. I saw the white windows in
its tail when it flew and I know it is our Chuck-wills-widow (CWW). One of our
Nightjars or Goatsuckers (don’t ask, and no they don’t). We also have the
Whip-poor-will (WPW). Both are named for their call, as are many in this group
around the world. It is a surprising fact that many people think that the call
of the Chuck-wills-widow is actually the call of the Whip-poor-will bird. The
CWW being much more common in areas that are not pristine woodland or mountains.
Suburbs and parks host CWW. WPW don’t care much for intrusion. The call of the
WPW is relentless sometimes. The CWW more leisurely paced and often just a
soothing background noise. This particular guy stays on his perch. He did not
wing feign after flushing but I still look carefully for eggs. They are placed
directly on the ground with no real nest around them. Nearly as invisible
sometimes as Killdeer eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs. The bird likely feeds
along and over this back highway stretch at night, away from traffic. It is a
lovely open corridor to scoop insects. He should have a mate already but perhaps
he is still crying in the dark for one. I try to take his picture but the light
is too low, even leaning against a tree trunk. He begins to make odd growling
barking bouncing noises like he is chiding me for being in his area. Goatsucker
cursing, I suppose. The nightbird gabbling at the dawn straggler. I may be
missing some secrets about managing the darkness. I don’t know. Tell me a
beautiful thing, catcher of moths on the wing. I know I have never heard this
sound from a CWW before. He keeps it up until I move closer and then he flutters
over to another perch. He has made my morning already.
Down the trail, I cross through pines and then turn west.
I find some blooming fire pink with its five-pointed stars. And then soon after
I hit the denser hardwoods with the light expanding behind me. Tanagers speak in
whistled conversation. The trail seems to head upwards slightly and there I find
Pileated Woodpeckers working the high trees. Tap-tapping and echo calling back
and forth to each other in that wild jungle noise. I can see brighter gaps in
the cover walking through stones, and I hear the first Worm-eating Warblers. The
high fast sizzle burns close by and then I hear a chip that I don’t know and I
kneel and make some pishing wren sounds to bring up the first Worm-eaters. They
are painted with creams and grays and browns. The tones of fallen leaves. With
stripes on the skull cap like it wears a small biking helmet. They are truly
neutral colored overall, like Swainson’s Warblers, though they choose the
absolute opposite in habitat preferences. No flashy golds or reds or chestnuts
on these birds. I find that I am standing on boulder strewn slope that falls
towards a slow bend below in the White River. A pair of Worm-eaters comes to
give me a closer look. Both are chipping, excitedly. I watch for any nesting
materials in their beaks, but they just seem interested in me as invader. I can
hear more calling to the right and down and to my left. With a few hops and a
tree assist, I am standing on a rock prominence leaning out over the river.
Still early, with haze over the clear water, I can hear
just about everything in the valley. The far side of the river is private land.
There I hear some cows lowing and moaning. On my side Pileateds cry out still in
several directions. A noise comes up from across the river that sounds like a
trapped or wounded lion of some sort. But I realize it is a donkey braying. I
don’t know donkeys or their messages and thus it is a bit lost on me. The motion
of the river itself is too far below me to make much sound. There are no rapids.
Just steady clear waters moving north and east over all those stones. There are
no jets, no cars above us or beyond. Perhaps a dirt road cut through the woods
on the far side. For several days up here in this county I see only one single
jet trail. Some of the trees around me on the slope are truly beautiful and old:
oaks and pines. They scraggle and diminish out here on the rocks with me,
sunshocked and windblown, I suppose. The trail continues downward and south
toward the river. But that hillside is for another day. On the way back, I find
3 or 4 more Worm-eating Warblers. I stop and listen to the calls every time one
sings close to me. I need to try and remember the sound again. And then I walk
away.
Back at the cabins I wake the sleepy heads up. And I make
some coffee. Delaying my coffee enjoyment until I return may be the hardest part
of the morning walks. But out in the woods, I forget. Back on the deck, coffee
in my nose, I watch the locals again. The honeysuckle banks steam and waft:
coffee and then honeysuckle, coffee again. The hummers ply the blooms. I
remember pulling the flower pistils backwards through honeysuckle blooms onto my
tongue for that drop of nectar inside them, all the way back to the time of
early childhood with my grandmother in charge. How sweet it was. What it must
taste like on the feathered, split and tubular tongue of a hummer. The jays are
coming and going again. And I try and find where in the downhill hickory leaves
the nest is hidden. They don’t seem to go to the same spot. Jay nests are
usually close to the trunk on a main split and are well hidden. These birds make
very twiggy clumps. I do see one jay dive down below the deck and get just
within the boundary of the honeysuckle banks. A thrasher immediately challenges
him, flutters him off and chases him out of sight. The thrasher nest is
definitely in there close somewhere.
After the noon sun is up later, I walk down the highway
just behind the cabins that winds down toward the river. It was always good for
the north country flowers. Though it passes private land in many places, the
road banks are never mowed on this small locals only highway. People rarely care about
a man with a camera who seems oddly focused on butterflies and flowers.
Sensitive briar grows pink in the ditches. A few cloudywings flutter there. Soon
I am in the wild Larkspur, Missouri Primrose, showy primrose, the tall spikes of
the Yellow Coneflower. This coneflower only grows up here in these four closely
clustered counties, mostly near limestone. Also skullcap, several mint species,
some more butterflies including the nectaring Pipevine Swallowtails. More Brown
Thrashers sing above me. Indigo Buntings smack and hide. Penstemon, Indian
paintbrush and, beneath a powerline, a clear pool of water with toads calling.
Here and there a Monarch is frisking the milkweed plants. I see no snakes. I
stoop and sniff bloom after bloom standing in flowers sometimes above my knees.
Next morning, I go down the
road beyond the trail where my Nightjar resides. I was tempted to flush him
again but I deferred. Off to my left was a valley that was filled with grounded
cloud, like a fire had settled and died, filling the whole landscape up with a
white foam up to the ridge tops. I pass a small pull out but see nothing of a
sign. I circle back and find there is just enough room for about two cars in the
shade in this spot. There is a small spike of a sign which says OHT, the Ozark
Highland Trail. And I am in. It is cedar and fog, stone and dawn bird song. I am
away from the slopes where the Worm-eaters sing, away from the river on this
side of the highway. This trail likely goes for miles beyond where I can go
right now, this one morning, unless today is the day I decide to just walk off
into the mountains for good. I will decide on the way.
I
find some milkweed vine with their chocolate/purpled bloom clusters. The place
is rich with ferns and mossy rock. I hear Indigo Buntings off in some unseen
opening to the left. And then on the trail I find a very aged looking Box
Turtle. The Three-toed Box,
Terrapene carolina
triunguis, is easily one of my favorite
Arkansas animals. My wife and I have helped countless of them cross the highways
in Faulkner county in the Spring months when they seem to be on the move. We
have brought some youngsters back to our own home woods. We had already been
doing this again this year before we headed north for this break from our normal
routine. On my walk the morning before, with my Nightjar, I had seen one young
Box about 3 to 4 inches in shell length. On that trail, in the rich woods, it
did not need my help going on with its life. These small terrapins grow rapidly
for the first 4 to 5 years to reach sexual maturity. That little one yesterday
was probably not there yet, to this driving instinctual power, to this seeking
of the opposite sex.
But here on this Highland trail, this first turtle I see
is striking and large, red and yellow spotted on the forefeet and head with the
red eyes of a male. I have pondered the age of these small things before. And
have never personally killed one on the highways, shortening their life. I
really have no excuse for those drivers that do, except distraction. And that
may be an explanation, but it is not an excuse. I find people take the lives of
these turtly things too lightly sometimes. I respect them like trees. But this
male by size must be one of the oldest I have ever seen. I stoop and try to get
his picture without disturbing him much. Though, what must he think of a flash
of light from a trail giant? Nonetheless, he never retracts his head. He just
gives me the look, the patient eye. Tolerating me, the leering youngster. Boxies
live to 70 and beyond. There are records of hundred year old Three-toes.
Apparently most that make it past the first 5 years and achieve sexual maturity
live to at least 45. Nothing eats them really but some strong jawed dog, perhaps
a coyote would, if it was worth the jaw work required. I suspect mostly the
highway takes them. And though this old guy is just one hundred yards maybe
through the trees from the roadway, he may never have crossed it in his long
life. Coming to the edge one day and casting a look across that expanse that
just did not look very promising, he just turned back. The world over there not worth
the hard gray heat of the highway, the weird rumble he could feel in the base of
his shell. Who knows what that old faded head has seen? I leave him to his long life.
And then not a hundred steps ahead on the trail I find
another Box. This one shell faded and face faded. The eye does seem to have a
tinge of red. So maybe another male but he looks even older than the last. Have
they ever met, living a half a football field apart? You can see that this one
has worn the red spots right off of his neck and head. He may be again older
than me. A shame they don’t have visible rings like a tree cut, to age them.
This one is also fearless, and the head never retracts. In all my many rescues
and in my home turtles, I have never seen one looking quite this old. I bid this
one good bye and I work my way further down the trail, with Cardinals calling,
more Buntings. And I come to a place to stop. To turn back. Turns out it is not
the day I walk off to my woodland death. I will save this trail now for a longer
walk someday. And then as I am coming back towards the truck, I find another
trail branch that heads off to the left just past where I had parked. It appears
to cross over the highway and head toward the river west of here. I smile.
Coffee again. The wife and children up. Josh and Amelia
want to be shuttled to Gunner Pool today for some fishing and creek walking. It
is a place I took my daughter to several times when she was a child. She loved
it then and has returned many times with Josh to explore the clear spring fed
creeks. I will drive them there and return in the afternoon. My wife staying at
the cabins. We wind through Calico Rock and south to the wild road through the
hills to Gunner. We stop for butterflies, wildlife, bird song, overlooks,
handsome trees, flowers, interesting rocks. It is definitely stop-and-start. I
tell Josh to be on the watch for snakes. And soon enough we see one stretched
across the rocky road. I bail out and block the right side of the snake’s exit
and the big snake coils and raises itself off the road. It tries to turn, and
Josh quickly has it by the back third of the long body from behind. It is a
four-footer. And a beautifully marked Western Rat Snake. It never strikes. Josh
proudly holds it with the head draped on the ground. Its great tongue feeling
the air for everything it can. So wild out here, it may never have encountered
strange two-legged kidnappers before. The north Arkansas Rat Snakes and more
etched and blotched with the markings of a younger snake even into adulthood. We
take his picture and release him in the leaf litter on the side of the road he
was headed towards.
At the pools, after an ascent and then a zagging descent
into the rich valley, we pull into the rough parking area. There are other people
nearby, a camping tent. It is a popular swimming area. The water, as always,
very cool and clear. So glassy, I can see the fish in their swimming groups
anywhere they ply. A Phoebe calls and I see him go up to the tall rock cliffs
jutting above us. A wild nesting Phoebe, clearly. Somewhere on the rock ledges,
his nest. I walk out on the rocks while my daughter and Josh get their things
together. Butterflies are zinging up and down the creek. And I follow one to
find a puddling group of more swallowtails than I have probably seen all year. I
call my daughter over. And we both try and take their picture without flushing
them. The bulk of the flutterers are Spicebush Swallowtails, who feed in the
Ozarks on Spicebush and Sassafras, both fairly common plants in these valleys. A
few Giant Swallowtails dive in and out. I see there are some butterfly bodies in
the bottom of the pile, possibly killed by a frolicking dog or a raccoon, downed
by something, or just senescence, perhaps. “In the final end of me, I will die
on a beautiful creek.” Perhaps they even committed some sort of kamikaze suicide
against the pale white stones. Whatever happened, this just brings in more
butterflies to the spot. Wondering how something that can fly for just two
months or so could crash on purpose. Is this worship or recycling? I am not
sure. Dark or light, it is a fluttering wonder, whatever the reasons.
Up the hillside, I hear vireos and Acadian Flycatchers.
Summer Tanagers call. Josh wanders off to fish. Amelia follows in her wading
shoes. I leave them until our later meeting time and drive back to some other
points on the creek. I find some striking Yucca spikes in bloom. Kingfishers
work the glassy waters. Beech trees loom and filter the afternoon light with
some kind of magic flourish. It is a quiet, wild place. Amazingly unknown to
many people. But not far from the popular caverns and the music town of Mountain
View.
Back with Vicki, on the cabin deck, we watch the Turkey
Vultures work the warm air currents over the lake. Things die. And then things
wing in that direction. Another rain storm passes, sheeting legs of white rain.
The storm rolling east to west again, playing lightning games north of us.
Rumbling like a war. The trees in the valley glisten afterward with water
droplets. The jays start up immediately afterward in their back and forth
travels. We both go later to drive to Gunner and retrieve our youngsters from
the pools. Vicki walking out on the rocks to admire the towering cliffs. The
Phoebe still talking and perching around us. Josh gave up on fishing at some
point and they both just chased damselflies and swam. My daughter is a sucker
for baby turtles. She scans for them constantly. She notes the damselflies. It
is an awareness I think I actually passed on.
That evening is the night of my birthday. Day 21,915
counting out the leap days. And I find that using a multiplier of 365.25 or just
straight counting them out comes to the exact same number. Everyone else is in
their cabins or in their reading chairs or beds. I ride the deck in the darkness
looking toward the north star which sits almost exactly where it sits from my
own front porch at home. Though there it holds its high place through a leaf
bordered gap sparkling over the top of a sweetgum tree. The light from that
single star older than everything I can see, probably from anywhere nearby, at
more than 400 years old. Older than everything except the stones, of course. Here on my wooden deck
ship, I am elevated above the body of the lake which is reflecting the stars and
the passing aircraft. Captain of my own imaginary ship. Sailing nowhere
important. A half moon comes up over my left shoulder inside the pine needles
and the heart shaped catalpa leaves. I see a satellite pass. The automobile
traffic has diminished on the highway. And I can hear at least three
Chuck-wills-widows calling in the night. A mockingbird almost starts and then
stops. The hummers sleep. And I salute my glass of red wine towards the speckled
galaxy. This one I reside in, among the million others. A sixty-year-old
nothingness plying the sky with some gratefulness on this one night. Night being
relative, as all things are. The galaxy knows nothing of my lights and darks,
neither its depths or its numberings, truly or metaphorically. If there is one
thing a mass of stars is good at, it is, in the end, inattentiveness. Like an
overworked God, shaking his head and looking off, inside the scree of all that
desperate unanswered prayer. I just know, this one microbe is grateful for the
brief flash of existence I have known so far in this local light and dark, in
this turning of my particular home globe. Three fourths of this ride of mine may
likely be over, if I am lucky. If I just make it through this one night. And
then one more. As always, a star-filled sky and a bottle of red wine are not a
combination to be messed with.
Dawn
again and I go back to my turnoff for the Highland trail and track down to the
spur I found before. It crosses the highway, unseen to passing vehicles. I stand
on the center stripe and imagine the view of a turtle, the distant rumble, the
urgency. But there are no cars, no turtles down the long stretch I see to the
south. I am on the Matley camp trail by the signage. And it is headed toward
another part of the White River. On the map this zone looks steep. And the map
does not lie. I pass into a part of the trail surrounded by the bright red and
yellow blooms of
Spigelia,
Indian Pink. They stand on either side of the trail as it slopes downward. After
that I am staring into the treetops below me as the trail begins zagging
downward in sharp hairpin cut backs. I find a hand made bench on the upper
trail. It looks out into the trees. And all things are quiet except the birds:
tanager and woodpecker, vireo and warbler. There is no early morning wind. With
the first trail cuts, I am moving through limestone formations with small caves
and overhangs. One must step down hand cut stairs over some fine stone work.
Ferns of several kinds spread over the limestone boulders. I see the creeping
fern and some more black stemmed maidenhair. And, of course, here in all this, I
find another Box Turtle heading up the path that I am descending. In my
half-ass, don’t-really-know, seen-a-lot-of-Boxies method of aging, I would guess
she is 20 to 25 years old. Today she seems to have business on the roof of the
world. This might be her first exploration at this altitude. “To hell with the
river, I am going to see where the rain comes from.” Born near the shifting
riverside sands she has decided that today is the day to climb the mountain. She
is hard up the best part of the hill and cruising toward all the answers and
here suddenly is a looming and stumbly giant in her way. Bulbous and
multicolored, this giant moves out of her way and waves his hand sadly up the
trail, with a flourish. “Good luck,” I say.
I pass bench number two. And I note the Umbrella Trees
nearby. One of my favorite Ozark trees, though they don’t grow to great size.
With leaves as long as a hiker’s arm, they do like it cool and wet and steep.
Today I have the same preferences. I sit each bench and listen. Once again, I am in Worm-eating
Warbler territory. They sizzle behind me. Pileateds call down slope. I think I
can hear the river but I may be imagining it. The sound of water in my ears, in
my mind. Oh, to have this wooded view of falloff mountainside behind my house. I
have trees and a creek. But this is pure Ozark highland spectacular. I turn back
for the cabin at this third bench and wend my way again up through the
limestone juttings. Coffee awaits.
In
the afternoon, to ward off the youngster’s urge to go back to Gunner Pool, I
suggest we go back and walk the full trail down to the river at Matley camp.
Josh agrees, thinking fishing should be the end reward for any fine trail walk.
And he is a Geologist, so the limestone and bedded rock will also keep him
going. We pass the
Spigelia.
It deserves repeated admiration. It is given some. We find again, amazingly, the
Box Turtle still working her way up the mountainside. I am tempted to haul her
up top if we find her on the way back. I count the benches and we sit the third
one again, listening. My daughter cocks her head at the Pileated cries. After
this, the trail does get even more switchback rich and is lined with impressive
trees. Probably never cut or thinned on this steep incline. We do finally begin
to hear actual river noises and human activity on the other side of the river.
Near the flattened bottom of the trail we see old concrete picnic tables.
Evidence of the old camp, apparently still used by some of the riverine travelers. We
find a new outhouse, busy with wasp nests, but far younger than the tables and
grill stands that really look older than I am. Am I beginning to sort things
into those older and those younger than myself?
The river is wide and clear. The shoreline walkable.
Butterflies are aloft. There is a sealed piece of pipeware hanging from a tree
that is asking you to insert your comments about your Matley camp experience. We
laugh at the thought but there is pen and paper inside. Josh begins throwing
casts into the deep mid-river. It would require swimming to cross here. Rocky
bottomed and tree lined, it is likely not a visited spot by hikers often but is
a riverine stop for sure. Kayakers and canoeists, surely have a picnic break
here. I find some of my old friends the robber flies while I am wandering with
my camera and also a pair of Bell’s Roadside Skippers. We can hear thunder off to the
south. And we begin to worry about ascending that zigzag slope upward in a
driving thunderstorm. Overhangs and roots, stones and turtles: the obstacles you
want on a nice hike but not beneath the washing rainfall of an early summer
downpour.
Collecting our gear, we climb back out and up surely one of the finer trail spurs
off the Ozark Highland Trail.
The next day we pack up. And I watch the jays one
more time. Finding, finally, that the Jay's nest is right there in the cedar tree next
to the porch that we have been sitting on for days. They weren’t leaving, they were
coming back to our cabin yard. We leave the Whispering Pines behind that day to
head west to Eureka Springs. For a whole different world environment. This is
not only the week of my birthday but also the week of the Anniversary of my
marriage to V. And 34 years ago, on the day after we were married, we stayed in
the Palace Hotel in the upper end of the valley within what is the unique town
of Eureka Springs. 26 years old, what did I know then? Way less than I thought I
did. And Eureka hasn’t changed much from my perspective. The upper end being far
quieter than the stretches downtown that drop off below the Palace. We dodge
more rain on our journey and it is raining hard at our arrival. The streets are
rolling with clear runoff, Eureka being a downhill kind of place. The parking
zone is below the hotel, 90 steps exactly down a boardwalk through the trees. We
unload out front and park down below and Josh and I run the 90 steps up. I don’t
recall if this was a walkway that was here 34 years ago. There must have been
some means of climbing the slope from below but the aging memory is blank there.
This red painted stairway with a gazebo two thirds of the way up appears too new
to be older than my marriage though. There are some very old trees on this
hillside next to the hotel which may have been here at my birth however.
The rooms are huge and full of windows. Some high up and
some facing out onto the stone sidewalks out front. The bath and dressing suite
are as large as I remember. My brain having trouble reconciling all the
information. What is old; what is new. Fruit and champagne entertain us while
the rain dies down. The sun comes out. We are here for some city life I suppose.
I slip out at dawn with some
coffee. There is a statue of a child launching a bullfrog on the first level of
steps. This is among potted flowers, which appear to be well cared for. Birds
sing over the slopes in several directions. I go down to sit in a gazebo chair
to watch the action.
Fifty steps below me, I can see someone’s
outside patio with some private sitting chairs, otherwise I am looking into
trees and the old stone wall of the Palace. A decaying foundation is covered
with Virginia Creeper to my right. I hear Acadian Flycatchers. If you live in a
town and you can hear Acadian Flycatchers, you are probably okay. Also Red-eyed
Vireos. Somewhere an Indigo Bunting and some Summer Tanagers. City Crows caw at
several distances. And in my several gazebo visits, many times I have crow
visitations. They always seem to specifically bend or lean over or back up on their perches to
give me the straight-up Corvid eye. Checking my status. Crows apparently can recognize individual
human faces. They may be looking for some particular local troublemaker. I’m not
one yet, but apparently I bear watching. Whenever the crows are nearby, the jays
are nervous and they follow them around. Crows are notorious egg eaters, nest
raiders. Black demon birds, no doubt, in the mind of a jay. But I can’t tell if
these black crow birds are hunting or just being inquisitive. Maybe they are
always on the watch this time of year. When the jays are around the vireos
follow them. Jays also eating the eggs of smaller birds. The vireos making that
constant little mewling sound which sounds like worry, like nervousness. Nothing
like their normal whistled song. Hierarchies are ranked within just this little
patch of sloped woodland.
Thirty-four years ago, my wife and I would have walked
the city streets after coffee. The same as today. I honestly don’t think they
have changed much, this upper valley. Certainly, the homes across from the
Palace look antique and quite the same. I must have an old photo somewhere at my
home, tucked away in an album. We would have just finished Medical school back
then. We would be headed for San Antonia. Graduation, marriage, moving across
state lines all in rapid fire succession. So, it is hard to imagine we weren’t
distracted. I had been away from birds for four years at that time. I made one
trip to the Grand Canyon by car on a break during the four years of med school.
Otherwise, I abandoned birds for the only such stretch that I hope I have to
ever experience. Back at that time, I may have been less aware of birds just from
the disuse of my ears. Walking now, I am certainly reattuned. Have been for at least
thirty years. I hear Rough-winged Swallows over the street near the
Post Office, which is very close to the Palace. A swallow perches on the power
line above us, holding a very long strand of grass. She seems to be watching my
wife and I, hesitant to show me where in the wall of stone ahead of us she was
going to place this critical fiber. She cannot trust me not to be a climber, a
raider myself. She eventually just drops the long strand, perhaps because it was
just too much, a wrong choice to begin with. And off she goes.
Down into the valley, the humans grow more numerous.
Early in the day, it is not crowded but peopled nonetheless. Other coffee
seekers, breakfast stalkers. I lose the thought of birds. Outside the Post
Office, I note they have the largest Gingko tree I have ever seen, anywhere. It
must be something spectacular in October. It is a green beautiful thing now.
These Asian trees flutter even in light breezes. I don’t recall seeing this one
34 years ago. But they are slow growing trees for sure. There is music playing
in the park downtown. People gathering there. We see some of the shops that were
definitely there the day after we were married. Others, we are not so sure.
Morrison’s gallery is gone. Souvenir shops abound. There is one bookstore,
quirky, still surviving just selling actual books in this digital world. The day
after we were married, the internet was an unknown thing. It was seven years
until its arrival. We had to go through our medical training using books and
microfilm, paper diagrams, with the actual sick and injured at hand. It was 14
years before the first iphone. Now on the street, there was no momentary view
where someone wasn’t holding up a phone for a picture or a selfie. The world is
wired now and photo mad. I still consider my phone mostly an annoyance. A way to
exchange brief messages with my wife and daughter. I carry a real camera when I
am after photos, though it is digital. Film has gone the way of movie attendance
and paper maps and newsprint. We walk further. We gawk at fools. They gawk back
at the odd old guy who doesn’t seem to have a phone.
Morning time again and I am in my gazebo shelter, shaded
and cool, the streets deserted until I see a car pull up above me and a man
older than myself gets out with a tripod and a real camera. Like he is there to
prove me wrong about people. I like him. He walks with a bounce. He assesses the
morning light and the trees and moves up the street setting up his tripod and
shooting steps and plants and walkways. He has the careful eye. A man getting a
newspaper (!) from the nearby pay-and-grab box says hello and calls the
photographer by name. It is locals up here in the top of the valley. Only a few
shops up and beyond the Palace and it is then all residential. Newspaper man is
having a morning cigar. He may own the art gallery next door. I watch photo man
work his way up the street. Meanwhile, my crows are trying to get my attention.
They think they are being ignored. The lady down below is also having a smoke on
her patio. I am the outsider here, odd man out. Coffee drinking cameraman hiding
in the tree shade.
We have my late birthday dinner at one of our favorite
restaurants that is just a road turn or two down from the Palace. It did not
exist 34 years ago. Or the room existed, but I have no idea what was in it. We
ate there on our last visit to Eureka, however, and now we will be permanent
guests for each and every future visit. At least until they are gone. It is high
end food, a beautiful bar: we hope they make it. Not your average tourist town
food. The waitress laughs at my jokes. The sign of a good waitress. For they are
not necessarily good jokes. I think you understand at this point. She brings a
chocolate dessert of my choosing with a single candle amidst the chocolatiness.
We smile together at age and the sustained wisdom of eating chocolate. She nods
her head.
My wife and I are out again on the morning walk the next day. The
downward roadway once more. We stop to talk to the gardener in charge of all the
stony garden patches around this upper part of the city. There are many. We ask
about people dropping trash and he says really, up here, it is not that bad.
Keeping enough water on the garden patches, that is the tough work. Making the
drive over from his home town which is not in Eureka. The flowers look good. We
tell him. He thanks us. He silently weeds while we head out, stooping in the
dirt, trying to beat the heat. Above him, I see someone sleeping up on the steep
stone steps, his bike parked nearby. Just coming through town perhaps. That
valley climb would make anyone sleepy. Maybe escaping something or headed toward
some lone destiny that everyone will someday know. Maybe just sleeping off that
long ride. One never knows.
I see my postwoman on the last day, sitting in her postal
van with her bare feet propped up on the steering wheel for her lunch. I give
her the thumbs up. She has a barricade across the lot entrance. It is her
personal patch
of the world for now. The swallows sweep all of us. The giant ginkgo shivers. I
still wonder at its age. I will have to look for a photo from 34 years ago of
this stretch of grass next to the post office. At home, recently, we finally had
the dead hickory taken down out in front of our house before it crumpled over
onto something important, something younger and delicate. It was down to a
thirty-foot spire with just a few side stumps. A shadow of its former self, it
had been eaten and probed for more than 12 years by every kind of beast. My
Pileated Woodpeckers will miss it, if woodpeckers truly get nostalgic about old
trees they loved for most of their lives. “Oh, the grubs I used to find there.”
When I examined the top of the cut stump, I counted out at least fifty years of
rings. Likely it was missing some of the outer ones, eroded by these same
beetles and the fast tracks of red-faced lizards. It was older than me at the
time it died and now I have surpassed it. Any tree I plant in its place will
certainly outlive me, bar lightning or fire or men with saws in the dark of
night. I have more worries than a tree when it comes to senility, when it comes
to the wearing away of my outer rings, when it comes to those things that will
make me fall over for good. I won’t feed any woodpeckers or support any
flowering vines as that hickory did, long after its actual death. We are
transient soft things and not much good when we are gone. We don’t leave our
dead for the carrion birds on a platform anymore or carry our lost ones to some
high mountain top and leave them. I do know that it has been a 60 year stretch
so far for this particular soft thing. Which is nothing when you draw back to
look on the big time lines: the stars, the layered stones, hell, most box
turtles, I suppose. And 34 years of marriage is, well, a start, I guess. We are
stopping by the native plant nursery on the way home. I am definitely going to
buy some more trees anyway, some youngsters. Get them started deep and hopefully
safe into that first tender twenty years or so. The starter years, when we don’t
know anything. When the lightning isn’t looking for us and we don’t fear it all
that much. We don’t know what to fear at twenty, especially not expiration
dates. I just know something must replace and stand where the old dead hickory
stood and take the sunlight. Make it into something better.
Ah, time, is all I can say, you asshole, always trying to tell me something. Reminding me, really, to use the much more precise word: to remind. The internet gives an example: “the watchtower is a reminder of the days when an enemy might appear at any moment.” Telling me again, anyway, a hard truth, for I can be a dunce. Talking of fear once more. Telling me about inattentiveness, out loud, like a greater gabbling goatsucker. It seems to be the word of the month. Attend, my friends, in the older sense of the word. Tick tock, time says, sometimes with an annoyed tone that seems to be getting louder and building to that certain edge: of high annoyance, of disbelief. "Dammit," comes the accent, "listen," says the shifted voice, because it certainly has told me before. Many times.
Hell yes, it has.
I mumble something about red wine.
“Prick up your
ears, you tiny thing.” But I just keep on forgetting. Though, in my own
defense, what else can I do?
HR