MOVING SLOW..LIKE A TURTLE

Terrapene Carolina.(Eastern Box Turtle)

Ok…we finally did it! We have had this plan in the back of our heads for about five years and it recently moved to the forefront. After a lot of misgivings about having passed the opportunity by on three occasions, we are jumping feet-first into a new, ardous and hopefully rewarding business/passion venture. Our house sold this week and we cashed in the 401K and the moving van is scheduled for Friday morning. Enough of the schooling, working for the ‘Man’ and living paycheck to paycheck. We are trading in a life of daily toil and strife to return to the land and reap the lifestyle only it can bestow.
Our venture begins with the move to Watauga County Tennessee in the eastern part of the state. We found the ideal opportunity to own our own nature preserve, where we will be actively involved in the breeding, hatching, raising and the eventual release into the wild of the threatened Eastern Box Turtle. The preserve is comprised of 500 acres of prime unspoiled turtle habitat. Second growth forest surrounded by a buffer zone of no development only adds to the beauty of the preserve. We are taking over an existing facility that has fallen into disrepair. No too far gone that it can’t be rebuilt with a little effort. We will have to live in an old mill house on the property until we can build our cabin.
That will be secondary, as we will be there primarily to start the restoration of the breeding facility. The turtle population in the area is still at a level that is stable and not in decline, so we will have a slight head start in that aspect. While the Eastern Box Turtle lives an average of 40 years, some have known to live to 100.
Our goal for the next 20 years is to raise and release 5000 breeding pairs back into the woodlands of surrounding states and to educate the public on how to help the population survive.
The days will be long and hard, but I’m sure the rewards will be great.
We will try to keep in touch frequently, but the 18 mile trip to town to use a computer at the local library will not happen that often.
You can reach us by mail at:
Turtle Back Farm
No. 1 April Fool's Dr.
Watauga, TN. 04-01-2008

BOY SCOUT ROAD CAMP VERITY

Boy Scout Road.
With a name like that, you can only imagine that it would be running rampant with wild-eyed boys full of vim and vigor.
It was! Once upon a time.
Now the land seems sterile, gone is the big hand hewn cabin, trees, creek. Replaced with millions of dollars of homes and green manicured lawns devoid of the sounds of restless youth. The hills we roamed as kids, now are fenced and protected by silent alarm systems daring you to tread backward to those days gone by.
The two story cabin only sat about fifty feet off the road, but to us kids it was in a wilderness, miles from civilization. We unrolled our sleeping bags on the floor upstairs and then set about gathering firewood to burn throughout the night in the great stone fireplace. We traversed the hills behind the cabin as if they were the Sange de Christo mountains and we were beginning an adventure at Philmont. We practiced our woodsmen skills with knives and axes. We built bridges and towers of saplings, lashing them together with rope and honeysuckle vines. We hunted the very elusive snipe at midnight with the new scouts that joined our troop. All in all, we slept very little when we went camping at Camp Verity. There was just so much to do and so little time to do it in.
We tried to squeeze a week of activities into a weekend.
The big cabin is still alive and well. It has a new home near Yatesville Lake in Lawrence County Kentucky, and it has a new name: Camp Cherokee. While it kind of looks the same, it will never be the same. It just doesn’t get the attention it did 30 years ago, when it was occupied by happy throngs of boisterous scouts.
In September 1999, six of us old guys got together and spent the night in the cabin. We didn’t sleep. We sat on the porch in chairs and reminisced the entire night. The propane lantern softly hissed as it lit up the front of the cabin. We all took turns with a memory and everyone added to it. Before we knew it, the sky was beginning to glow a soft yellow and was soon peeking through the pines. Where had the night gone? Once again we squeezed a lot into a little. This time it was twenty five years into about ten hours. We parted ways that morning, only two of us still live in Catlettsburg and the other four headed back to California, Texas, Florida and Ohio, ensuring each other we would try it again soon.
As for Boy Scout Rd…I think it needs a name change.

Camp Arrowhead...I'll save that for later.

SNOW DAY SICK DAY

Snow Day and a sick day. I am stuck in the house, recovering. This is a progression of what took place in an hour this morn. Only the mailman braved the drive and then he griped because I was home and that he had no place to turn around at the top. He had to back/slide off the hill.






And now it is melting...but gonna be 15 degrees tonight...and don't forget the lunar eclipse.

THE VIENNA SAUSAGE CAN..an artifact of my generation.

In my backwoods adventures, bushwhacking across streams, valleys and through lush forest. I have often stopped and rested atop a moss-covered rock to take in the beauty of a stretch of green unspoiled wilderness, and thinking to myself that I could quite possibly be the first person ever to step foot in that particular little piece of Appalachia apart from Dan'l Boone himself.

Then as I shift my gaze from the horizon toward my feet, slowly rising to stand. My eyes are drawn just to the side of the rock and I see a dull gray cylindrical object half buried, poking out of the leaves at the base of a giant oak tree. Yep...it's a vienna can!

So..I wasn't the first person here after all.

Just when you begin to think those kind of thoughts, you stumble upon the kind of objects that let you know that the world is still very small. The vienna sausage can, pop/beer can with a pull top and one of those small red plastic sticks that is used to spread that nasty yellow cheese-like substance on some pre-packaged crackers.

According to scientists that study biodegradability,(would you call them biodegradabilityologists?) pop cans will be with us 50-100 years, the aluminum vienna can 80-100 years and the little plastic stick will probably last over 500 years.

I won't even mention how long they say styrofoam will be here.

I can only find in my research that the vienna sausage can only dates back to 1963, when Armour Meats packaged them and single-handedly began the planting of thick aluminum trail markers across our woodlands and pristine ridgetops, I shudder to think of the numbers that coat the bottoms of our lakes, as the company marketed them as an addition to any successful anglers tackle box. Not as bait as some think. While they have been packaged in cans I have heard references to jars. I don't know how long that dates back or what type of jar the sausages were packed in. I have a notion that they were packed similarly to dried beef and pimento cheese spreads in those small jars that many in Kentucky use as 'juice' glasses..you know the ones!

Vienna..pronounced as the city in Austria is the so-called proper pronunciation, pronounced as one word.However, in Kentucky we say it as if it is two words vi enny. Long i Long e.

It has been a staple in my life and has filled my hunting coat and fishing vest along with saltine

crackers for many years.

A coworker of mine told a story of a young lady he worked with in Portsmouth, Ohio who came to work one day showing everyone her new discovery at Kroger. Little hotdogs in a can! They are new. When they proceeded to tell her that they weren't new and probably packaged before she was born, she still didn't believe them. She tasted one, made a face and the guys gobbled up the remaining six.

Viennas now come in a few different flavors, barbecue, smoked, jalepeno, cajun, honey mustard and hot n' spicy. Armour is my favorite brand and I just won't eat Prarie Belt, Hormel, Libby's or Maple Leaf ,eh!

While the lable will biodegrade in a couple of years, the company needs to stamp a date and flavor type on the can. How will our progeny a hundred years from now know what was packaged in those small cylinders that I'm sure will catch the eye of some intrepid soul searching for a piece of the past.

Maybe I'll bury a few in the woods with the meat still inside along with a package of those cheese and crackers complete with the red plastic stick!

SEARCHING FOR SAUGER

Cold Cold Cold!!! 19 degrees this morning at 8:30 as I threaded my way down the ice-covered rocks toward the swirling waters of the mighty Ohio River below the Greenup locks and dam.

The sun was blazing through the light fog behind the dam, hundreds of seagulls worked the churning current and about a dozen brave souls stood rigid, casting chartreuse twisty-tail grubs into the chilly water.

I have been hearing about the large numbers of sauger being taken in the last month and decided to try my hand. I fished for almost two hours without a strike, but that never stopped me from enjoying the scenery and serenity.

I watched a few guys come down, make a few casts and then hoof it back to the warmth of the truck. One guy not far from me looked like Ralphie's little brother Randy; bundled up so big that he could scarcely move his arms to reel.

So my first fishing trip of 2008 brought no fillets to the table, but I'll be back, This was just an off day for the sauger.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL, AN EASY DOLLAR?

OK...so now I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute.

I come from a long line of coal miners. My mom's family toiled long dark days in the mines of Floyd and Pike counties of eastern Kentucky. Days of hard labor, dusty, cold, dangerous, and again..dark days. They were deep miners. They worked the coal inside the mountain. The only visible sign of a deep mine was the loading tipple and the 'gob pile' of carbonaceous slate that was discarded over the hillside near the mouth of the mine or trucked away and deposited nearby. The gob invariably would catch fire either spontaneously or with the help of a match. The ensuing product of burnt gob resulted in a commodity termed 'red dog' and it is still used today in Kentucky as a substitute for gravel to coat many a muddy holler road.

I sort of followed in the footsteps of my family, earning a degree in Mining Technology from Pikeville College. While I never worked actually extracting coal, I chose the path of quality control and analysis. Out of college I worked for Ashland Coal and then Arch Coal in the lab.

I know who buttered my bread, bought my groceries and gave me electricity when I flipped a switch.

I have spent many hours underground studying roof control, ventilation, machinery and blasting and explosives. I've witnessed first hand the hardships and dangers that miners face every day.

I've studied the strip mining activities and the reclamation requirements that at the time required the site to be returned to the original contour. That practice seemed devastating to the topography of the mountains 25 years ago, but today the strip mining activities and mainly those of mountaintop removal are destroying the beauty of mountains. The 'original contour' laws are thrown out the window, in favor of so-called economical development. The 'flat' featureless plains in the middle of nowhere are supporting landing strips, golf courses and trailer parks. These operations are often out of the view of the public eye and seem to be 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Silas House wrote in the Lexington Herald Leader:"The sites are usually in isolated areas where as few people as possible can see them. Since the coal industry's major defense is that it's providing much-needed flat land for development, I wonder how many people are going to drive the winding, crumbling roads into places like Lower Bad Creek to shop or build homes on subdivided land. Not many, I assume."

While the technology is ever-growing in the mining industry, with the development of robotic remote control continuous miners, longwall systems and the safest coal mines in the world. It seems that we could mine the coal underground with greater safety and efficiency and preserve the natural beauty of our beloved mountains. The stripping of the mountain top, filling the valleys and hollow heads with rock and choking the streams, literally laying waste to the land is not what we deserve. There has to be a better way, not just the cheap, easy way that rapes the land and recovers the smallest seams of coal. Lets save the smaller seams near the summits for our future generations to mine with the unforeseen technology that is certain to come in the future.

Want to see firsthand the atrocious scars? use Google Earth to zoom down on any light colored spot amidst the verdant sea of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The proof is there!

Get involved, join the fight!. Visit I Love Mountains!

ICE FISHING IN KENTUCKY

Bummer!
I had a little extra time on my hands this morning and as I spent yesterday at work daydreaming about doing a little trout fishing, I bundled up and gathered up a couple of rods and my small tackle pack from the shed.
Now, I wasn’t going to get to fish for trout this morning as that trip requires a two hour drive to the Red River Gorge. I was merely going two miles to my hotspot pond and drown some minnows for bass and crappie. My pal ‘Woodsy’ has a great fishin’ hole that is full of pole bendin’ action, and is just close enough that I can drop in for a few minutes to a few hours and not have to spend a lot of time on the road.
I scraped two bucks together from the loose change in my cup holder and headed for the bait shop. When I got there the cupboard was bare!( in reality is was a rusty avocado green Kenmore refrigerator) No minnows, no worms! Oh, well, I’ll just go and throw a few spinners and jigs to at least get the fishin’ fever down a few notches. I parked the Jeep, put on my coat, and started up the hollow. The ground was still covered with a blanket of snow and rabbit tracks crisscrossed the open ground as I trudged onward. I climbed the slippery slope of the dam and stood motionless and dejected as I saw the thin covering of ice. It couldn't’t have been more that 1/8” thick but it might as well have been 8’. I didn’t think it had been that cold the past few nights. It was 32 degrees now and getting warmer but I decided not to sit and wait for the Spring thaw.
I returned home, put everything back in the shed, went in the house and baked some cookies.
The cookies didn’t satisfy the fishing fever. Maybe I should have added a few anchovies!
I guess I’ll have to save some money for gas and drive to Wolfe and Menifee counties to the streams that don’t freeze over in the winter. There is a Class I stream I’ve never fished that requires a 1 ½ to 2 mile hike, that harbors native Brook Trout. The stream is said to only average 9” in depth, 12’ max width and in places is completely canopied with rhododendron.

That is my dream for the coming year.
But I’ll still make a few trips to the pond, after ice-out.

IF YOU GO OUT IN THE WOODS TODAY........

If you go out in the woods today,You’d better not go alone.It’s lovely out in the woods today,But safer to stay at home.

A real shocker today.

I was perusing the Google Earth this afternoon, looking at soccer stadiums across the globe and on a whim, typed in my address as I had done before and zoomed down on my house. This is an amazing site. I can see the house and cars in the driveway. I used the directional pointer and started a journey up Hurricane Rd. Less than 1/2 mile and before the next house there was a blue dot. Now a blue dot on Google Earth allows you click on it for some pertinent information. I clicked and a box appeared with a web address and nothing else.

I clicked again and it directed me to http://www.bfro.net/ The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

Now I have to admit that I was really into Bigfoot, Yeti and other unexplained beasts but got over that phase back in 1974. I read every book, newspaper article and could watch that short, shaky Patterson film over and over again, truly believing it was for real. I wanted to travel to Northern California and Mt Hood in Oregon to chase my own Sasquatch!

I guess I just outgrew my fascination and moved on with other pursuits.

So I click on this dot and read the headline...Mother and her son see a tall, hairy, bipedal creature cross the road in two steps.

The account goes on to explain that it was 2;30-3:00am on a blacktop country road..it was extremely tall..extremely hairy...took lanky steps.

This account was witnessed in 1998 but reported in October 2001.

The area in question is a heavily wooded area,only a mile southeast of Blackburn Ave in Ashland. I have lived here for 17 years. It consists of several hundred acres of uninhabited woodland with a lot of heavy timber. The area directly behind my house and extending toward Skyline Dr is 2 miles long with only 4 houses on that side of the road and the other side is comparable with only a few more houses crowded into a short 800'.I have covered practically every inch of this area over the years and I do believe that is secluded enough to harbor many forms of wildlife and I have witnessed many beasts roaming the woods..squirrels, deer, raccoons, owls, turkey, snakes, tarpins ,( box turtles for you folks that "ain't from around here" and even coyotes....but never a Bigfoot!

Further investigating led me to http://www.kentuckybigfoot.com/ it had pictures of Bigfoot's taken in Carter County and Boyd County.

I printed the report and gave it to Sharla to read without any explanation. She read along, stopping only to say "is this for real"? after she finished, she dropped the paper on the table and said "we're moving!"

Nah, we're staying put. I'm not gonna tell Carson about this one, as he won't want to play outside and I'm not sure Sharla will let him.

If the cat food starts disappearing...or the cat..then I'll think about moving.

FROZEN DREAMS

Frozen Dreams

My ultimate fantasy trip of a life-time is not to lie on the beach on some tropical island while a warm breeze parts the palm fronds above as I sip a cool drink from a coconut.
I wanna go North!
Up where the breezes are cool and the beaches are rocky and ice-strewn. Where the caribou and the musk ox run free, and the mosquitoes swarm so thick that they can dim the everlasting summer sun. I dream to trek across the open expanses of the frozen tundra, living off the land. I want to partake of the hospitality of the Inuit, learning their ways of survival in the harshest of climes. I want to wear a robe and mittens of sealskin and mukluks made of the finest walrus hide. I will watch as clouds of migrating bird’s trouble the waters of a pristine glacial lake. I want to catch the grayling and the char and cook it over a fire of driftwood from a distant unforeseen boreal forest. I long to lie on my back and watch the Aurora Borealis paint the black sky with curtains of pastel brilliance. I want to feel the bite of -45 F on uncovered skin!
I want to watch polar bears (from a distance, of course) as they lumber across the whiteness, ever searching for their next meal. I dream to sail the open waters of the polar sea, up the west coast of Greenland, passing giant headlands and countless glaciers and unnamed mountain peaks. Sailing northward, going as far as the pack ice will allow me. Retracing the route of the ill-fated Franklin expedition and the later voyage of Amundsen through the Northwest Passage. I will trudge onward as a lemming, crossing each new barrier without a thought of turning back.
My infatuation of all things “arctic” began over two decades ago when I discovered the books of Farley Mowat. His stories and sociologic insights into the people that inhabit the vast expanses of the Great White North filled me with intrigue. He traveled extensively throughout the arctic, preserving the ways of life in his reports. He brought to light the hardships and travails facing the Inuit and the Siberians, along with the issues of habitat destruction, over-fishing, oil exploitation and introduced diseases. All of these things have a detrimental effect on the northern societies. His books, Sea of Slaughter, People of the Deer, The Siberians, Never Cry Wolf, The Desperate People and the Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, are must read’s for anyone looking for an insight in the nether reaches on the far north.
While I long to step foot on the frozen soil, I also know that dreams are dreams. Dreams are what you make of them. Some people have an uncanny knack for making their dreams come to fruition and others, me included, dream just to be dreaming. My head sometimes swims with countless thoughts, and I struggle trying to make sense of the mish-mash. Thoughts of a child. 1 Corinthians 13:11 tells us….I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I guess I will always struggle with this one, and next year I’ll probably be reclining on a beach beneath an umbrella slathered in SPF 45, reading a book about the arctic, drinking frozen lemonade and watching Sharla bake in the sun while Carson splashes and builds sand castles.
Oh, the life of a dreamer…and forever a little boy!