Goodbye, Summer

When it rains, it pours. I’m sitting here right now listening to the literal, water from the sky kinda rain, but yesterday evening, it felt like it was raining artifacts. Didn’t get to go hunting until after 6:30, so I knew there wasn’t much daylight left. The game reserve was chosen over the bottoms because of proximity. There is also the fact that the game reserve closes for the winter at 12 noon on October 15. It will reopen at 12 noon on March 15, as it does every year. Quite a few of us here in the county will miss it just like it was a good friend gone on an extended vacation, or if you’re young, like a buddy gone off to college for the term. When I stop and think about it, it’s hard to put down in words just why. Yes, it is prime wildlife habitat, with miles and miles of creek-bed gravel roads. It is a quick, easy getaway from what passes as civilization around here. But that’s not it, because about half of this county lives where we can’t even see our next-door neighbors house. It’s not the terrain, because this place is full of river bottoms. It’s not uncommon to see more deer than humans when you are meandering about on the GR. And we are some of the few Americans that are privileged to be able to watch our national symbol day in and day out, nest and raise their young. It is an amazing thing to find yourself holding your breath and crossing your fingers when you notice it is the fledgling’s time to take that big “leap of faith” over the edge of their safe and secure aerie. The eagles that live here all year don’t take any notice of us poor earth bound humans anymore. And I can’t say as I blame them, we ain’t much to be noticing. But just imagine, it is a warm spring afternoon. You’ve gotten the boat out and have put in at the little landing at the northern end of the county. The Ohio is in a mellow mood, and the sun is becoming strong enough to chase the chill of winter back to wherever it goes until late fall. As the water sucks up the sunlight and reflects it back, the air warms and a gentle breeze rises off the river. We are limited to sitting in the boat and enjoying it, which is nothing to complain about. But wait, did you hear that strong, long, drawn out keening from way up there? Just tilt your head back, shade your eyes, and you will see total abandonment to the sun, the warmth, the wide open… the spring! High overhead, wings outstretched, the bald eagle is riding the thermals wafting up from awakening earth and the gaily chortling river. You can’t help but watch, and in your mind you try to imagine how that freedom must feel. The closest you can come is being about 10 or so, on another gorgeous spring afternoon. Your time is your own, and there are no grown-ups anywhere in sight to put a damper on your day. You pedal your bike several blocks north, to where the street turns into a cow path, and wanders away on up over the mountain. You circle, and then stop, facing back the way you just came. Only now instead of the street seeming to come up to meet you, it now rolls away downhill in front of you. You gotta concentrate now, for a moment. There are coal trucks that come down from the top of the mountain, fully loaded, and if you run out in front of them, there really isn’t anything at all they can do to avoid your little, dumb, ass. The houses are right up against the curb in places on those streets that run damn near vertically down “the hill.” So you gotta listen real close and make sure you don’t hear the labored whining of their transmissions as they decend in low gear, so as not to lose control or burn out their brakes before the 90 degree turn at the foot of the hill. the coast is clear, so here goes, the closest you will ever get to flying under your own power. You stand up on the pedals for the first few hard pumps. Since you are headed downhill now, it is amazing how fast that 26 inch schwinn can pick up speed. Strain your ears to make sure all is still ok, and sit down on the seat. And now for the lift-off. Slowly, and gingerly you raise your hands slightly off the handgrips. The front wheel stays steady. You ease them simultaneously out and then down to your sides. You don’t have to rock the boat by peddling now as you are heading downhill and picking up speed with no need to move a muscle on your part. You turn your head to look uphill and downhill as you approach the first intersection. All clear. The wind in your face tastes good, and lifts the hair off the back of your neck, cooling away the sweat you worked up on the way to the top of the street. This is as close as you will get to riding those thermals. You begin to sway, ever so slightly, by shifting your weight on the seat. The schwinn responds by making wide gentle curves from side to side as it carries you on, feeling like the tires are not even touching the blacktop. In your peripheral vision, the houses and yards blur together, and you are wrapped in a cocoon of motion and balance and warmth and wind; and you know it will end all too soon. You flash across the next intersection and you can see the end of your freedom up ahead. This block is a gentle slope at first and then a huge drop before the next intersection. And just on the other side, it slopes just as steeply upward, an obvious end of the line. That is why this last part is sooo sweet. Even as you feel the street dropping away, and the bike picking up speed, the end is in sight. So you ride it out to the verrrry last second, and then it’s done. Hands back on the handlebars, stand up on the brakes, and when she starts to slide, sling all your weight to one side, stick your ked’s clad foot on that pavement, and whip the ass end of that bike around to a screeching halt inches from that final intersection. I deserved every cussing I got from those coal truck drivers, and every one of them was damn well worth it. Now you may think I’m full of bull, but I swear to you, I knew even then that those were the good times. I remember trying to imagine what it would be like just to be a high school senior and I could not wrap my mind around it. But somehow I knew that no matter what had to happen to make me grown up, or whoever “she” (me) turned out to be, the memory of what it feels like to be free and fly, would always be there. And I felt kinda sad for the folks who would never know that feeling. I hope that invincible , forever 10 year old tomboy knows how much she means to me, and how much I wish I could be her again. I do know she is still in there somewhere, and she is the best part of me. So here I sit, decades later, on a warm fall day, hundreds of miles from her beloved mountains. If she hasn’t shown up by dark, I’ll slip outside and listen to the quiet for a bit, and then call her in the way we used to do on those evenings in another life. And even though it means an end to the game, it also means that you won. We know the words by heart…. Ally, Ally out’s infree!!!

You Can Find More Than Corn in a Cornfield...

If you’re lucky, that is. These two artifacts are the newest residents of my household. I found them Saturday, in a cornfield that is just about ready to be harvested. The one on the top is what “they” call a “nutting stone”. They being those who have a degree (read often useless piece of paper) in such things. Saturday was a gorgeous, clear day, temp in the upper 80’s with a slight breeze that sprang up to rustle the dried corn stalks together every once in a while. In case you have never been deep inside a corn field at harvest time, the stalks rustle together at the slightest motion, and a breeze can make it sound just like rain drops hitting a hot steamy pavement. The sound comes at you in a wave and washes over and around you. It can be distracting until you realize it ain’t about to rain, and this is just the sound of the corn talking to itself. You simply drown it out with the sound of yourself talking to yourself, and go on about your rat-killing. Anyways, back to the nutting stone. I was walking along a row, looking down, of course, and there it was, a couple of feet ahead of me. Sitting right on top of the ground. If I had not come along and rescued it, the harvester would have got it for sure this time. In size it entirely fills my hand. On the other side of it is another circular depression, exactly opposite the one in the picture. “Experts” say the prehistoric Americans used these stones to crack open nuts. I wonder if the experts have ever sat down and tried to somehow produce such a deep, perfectly round hole in a stone like this. And not just one, but one on each size of said stone. There is also a trough carved in it from something being drawn across it in what seems a sharpening motion. On the end of the stone that the trough leads to, you can see evidence that it was also used as a hammerstone. Just my opinion, but I can’t imagine someone seeking out this stone, polishing and grinding it to a perfect oval, then sitting down and putting in untold hours to add the two depressions in the center, to crack nuts. I mean, come on, you can crack nuts with any old flat rocks. You can figure out how much pressure to apply so the meat of the nut is not pulverized or sent flying into the dirt without a whole lot of dry runs. They date from 10,000 to 3,000 before the present. This was the Archaic period. The one just after the Paleo or Stone Age. There are no words to describe the feeling of reaching out and picking up one of these tools and knowing that yours are the first human hands to pick it up in thousands of years. To me, it is a mystical experience. The photo on the bottom is what everyone thinks of when you say arrowhead hunting. It is a small brown point. But the fellow who made it had an eye for the artistic as well. It is hard to tell from the pic, but there is a vein of light gray that runs through the stone and the tip of the point is entirely gray. I’m still trying to identify the type. I have other points that are the same shape, but they are much thinner, in cross-section, and more finely flaked. It seems to date from the late Woodland period, when bows and arrows were first developed. This was around 1300 before present, give or take, lol. Before that, the weapons were spears or atl-atl’s. Here is a link to one of umpteen million sites on the net about this stuff. Who woulda thunk that us lowly shovelbums would share an interest with the scholarly types?? This beautiful little point was buried tip down up against the base of a corn stalk. I had been seeing “lithic scatter”, or as we say, chips and flakes, for the last few minutes of my bent double progress through the cornrows. I just had one of those feelings that I was about to happen up on something special. Just kept movin, one step at a time, bent double from the waist, scanning the row I was in and a couple rows to either side, and there she was. I could see it was worked, and when I reached out and touched it, I could feel that there was more of it than was showing. A gentle lift, and voila! Another artifact rescued from a fate it did not deserve. My day was made, for sure. It has rained rather hard since then, and I’m seriously thinking of payin another visit to that field this evening. I’ve not even searched a small portion of it. These river bottom fields go on forever, it seems. Of course, since it has rained, every spot deserves the once over again, to see what the water has revealed. So many fields, so little time. But like Jeff Healey, the blind blues man, says, “Nice problem to have.” Later, y’all.

Welcome

Make yourself ta home. Find yerself a place to light, and kick off yer shoes if ya wanna. Prepare to be bored, amused, outraged, edjicated, and hopefully entertained in some fashion. No tellin' what i'll ramble on about on any given day. I’ve had a full spring and summer of walkin cornfields, soybean fields and two game reserves. i've been on the riverbanks, under interstate bridges, deep in the backwoods and right up next to the border of a state historical site. High up on windswept, sheer drop-off river bluffs, deep in the backwoods, crossin rain-swollen creeks by crawlin', hands and knees, across a fallen tree trunk, lodged about 20 feet above the brown water. (not as scary as it sounds, I can swim like a fish, and it was hot enough that i seriously considered, accidentally on purpose, losin' my balance. I catch myself feelin kinda naked if I can't feel the security of my knee-high, water-proof Rocky snake boots. They are the shizznit, fo sho. You can hang a field knife on the top and tuck your trusty foot and a half long, heavy duty, flat head screwdriver securely down beside your calf. Screwdriver is the proper name for the tool, but to a shovelbum, it is a multi-tool par excellence. It serves as a probe, a pry bar, a digger, and a tapper. A tapper, to those unfamiliar with this pastime is an absolute essential. As the shovelbum walks around (lookin’ down, of course) this tool is used to tap any and all likely looking objects on the ground to determine their composition without the necessity of picking each and every one up. The “screwdriver” can also serve as a flipper. Suffice it to say that a shovelbum leaves no stone unturned. It saves a fair bit of physical exertion. A shovelbum spends a huge amount of time folding at the waist, and this essential implement extends the reach so that the legs can still propel the shovelbum while the upper body is folded with the top of the head roughly at knee level. It can serve as a prop if one becomes exhausted, and must pause, bent into an upside down “V”, before moseying along again. When scaling creek and river banks, bluffs and ravines that are just a smidgen off of straight up, it can provide that extra bit of purchase needed to keep from losing the battle with gravity. Ending up in a tangle of limbs (your own), brush walking stick, along with the various accoutrements strapped to yourself, can be a real downer if you let it. Not to mention the fact that you will just have to start all over again. Betcha never realized the humble screwdriver could lead such an exciting life, didja? I could go on, but I think I will introduce other uses for this underappreciated object in the course of subsequent posts.  Hope I didn’t keep ya too long, and I sure do appreciate the company. I will be posting pics of some of my finds later on, and relating the tales of how they came to live with me. Once again, thanks for the visit, and y’all come back now, ya hear?