Slow Road Home Portal - Recently Updated Pageshttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/pageSearch/updatedRecently Updated Pages on http://fredfirst.wetpaint.comen-usinfo@wetpaint.comSun, 13 Apr 2008 16:18:34 CDTSun, 13 Apr 2008 16:18:34 CDTwetpaint.com60Slow Road Home Portalhttp://image.wetpaint.com/image/1/xMTWbjWBHi9YWNWQc3mjlw22105http://fredfirst.wetpaint.comPhotojournal Fragments from Floyd became Fred First's book, Slow Road Home--a Blue Ridge Book of Days. Here, more about the book (an "essay of place" from Floyd County, Virginia), Fred's photo-note cards, his image galleries and more. Floyd Earth Day 2008 Speakershttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Floyd+Earth+Day+2008+Speakersfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Floyd+Earth+Day+2008+SpeakersSun, 13 Apr 2008 16:18:34 CDTFloyd County's Earth Day program starts at 9:30 Saturday April 19 at the Floyd County High School. The focus this year will be water resources. In addition to the presentations shown below, providers of water and earth resource management information and products will be available and community organizations will provide food for purchase. For futher information contact Fred First at fred1st@gmail.com


Rupert Cutler....

of Roanoke, Virginia, is vice chairman of the board of directors of the Western Virginia Water Authority, a trustee of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, and a former member of the Roanoke City Council (2002-2006). A native of Detroit, Michigan, he has an undergraduate degree in wildlife management from the University of Michigan (1955) and master's (1971) and doctor of philosophy (1972) degrees from the Department of Resource Development of Michigan State University.

He has been the editor of the Virginia Game Department's magazine, Virginia Wildlife, and the National Wildlife Federation's magazine, National Wildlife. He has been assistant executive director of The Wilderness Society, senior vice president of the National Audubon Society, executive director of Population-Environment Balance, president of Defenders of Wildlife, and president of the Virginia Section of The Wildlife Society. Rupert was assistant secretary of the US Department of Agriculture in charge of the Forest Service and the Soil Conservation Service during the Carter Administration.

Since 1991, Dr. Cutler has resided in Roanoke where he has served as executive director of Virginia's Explore Park, an outdoor living history museum, and founding executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust.

PRESENTATION ~ Dr. Cutler will offer ideas regarding grass-roots measures for conservation of water supplies and protection of water sources.He'll describe how easements can help keep working farms and forests going, to provide local food and fiber and protect watersheds.Reducing the amount of coal and oil-based electrical energy we use can reduce air pollution and slow climate change and global warming. We can reduce our "carbon footprints" in southwest Virginia and should encourage state and national legislators to help us manage our water and other natural resources and maintain a healthful environment.

Tammy Stephenson...

... is the Senior Water Supply Planner for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. In this capacity, she works with localities in western and southwest Virginia in developing local and regional water supply plans. She has a B.S. in Business Administration from Old Dominion University and is certified as an Erosion and Sedimentation Control Program Administrator. Tammy serves on the Alleghany Highlands YMCA Board of Directors and Executive Board, President of the Alleghany Highlands Humane Society Board of Directors, Chairman of the Upper James River Roundtable/Mountain Waters RC&D, Chairman of the Alleghany Highlands Emergency Food and Shelter Board, and a member of the Council for Rural Development Board of Directors Tammy is married to Roscoe B. Stephenson, III, an attorney, and has three children: Nick, Sarah, and Daniel, and two stepchildren: Jane and Bo, one granddaughter by Jane and Joe, Antonia, and one granddaughter on her way (due early April) by Nick and Courtney.

PRESENTATION ~Tammy Stephenson will discuss the role of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and particularly, her role there as she works with the region and localities in the development of their water supply plans. She will provide a brief overview of Virginia's Water Supply Planning regulation which requires all localities in the Commonwealth to develop water supply plans that will become part of a statewide water supply strategy. In addition, she will identify policies that may impact the water supply andoffer actions that everyone might take to conserve water inside and outside the home.

Fred First...

...moved to Wytheville, Virginia from Alabama in 1975 and taught biology at WCC until 1987. Since 1989 he's been a licensed physical therapist practicing locally and has also taught as adjunct biology faculty at RU. Since 2002 he's written and photographed the "beautiful ordinaries" of life in Floyd County and shared these reflections on his blog, Fragments from Floyd, in his book, Slow Road Home, and by way of NPR essays and his columns in the Floyd Press and Roanoke Star Sentinel. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the South Fork of the Roanoke River.

PRESENTATION ~ Fred will narrate his multimedia "Our Place in the World" that includes some sixty Floyd County digital images. His presentation offers a visually-rich and compelling invitation to forge deeper relationships with the landscapes we call home.

David E. "Jason" Rutledge...

... is a lifetime farmer, forester, horseman and father of four. He co-founded Healing Harvest Forest Foundation in 1999 along with community volunteers and fellow horse loggers. He has provided leadership as a visionary and practitioner of "restorative forestry" speaking on the issues of sustainable forestry and sustainable agriculture all over the United States. He was awarded the Rock the Earth Planet Defender title in 2006, has been featured on the cover of the Mother Earth News, Draft Horse Journal and has been featured on television for PBS, A & E Discovery Channel in the documentary "In The Company of Horses". Jason has raised, trained and worked Suffolk horses for nearly thirty years. He is a native Virginian and lives on Ridgewind Farm in the Appalachian Mountains of Floyd County, a "born teacher who has done more than anybody else known to me to establish horse logging and sustainable forestry as a way of life and work among younger people. In my opinion, his educational efforts are worth whatever you may wish to invest in them." Wendell Berry, December 31, 2007

PRESENTATION ~ Jason Rutledge will speak on the issue of water as being the most valuable product to come out of the forest. Since the forest is the largest landscape condition in our region it plays a vital part in our environmental quality. Jason practices restorative forestry that is ecosystem based, carbon positive and a part of ecological capitalism.

David Crawford...

...of Rainwater Management Solutions (bio not available) will discuss rainwater harvesting and other practical means of water conservation and use.

]]>Photographic Note Cardshttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Photographic+Note+Cardsfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Photographic+Note+CardsSat, 29 Mar 2008 07:36:24 CDT


There are now THREE SETS available: Blue Ridge Back Roads, Blue Ridge Parkway, and Blue Ridge Autumn.

Cards are 4.25 x 6.5 inches, with image edge to edge on the front, notes about the image and contact information on the back, and blank inside the fold for your greetings and messages to those with whom you want to share the landscapes of the southern mountains. Each set includes five envelopes.

If you have a PayPal account, you can simply transfer the price of card sets plus shipping to me.

On PayPal, go to SEND MONEY and enter fred1st@gmail as recipient and send correct amount for cards and/or books plus shipping and handling. Your order will be sent within 48 hours of receipt of the transfer. Be sure and give an email address for contact in the event I need to contact you about your order.
Fred’s Cards and Books Order Form
(print form, clip and mail with your order) Downloadable form here. # sets ____ Blue Ridge Back Roads
# sets ____ Blue Ridge Parkway
# sets ____ Blue Ridge Autumn
# copies ____ Slow Road Home @ $15 + $2 S&H

Cards: Send $10 plus $1 each for S&H to (check payable to)

Goose Creek Press
1020 Goose Creek Run
Check, VA 24072
Email: Fred1st@gmail.com		 Add your address in this box (or ship-to address if for someone else): Please print: this will be your shipping label. Provide additional instructions if a gift.

]]>Homehttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Homefred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/HomeMon, 10 Mar 2008 07:34:15 CDT

Greetings, and welcome!

My name is Fred First, and I'm happy that you've dropped by to visit--by chance, or to discover links and events related toSlow Road Home -- a Blue Ridge Book of Days, and to the photo-note cards, and other products and productions. You can follow the links below or in the sidebar (scroll down for more choices) to other destinations on this site. Please do, and leave comments or email me!
Be sure and watch the sidebar (left margin) as new pages and links are added! Scroll down the page for more! (Click the top of this page from any other page on the site to return here.)

I hope to add to this site regularly, so check back often. I'm happy to have comments, so don't be shy!


Fred First

Blogger, essayist, teacher, physical therapist, naturalist and photographer.

Fred's bio (pdf)


Email Fred		 Slow Road Home ~
a Blue Ridge Book of Days

For those who enjoy or long for the pace, place and pleasures of life in the southern mountains of western Virginia.

See the left SIDEBAR for excerpts, endorsements and ordering information for Fred's first Book (2ed Jan 07).

Find out how to order Fred's photo-Note-Cards

THREE sets available:

Set One: Blue Ridge Back Roads
Set Two: Blue Ridge Parkway
Set Three: Blue Ridge Autumn

More sets of five cards anticipated. Check back!
The town of Floyd (population 400) is the county seat of Floyd County, located southwest of Roanoke, VA in the Blue Ridge Mountains and bordered by the Blue Ridge Parkway.



While there is only a
single traffic light in the entire county, something's always doin'--at the Country Store, along the Parkway, at Sun Music Hall or at Oddfellas.






Some places you might go to find out more include this Calendar of Events. And Fred often posts narrative descriptions and images of the cultural, natural and social happenings in and around town on his blog.



]]>Floyd Press Invite Vendorshttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Floyd+Press+Invite+Vendorsfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Floyd+Press+Invite+VendorsFri, 15 Feb 2008 07:20:20 CST

Since its inception in 1970, Earth Day has been an annual opportunity for civic and church groups, schools and universities, municipalities and national organizations to take a fresh look at how we might work more effectively towards a healthier planet.

Come celebrate our place in the world with a focus on the topic: Water and Life in Floyd County.

The April 19 event will be free and open to the public. (Official Earth Day is always April 22, a date the original founders mistook for John Muir's birthday--on April 21, actually.)

Speakers, panelists, vendors of water and nature-care-related products as well as water, soils and geology professionals be present. They will meet with interested county residents who want to learn how to help maintain both adequate quantity and quality of water in the county.

Beginning at 10:00 a.m., four morning presentations in the auditorium will offer perspectives on water, sustainability and earth-care issues in Floyd County and the region.

Ongoing demonstrations and displays will be offered by Floyd County high school students as well as by area agencies, organizations and enterprises. Food and snacks will be available provided by local vendors.

A panel discussion in the early afternoon will look at ways to "take home" better water and soil management practices and apply them locally now--the best way to start having a long-term earth-impact for the years ahead.

Details of event times, locations and topics will be made known in coming weeks in the Floyd Press.

Your participation is invited. Plenty of space is available at the high school for vendors of water and earth-care products and services, earth-related arts and crafts, food services and relevant stewardship and conservation information. Help is always welcomed in any way you might volunteer for the day.

If you are interested in being involved in this effort sponsored by the Partnership for Floyd, please contact ??? (Jack?) as soon as possible. And put April 19 on your calendar today!

...back to Floyd Earth Day page






]]>Water Earth and Floydhttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Water+Earth+and+Floydfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Water+Earth+and+FloydFri, 15 Feb 2008 07:15:16 CSTThis page is a central "watering hole" for those involved in the Earth Day Event planned for Floyd County Virginia on April 19.
First item of business: review Floyd Press announcement NOW!

I'm looking for other ways to collaborate on this project. Time is short.
Having a central location to share updated info and things that need
doing seems like a good use of collaborative online tools.

But then I'm sort of a geek. -- Fred

___________________

List of links

Watersheds of Virginia pdf downloadable maps. Could be printed for poster demonstration?

What else is available through VA commonwealth resources?


Ideas and questions

  • when will vendors be allowed to start set-up--Friday afternoon before the saturday event? Seems saturday morning set-up may be rushing things, esp if visitors begin showing up before 10 am.
  • Is the state of VA planning anything for Earth Day? Some states have been very involved. See Pennsylvania's efforts (including water focus)

Local Resources

  • invite Jason Rutledge horse logger (fred)
  • invite VA Forest Watch (fred)
  • invite Apple Ridge Farm environmental ed display (fred)
  • once Floyd Press invitation to vendors is finalized, send to email list to be generated here so to avoid duplication
  • NRV Land Trust -- Beth Obenchain (fred)
  • please add other contacts and name of committee person who will take on making a personal phone call or email

Earth Day Resources



Day Events Schedule

Room Use
Vendors List
Equipment Needs




]]>Where I'm Fromhttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Where+I%27m+Fromfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Where+I%27m+FromMon, 14 Jan 2008 06:29:05 CST "If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going." Wendell Berry, among others, has voiced this idea that we need to understand our roots to know our place and our path in the world. A poem by George Ella Lyons is called "Where I'm From." I first heard it read by Appalachian poet Rita Quillen. Six months later, we used this template as a writing assignment in a class taught by my friend Elizabeth Hunter at the Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. The poem lends itself to imitation and makes a wonderful exercise of exploration in belonging.

 I'dsuggest that you give it a try. The prompts have a way of drawing out memories of the smells of attics and bottom-drawer keepsakes; the faces of long-departed kin, the sound of their voices you still hold some deep place in memory. You'll be surprised that, when you're done, you will have said things about the sources of your unique you-ness that you'd never considered before.

What's more, you will have created something of yourself to share--with your children, spouse, siblings--that will be very unique, very personal and a very special gift. I'll give you the template here. To get you started, I will show you my WIF (below) and you might want to see how others have responded to this pleasant challenge. Check here to see how others have told where they are from.

The WHERE I'M FROM Template (cut and paste to use)


I am from _______ (specific ordinary item), from _______ (product name) and _______.

 I am from the _______ (home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

 I am from the _______ (plant, flower, natural item), the _______ (plant, flower, natural detail)

 I am from _______ (family tradition) and _______ (family trait), from _______ (name of family member) and _______ (another family name) and _______ (family name).

 I am from the _______ (description of family tendency) and _______ (another one).

 From _______ (something you were told as a child) and _______ (another).
 I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

 I'm from _______ (place of birth and family ancestry), _______ (two food items representing your family).

 From the _______ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the _______ (another detail), and the _______ (another detail about another family member).

 I am from _______ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

Where I’m From ~ Fred First ~ November 2003

 I am from the peaceful banks of a creek with no name; from JFG, toast and blackberry jam and home-made granola.

I am from "a house with double porches," a room filled with good ghosts and creek laughter in the mornings before first light.

I am from Liriodendron and Lindera, butterfly bush and mountain boomers

I am from Dillons and Harrisons, Betty Jean and Granny Bea-- frugal and long-lived, stubborn and tender, quick to laugh. Or cry.

I am from a world whose geography my children know better than I, from a quiet valley where I am the proprietor and world authority of its small wonders.

From barn loft secret passwords and children who can fly if they only try.

I am from oven-baked Saran Wrap and colds caught from jackets worn indoors.

I am from pire in the blood Baptists, from the cathedral made without hands, the church in the wildwoods, the covenant of grace.

I'm from the Heart of Dixie, son of Scarlett O'hara. From War Eagle, Wiffle, UAB and PT, from Walnut Knob's blue ridge and the soft shadows of Goose Creek.

From a "fast hideous" dresser and a home body from Woodlawn, from a grandfather I never knew that I can blame for my love of nature and my stubbornness, they tell me.

I am from fragments, the faint smell of wood smoke, and familiar walks among trees I know by name, from HeresHome and good stock. A man can hardly ask to be from more.

BACK TO FRAGMENTS FROM FLOYD

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]]>Slow Road Audio Clipshttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+Audio+Clipsfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+Audio+ClipsMon, 24 Dec 2007 15:30:57 CST
Here are a couple of essays, songsand stories from yours truly--for what it's worth.

Hush My Babe / A Christmas Song...sung by Fred


These readings from the book are "as is" from the studio recordings at WVTF, Roanoke's NPR station. These were recorded for the Radio Readers program for the visually impaired, and the files kindly shared with me by the studio staff.

I'm in the process of parsing the seven larger mp3 files into roughly 10 minute segments, and below are the first several installments. I'm considering editing in some musical bullets to fade in and fade out each vignette, and possibly to add some ambient sounds from Goose Creek.

I'll be very pleased to hear your comments, suggestions and ideas for how and where these sound files might find a further life. Email me -- fred1st over on gmail.


]]>Pulaski Author Event December 6, 2007http://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Pulaski+Author+Event+December+6%2C+2007fred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Pulaski+Author+Event+December+6%2C+2007Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:04:14 CSTDecember 6th, from 4 p.m. until 8 pm. Local authors Dari Carroll, Fred First, Jerry Haynes, James LaValley, Sharon Moore Myers, Joe Tennis, and Pat Woodruff will make presentations on a rotating basis in the Community Room. The authors will have displays set up with their books available for sale and autographing. The event is free and everyone is invited to drop in.

Dari Carroll was born in Radford and grew up in Pulaski County. She holds an associate's degree from NRCC in Administrative Support Technology. She recently became author of a book of poetry called Free of Me, which was self-published in January, 2007. Her work reflects her childhood, life and opportunities.

Fred First graduated from Auburn with a MS in Zoology and taught at Wytheville Community College. He earned a second masters in Physical Therapy and moved to Floyd in 1997. Fred is a regular essayist on Roanoke's NPR station, WVTF, and his writing has been published in Blue Ridge Country Magazine, Petlife, Greenprints, Birmingham Arts Journal, and Nantahala Review. He writes a biweekly column, A Road Less Traveled, for the Floyd Press as well as a biweekly piece for the Roanoke Star-Sentinel. Much of his writing and pondering turns to sense of place and belonging, especially as they relate to the Southern Mountains, as it does in his first book, A Slow Road Home.

Jerry Haynes resides in Pulaski County. He was born in the cotton mill town of Danville, VA and grew up in Fries, VA. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a BS in Civil Engineering and currently works as an engineer and as a financial advisor. He and his wife Judy founded the charity, Bringing Hope and Happiness to Others, in which they strive to improve the lives of children in Romania and other countries. His first book, A Cotton Mill Town Christmas, has its setting in Fries. In it, a sweet young girl named Suzie and a Santa named Sam saved Christmas for the mill town, while two people find a love they never knew existed. He has recently published a second book, The All New, and Improved, You! In notebook form, this books helps guide you through the steps of uncovering the potential that each of us have within ourselves.

James La Valley originated in upstate New York and attended UVA, completing his BA in English and three years of medical school. He gained an MA in Bible and another MA in English. He pastored, taught college, administered federal health programs, and conducted seminars throughout the West Indies, the locale for the adventures of the Freedom Quest series. This series includes The Book: Barbados, 1751, Devil's Triangle, and Freedom Voyage, which is inspired by his family history. James currently resides in Pulaski County.

Sharon Moore Myers is from Pulaski. She is a retired four-time Paralympic/Pan American wheelchair athlete who competed in eighteen countries. She continues to promote equal access for the physically impaired. Her articles about travels to Peru, England, Dubai, Puerto Rico, India and South Africa have appeared in Open World, National Geographic, Traveler and Yes magazines. She lives on a small farm in Southwestern Virginia with her husband and Border Collie. Her first book, Paco's Gift, was inspired by meeting a shoe-shine boy in Peru, and has been a source of inspiration to the readers.

Joe Tennis is a graduate of Radford University and frequent writer for Blue Ridge Country and the Bristol Herald Courier. He is the author of three books, including the newly-released Beach to Bluegrass: places to Brake on Virginia's Longest Road," which explores legends and landmarks along US Highway 58. This summer, The Marble and Other Ghost Tales of Tennessee and Virginia premiered. Tennis' first book, Southwest Virginia Crossroads, is now in its fifth printing, and features Pulaski County as part of its history and guide to 17 counties across Southwest Virginia. Tennis lives in Washington County, near Bristol, with his wife and two children.

The Friends of the Pulaski Library are hosting this open-house style event. The authors and Friends hope to see you there!

]]>Slow Road Home: Review, NRV Voice, Nov 07http://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+Home%3A+Review%2C+NRV+Voice%2C+Nov+07fred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+Home%3A+Review%2C+NRV+Voice%2C+Nov+07Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:04:16 CSTSlow Road Home Fred First Goose Creek Press 2007

In his mid-fifties, Fred First decided to give up his career to fully explore the small valley in which he lives and take an honest look at himself and the natural world around him. Slow Road Home captures, in autobiographical and lyrical prose, the feel and essence of First's adjustment to life outside of the rat race and into his back-to-nature life on Goose Creek in Floyd County.

Though the book is not exactly chronologically arranged, in many of the early passages, one can feel the weight of the civilized world falling off him, and yet, at the same time, get a sense of his uncertainty of what to do with himself in the new world of "free time" and nature he has plunged into.

Once that weight falls, the book becomes primarily a celebration of the joy and beauty of simple things - the companionship of a good dog, the thrill of watching a raven ride the wind, the silent tranquility of snow, the satisfaction of a hard day's labor.

The book is not all goodness and light - life can be harsh and First does not shy away from those topics, either - but throughout the book, he consistently uses honest, evocative language to describe his landscapes, both physical and emotional, internal and external. There are also moments in which he reveals his obvious love of playing with language: he describes a surprise mid-winter warm streak as "a teaser, a complimentary packet of pretzels on the agonizingly long flight into spring" and of the working world he says, "no matter how good a job looks before you start it, there will be days when you'll need hip waders for mucking around in the barnyard bog most jobs eventually become."

Though First is a contemporary author, there's a sense in his essays of visiting a time long past - like the sepia-toned remembrances of old relatives we heard when we were children, set in a time and place when life seemed simpler. This book is a gentle reminder that life can still be like that. Like Thoreau before him, First reminds us that nature moves at a pace different than human society. He tells us we can all share in that slowed pace of life if we pay attention and take the time to look, listen, smell, feel, and drink in our natural surroundings.

The subtitle to this collection of essays is "A Blue Ridge Book of Days". First has called that subtitle "a serving suggestion." Yes, Slow Road Home is the kind of book one can be completely satisfied reading a few pages at a time, but an even better "serving suggestion" this time of year might be to put another log on the fire, give the dog a good scratch between the ears, have a seat in your favorite chair, pour yourself a cup of warm apple cider, and spend a relaxing autumn afternoon exploring the beauty and wonder of Floyd County through Fred First's words and senses.

Rating: 3.5 out of 4 Winstons

John C. Leonard became a fan of non-fiction nature writers in Blacksburg High School teacher Shirley
Maybury's English class.


]]>What Readers Say...http://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/What+Readers+Say...fred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/What+Readers+Say...Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:58:56 CST... about Slow Road Home

Reviews and Interviews

  • Wilma Snyder of Wytheville reviews Slow Road in her AboutBooks radio program, January 11, 2007.
  • Middlewesterner Poet and Author Tom Montag offers and appreciation of Slow Road Home, valued because Tom has followed my journey from early on, and because he has such a rich sense of his own place. November 2006
  • Prime Living Magazine / October 2006 Cover Photo and interview feature
  • Listen to Fred's interview for Studio Virginia on WVTF, broadcast on June 15, 2006. PartOne and PartTwo

Mary Ann Johnson of Roanoke Times Book Note June 11, 2006

From Meredith Sue Willis' Books For Readers
  • Fred First, biologist and naturalist, has collected the best of his newspaper column and blog about his life on a small property in Floyd County, Virginia. He and his wife chose this property in this location after much thought, and his life in these southwestern Virginia mountains is a conscious, indeed ideological choice– that is to say, he is attempting to live in a way that is exemplary and instructive to others. He believes that it is a good thing to garden in the summer and a good thing to chop wood and tend the wood stove in the winter. In particular, he believes that a meditative observation of nature is a good thing, and some of his paragraphs of description are as powerful as any I’ve ever read about nature. Readmore...

Jack Higgs, editor of Appalachia Inside Out, Volumes I and II
  • Much in little: this is modus operandi of Fred First. Like Emily Dickinson, he notices “smallest things,” things overlooked before, finds them italicized as it were, and makes them part of his memory, his diary, and now this book, vibrant with the rich sense of living things on the pages within it. Everything he sees is connected, barely visible and maybe even invisible, but clearly a part of the web of being running trough space and time. (Read all of Jacks Review.)

Jim Minick, author of Finding a Clear Path
  • Socrates calls us to live an examined life and Fred First heeds this call. Through these fragments from Floyd, he mends together the bits and pieces of his days to create a wholeness of a life and a book.

Thomas Gardner / Virginia Tech Author of A Door Ajar
  • Fred First's Slow Road Home, like Thoreau's Walden, is an experiment in living deliberately and facing the essential facts of life. Morning after morning, First opens his eyes and remembers, using words and a naturalist's love of details to coax pattern and parable, tragedy and transcendence, out of his Floyd County meadow and creeks. His paragraphs trace the drama of the ordinary—an ordinary so rich and strange that we realize we've never been truly awake before.

Margaret Mc Ghee / Floyd, Virginia
  • Many folks dream of stepping off of the fast track on to a slower road. A few actually do it. The Slow Road Home, a chronicle of one person’s transition from faster to slower living, offers wonderfully written insight and honesty about the journey. As I stumble through my own transition, I find Fred’s observations to be both validating and encouraging. But there’s more! Fred is, among other things, a naturalist, a photographer, and an observer. Readers will find excerpts that make them smile, segments that are thought provoking, and observations that resonate with their own suspicions that intent is a quality to be cultivated.

Anne Downing / Baker, Louisiana
  • Taking the slow road home can bring a peace that settles our minds, will lift our spirits, morph our attitude into one of joy unspeakable, and prepare us for the comforting nest of home. Let the cares and busyness and uproar of the world drift away, as you experience this author's SLOW ROAD HOME. Journey with him as he pauses to observe, celebrate, and ruminate on the simplicity as well as the complexity of life in nature's backyard.

Jan P / London, UK
  • Both down-to-earth and heartwarming, the Slow Road Home is just one of those books that enrich your experience as a reader. Each entry is a walk out into the countryside with the author, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Ann, and their dog. He's a good companion, using his knowledge as a naturalist, his eye for a picture, and his decidedly poetic voice to point out all the small things one might otherwise miss, while spinning a yarn that captivates the imagination. But this isn't just a book of confectioner's treats: Fred doesn't spare us the harsher realities of Nature and paints a broad and honest canvas with the darker hues of life, but uses them with great effect to highlight life's wonderful moments, leaving the reader satisfied, a little wiser, and with the realization that—although it's never easy--our goals are worth striving for and that one day, too, we could find ourselves content just 'coming home'.

Leslie Shelor, editor, Blue Ridge Gazette
  • "I'm a person that devours books, reading cover to cover in a rush to absorb words and meaning and experience. But this lovely book stopped me cold sentence after sentence. It's a book to pick up and savor, then put down to think about the phrases and meanings. I'll be reading this memoir for years. It speaks of a man's personal journey, and it speaks to my personal journey. I am in awe."

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]]>About Fred, Floyd and Homehttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/About+Fred%2C+Floyd+and+Homefred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/About+Fred%2C+Floyd+and+HomeSun, 18 Nov 2007 06:01:44 CSTAbout Fred
Since his earliest years in Birmingham, Alabama, Fred First has called several places in the southern Appalachians home. An Auburn graduate with a MS in Zoology and an avid naturalist, he first moved to Virginia in 1975 to teach at Wytheville Community College. In a mid-life career change, he earned a masters degree in Physical Therapy and practiced in that field in North Carolina for six years before moving--permanently, he says--to Floyd County in 1997.

In 2002, his personal focus shifted from what he did for a living to where it was that he lived. He continues to explore the beauties and perplexities of his rural Blue Ridge valley in words and images, including a daily photo-journal called FragmentsFromFloyd . Much of his writing and pondering turns to sense of place and belonging, especially as it relates to the Appalachian Mountains. Read an extensive interview with Fred in Rebecca Blood's Bloggers on Blogging series from May, 2006.A more recent short bio is here.

Fred is active in his Floyd County community, as member of the Floyd Writers Circle and is a board member at the Jacksonville Center, Floyd's Arts Center and arts incubator. Recent speaking engagements include guest lecturer at Virginia Tech (Appalachian Cultures class, Sept 04) and spoken word readings given locally in Floyd, including Floyd Fest 2004. He has participated as a student at the Highlands Summer Conference in Radford and at the JC Campbell Folk School (2003) and presented his "photomemoir" at the Appalachian Studies Conference at Radford University in March, 2005.

Fred is a regular essayist on Roanoke's NPR station (WVTF). His works are published in various places including Blue Ridge Country Magazine, Petlife, Greenprints, Birmingham Arts Journal, Flow (Glassblowers trade magazine) and Nantahala Review (Feb 2005). He writes a regular column, A Road Less Traveled, in the Floyd Press. Fred's photographs have been featured in promotional materials for the New River Valley Land Trust and the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce.

Fred has recently taught biology at Radford University as adjunct faculty while he pursues his interests in writing and nature/rural landscape photography. He has also re-entered clinical work, part-time, as a physical therapist at a privately-run outpatient clinic not far from home. His book, Slow Road Home, was published by Goose Creek Press and available for readers at the end of April, 2006.

About Floyd


Floyd County is our adopted home. We 'discovered' it in 1997, even though we had lived just two counties away for 12 years, long ago. Floyd is located in Southwest Virginia--that part of the state west of Roanoke that even Virginians frequently don't know exists.

You can't get here from there: there is no interstate access (which is both an advantage and disadvantage), and the approaches from the west and south are very steep, requiring a climb Blue Ridge Escarpment from the piedmont. There are no large employers luring workers from adjacent counties to mills or factories here, so you have to come to Floyd on your way to Floyd. Not many folks just pass through on their way to other destinations, except for those who wander into town off the Parkway.

Tourism for a wide variety of music, for the scenery and the unique ambience of the little town promises to bring more visitors here in coming years. Floyd County is bordered on its south boundary by the Blue Ridge Parkway, roughly from milepost 175 near Mabry Mill to milepost 145 toward Roanoke. The county has the highest average elevation of any county in Virginia (about 2700 feet) with the highest elevation in the county being Buffalo Mountain.

No water flows into the county from outside; and it is the biggest producer of Christmas trees in the state. The population of the county is about 14,000. There has been considerable recent influx of new residents from both north and south of us. The new and multi-generational residents generally get along rather well. There are many artistic types among us--particular, potters, painters, photographers and organic earthy types. There is more to do here than we have time to participate in--suprising for a county that has but a single traffic light.

The town of Floyd is the county seat, and a wider place in the road than the couple of other county settlements centered around post offices and a gas station. Notable for the county is that there is a single traffic light, in the middle of 'downtown'. Town population is about 400; most folks live in the elevated rolling hills, many keep cattle or horses.

Notable features in Floyd County: Buffalo Mountain; Chatteau Morrisette Winery; Mabry Mill; Schoolhouse Fabrics; Oddfellows Cantina; Blue Ridge Parkway; Rock Castle Gorge; New Mountain Merchantile; Cafe del Sol coffeeshop (with wireless internet!); Harvest Moon Healthfoods; Pine Tavern Restaurant and the Blue Ridge Cafe. The town of Floyd is about 26 miles south of Blacksburg (Virginia Tech) and 35 miles west of Roanoke. You can find links to Floyd-related info here and here.

About Goose Creek


In the northeastern end of Floyd County, the south fork of the Roanoke River is formed by the confluence of Bottom Creek and Goose Creek. We live very near the headwaters of Goose Creek, where the creek is too small to lure trout fisherpersons, but large enough to provide a constant rise and fall of burbling wet noise, all day, all night

The road we live on is honestly one of the most beautiful but most treacherous little lanes in the county, state-maintained, and the last state road that ran in a creek bed (until the early '70s). There are more than a dozen blind curves and very few places where two cars can pass one another, with a steep dropoff into the creek on some sections.

At the turn of the century, there was a thriving settlement up the valley here, but now only the empty remnants of a church and store. Today there are fewer than a dozen widely spaced occupied dwellings on our 4-mile road. We first drove down our road after an ice storm in February 1999 to see the property, and I wondered if we would ever be heard from again. Then when we finally came upon the house 'as pictured in the real estate ad', I knew we were NOT interested. My wife cast a strong dissenting vote, and well, here we are.

The purchase of the land was a no-brainer; we could have recouped our investment and made a profit in 6 months. But the house: now THAT was a gamble. Long story short: the 130-yr-old structure was worth saving, took way more $$$ than we intended, but now has indoor plumbing and electricity, new windows, new foundation, a paint job. It is a snug and comfortable home with the ambience of age and the utility and life expectancy of a new house. It is the most serene and peaceful place we have ever lived, and we are not moving from here until they move us out in a pine box.

Return to the Front Page

]]>Fred's Biohttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Fred%27s+Biofred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Fred%27s+BioSun, 18 Nov 2007 05:56:17 CST

]]>How to Order Slow Road Homehttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/How+to+Order+Slow+Road+Homefred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/How+to+Order+Slow+Road+HomeFri, 02 Nov 2007 06:36:36 CDT


You can order a single book and pay by PayPal.



Click the PayPal button on this page for now. I'll move it here eventually.

 I'll send your book to you by USPS media mail within 48 hours of receiving your order.
Current orders filled with the second edition of Slow Road Home which has a Table of Contents to the 100+ vignettes, stories and celebrations of country living.

__________________________________

*** To pay by check...

You can download and print this order form for book orders

or to combine an order for both books and cards.


1 book $15.95 plus $3 S&H = $18.95

2 books $31.90 plus $3 S&H = $34.90

3 books $47.85 plus $3 S&H = $50.85

Notecards $10 plus $1 S&H



Virginia residents add $0.80 state tax for each book and $0.50 for each set of notecards
Email me for shipping costs outside the US or for larger quantities

Send your check (made out to Goose Creek Press) to:

Goose Creek Press

1020 Goose Creek Run N. E.

Check, VA 24072


___________________________________________________

You can purchase a book off the shelf:

  • BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY: Chateau Morrisette Winery; Poor Farmer's Country Store (Meadows of Dan); Roanoke Trading Company at Explore Park, MP 115 Roanoke. AND GOOD NEWS! In late March 2007 I learned that Slow Road Home will be available at all Blue Ridge Parkway bookstores at Visitors Centers along its length.

  • FLOYD: * Bell's Studio; * Floyd Country Store; *Jacksonville Center; Cafe del Sol; Slaughters Grocery; Notebooks * Note Cards also available at these locations

  • ROANOKE: Ramshead Books / Towers Mall and Explore Park, Blue Ridge Parkway Visitors Center

  • BLACKSBURG: Tech Book Store / Main Street

  • PULASKI: CoffeeBuyTheBook

  • VirtualBookStore/BRParkway Foundation




]]>Image Gallery Onehttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Image+Gallery+Onefred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Image+Gallery+OneMon, 22 Oct 2007 12:17:14 CDT
I hope you enjoy the Flickr gallery here. Go visit the site without the slideshow by clicking here.

I also have lots of little galleries up at SmugMug. Go look around, won't you?






Our barn in a January ice storm






Blue Ridge Parkway traveler, Floyd County, Virginia





Pasture flowers catch first light





Distant view of Buffalo Mt.





Ink art by Ron Campbell, Dream Catcher Meadows Floyd, VA





Giles County barn





Floyd County Friday Night.





Oddfellas Cantina, Floyd






]]>Our Place in the World: videohttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Our+Place+in+the+World%3A+videofred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Our+Place+in+the+World%3A+videoThu, 06 Sep 2007 06:13:39 CDTThis is a fairly low-res version of a more sophisticated and attractive Powerpoint program I'll be delivering several times in the Fall of 2007. I'll narrate live while some sixty of my digital images illustrate the three shorter pieces of text here (two of them from Slow Road Home) that have to do with our relationship to nature and the land. (Fifteen minutes)

I hope you enjoy it. Comments welcomed, and speaking engagements too!


]]>Stop Mountantop Removal Mininghttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Stop+Mountantop+Removal+Miningfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Stop+Mountantop+Removal+MiningSun, 26 Aug 2007 09:13:48 CDT
Below are instructions for wading through far too much upfront garbage to get to the comments area to let your voice be heard during a short public review period against this administration's shameful concessions to the Coal Lobby. Please share this (cut and paste text with separate links below the formatted text to make it easy to share and adapt. Do so, please!)

______________________________________

First go to this page. http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main

In the SEARCH DOCUMENTS panel drop down, select

OFFICE OF SURFACE MINING RECLAMATION AND ENFORCEMENT and submit.

From the page that opens select DOCUMENT OSM-2007-0007-0001

From that page, you can read the document and/or click the COMMENTS button and enter your comments. Click HERE if you don't know your Congressman to put in the SUBMITTERS REPRESENTATIVE field). You might cut and paste your comment and send it directly to your congressman on the page link just provided.)

Your comment might say something like the following
(feel free to copy and edit my words to suit):

I am writing in regard to DOCKET ID OSM-2007-0007 which would further weaken environmental protection of the natural and human environments in the coal-bearing portions of the Appalachian states where mountain top removal coal extraction is currently taking place.

I support as rapid a transition as possible away from our dependence on coal to provide electrical power. I support a significant increase in our national budget toward alternative sources of clean energy such as geothermal, wind, solar and other methods.

I support a national effort mandated from the Presidential office and sustained across successive administrations to significantly reduce our inefficiencies and waste of electrical energy and to support and require significant conservation measures that would obviate the purported need for numerous additional coal-fired facilities in the coming decades.

I am strongly opposed to mountain top removal as a means of obtaining coal at the expense of our mountains, the headwaters of our streams and for the health and safety risks that kind of mining poses to families and communities. I am opposed to this pending regulation that serves those who financially profit from extraction efficiency and punishes all of us who share the harm brought to the commons of the natural communities we call home.

(BELOW is cut and paste text and links separate to adapt for your webpage or blog:)

Instructions for wading through far too much upfront garbage to get to the comments area to let your voice be heard (during a short public review period) against this administration's shameful concessions to the Coal Lobby. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3364/

Go to this page. http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main

In the SEARCH DOCUMENTS panel drop down, select

OFFICE OF SURFACE MINING RECLAMATION AND ENFORCEMENT and submit.

From the page that opens select DOCUMENT OSM-2007-0007-0001

From that page, you can read the document and/or click the COMMENTS button and enter your comments. Click HERE if you don't know your Congressman to put in the SUBMITTERS REPRESENTATIVE field). You might cut and paste your comment and send it directly to your congressman on the page link just provided.) http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Your comment might say something like the following:

I am writing in regard to DOCKET ID OSM-2007-0007 which would further weaken environmental protection of the natural and human environments in the coal-bearing portions of the Appalachian states where mountain top removal coal extraction is currently taking place.

I support as rapid a transition as possible away from our dependence on coal to provide electrical power. I support a significant increase in our national budget toward alternative sources of clean energy such as geothermal, wind, solar and other methods.

I support a national effort mandated from the Presidential office and sustained across successive administrations to significantly reduce our inefficiencies and waste of electrical energy and to support and require significant conservation measures that would obviate the purported need for numerous additional coal-fired facilities in the coming decades.

I am strongly opposed to mountain top removal as a means of obtaining coal at the expense of our mountains, the headwaters of our streams and for the health and safety risks that kind of mining poses to families and communities. I am opposed to this pending regulation that serves those who financially profit from extraction efficiency and punishes all of us who share the harm brought to the commons of the natural communities we call home.


]]>Current Events | Floyd Countyhttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Current+Events+%7C+Floyd+Countyfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Current+Events+%7C+Floyd+CountySat, 18 Aug 2007 07:38:09 CDT Heritage Artisans take Center Stage at Floyd County Harvest Festival Watch soapstone carving, learn tree grafting, smell fresh cider being made. These are just a few of the artisans who will demonstrate their work at the Floyd County Harvest Festival and County Fair on Saturday, September 15th at the Floyd County Recreational Park. Also scheduled to be on hand are experts in the area of chair caning, black powder guns, tatting, quilting, and spinning. Come out and share some memories with your family. The Floyd County Harvest Festival and County Fair is a day to celebrate Floyd County’s agriculture and heritage. Many fun family activities are scheduled including traditional music, children’s games, craft vendors and more beginning at 10 a.m. and continuing to 4 p.m.

Craft vendors will include goat milk soaps and lotions, quilt blocks, alpaca spun wool, local jams, jellies and cakes, and other related products. There will also be youth livestock shows from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., done by 4-H and the Future Farmers of America Adult admission to the festival is only $2, and children 12 and under are admitted free. For more information, including County Fair categories and entry information, visit www.floydharvestfestival.org or call 540 745-9307.

This event is made possible with grant funding from the Community Foundation of the New River Valley and many private sponsors. The Jacksonville Center for the Arts will also host many heritage arts demonstrations that day including well-known whittler Brad Smith, plus Dillard Frazier demonstrating basket-making and furniture making with wood-shaving horse. A special treat will be Buck Whisenant demonstrating blacksmithing in 18th-century costume.

There will also be ceramic and an early form of lampworking (glassbeads) demonstrations. For more information see www.jacksonvillecenter.org or call 540 745-2784. There will be many other special events that day, too, including historic walking tours of downtown, free music at the Floyd Country Store (www.floydcountrystore.com), children’s theater at the June Bug Center (www.junebugcenter.org) and an Open Farm day at Hope Springs Farm (www.innathopespringsfarm.com). More details on these other events will be upcoming. Many events, one great day in Floyd! Check THIS out!

"A Taste of Floyd"

Region: Blue Ridge Highlands
Locality: Floyd County

Harvest Moon Foodstore
227 North Locust Street
Floyd, VA 24091

Harvest Moon Foodstore presents "A Taste of Floyd" featuring "SLOW FOOD" from Floyd and the surrounding area.

Admission of $3.00 will cover an abundance of tastings from many of the region's finest food producers of
breads, cheeses, wines, produce, sauces and even fresh roasted coffee. Harvest Moon is located on Route 8 in the town of Floyd.

The Taste of Floyd is an event in conjunction with The Floyd County Fair and both are presented as part of the Floyd Harvest Festival.






]]>Jack Higgs Review of Slow Roadhttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Jack+Higgs+Review+of+Slow+Roadfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Jack+Higgs+Review+of+Slow+RoadWed, 11 Jul 2007 04:58:38 CDTMuch in Little on Goose and Nameless Creeks
“Where does this road go” asks the title of the introduction to Slow Road Home. It is also, of course, the legendary question often asked of country people by lost travelers from urban centers. The favorite reply by bemused farmers over the years is probably this: “Well no matter where you’re headed you can’t get there from here.” Fred First, posing this question in this utterly remarkable book of travel, offers a different response. “It goes nowhere and everywhere.”

Traveling of some sort seems essential to cultivating a sense of place. Fred First has traveled a lot along the banks of Nameless and Goose Creeks on his farm in Floyd County, Virginia, taking note of the endless miracles in the natural world. From the beginning, the move by Fred and wife Ann from Birmingham, Alabama to the Ridges of Appalachia is a journey of pilgrims seeking knowledge and meaning rather than a mission of true believers of one kind or another who already have all the answers.

With open minds and hearts, before the immensity of nature and a willingness to change, what they learn and experience in life close to and directly off of the earth constitutes nothing less than a book of wonders. It is a picture of the natural world that is not only stranger than we think but stranger than we can imagine.

The purpose of all art is to make us see, but Fred does more than that: he also makes us listen and hear, scent and smell, touch and feel, and taste while eating. Here is more proof, if any were ever needed, that all good writing begins with the senses before exciting feelings of awe, mystery and reverence of powers unspeakable all around us.

Much in little: this is modus operandi of Fred First. Like Emily Dickinson, he notices “smallest things,” things overlooked before, finds them italicized as it were, and makes them part of his memory, his diary, and now this book, vibrant with the rich sense of living things on the pages within it. Everything he sees is connected, barely visible and maybe even invisible, but clearly a part of the web of being running trough space and time.

Tens of millions of years ago, according to Nigel Calder in Restless Earth, dinosaurs walked from Poland to Alabama by way of Ireland and New York. In Slow Road Home: a blue ridge book of days, Fred First reverses part of that journey, heading north from Birmingham and stopping in Floyd County, discovering the composition of organic life, the rhythms of seasons, and a kinship with everything that is, has been, or will be.

I have never read a book quite like it.

In River of Earth by James Still the mountain preacher opens the Bible and places his finger at random upon the pages, locating a passage which says that the hills of ancient days go hopping and a skipping like sheep. If one were to place a finger in Slow Road Home, it would more than likely land on a memorable metaphor linking in mystery and awe the visible world to the great spirit that animates it.

by Robert "Jack" Higgs, Professor Emeritus, East Tennessee State University, editor of Appalachia Inside Out, Volumes I and II

Return to the Front Page

]]>Linkage: Local and Far-flunghttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Linkage%3A+Local+and+Far-flungfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Linkage%3A+Local+and+Far-flungFri, 29 Jun 2007 18:00:31 CDTFloyd Area Bloggers
Doug Thompson ~ Blue Ridge Muse
Colleen Redman ~ Loose Leaf Notes
David St. Lawrence ~ Ripples
Fred First ~ Fragments from Floyd

Other Floyd County Websites

Floyd Country Store
Floyd County Calendar of Events
Floyd Virginia Online
Oddfellas Cantina
Partnership for Floyd
Southern Mountain Melodies | Traynham's Weblog
Jacksonville Center for the Arts
Dream Catcher Meadows | Ron Campbell Ink Art
Chateau Morrisette Winery

Virginia Links

Virginia is for Lovers | The Virginia Tourism Portal

Blue Ridge / Parkway Links

Mabry Mill
Blue Ridge Parkway
Blue Ridge Country Magazine
Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway
Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation


]]>Slow Road excerptshttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+excerptsfred1sthttp://fredfirst.wetpaint.com/page/Slow+Road+excerptsSun, 24 Jun 2007 06:34:39 CDTStranger in a Strange Land
I don't have a job to go to and I don't have a plan for what comes next. And yet, somehow, I am not as anxious about this as I would have thought I'd be. But I do feel guilty--as if I had skipped school. I pull back behind the curtains when the few cars go by the house, lest their drivers, our neighbors, see that I'm not at work on a weekday. I tell myself to relax and enjoy being here while I can. This is not house arrest. It is not punishment. It is an odd kind of time apart from work that might become more like an unplanned vacation between jobs-a strange vacation, I'll grant you-just me here all day, every day.

The place seems unfamiliar, like a bed-and-breakfast, somewhere I've spent many nights but not so many days. Maybe the next few weeks will be a sort of spiritual retreat, one novitiate and one big black dog in eighty acres of quiet sanctuary. My work for now is living fully in this alien world, moving in a smaller orbit. This is a world not made or managed by man--a natural world of cold creeks, inhabited by mayapples and scarlet tanagers. This is a planet where I am learning to smell the changes as the season unfolds, taste the first cup of coffee under stars before the sun comes up over the ridge, and enjoy the comfort and companionship of the pup--blessings that persist even while some things have come undone, for a while.

So here I am all at once, thrown into this brier patch, a beautiful place to be tossed, though I would not have chosen to get here this way. I still feel like a stranger in my own country, but less so than last month. Three months from now, will I be more content with my lot? Will I be by then so immersed in this place that I look like it, become invisible against it, evolving, camouflaged and part of the landscape myself? Will I become lost here, or found?

Summer Lightning


It is late, and I am last to bed, past the usual time. I step out onto the front porch into the cool, sweet air of Early June, and sit on the top step quietly as if not to disturb the wildlife, whose nocturnal day I am entering. The pasture grasses just beyond the maples are in full flower and their pollen smells like midnight bread baking, while Goose Creek sends up wafts of spearmint, wet mud and turbulence.

My eyes soon learn to see in darkness and I am aware of soundless flashes of summer lightning, and stars overhead. My night vision comes and goes with each flash and pause and flash. Rising from the dark field on the fragrance of grasses are tens of thousands of lightning bugs. Put them in a jar, shake and see them illumined with the cold translucence of memory. They pulse and rise above the field in counterpoint to the tempo of the clouds, signaling ancient syllables that we could understand, if we were more often still, less hurried, and more at home in our own pastures.

Gravity pulls me down and I lie on my back, on cool stone horizontal, before a mock-infinity of space, wondering what is my place in this world of men and of words? Do I deserve to be so blessed among Earth's teeming humanity? What must I do in the warmth of this gentle epiphany that is revealed to me tonight and how should I then live? Maybe I will try to find the words in the morning, after the house is quiet again and the fireflies have gone to bed and the world smells of heat and ozone and toast.


What I Do I Do For a Living


"So, what do you do?" a stranger asks. For him, it's just polite conversation. But this question makes me break out in a cold sweat. What am I supposed to say to him? Am I a gentleman farmer now; a domestic engineer; a stay-at-home husband? Am I a former teacher, former physical therapist, former income earner?

I'm not sure if I'm between jobs, or out to pasture, or starting over in a new career that I can't give a name to. I do know that when I wake up in the morning and groggily project my mind forward into the day ahead, it's not the biology classroom or lab where I see myself and it's definitely not a day in the clinic full of patients in pain. Truth is, the first thing that comes to mind in the morning, before my eyes are open and my feet hit the floor, are the things I want to say and images I want to show to my weblog readers.

I've come to think about Fragments from Floyd as my work, what I do with my day, what I look forward to-to simply write out the days as they come. I feel no burning urgency to go back to healthcare where the money is. For a while, with some frugal belt tightening, we can meet our bills on one salary. But it is her salary, not mine and hers, as it has been for more than thirty years. I'm non-productive now, a parasite, and no matter how I turn it in my mind, that shakes up my male ego more than a little.

Our good friend Lynn died suddenly in her sleep last month at forty-five. She left projects that she will never finish. She had visions of things she would someday do that now will be left undone forever. She died one ordinary day in the midst of a busy life. Maybe she expected the end. Maybe she knew her treasure wasn't in making more money. When she left us, I feel sure that she was doing with her life what she would have done, had she known. Months before, she left a lucrative business so she could create, so she could invest her energies in the things she loved.

Her death has come just when my life was changing, just when I've been given this opportunity to dig for treasure in a different place. I am digging, and sometimes finding, even when I'm only working in the garden or bringing in the wood. Maybe this is what I do for a living now.

I put away scraps from the ordinary times, collect odd bits of experience and memory-strings of adjectives, strong verbs, the small revelations or perplexities I discover under rocks while sitting on the creek bank. I hold on to curiosities that make me smile-a nice phrase here, an alliterative couplet there, or some odd voice I hear in the wind or water. I once threw away such foolish things. Now I save them all.

My journal is a junk drawer-a place to save the parts I might one day need for a paragraph. I dig into the jumbled springs and strings, wires and washers and pull out the piece I need to tie up a sentence. I don't throw away the scraps of language anymore. I am a collector of fragments from these days on Nameless Creek.

Winter Walk


The sun will be up soon, and we will be heading out for our morning walk, this week after Thanksgiving. We are now one season removed from summer and our lives have taken on a different character, a seriousness not familiar in June. A June morning walk is a casual and spontaneous amble, and we are in no particular hurry to go or to come back. We follow our usual loop down the pasture road. We step across the creek on the dry backs of boulders in the shade of the lanky rhododendron.

We amble home north along the logging road, and use our hiking sticks to keep us from slipping in the wet grass. Now and then we stop to note a new arrival in the calendar of budding and blooming things. The air is still, heavy with the familiar smells of warm earth, fields and woods. A hundred birds sing about themselves from high in tulip poplars that are sprouting tiny leaves. At the end of our walk, the path leads downhill toward the meadow where we cross the creek once more and return home.

When winter comes, our morning walks don't end, but they are no longer a casual tiptoe through the woods. Winter walks are a deep-sea dive into cold and dark, in a submersible of wool and down. Peeking out from stocking hats like diving helmets, we trudge heavily against the stern and biting currents of polar air that wash over us like waves. Without our swaddling spacesuits our frail pink flesh would turn blue and brittle as December leaves, and our expedition would never be heard from again.

A summer breath, outdoors or in, is little different. But with the first breathing in of winter air outdoors, you know that you have stepped out into a world that is remarkable for things missing. Winter outdoors is a play on a stage vaguely familiar, from which most of the props have been temporarily removed.

Heat is only one of the absent characters. Diminished too are color, smell and the sounds and motion of living nature. Even molecules move with lethargy. Come the play of winter, all the best lines have been spoken by autumn; and, except for the wind, there are no words.

Summer is soft, yielding and supple. Winter is hard, unyielding and brittle. You feel winter through your feet and hear it in your steps. Cold dry air has its own smell, and there is a sound that belongs to the cold of winter. It is the sound of breathing, ears muffled, holding the beat of your own heart in wool like an echo in an empty shell.

No birds call; insects sleep frozen solid under bark and sod. Winter smells of wool and of wrapped humanity inside. From beyond the thick shroud of winter clothes there is only the near-fragrance of frost. No motes of aroma escape on warm currents from spicebush, sassafras, white pine, from dank soft creek mud or pasture clover. There should be an olfactory adjective, like monochrome, to describe the lunar-stark aromasphere of winter.

Wind in winter


Last night the wind screamed overhead like a great circling bird, back and forth from ridge to ridge. Every now and then it would swoop down to clutch at our porch roof and ruffle the metal, making a strange rumbling studio-thunder sound effect. Then it would lift again and circle a thousand feet above us, coursing the high places round and round, sounding like a great locomotive caught in a switching yard right over Goose Creek.

Now summer winds throw angry tantrums like this just briefly, and only when performing the accompaniment to a summer thunder storm. A million green living leaves modulate the pitch and timbre of the wind, so that even in the summer gale there is a softness, a lifting and cleansing quality that is altogether missing from wind in winter. Summer wind appears at the height of the storm, strutting and fretting about briefly; and then it exits stage left and its pitch falls off, Doppler like, and only a cooling breeze is left behind.

I have no complaints to register against summer winds. But winter wind arrives here irritable and there is no cheering it up. Dense and gray, heavier than air, it sinks into our valley like a glacier of broken glass, pushing down against hard and frozen earth, and it will not relent. When the wind howls at midnight, I dream of the Old Man Winter of children's books, his cheeks bloated full, lips pursed and brow furrowed, exhaling a malevolent blast below at frail pink children in wet mittens.

If you listen, you may think you hear a tone to the roar of January wind, a discrete pitch of a note that you could find on a piano keyboard. But this isn't so. In the same way all rainbow colors blend to make white light, January wind is the sound of all tones that nature can create, at once together as the Old Man overhead blows through a mouthpiece formed of ridge and ravine, across reeds of oak and poplar trunks. Winter wind is the white noise of January that won't go away.

ICE: Figments and Formations


You hear of remote country places where so little goes on that the locals sit around and watch the grass grow. I'm here to tell you that I have experienced the winter counterpart of that mindless rapture, and of this fact I am not ashamed. For the past two months, I have watched the ice grow and morph in our creek, and it has been a most beautiful, amazing and confusing hobby. I do not know what I am seeing, cannot explain it, and lament the fact that I have missed fleeting opportunities to capture rare photographic images to remind me of all the wonders I have and have not seen.

Witnessed: crystal stalactites of ice that look every bit as if they were formed from the roof of a limestone cave. And sharp transparent shards like snowflakes that form a visible fringe along the edge of the creek. I have seen the results of something like snow that forms overnight, six inches deep, right along the water's surface in a zone of supersaturated frozen air.

This magic leaves a white-spongy pad of airy creek-snow on the rocks, even on mornings when it has not snowed on land the night before.

Fluted. Filigreed. Lacey. Cancellous. Clear as crystal glass, green as a glacier. Granular and rough over here at the top of this rocky ledge; and just there in the shadow of the bluff, a smooth, flat sheet that protects itself by reflecting the pale pastel light of a weak winter sun. Ice buttons and balls, goblets and goblins that decorate the drab grasses at creek's edge with bright colorless ornaments. Air bubbles under glass move rodent-like downstream, in a warren of liquid and crystal.

Summer Symphony


This has been a wonderful day of sun, a reprieve from weeks of spring drizzle, welcomed on the eve of the summer solstice. A cold front passed through and carried away the blue haze so that edges are vibrant-razor-sharp. The greenness soothes the eye today under an achingly blue sky. I had almost forgotten.

While the colors were remarkable, it was the sound of this day that made me take notice. Standing at the edge of the creek in the warm sun in the amphitheater of our valley, sound reverberated in layers, bottom to top-the creek rumbling below, a thousand incessant insects stridulating in the middle, while the northwest wind above played the ridges in the treble clef.

The creeks are risen and clear; much of the water enters the flow from underground. Recent rains have forced cold clear water from deep below the surface into the swollen stream-enough water to call it a torrent, and it is raucous, in a hurry. If you could stand at the shore of the ocean and record the sound of breakers, then take out pauses between waves-this is the sound that roars along the valley floor today. Breakers without a break, the bass undertones in this valley full of sound.

The seventeen-year cicadas relentlessly wax and wane their nasal love songs, although now and then the singing males all stop together at once, just for a moment. They preen circumspectly before getting back to their seductive songs. I'm certain they expect at any moment a lured lady locust will climb up to their singing perch and make arthropodic whoopie. It must be a most orgasmic event-to have waited seventeen years for this very moment. I wonder: if you listened closely, could you hear the instant of those little whoops when the next generation of earth-sleeping insects is conceived, followed by a satisfied sigh, just days before death?

On top of the ridges the wind becomes visible as a million leaves race just ahead of its force, like the standing wave that crowds perform in perfectly timed sequence at football games. Before me, a stadium filled with soft leaves. They rise in unison along the leading edge of the wind; they sit back down as it passes, only to stand and cheer again and again.

The cool air today is light, full of energy and ozone. It has come here all the way from the tundra, never breathed before, save by a few caribou, and fewer wolves. The sound of wind in summer treetops brings a multitude of boreal voices, a soft rushing whisper that lacks the shrill whine inflicted in December by this wind's winter relatives traveling over Nameless Creek though bare branches.

Lucid Daydreams


I become very still sitting on the front porch on a calm and tepid summer day. I am asking my mind to wander free from limits, from reason and the burden of gravity. It is time to cast off.

Eyes lose focus, the body rises weightless, and I possess power over time. Nature is at my whim and I call on the century-old maple tree to repeat before my eyes in five minutes and in reverse history a hundred years of growth. I bid it stop at the moment it entered the ground as a winged seed. Then I command it to grow from seed to shade tree again. This I repeat over and over until I become saturated with the details of how a tree twists and lurches and spreads as it grows old, and the converse as it grows young again.

And later I may cast this spell on different kinds of trees up the valley noting differences in the choreography. Farther down the valley where I wonder without leaving my chair, fireflies emit pulses of light and also give out tiny corresponding throbs of percussive sound, a barely perceptible drum beat. Their language reverberates between indigo hillsides at midnight. Is there a rhythm here-a pattern of light and sound, a message that my senses cannot quite make out?

I am still, still moving; still but wandering this new-alien terrain. The soil in our pasture and woods becomes transparent, but it gives shelter and substrate for a legion of insects and burrowing creatures visible, suspended underfoot. Each kind of being has its own unique bioluminescence and I walk spellbound on the surface of invisible ground, above endless thousands of subterranean animals I have never known that swim or float, as if under depth of water.

I walk Nameless Creek at the very edge of this world. I bend and lift one rock, then another-of rounded gray granite or pink quartz; of angular shale or sheets of slate-and each stone I can see in its context of time, can go back to its life at its origin to the Very Beginning. I can follow the journey back to its source ten thousand miles and eons from here, and watch as sharp Paleozoic mountains melt into round-shoulder Blue Ridges of home.

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