Write Mail

Sometimes, now, I just keep a file open. A reporter's notebook or the sheet of paper I carry, folded into eights, bearing notes headed in every possible direction. There are two places to ford Upper Twin and we locals use them to clean our undercarriages. The first is beside a bridge and follows the old roadbed, a natural ford, on solid flat sandstone. The second, added recently, several miles further upstream, is not as elegant. They dozed a tow-path and hauled in some rock. It cuts a corner where the road turns sharply, nothing fancy, but serves the purpose. I drive back and forth through the first one, melting a week's mud. In the country we call this alignment. A thought occurs to me, something about crows, because there are crows everywhere on this little drive, and I stop to make a note. It's cool and I'm not dressed appropriately, but the hood's warm, so I sit there, amazed at how far a warm ass can take you, writing words on a folded sheet of paper. For the record, the words were: "How many times can three crows surprise you?" Rolling a smoke and of course a Park Ranger drives by, the first moving vehicle I've seen. It's bow season for deer, and there are trucks parked off the road, where hunters have staked claim, but the Ranger is moving, driving slowly, checking for violation. And of course he stops, recognizes me, and we chat (exactly the correct word, I love English, the nuance provided: we didn't really talk or have a conversation, we chatted) about the price of tobacco. I told him about the loophole in the new tax, how I now rolled cigarette tobacco that was packaged as pipe tobacco. There are always ways to cut corners. Between acorns and roadkill. At the second ford, I went through at speed, I knew I'd lose control for a split second, but trusted my ability to gain it again. Right there, where the State Road turns sharply, a Forest Service road goes straight into the heart of Appalachia, trailers, with everything they've ever owned piled outside, and there's a pick-up truck with three guys drinking Bud Light, waiting for me to make a commitment. I hit the ford at a high rate of speed, maybe 25 MPH, and the water exploded. The Good Old Boys applauded. We went our separate ways. The wild mustard is rampant. The one blue, other than the sky, is phlox. I recognize chickory by the stalk, it used to be blue. There is a way in which the change of seasons is just a change of color. Eventually everything becomes black and white. The dead of winter. I need a base line, and I find it in a stark black and white scene, deep winter, everything frozen, with Sam Bush playing a heart-breaking mandolin. My world, take it or leave it. Where nothing is what it seems.