Tremors

Woke last night like someone was shaking me awake, only it was the bed doing the shaking. My wife was sound asleep and I lay there a few confused seconds trying to figure out how she was rattling the bed. Then it subsided and right off I noticed the roosters crowing in the dark. After a while slipped back into sleep.

Turned on the TV this morning and they said there had been a 5.3 earthquake centered in Illinois, I, about 200 miles north from here. So, my first tremors.

Around 10:15 this morning felt an aftershock, my log cabin office vibrated with a dizzying effect for a few seconds. It rated around 4.5, depending on the source.

We’re about 200 miles southeast of Reelfoot Lake, epicenter of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, strongest to ever hit the United States.

A few years ago a guy from Texas came wandering through here, retracing his roots. His family had been Tennessee pioneers, settled in Liberty for a while before they pushed further West. Had a diary from that period. They wrote about strange days when the trees swayed back and forth on the hillsides like thy were riding an ocean wave.

Must have been quite unsettling to see, and feel, but not know.

Dogwoods and Redbuds

There’s two times of year when I’d urge all with any level of passion for the outdoors to take in the woods, and its short-lived seasonal glories. The fall, when the forest is consumed with color, and right now for the brief reign of the dogwoods and redbuds. If you can’t walk a forest trail, then drive any of our country roads for the tonic of an Appalachian spring.

We’ve just emerged from the yearly early April chill known as as “dogwood” winter. It seems to herald the coming show, while there’s still a green blush to the dogwood blossoms. Maybe that chill infuses the flowers with the brilliant white which charms so distinctively under clear blue skies.

On the hillsides, along the bottoms, wherever there’s an edge to the forest, dabs of bold white counter the soft lavender of the redbuds and green hues of the awakening season. It’s the redbud's final show, too, before heart shaped leaves rule limbs now decked in delicate flowers. Under foot, the warming earth invites trilliums and wake robins, phacelia, violets, and stands of mayapple back from winter’s retreat.

A few years ago, there real fears a blight would banish the dogwoods from our spring. And dogwood anthracnose took its toll, bringing down many trees. The dogwood still reigns, but with less hold than seasons past. But the worst may be over, or at least that’s my hope.

Over the weekend I wandered off a trail into a pocket of deep woods where a dense stand of loblolly pines had been planted years ago. Another scourge of recent years, the pine beetle, left the forest floor criss-crossed with fallen trunks, moss covered and decaying.

But in their wake, young dogwoods had taken root, a stand stretching for a hundred yards or so, determined and promising even in the shower of ice pellets that fell as I passed in winter's finale.

A Long Way Here

We’re into he early throes of spring now, grass and weeds starting to surge from rent rains, leaves taking shape on the branches of all the trees and shrubs.

One of the harbingers of real spring in the woods here is the blossoming of the shad bush or serviceberry. It’s what I call an occasional tree, pretty infrequent here. In fact there’s less than a dozen or so in our entire 40 acres. So few, I set out last week to mark them so I could track them throughout the year. Tied a strip of orange on a branch then moved on search for another break of fleecy white in the woods.

Two falls ago, after all the leaves had fallen from the trees and a spot of bold pink suddenly appeared in the upper branches of one tree across the hollow. With my binoculars, I could make out a balloon tangled there. Over the next few months it gradually lost its shape as the helium leached away. One day, it was no longer visible and quickly forgotten.

As I searched for shadbushes last week I stumbled on a baggie holding a folded over wet piece of paper right below where that balloon had hung. I could make out a name, a place—Etta, MS- and a request “If you find this please call..”. So I did.

A woman answered, I asked for the name and she told me it was her six year old son who was not at home. When I explained the call she reasoned he must have released the balloon at school, either in nursery school or kindergarten. It traveled 350 miles here, but we’re not sure how long it took.

Whenever I stalk a shadbush I'll remember the reach of things scattered in the wind.

Snow On The ButterCups

Where I come from they call them daffodils, ‘Round here these yellow harbingers of spring are commonly know as buttercups.

There’s a saying, too, “It always snows on the buttercups.”

But it didn’t look like that was going to happen this year. We’ve had a mild winter, with barely a trace of the white stuff all December through February. So over the last couple of weeks, as the bulbs pushing through started to lend a little color to the brown winter lawn, it seemed this year might live down that bit of weather lore.
Then yesterday, with March a full week old, and the buttercups in full bloom a storm took shape out west, driven by a cold blast to remind us we’re still two weeks shy of spring. Some time after midnight the snow started falling, giving us the first real snow of the year. By sunrise, the yardstick showed two inches out back of the house, and it kept snowing well into the morning.

As so often here, the storm was quickly followed by clearing skies and gradually rising temperatures. It’s late afternoon now. The icy roads are gone. The melting snow drips steadily off the roof. It’s already disappeared from all the hills facing South, leaving them a brighter green. This time tomorrow it will all be gone.

Spring can’t be too far off, the maples are in bloom, and we can leave winter behind, now that it’s snowed on the buttercups.

Feedin’ The Stove

During the cold snap last week we kept the woodstove in high gear, ‘round the clock.
Feeding a woodstove is one of those things I never could have dreamed would become such an essential part of our lives. Late summer our first year here someone asked how we were going to heat the house that winter. We looked around for the thermostat---it had never occurred to us a house could come without heat.

A week later we got our first woodstove, a leaky two burner box that wasn’t too efficient. Really cold nights we’d sleep as close to it as we could. By morning the fire would have burned out out and the bucket of water we kept in the room just in case was frozen solid.


From then on I’ve spent part of every fall or winter cutting wood for the stove. First few years I did it all with a 17-inch bow saw, we couldn’t afford better. Cutting wood took up most weekends.

Prosperity and common sense brought us much better and more efficient stoves. A chain saw has made the work easier. Cutting wood is always a good excuse to spend a day outdoors, getting exercise, outside.
And I’ve learned all kinds of practical things. I scout the woods in summer for trees to cut. Can make a tree fall in any direction, and some won’t no matter how carefully you plan. It’s always the gas or file or wedge or sledge or chain I need that I left behind.

Know all the trees now, and to burn polar or maple when it’s not that cold, and save the hickory and oak for deep winter. Elm and persimmon won’t split, locust will, and it will put out heat but won’t leave coals. Cherry throws some colors as it burns, the nutwoods and cedar smell great as they burn. That hissing and pop in the fire is some poor bug who thought he’d found a safe home in the log.

And, there’s nothing better than coming in out of the cold to a room with the woodstove roaring.

Rainbow Hunting

A rainbow is always a welcome surprise. But over the years I’ve learned to recognize when conditions are absolutely right, and thereby increase chances of catching one.

We were unloading the truck yesterday afternoon in a cold rain, but to the south and west patches of blue could be seen breaking through the clouds. And no sooner had the rain moved north then the sun was shining on us.

Good time for a rainbow, I remarked to my on. Soon as I searched upward he shouted “There it is,” directing my attention further down toward the horizon.

And what a rainbow it was! Not only were the colors especially bright, a double rainbow taking shape. And this this rainbow was near enough, there was enough drizzle in the air, we could glimpse where it touched down in the field above and to our left, and further down, in a wide arc, near the bottom of the holler. “

“There’s the gold!” my son joked, pointing where the hues kissed the ground. We stood a full minute or more admiring the colors and curve before I thought of taking a picture. By the time I hobbled to the house and back with a camera, it was starting to fade, the bow breaking up. But you can see where it touches down if you study the left side of the picture closely.

And as for rainbow hunting, here’s what I’ve learned. They only appear when the sun and rain-bearing clouds are on opposite sides of the sky.

Best chances are when the sun in shining in the morning as rain is approaching from the West, or in the afternoon, as the sun breaks through the clouds just after a storm has moved through and the dark clouds can be seen to the east.

Even when you expect to see one, it’s a cause to smile.

Spring In Winter

Hasn’t been much of winter yet. Except for a few days of below 10 nightly lows to start the New Year, it’s been unseasonably warm since fall. I guess its a continuance of the cyclicly higher temps which made last summer such a scorcher. But it seems, at least for now, the drought is behind us. Rain has been falling with some regularity since fall, the earth is damp. Grasses are starting to assume more green, and there’s green showing even in the woods. Out front of my office the daffodils—others call them jonquils or buttercups— have pierced the ground with the tips of their spears. That might be a month early, give or take a week.

I wouldn’t count winter out, yet. Two months more could bring us snows; the worst snowstorm we ever saw fell almost mid-March, gone n days. But Winter warmth like this carried tow dangers: when the weather changes, and it inevitably will, the transition is usually ushered in with violent thunderstorms, even tornadoes. And if the warmth continues too long, or isn’t broken up with prolong spells of serious cold, we end up with an early spring and the prospects of a killing frost like we had last Easter. It was a hard freeze, really, that robbed the warming season of all its glory.

So while I greet the green as sure sign spring’s to come, I hope it doesn’t arrive too soon.