9 January 2008 and a brand new year in which already we have had 85 degree heat, 10” icicles, rain, sun, and, today, some of the most beautiful clouds I’ve ever seen. Tonight, I have the ac running.
I don’t think this blog is well-focused and I’m probably going to give it a new name; let me tell you what I was thinking when I started this: Almost everyone lives fast; we hurry, there are stacks of emails and blinking phone messages, more snail mail than we’ll ever get through. Since I can sit for at least a few minutes every single day on the deck by the Suwannee, observing its life and examining whatever thoughts wind their way into my head, I hoped it might be meaningful to share this experience with people who can’t routinely have it. I want the blog's readers to see how it is living here (as simply as I can, which turns out not to be nearly so simple as I’d intended). Although I haven’t a TV or clothes dryer, I do have a merciless computer with email and a telephone, and I want to respond to both because what I am trying to do (see www.sudyecauthen.com) is important to me—all of it, however, springs out of that one hour on the deck, usually at sunset, each afternoon. Here’s an earlier blog I failed to post that I submit now because it starts out as a morning entry and includes deer. I didn’t want you to miss these deer.
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Wednesday, 11/28:
Before 8:00 a.m. I was sitting with coffee on the upstairs porch from where I could hear the interstate’s roar. This displeases me; I would like to think I am in a remote wood but some days the wind blows all that racket in this direction. It’s 60 degrees, very damp, and the laundry I left on the line overnight is still hanging there. My cat, Thomas, is watching a squirrel leaning toward the bird feeder; I growl at the squirrel; he knows my sound and scampers off. A band of white light is spreading in the east, beyond the gnarled oaks that stretch their mossy arms over the grave of the cat, Isabella, d. 2002.
In spite of the traffic grinding along, I am gladly sitting in this cold and damp, considering the day. All the leaves are gone from the Opal Miller Worthy pear tree, at most there are 2 mph wisps of wind, the light in the east has suddenly disappeared, which is strange as I’d expected it to lift and spread; but no, a still, gray day.
9:08 a.m.: a bright burst of sunlight and the day is born, just a little later than usual.
* * *
I drive 24 miles through the wines and golds to the gym: jacuzzi, laps in the heated pool, and jacuzzi again, then back through the colors of fall, 2007, and about five miles from home two dark brown deer, Odocoileus virginianus, leap across CR 25A in front of the car. I slow down; I am determined never to hit a deer. They are an omen, though; I know that much. I don’t remember ever before having seen dark brown deer.
Online I find a deer site and discover that in winter deer’s hides often darken. Those I saw were does, the darkest I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I can ever get enough of seeing them. A few months ago, two fawns cavorted each morning at my mailbox—too close to the county road--and when I called Florida Fish and Wildlife they told me to leave them alone. Local hunter, Ivey Harris, said he’s seen black deer and albino deer. The Harrises hunt and they eat venison, which I’ve tasted. However, besides being food the white-tail is for me a sacred animal, a messenger from another plane, a reminder that I’m ignorant as heck about any such plane.
There were deer tracks on my friend Larry’s grave; a good sign, I think.
When Cousin Leon and I went up to Jasper to the hardware store, he pointed out a bag of deer attractant called “Deer Cocaine,” a name reminiscent of the headlines on grocery store tabloids. As instructed, I dutifully dug a 4 x 4 area and sprinkled the white powder onto the ground, but I’ve yet to find a single track. However, I did find tracks in the winter rye beneath the front door entrance.
This evening has been devoted to prying open my wee brain on the subject of websites. My evolving website’s a long way from being what I want and I find I don’t have the vocabulary I need to explain to the designer what I have in mind. It goes slowly. The work goes slowly, but the time goes fast. Sometimes I set the timer and when it rings, go downstairs and stare at the river for a few minutes. This is nothing like that first year, the year of Alone, On The River This Spring when whole poems rose from my throat and fell onto the pages of my notebooks, the year when I first found the wild huckleberry and the ghostly white Indian Pipes that grow nearby on the Florida Trail.
I don’t think this blog is well-focused and I’m probably going to give it a new name; let me tell you what I was thinking when I started this: Almost everyone lives fast; we hurry, there are stacks of emails and blinking phone messages, more snail mail than we’ll ever get through. Since I can sit for at least a few minutes every single day on the deck by the Suwannee, observing its life and examining whatever thoughts wind their way into my head, I hoped it might be meaningful to share this experience with people who can’t routinely have it. I want the blog's readers to see how it is living here (as simply as I can, which turns out not to be nearly so simple as I’d intended). Although I haven’t a TV or clothes dryer, I do have a merciless computer with email and a telephone, and I want to respond to both because what I am trying to do (see www.sudyecauthen.com) is important to me—all of it, however, springs out of that one hour on the deck, usually at sunset, each afternoon. Here’s an earlier blog I failed to post that I submit now because it starts out as a morning entry and includes deer. I didn’t want you to miss these deer.
**************************************************************
Wednesday, 11/28:
Before 8:00 a.m. I was sitting with coffee on the upstairs porch from where I could hear the interstate’s roar. This displeases me; I would like to think I am in a remote wood but some days the wind blows all that racket in this direction. It’s 60 degrees, very damp, and the laundry I left on the line overnight is still hanging there. My cat, Thomas, is watching a squirrel leaning toward the bird feeder; I growl at the squirrel; he knows my sound and scampers off. A band of white light is spreading in the east, beyond the gnarled oaks that stretch their mossy arms over the grave of the cat, Isabella, d. 2002.
In spite of the traffic grinding along, I am gladly sitting in this cold and damp, considering the day. All the leaves are gone from the Opal Miller Worthy pear tree, at most there are 2 mph wisps of wind, the light in the east has suddenly disappeared, which is strange as I’d expected it to lift and spread; but no, a still, gray day.
9:08 a.m.: a bright burst of sunlight and the day is born, just a little later than usual.
* * *
I drive 24 miles through the wines and golds to the gym: jacuzzi, laps in the heated pool, and jacuzzi again, then back through the colors of fall, 2007, and about five miles from home two dark brown deer, Odocoileus virginianus, leap across CR 25A in front of the car. I slow down; I am determined never to hit a deer. They are an omen, though; I know that much. I don’t remember ever before having seen dark brown deer.
Writes Richard Nelson, author of HEART AND BLOOD: Living With Deer In America, "I felt that we were more alike than different . . . .” and “ . . . we should always keep in mind what the philosophers and elders teach: that while knowledge dispels some mysteries, it deepens others.” (HEART AND BLOOD, p. 9)
Online I find a deer site and discover that in winter deer’s hides often darken. Those I saw were does, the darkest I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I can ever get enough of seeing them. A few months ago, two fawns cavorted each morning at my mailbox—too close to the county road--and when I called Florida Fish and Wildlife they told me to leave them alone. Local hunter, Ivey Harris, said he’s seen black deer and albino deer. The Harrises hunt and they eat venison, which I’ve tasted. However, besides being food the white-tail is for me a sacred animal, a messenger from another plane, a reminder that I’m ignorant as heck about any such plane.
There were deer tracks on my friend Larry’s grave; a good sign, I think.
When Cousin Leon and I went up to Jasper to the hardware store, he pointed out a bag of deer attractant called “Deer Cocaine,” a name reminiscent of the headlines on grocery store tabloids. As instructed, I dutifully dug a 4 x 4 area and sprinkled the white powder onto the ground, but I’ve yet to find a single track. However, I did find tracks in the winter rye beneath the front door entrance.
This evening has been devoted to prying open my wee brain on the subject of websites. My evolving website’s a long way from being what I want and I find I don’t have the vocabulary I need to explain to the designer what I have in mind. It goes slowly. The work goes slowly, but the time goes fast. Sometimes I set the timer and when it rings, go downstairs and stare at the river for a few minutes. This is nothing like that first year, the year of Alone, On The River This Spring when whole poems rose from my throat and fell onto the pages of my notebooks, the year when I first found the wild huckleberry and the ghostly white Indian Pipes that grow nearby on the Florida Trail.
1 comment:
This was a lovely entry. Keep 'em coming, Sudye.
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