No GPS

How does GPS deal with detours? The road department finally got decent signage mounted, so one could tease out the detour route. The other route would be all the way up the creek from 52, the river road, but it winds around so much you're often driving by looking out your side windows. Coming in the detour route there are several abandoned house sites, two completely fallen down old houses, and the trailer where everything the family has ever owned is strewn around the yard. It's a nice drive. I've stopped at most of the abandoned sites, looking for fruit trees. I've come to believe that turkeys are a primary vector for spreading morel spore. This morning I listened to a flock coming off the roost. I'd slept downstairs, the windows were open, and they were as clear as day. They were all clucking, as they got down to the ground, not really flying, more of a controlled fall. Cluck, cluck, thump. They must have roosted on the ridge, and then were headed off to the west. Their feeding ground for the day. Maybe they'll be back tonight. I got a couple of things done, loaded a few hundred pounds of magazines and book reviews into the Jeep for recycling, got out supplies and rubber gloves to clean the cast iron sink and drain board, dug a hole in the compost pile, for some shit and ashes, and cut some green stuff, a path to the outhouse, to top up the pile. I have to tend to the dying fridge, I need a small freezer, for next winter, and maybe 8 cubic feet of cold storage, and no doubt I can arrange this. I have friends in high places. It finally hit me that this is a holiday weekend, when I didn't want to be on the roads, so I hurried into town for whiskey and oysters, a few other things, a trip to the library, a stop at the pub. Speak to a few people. Kroger is crowded, but I have a grin on my face, because the seafood lady had treated me very well indeed, 18 oysters and a No Charge sticker, she says she hates to throw them away, even though she'd never eat one. A couple of these are bad, and I just throw them outside, the coons or crows will eat them, then grill the rest open, to make a morel-oyster stew. A big day for reptiles moving on the roads. I stop for snakes. Linda emailed that morels were finally available in St. Paul for $49.95 a pound, which seems about correct to me, if you factor in a ten-dollar minimum wage for all that walking around. I think about getting fresh morels from Oregon to St. Paul, and then the store that finally sells them, and the profit margin for everyone along the way. Yesterday was the day, and I swear this is true, that the turtles started crossing the road. There is reason behind this (moving to the lowlands for water) but it's often suicidal. The good-old boys like to squash them with their trucks, so I have to stop and get them off the road, move them down-slope to the verge. This will continue for a week or two, then the reverse in the fall. A crude method of keeping time. In the patois of the time, early North America, when Kentucky was common hunting and salt territory, there must have been a sign for "when the turtles move down" as a way of setting up a meeting for next year. Which is not quite as accurate as "when the Dog Star rises" but actually works just fine. You have to adjust to a different sense of time. The last house I helped build in Utah, I lived in a trailer park on a Navaho reservation, and their sense of time had no relationship with time as determined by the British railway system. Noon today might well mean noon tomorrow, they got hung up, moving his cousin's sheep from one pasture to another, drinking with his father's brother's wife's family, or simply forgot. The turtles never move before the walnut trees leaf. I know what I observe is insignificant, patterns that I imagine are errant samplings. I don't desire much, not getting arrested, avoiding boring conversations, not falling. B and I talked about smoking vegetables. I've been making what you might call a smoked frittata, with purple potatoes and onions in a browned butter. If you add half a pound of morels, it's truly spectacular. I used a sling-blade to cut the young blackberry canes on the path to the outhouse. With house-guests coming I thought to tidy up a bit. Kim next weekend, then Diane the week after that. It'll be fun, but I can't write when anyone else is in the house, so I'll be even more intermittent. I look forward to some great conversations. Even though this means compromise. You and me babe.