Nature – Towards the Moon or To the Sun

Box Turtles: Shy Ambassadors

Eastern box turtles.

I’ve seen several of these unobtrusive critters in the past month, so I ought to spend a moment talking about them. We’ve had quite a bit of rain here lately, and turtles move more after rain.

Box turtles are easily identified by their high, domed carapace (top shell). The plastron (bottom shell) has a unique feature: a hinge. When threatened, all terrestrial turtles can pull their limbs and head in to gain protection from their shells. But box turtles go a step further by raising the hinged portion of the plastron, completely enclosing the head and front legs.

The box turtle looks and acts like a land-dwelling tortoise but is more closely related to pond turtles. You might see them in puddles or shallow creeks on occasion, but box turtles aren’t swimmers and can drown if they go in over their heads.

Box turtles are omnivores, eating grass, mushrooms, berries, earthworms, insects, slugs, and suchlike. Immature turtles tend to be more carnivorous, as young creatures often are – it’s the best way to get the protein they need to grow.

It’s possible to tell the sex of a box turtle with some basic observation. The male generally sports a brighter coloration than the female, although there is enough individual variation to make this method of sex determination unreliable. Male eyes tend to be red, while those of a female are brown; again, there is variation.

A more reliable method is to look at the back of the shell. The female’s shell is more domed and higher than the male’s. This may require looking at a few shells to get the hang of it, but it is an accurate method. Finally, if you have the turtle in hand, you will see the plastron of the male is somewhat concave, rather than flat as with the female.

Box turtles can breed anytime from late spring through early autumn. While there is courtship, they don’t bond, separating after mating. Most nests are produced in early summer. A surprising fact is that females can store sperm for several years, waiting for favorable conditions before developing eggs. When they are ready, the females dig shallow nests in the soil, deposit 1-8 eggs, and cover the nests in soil or leaves. They may lay more than one clutch in a season. Similar to other reptile species, temperature of the eggs determines the sex of the offspring. After two to three months, the eggs hatch and the hatchlings, perhaps an inch or two long, make their way into the world.

That brings me to the little tyke I saw last week. I noticed what looked like a dirt clod wobbling past my wheelbarrow. It was too small to close its shell (which was too thin to give much protection anyway); for the first few years, not being seen it its best defense. After inspecting it for a few minutes, I removed the wee thing from the wide open clay yard to the safety of the leaf mould just off in the woods.

Will it make it through the winter? Between predators, fire ants, and inclement weather, the first year’s odds are stacked against a young box turtle. If it reaches maturity (5-10 years), the turtle is likely to keep going for decades with few worries outside human-related mortality. I’ve seen turtles killed by plows, dogs, and cars; on hot summer days, it’s possible for a turtle to cook to death trying to cross an asphalt road. But if it avoids the hazards and finds enough slugs and bugs, perhaps our paths will cross in a decade as it searches for a like-minded turtle to tryst with.

If you wander the hardwood forests, you may come across an empty box turtle carapace. Perhaps, like this example, your shell is shedding its keratin and leaving only bone. Did the turtle leave its shell to grow a bigger one, like a snake shedding its skin? I’m afraid not. Look inside; you will see the structure of the backbone along the inside of the dome.

The bones extending from this structure are the modified ribcage, fused together into a protective dome. A turtle can no more leave its shell behind than you can pull loose from your skeleton!

For budding naturalists, box turtles are excellent creatures to experience up close. Spiders and snakes can be off-putting; birds, rabbits, and deer only allow a distant viewing. Even water turtles will slide off their logs when approached. But a box turtle is pretty mellow. It will sit, wary but confident of its defenses, while you observe. I met an environmental educator this week who said she likes to show kids the box turtle because it is the animal they are most likely to encounter in their backyards. “To these kids,” she said, “box turtles are nature.”

The Dance of Lights

Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Depends on the picture, and the quality of the words.

I lack the picture, and am not confident that the words will be adequate. Nevertheless, here goes.

My wife and I took a weekend getaway in the northeast corner of Georgia, nestled in a small rental in a cove framed on three sides by green-mantled mountains. The little cabin shared a fenced-in field with a barn and a couple acres of unmowed grass. Beyond the fence were other fields and other houses, some abandoned but most with more permanent residents than the sort our getaway hosted. It was a pleasure to hear chickens rather than sirens, and to let the dogs out into the yard without a leash, confident that the rabbits and whistlepigs (as my wife’s people called groundhogs) had the sense to clear out before the hounds noticed them.

The sun had dipped below the nearest hills when we sat on the patio and ruminated in the still, cooling air. Turns out, we were waiting for a spectacle we weren’t even expecting.

We spotted the first flash a few minutes after sundown – a silent greenish spark, twenty yards distant among the branches of a black walnut. It was followed a minute or so later by another brief glow farther down the treeline. I enjoy seeing lightning bugs on summer evenings, and noted these as a part of the background, along with distant treefrogs and the occasional flash of heat lightning.

Why is it easy to dismiss such a natural wonder? A beetle that mixes biochemicals to create visible light with almost no heat? A beetle that uses this visible signal to alert potential mates? A beetle which flashes its bioluminescent lantern in a particular pattern to distinguish itself from the dozens of other firefly species in Georgia? A beetle whose numbers, like those of many insects, have dwindled in recent decades? Watching a biochemical flare popping over every five or ten seconds was notable back home, but it wouldn’t hold my attention long.

Yet fifteen minutes later, I noticed that these fireflies were uncommonly active. As the treetop silhouettes faded against the dimming sky, the light show ramped up, drawing us into the field for a clearer look. By full-dark, I could look in any direction and see ten to twenty flashes per second. In the trees and above the tall grass, a multitude greenish sparks floated in the darkness.

My wife was awed; she said she had not seen such an intense display since her childhood in western North Carolina, before developers transformed the fields and orchards. We watched the green sparks, like embers from a faerie fire, appear and vanish the blink of an eye. From beside our heads to two hundred yards away, they flared silently.

For the next night – our final night at the cabin – we determined to make best use of the only cameras we had: our phones. But despite fiddling with the exposures on photos and video, the devices let us down. They just weren’t sensitive enough to register the brief pinpoints flaring in the otherwise complete darkness. Out of many attempts, the best I scored was one photo with a few blurred green spots. There was also a video of the female lightning bug that I plucked from the grass at my feet. It crawled across my arm to the top of my head, strobing like it was overcaffeinated, before dropping back on the ground. But without a good way to visually document the spectacle, we were left no option but to capture the moment as we do so many of life’s stolen moments: with the mind’s eye.

After a long while bearing witness to the dance of lights, the promise of an early morning made us to reluctantly retreat indoors. I wonder if anyone in that little valley was appreciating the natural spectacle. How often did those spending nights at the cabin turn off the television long enough to notice the show outside their window?

Looking back, I can confirm that my words were inadequate. But perhaps they will be enough to encourage you to seek out this natural light show in your own forest, field, or back yard.

Additional Resources:

A firefly fact sheet (pdf) from the Georgia Extension Service.

Firefly.org: Conservation and research information.

Gone With The Rain

Many moons ago, I was on a van with my college Soils class, riding past farmland south of Athens. One of the students hailed from the Midwest. Surveying newly-tilled, rusty-red earth, she asked the professor, “Do you have any soil here?” All the southerners laughed, but it’s a fair question, and one with a depressing answer.

It’s been called “one of the most significant environmental disasters to occur in the state.” The evidence is all around, in forest and river, and indeed the consequences can be seen in how limited our choices of land use are today.

Most soil profiles have several distinct layers, or horizons. The O (organic) layer and A (surface or topsoil) layer contain most of the accessible minerals, organic material, water-storing pores, microbial life…everything that makes soil valuable for plant life. The Georgia red clay, synonymous with southern dirt, is the B or subsoil layer; it contains very little organic material and is stingier both with nutrients and water. In much of the south, and especially in the Piedmont, we simply have little to no topsoil. But this was not always the case.

Think back to the first half of the 19^th century. The native peoples were swept out, and settlers opened the forests and savanna. The supply of land seemed inexhaustible, so it was deemed more important to wrest what one could from the soil than to tend it carefully. Cotton was the primary cash crop, and straight furrows were easier than rows that curved to follow the contour of the land. Rains came and washed away centuries worth of topsoil, hastening the decline of fertility and forcing farmers to abandon exhausted farms for new ground. By mid-century, many upland farms had lost their topsoil completely and farmers were trying to coax crops from subsoil. The problems compounded as the lost soil washed into waterways. Millponds filled with silt; rivers clogged up with earth, increasing flooding. There were some efforts to control erosion – contour farming and planting pines, for example – but war put those efforts on the back burner.

Recent erosion leaves only a rootball on this oak

Subsequent decades follow a pattern of waning agriculture, a rise of forests, a clearing of forests, and a new rise of agriculture. Poor farmers trying to coax crops from even poorer land was the recipe for a cycle of poverty and destitution. In my lifetime I have seen the cycle more or less continue, with eroding fields planted in pines or left to grow wild; some of those stands have since been cleared again for agriculture or other developments. Erosion is still a pervasive issue.

Take a look at this creek in the Georgia Piedmont. See the broad slabs of stones and smaller rocks in the creek? That’s likely the natural base level of the creek, about where it would have been two centuries ago. See the 10’+, nearly-vertical banks? Those are largely composed of earth that has eroded from the surrounding hills due to clearing, development and poor farming practices. Steep banks of silt such as these are unfortunately a common feature of creeks and rivers in much of Georgia.

I’ve been told that one reason for the University of Georgia’s location at the turn of the 19^th century was the clear waters and abundant fishing on the Oconee River. Current students may be forgiven for assuming the steep banks and opaque brown water is the natural state of Piedmont rivers. Not that many years ago, crews dredged behind the dam at Whitehall Forest; 20 feet down into the muck, they came upon a sawn tree stump!

I drive past so much land with stubby, slow-growing pines or thickets of spindly sweetgums and scrawny oaks, with little on the ground beyond stubborn tufts of grass or reindeer moss – a lichen that even as a kid I learned to associate with poor soil. Across the land, gullies – some bandanged by leaves and brush, others bare gashes that continue to hemorrhage soil – remind us of the natural wealth lost through ignorance, indifference, or greed.

But I haven’t visited the most famous monument to this human-enabled catastrophe: Providence Canyon. What started in the mid-1800s as series of gullies a few feet deep have become a fan-shaped series of canyons spanning hundreds of acres and plunging up to 150 feet below ground level. The super-gullies continue to gnaw at the land around them, extending further every year. It is sometimes called the “Little Grand Canyon,” as if its existence was a point of pride and not the most visible scar of a curse our ancestors bequeathed to us.

I see turn-of-the-century farm houses, mobile homes, and dilapidated ranch style dwellings lining the backroads I travel. Around these homes are either pine stands or clearcuts, for the hard, gullied subsoil is neither fertile enough for seasonal crops nor (in some cases) level enough to run a tractor. The preponderance of political banners touting modern lost causes suggests to me where these folks stand on the subject of climate change. They are willfully ignorant of the effects that human irresponsibility will have on their descendants; yet I suspect that they are innocently ignorant of the impoverishment bequeathed to them by their own forebears.

A 8′-10′ deep gully. It still carries soil away when it rains.

A Different Shore

In my childhood – all my life, really – the shore was about sand. Where land met sea, you would find the white of powdery quartz or the orange of crushed shells. Some were good for dribbled towers on the featureless shore, and others occasionally offered up sand-dollars or interesting bits of flotsam.

My recent trip to Maine showed me a coastline in rawer form. Schoodic shore

In July I spent a few days on the Schoodic (SKU-dik) Peninsula, where the crashing of the waves sounded like the sighing of wind through my open window at night. I spent one late afternoon alone on the rocks, watching and listening. Behind me, stunted trees and herbs clung tenaciously to a mantle of dirt only a few inches thick. Before me, waves crashed against the cracked, ancient granite. It made me think of troops advancing in human waves, charging up the slope before faltering and falling back, only to regroup and charge forth again.

Closer to the huddled vegetation, I saw sharp demarcation in the stone, as a dike of basalt cut through the granite. A young geologist could have a fine time following the lines of dark stone slashing the open ground of Schoodic, to be fractured and worn down, leaving wide trenches in the harder granite. schoodic basalt

The crashing waves were soothing, but some animal part of me also watched with dread. This wasn’t the domesticated water of a swimming pool; if given a chance, those powerful, frigid waves would mindlessly sweep you away, break you against stone, rob you of air, or drain your body of all warmth. But that’s the way of Nature, isn’t it? Tornados, volcanoes, cliffside vistas, grizzly bears – we can appreciate the majesty of Nature, but Nature isn’t obliged to return the favor.

I wonder how my thoughts would have turned had there been a horizon for the sun to sink into, and distant islands and coastline to observe. But the world was confined to a grey dome encompassing spruces, stone, and sea.

On a different day (but no less grey), my guides drove me far up the coast to a cove south of Machiasport to visit Jasper Beach. Again, this shoreline was all stone, but stone that had been broken down and placed in a natural rock tumbler for a geological moment. The beach drops down in a series of tiers to the water’s edge, where stones –from hand-sized cobbles to pebbles smaller than your pinky-nail – are rounded and polished against each other by wave action. The waves gently rolled in, blunting their power by filling the spaces between billions of stones. When the water withdraws, the air fills with a sizzling hiss, like a giant rain stick. It was like a half-mile ASMR trap. I could have spent hours poring over the limitless variety of stones. Chris Mackowski does more justice to the beach than I can.

The final stop of the tour was a beach that combined the previous two and added some extra elements. Quoddy Head State Park is as far up the coast as you can get and still be in the US, and the easternmost point in the US. The fog broke briefly, and I could just see a bit of Canada. From the parking area, I took stairs down the cliff face to the beach. It sported some cobbles, some bedrock, and some sand – with lots of seaweed mixed in. There were small columns of rocks here and there, cairns left by visitors. I didn’t add to them, but understand the impulse. I stood on a stone surrounded by the lapping low tide, so I could tell friends I was the furthest I could go in the US without swimming.

These beaches were new experiences for me. I’m back in the late summer roast that is south Georgia. But as I write this, the recording I made of the incoming tide making war on Schoodic Point is playing in the background.

Stepping Back to Spring

spring flowers

I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains around mid-May. I started the uphill climb in Cherokee, North Carolina, which (at around 2000 feet above sea level) has been shed of icy mornings for about a month and a half. I drove through a canopy of mature, deep green. By the time I reached Newfound Gap, some 3.000 feet higher, the days of frost weren’t nearly so distant. Temperature drops with increase of elevation, on the order of 3-5 degrees F per 1000 feet. So just as the greening of the land creeps northward, it also crawls up the mountains. Here, on the ridge line that marks the divide between Tennessee and North Carolina, the new leaves were bright green. In the Autumn, the progression will reverse, with leaves flaring and falling on the ridge before those in easterly Hendersonvile properly start to turn. So the southern Appalachians have growing seasons as short as those of Ohio or Pennsylvania. Yet with abundant rainfall and moderate sunlight, the mountains are mantled in lush growth.

A Quick Visit to “The Wall”

I found an excuse to make it back to my old stomping grounds for a few days last week, and carved out time for an evening walk to “The Wall”, the ruins of an old stone bridge on which are tied many memories. We’ve called it The Wall all my life, and for me it is the focal point of the 200-acre woodland. It is my church, it is my touchstone, and I think of it often.

On pavement, the walk from the road to the creek would have scarcely been a 3 minute stroll, not the 15 minute creeping meander it turned out to be. Here, enfolded by forest, I feel compelled to tread quietly, to watch my steps, to look around and listen. So much to note: more sourwoods here than I remembered… a neighbor’s horse left its calling card on the trail… armadillos have been rooting through the leaf litter…another old shortleaf pine has fallen victim to time… a loud snort tells me a deer has spied me before I noticed it. As the warm May air rustles the leaves far above, I turn off the path, stopping to brush humus and leaf litter off a small fire ring laid down 30 year ago by a smooth-faced youth with a less seasoned view of the woods; then I continue downhill to the Wall. Loose rubble fills the space between two massive stone walls, each wide enough to walk on. I perch on the highest end stone and silently survey the land, from where the creek rounds the bend to where it fades away behind fans of leaves. Birdsong pierces the chuckling of the water tumbling over rocks. Last year’s tropical storm left several trees lying across the creek, but at the moment the woods are dry enough that the resurrection ferns are curled and brown. Wall snake

The photo of the rocks above isn’t from the normal angle I shoot the rocks because I wanted to include a bystander. Look down near the base of the tree on the left.

nerodia 1

This fellow is a northern water snake. He stayed put from the time I saw him as I climbed down the rocks until I left the area half an hour later. They aren’t venomous, although they’ll bite if they feel cornered and can be aggressive in defending their territory. I’ve never seen one of these on our land before, and when I came out the next afternoon, the snake was nowhere to be found. The woods are full of life, and you will miss most of it unless you keep quiet and alert.

When you are out and about, try stopping and see what you can see, hear what you can hear. Be still, and Nature will come to you.

Smoothing the Scars

Wall and vine

Although I live in the Coastal Plain of middle Georgia, my family has 200 acres of woods in the Piedmont region of northern Georgia. It is a beautiful property, with stately oaks, hickories, and beeches, but the sharp eye can see the wounds Nature has scabbed over. Everywhere are gullies and thin rocky soil where farmers asked more of the land than it could provide. Here is a the hole where a moonshiner kept his still, and there is the echo of a sunken road now paved with oak leaves. An old wall by the creek — probably the remains of a bridge, or possibly a mill dam — is a focal point for my visits when I journey back there every few months. Humans have altered the landscape to suit their desires for nearly as long as they’ve walked these lands, and they’ve been especially good at it in the last three hundred years. Yet, as always, Nature makes do. Plant succession will turn a fallowed field to a pine woodland in a score of years, so what hope does a Mississippian mound complex have against Nature with a thousand years to work with?

woods road

Thoughts on Walking in the Woods

Reproduced here with the kind permission of Jerry Knox:

Some will say they fear the woods, for the snakes and such. I have found a different truth. One who treads the woods with care, to do no harm to tender plants, will never be surprised by any harmful thing. The very sense that guides your feet away from the violet, will alert you to the poison ivy there as well. The soft, and measured, step allows both mouse and rattlesnake time to flee your path, or hide, alert and safely unafraid, as you pass by.

But one who crashes through the brushy ways carelessly and unaware will find his way perilous indeed! Yellow jackets boil to defend their precious nest. Thorny vines find painful lodging round ankle, neck and arm. Ticks shower on his shoulders, chiggers cling to pants and legs. The rattler coils and bows his neck to fight off this bold invasion. Thrown out, repulsed by vine and fang, the intruder flees with tales of terror, and fearsome creatures lurking in the trees, and fails to see the danger in the woods was he!

22519267_1944339395592575_5945756040149729161_n(1)

The Country Mouse Replies

Around 15 years ago, I was conversing electronically with a friend who resides in southern California. Although we grew up around the large town/small city of Athens, our paths took us in opposite directions – hers led westward into bright lights and urban sprawl, while mine headed south and east to more rural landscapes. When I mentioned in passing the “perks of living in the boonies,” she admitted being stumped on what those could be. Although she managed to come up with a few — such as being able to play the stereo as loud as one likes — they paled against ordering takeout at will or reliable and fast internet.

The following day, I had mused on the subject, waxing exceptionally poetic as I waited for birds to call in the chill pre-dawn air:

As I write (the majority of) this essay, the dawn’s light barely illuminates the page, which is further obscured by the wisps of my breath in the chill of mid November. Overhead the larger drops of the Leonid meteor shower still burn despite the morning glow. I was out before dawn to survey quail, but while I’m no morning person and have lacked a full night’s rest for a considerable number of days, this AM I don’t begrudge the sleep.

You bring up some fair points about life beyond the concrete Pale, and I’m favorably impressed that you spared considerably more than a passing thought in trying to understand why someone with a choice would live where the blacktop ends. I’ve been mulling over the question, and my sleep-deprived brain has come up with this reply.

My house is about 11 miles from town (population 6000). The city of Augusta is a good 45 minutes away (and that’s burning up the highway, not creeping through traffic). The college town of Statesboro is an hour distant (The question of when distance became measured in units of time I’ll leave for another day). This means that seeing a show at the multiplex is a fair trip in itself – and indie films are out of the question. The closest bookstore is Amazon.com. No specialty coffees can be had in this county, at least nothing more exotic than what BiLo carries. In town, sit-down meal options consist of a diner, Mexican, country buffet, a sandwich shop, two Chinese restaurants and several BBQ joints. McDonalds is here but BK hasn’t made it yet. The farm equipment dealers outnumber auto lots. And you already know the trials of TV and internet access. So by the City Mouse standard – the measure of manufactured conveniences – this haystack just doesn’t cut it.

Luckily, there are other measures and other standards. You have thought of a few, though it is clear they pale by comparison to life on one pole of the LA-NYC-DC axis. Still, I’ll list just a few of the conveniences and opportunities:

–Having neighbors close enough to summon in an emergency, but otherwise out of sight and out of mind.
–Letting your dogs bark themselves hoarse without being threatened with legal action (I speak from personal experience).
–Practicing katas in the yard with a real katana without being reported and arrested. For that matter, walking around in public places with a knife on my hip and not being reported or arrested.
–Clean air.
–Being able to step outside at night and seeing more than the two dozen stars which are bright enough to punch through the haze of pollution and city lights.
–Hearing a car pull up and knowing they’re here to see you, because there’s nobody else around.
–Maintaining the yard at whatever level you want, not whatever the anal neighbors want.
–Don’t underestimate the mental health value of being able to blare the stereo while you’re working outside.
–Exchanging waves with strangers on the road.
–Driving above speed limit most anywhere because traffic is so light.
–Being able to cook over a hickory fire in the front yard.
–Having staring contests with a coyote, surprising a fox, stopping so wild turkeys can cross the road, and shooing spotted fawns out from under your truck.
–Hearing quail whistling to the north, barred owls hollering to the south, coyotes howling to the west, and wood duck wings whisper overhead.
–Anticipating what kinds of critters you’ll see on the way to work, whether deer or bobcats or hunting raptors, or maybe even otters.
–Having people react with interest rather than revulsion when you collect your steaks the old fashioned way.
–Having a job where I can feel the wind on my face outside almost as much as I spend basking in the glow of computer screens.

I know that there are many other ways of viewing the world. While it is important to me that city folks have some understanding of the value of a rural life, by no means do I advocate they take it up. The last thing I want is for urbanites to get a hankering for elbow room! As crammed together as they are, by spreading out they’d take up the whole country. Already my heart sinks every time I visit my old stomping grounds, seeing fields once mantled in wheat now sprouting crops of three bedroom houses. The Atlanta sprawl has metastasized and now Athens is growing beyond its charm.

I’ll end this reflection with a quote from Leopold:

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. Like wind and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth the cost in things natural, wild, and free. For those of us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

”These wild things, I admit, had little human value until mechanization assured us of a good breakfast, and until science disclosed the drama of where they come from and how they live. The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not.”

Here then is a partial answer to your honest inquiry. I think it is safe to say that we both are more or less where we belong; were our locations reversed, you would go nuts with sensory and cultural deprivation, and my soul would wither.

Still, you’re welcome to visit anytime :-).

Siren Spring

In the way-down end of Alabama sits the Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center, a 5300- acre property dedicated to research and education about the ecology of lower coastal plain landscapes. The workshop I attended last spring was worth an educational blog report in itself, but it wasn’t the group classes or field trips that garnered the strongest memories of that place.

Each evening after supper, the participants were at leisure to walk around the property or make the twenty-minute drive into the nearest town. One of the staff told me about a spring off one of the back trails, so, with hiking stick in hand. I strolled past the sinkhole lake and into the woods to find it. The young planted pines gave way to lush hardwood canopies, and I heard the chuckling of running water. Beside the trail, weathered stairs descended 20 or so feet to the stream. In a land of blackwater rivers, I was surprised to find the clear, bluish water streaming out of the wall of a greenery. The interpretive sign at the top of the stairs stated that this spring and its smaller neighbor produce 15,000 gallons per minute of 67 degree F water, running some 350 feet before disappearing back into the ground. It was clear, tinted blue, and wonderful to visit.

Spring

I couldn’t resist; in short order the boots came off and I stepped into the cool stream a hundred feet or so downstream from where the water rose. My feet glowed pale blue beneath the surface, and my first step disturbed the detritus of waterlogged bark and leaves at the base of the stairs. I felt them roll over my feet, and then noticed a rhythmic poking against my ankle on the leeward side. Lifting back out and letting the surface smooth, I noticed four or five fish darting around. By the interpretive sign, I guessed they were Dixie chub. I listened to the rushing of water beyond the downstream bend, felt the flow across my calves, and breathed A few minutes later, I was back on land, donning my boots as another workshop attendee came down the stairs. He looked appreciatively but briefly over the spring, then headed on. I meandered up the path toward the spring, stopping to measure the water’s depth at a narrow point (the part I could reach was probably above 4 feet on my staff). I was surprised to see a mountain laurel flowering, a mere fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The sign uphill warned against tearing up the banks looking for sharks teeth; there was plenty of evidence that the sign went unheeded. For one who is content to bask in the atmosphere of the cove, it saddened me that others would damage it for trinkets – but we all are guilty of this, either directly or at a remove.

At the spring, I succumbed to temptation and waded in to the shallower pool. I meant to only wade a little way, but the spring me to get just a little closer…just a little closer… until I was thigh-deep and balanced on rocks within arm’s length from the fern-covered cliff wall. At my feet, I could make out deep blue gaps where the springwater rushed out. The siren song of the narrow cavern beckoned me to take the plunge and float in the upwelling. Instead, I stood there and quietly tried to absorb the moment, watching the water roil, the sand swirl.

Spring mouth

Scattered lightning bugs flashed in the failing light as I headed up the bank and back to the dirt road. There was no sound of humanity until I was nearly to the paved road, when I heard the distant moan of a train.