IN THE DITCH

If you were driving between Jasper and Live Oak yesterday afternoon, perhaps you saw a woman in a black and white striped dress lying in the ditch taking pictures; that was me, admiring the Gaillardia pulchella Fougeroux. Coming home I stopped to photograph a lush garden with sunflowers on CR25A.


Reader, I have not served you well; in recent weeks I failed to report on the flowering of spring shrubs, flowers, and fruit trees. Among this spring's wild plants that have already blossomed, dropped their seed, and vanished are sheep's sorrel, toadflax, the wobbly-headed Cinnamon Fern, and the wild blackberries and huckleberries I ate from along my driveway. Along our county roads I spot signs advertising U-PICK blueberry operations. Our Suwannee Valley Blueberry Farm right here in White Springs has a luscious crop of organic berries. "A bumper crop" this year,, says owner Mark Quitero.

I have passed whole fields of dandelions, admired the chartreuse fruits of the Saw Palmetto, Serenoa repens (Bartr.); untangled myself from Catbrier, smilax lavafolia Linnaeus); and passed many tall, white spires of Spanish Bayonet. The purple Spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis Rafinesque I first learned in my Alachua backyard has come and gone, along with the white bells of the Dwarf Huckleberry, Gaylussacia dumosa Andrews; also the Anual Phlox, Phlox drummondii (Hooker) which spills its colors like blackberry pie a la mode along roadsides. The Fringe Tree, Chimanthas virginicus Linnaeus on the opposite bank of the river dropped its delicate white handkerchiefs within days of their appearance; here on Lot 22, the Chinaberry has shown its lavendar, and the Mimosa is blooming now, also Swamp Mallow and Passion Flower.

TRUE HEAT

A busy fish today. He has jumped—a fat, plopping sound—twice in five minutes and, of course, gives me no warning beforehand so that I can see him. He disappears so quickly. And I, immersed in Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, can only hear him. Why do fish jump?

I suspect True Heat begins today with the predicted 88 degrees and I hold out slight hope for more days like yesterday and earlier, days of sunshine and cool breezes, and low humidity. I was close enough to last year’s Bugaboo Fire that I now realize low humidity has its downside, but only an idiot could fail to appreciate these glorious green and gold days of new growth on every limb and branch along which caterpillars—yellow and orange, horned and not—creep, the cries of birds both far and near, the house of twigs hanging from the nearest palmetto frond.

I must sound like I’m on vacation, sitting here with binoculars, books, and coffee, writing it all down, even the small olive lizard who has stopped before me and marvelously inflates the orange goiter on his throat as though to warm me the hawk is coming, the river will rise, this ethereal weather will wane. Why am I writing all this down, anyway?

I describe this scene because doing so intensifies its effect. Putting it on paper mirrors the inscription of it on my brain, which is why I scribble. This is the reason I encourage others to write. Doing so brings the sharp tips of the palmetto’s fans into focus as I look more closely. It sharpens my hearing so that I know a bee approaches, though it is still out of view Here comes an interesting bird, batting its white wings, a bird with a voice like a slide guitar—more than one long note, something more complicated, bluesy.

I got interrupted, reading the Otto book. Found it pretty dense and, anyway, isn’t it possible either that everything is holy or nothing is?

Last night I saw a wild hare in the driveway, also one on the county paved road. This evening I went out onto the deck just before dark, sat down, and observed directly in my line of sight a female deer, frozen in position on the opposite side of the river. She stared at me for all of 30 seconds, then snorted and flew, springing from one place to another in leaps that took her six feet off the ground.

Now I am working on “pupa” and “chrysalis.” I am trying to find out what creature lives in the minute twig basket that dangles from the very tip of a palmetto’s frond here at the edge of the deck.


scauthen
www.sudyecauthen.com

Blue Needle

BLUE NEEDLE

Beside the deck where I am drinking coffee, a fish jumps. Across the way, a blue needle of a bird appears on the opposite bank, stalking deliberately along, one slow step at a time. He could be counting steps, but he is staring steadily at the water. As though he has just heard “about left,” he turns, dimples the water with his bill, stands straight, shakes his feathered head, threads his way between the roots of a cypress tree, and resumes his march. When I move, he rises into the sky, curves over me, and flies away. I go inside for a second cup of coffee, come back with binoculars just as the bird’s double appears, flying upriver, wings beating, black head pointed straight east.

At this early moment of the day it is near-wondrous to picture the hours ahead as fully conscious ones, gifts as pristine as the white beach Blue Needle strides along, as mysterious as the furred caterpillar climbing my chair’s front leg toward a destiny he is not thinking of, lost as he is in the moment. What I don’t like to slip into is the unconscious part, when the brain goes numb with clerical tasks and I plod on, forcing myself to complete paperwork, slit anonymous envelopes, record information while the day drops away; it happens. Just as any friendship is forever informed by one’s initial impression, this one morning on the deck plays within the context of mornings that have gone before. The birds’ medley twists through these newly green trees, knotted with the all the dancing lights, squirrels, otters, and fish I've seen over more than ten years.

I sit on, under the delicate, white bells of the Highbush Blueberry, Vaccinium Corymbosum, surrounded by a United Nations of birds: “I told, I told you, I told you” says one and, hardly audible, an answer comes-- “Wait, wait, wait,” followed by the sharp warning of a red-tailed hawk as his shadow crosses the deck. The birds keep on, sprinkling their songs through bushes and trees.

The second fish of the day jumps, and circles within circles appear, casting mirror-like shadows onto the lowest limbs of the trees leaning out over the river. There goes Blue Needle, headed south, one step at a time. At the foot of the bank a wild dark wisteria twists its way toward a hummingbird. The river is low, maybe at about 52’, not worrisome at all (since 77' is flood stage). The relative humidity is the lowest it’s been this year; this is Eden, you understand, Eden where leaves of plants I could label pinnate, palmate, bipinnate, and tripinnate flourish between my chair and the river. One of this morning’s messengers, a small dark bird with a black bill, appears. He is unknown to me, nameless. I wish I knew his name but I can’t throw nets of words over every single aspect of Nature. And perhaps that’s a good thing.

Rock Dove

I must have been reading a magazine or washing my hair or inventorying ant beds each time this bird appeared; the i.d. book says he is common here, but until today I'd never set eyes on him. The Rock Dove is 11" of oak bark until he moves slightly and the sun glints neon on the dark gray hood that reaches to his shoulders. Against the limb of the oak tree he was nearly camouflaged, his dark gray head and neck flashing greens and purples, his dove gray back, white body, pink beak and feet, and his yellow eyes surprised me. I often see a more familiar pigeon, but this one, never before. He sat in the elbow of the oak's limb for a long time, occasionally snapping his head to one side, giving me long enough to go for the two bird books and my binoculars. I watched for an hour, and he never left the tree but, then, as I turned to put the books back, he spread his black-banded white wings and fluttered to the ground where last week I'd dropped some seed, sat there as though he might have decided to try nesting. A little while later I saw him stand up and toddle toward the river in the odd gait that must have inspired the descriptive label "pigeon-toed." Sort of a delicate waddle from side to side, looking like a wind-up toy.

I thought I'd seen the last of him, but ran downstairs and put out corn where he'd been and, an hour later, I saw him sitting on top of the pile of corn, not eating it, just claiming the spot. He didn't move when I walked toward, then away from him. At a distance he looked like a ceramic decoy, a perfect porcelain bird. The book says: "ROCK DOVE (domestic pigeon) Columba livia." This common, introduced pigeon of farmyards and city parks has a white rump and (except in white birds) a dark terminal tail band. Wing tips collide on takeoff. Glides with wings raised at an angle. Nests on buildings."

I hope our new Rock Dove breaks the rules. I hope he/she stays here in the country and eats piles of corn while he's sitting on it. He chose a good day to visit. I was outside doing nothing but admiring the cool breeze and the sunshine on the deck, all that green hanging over the river, loving the low humidity that's such a rare treat. This was the kind of day you memorize and, so, I have memorized the whole 11" of our Rock Dove. I want to learn more about him and the one photo I found doesn't look like what I saw.

In the garden, tomatoes and snapdragons are blooming and a long line of lettuces is fattening. Pink and red amarylis buds are opening. This year's wisteria is more lush than last year, but has no flowers. On the river bank, wild wisteria is blooming in fat corsage size clumps whose sweet scents drift all the way to the house.

Notes From 3 March Flight to Key West

THE IDEA OF ORDER, APPROACHING KEY WEST

The whirl and vibration of propellers, along with our pilot's emergency instructions, are a buzz behind my orange earplugs. This Beech 1900 is vulnerable, its skin no thicker than mine, the sheeting on its wings held together by rivets no more impressive than upholstery tacks. I am hungry, working on a headache.

We leave Gainesville, FL, headed toward “a bright sunny day of +80 degrees” in Key West." The vibration of the plane forgotten, I look down on three lakes, three more lakes, a boat trailing a white tail behind. The strips of floss below are roads between neatly combed woods I surmise are planted pine.

On my (road) map, Archer, Bronson, and Chunky Pond* show. We cross I-75, fly over cattle that glint like metal filings in squares of tan and mauve, then houses of hunter green, olive, khaki, and pink; some of the houses have very few trees. On the wing out my window, blue panels open; I wonder if those metal rivets could pop loose.

The many subdivisions we pass over are iconographic, elaborate patterns of red tile laid in mathematical precision, then interrupted by the scrimshaw of the Suwannee River, a black ribbon scrolling toward the Gulf. Already we are dropping to the southwest, to Tampa. No coffee or pretzels on this flight; below us, long lines of ants on the north and southbound lanes of I-75. A bit of turbulence.

As the pilot announces our landing at Tampa/St. Pete, I see that the gray areas surrounded by green are cypress forests and the coastline is bejeweled with houses. Ball fields, construction sites, the windows in those houses. I am praying for the pilot's loves, whatever they are. We have each done something dangerous today.

Change of planes and I am in the sky again. The Sunshine Skyway, a curved eyebrow above water, doesn't bother me; I was far more nervous driving it in a car .

Below me, a geometry incised, it appears, by someone with a very long tool; then deep water over bands of chartreuse, the grid again, blue sky, houses crowding the water's edge, cloverleafs. From another planet we may look like we know what we're doing.

Captiva and Sanibel, a palette of green, brown, and chartreuse, then mauve patches of differing shapes that remind me of frescoes on old walls, bison in the caves at Lascaux. All one gleaming, iconic loveliness and, though it's a worry, right now I can't condemn people with houses situated on
fill for wanting this beauty every single day. Below: water and boats gleam like dimes tossed into a North Florida spring.

Florida Voices, Florida Changes

A NOTE ABOUT THE BOOK: Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place has been nominated for the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award.

Florida Voices, Florida Changes

"Glimpsed" is the operative word in the 1996 piece printed below. One almost must search for the landscapes known even fifty years ago. In my 2008 travels about Florida, I've been astounded by the numbers of new dwellings, the thousands of orange barriers lining miles of roads being reconstructed, the bridges, the tourist stops, the billboards.

I dug out this piece (see below) written a dozen years ago in order to compare how Florida seemed to me then versus how it seems in 2008 after visiting cities to the south and in the panhandle for book readings. In 1996, the state had 12,938 million residents and it now has in excess of 18,349 million; hurricanes George, Earl, Charly, Charlie, Francis, Ivan, Rita, Wilma, and the infamous Jeanne have borne down on us. In 1996 the state registered 129,000 housing starts and in 2006, we had 165,000. I first got interested in these statistics when I drove the Florida Turnpike for the first time since 1998. Florida is under far more of a strain than she was when this piece (see below) was written in a duplex on Terrace Street in Tallahassee where I lived for fall semester, 1996, before bolting to the woods in Hamilton County. I went back, of course, but eventually I was able to build here on the river where I might easily be accused of "hiding out." But now, because I've been traveling, I know what’s going on in the rest of the state and it’s startling.

This weekend I'll be at Debary Historic Site (10 a. m., Saturday, 12 April) where I hope to be involved in a spirited discussion of what's happening to Floridians, the place where they live, and what we can do about crowding.

One good thing: people are talking about Florida's environment, growth, development, and our future. More on this subject when I get back. Here's the 1996 piece:


VOICES FROM FLORIDA*

Florida is now home to many peoples, but her earliest languages were spoken by the hunter-gatherer tribes of pre-history, the Apalachee, Yustega, Utina, Potano, Ocale, Tocobago, Ais, Calusa, and Tequesta. These were the Floridians who met those first explorer-conquerors of the New World. “La Florida,” the Spanish named it “land of flowers.”

These peoples ate clams, trout, and mullet. They wore blue beads and were of Asian descent, but they wrote no books and their voices were never taped. Decimated by European diseases to which they had no resistance, the first Floridians are found now only in the archaeological record and in the descriptions of European diarists. However, in the graffiti on a boarded-up wall at coastal Cedar Key, an anonymous author has given them voice:

Tall we were, splendor was in our persons, comely our women, our waters
bountiful. Life was joy in our cedar-scented islands under the cloud-drifted
sky. Then came the ugly pygmies with their bright hard shells and devil-stone
knives, their demon-driven vessels rising up from under the edge of the sea.
By pure evil they triumphed over us. The plague that spread from their souls’
sickness that robbed us of our children, that stole away our beauty, brought
us to an end . . . .

Despite theme parks and tourist beaches, the unspoiled Florida, the Florida of her first peoples, can still be glimpsed.

*Copyright Sudye Cauthen,15 July 1996

ENDNOTE: 10 April 2008 - Sunday at 2 p.m. I'll be at the Micanopy Public Library at the southern end of Alachua County, not all that far from Cross Creek where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote Cross Creek in which she said:

If there be such a thing as racial memory, the consciousness of land and water lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings. We were bred of the earth before we were born of our mothers. once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.

UPDATE on the book, SOUTHERN COMFORTS: Rooted in a Florida Place

While I was in Key West this week we got word that SOUTHERN COMFORTS: Rooted in a Florida Place has been awarded the Bronze for Florida Nonfiction by FLORIDA BOOK AWARDS.