Daylight

When the clouds break forth into sunlight, I'm going to hop on that bike, place a tarp in my hiking pack and head out for a few days. I am a creature of light. I am happiest when I am outside. I rode back from Orangeburg, South Carolina, some sixty miles from home, where I ended my travail by bike. I keep going back to this time in my life because I received the amount of sunlight in those three weeks that it would take a year of normal living to get. I feel there is something left to be had in those wide plains. I feel there is something that I missed by not completing those last miles by bicycle. Riding back in the afternoon,-- urging along at twelve miles an hour passing many a sun-glazed field, grain elevators, pastures, hay -- was just as warm a memory to me as my time in the mountains. I even remember a point where I got off to walk, thirty-pound pack and all, up one of the last relatively-steep hills I'd encounter, and seeing to my right a lower plain, extending for miles. I saw multitudes of trees and a runt plateau off in the distance, and an opening where a plot of farm ground defined the sheer distance of the horizon. I just want to bicycle northeasterly until I pass the Orangeburg gap, hitting hills. Hill after hill will unroll before me and I will marvel for the space of an hour in silence, what enormity God has rendered.

Fiddlers and Resophonics

Note: I went back and updated all the music links. Songza removed its exclusive tracks, so I had to go back and replace the links with the same songs via Youtube, iLike, and Lala. Go back and check the last couple of posts from November and early December, as well as some of the earliest postings in October. You would benefit from seeing how my writing has changed (I don't say improved because I don't think I have. It is just different).

On Thursday, I ordered a few CDs in the mail. Its just so working out that day after day, an album would come in the mail and they honestly keep getting better each new day. I have been putting off buying new music for a long time, and have amassed a list of desired albums. I decided to finally go through with it and buy a few albums and support a few up and coming musicians, such as Balsam Range, who play many local shows in the Asheville area. The reserve of bluegrass CDs at the libraries in Charleston County have run out, faster than I thought it would. After checking out Alison Brown's Fair Weather for a second time, I decided to a buy a couple of her CDs. She is an excellent composer, covers many genres, uses many unusual mixings of flavors, such as flute and hand drums, and pairs with one of my favorite fiddler players Stuart Duncan, and he has markedly improved in improvisation (what people do when they jam on a tune for twenty minutes, except in shorter spurts of genius) from '92 to now. He is beast. The third album I got in the mail (yesterday) was Jim Vancleve's (the fiddle player in Mountain Heart) No Apologies. He groups up with some of the most well-known bluegrass musicians, such as Adam Steffey, Bryan Sutton, and Rob Ickes (of Blue Highway. I want to buy one of their albums). What I went for in all these albums was composition. Most of the songs in these albums are composed by the lead musician, which I really love. Vancleve writes shapes his melodies and song forms progressively. One of my favorite songs is Devil's Courthouse. Rob and Bryan perform excellently here, and all I can think of while riding it is riding down a railroad at disastrous velocity. The next track after that, Highlands, is gorgeous and adventure-lusting. That is my perfect kind of song. Its quite something that the title is Highlands, because Highlands, North Carolina has reached legendary status in my mind. Its almost the equivalent of Jack Kerouac's Denver, Colorado. Its at the first thrust upwards in elevation. You ride a road from western upstate South Carolina to get there. The road is called Highlands Highway. Sounds like a great road to get high off of. I think about going up there, but know that the swamp and marsh and oak and pine forest must be my muse for exploration for the time being. There's one more song I must rant about. It is Unionhouse Branch by Alison Krauss and Union Station. Learning that Jerry Douglas was in the band explained its intensity and sage playing feel. Its like an antique jam. My favorite band used to be Bonerama. Bonerama is a rock band out of New Orleans with a very unorhodox instrumentation: four trombones, drums, guitar, and tuba. They do a lot of classic rock covers. Their dedication to rhythmic intensity is what won me the most. It jammed. Its so interesting that when I listen to jamming bluegrass like Unionhouse Branch or Alison Brown's Late On Arrival, I get that same rush and listen to it like I would Mark Mullins sailing through a musical phrase on stage. Only difference I see is instrumentation and rhythmic center. I get my best moments with music while driving for extended periods. I listened to a mix tape on the way to Florence, including a few dollar downloads, and ate it up. It was so nice, that the forty-mile span that usually drives me to boredom passed by unbeknown to me, so great was the music. Intense music seems to raise my body temperature. I'm serious. I got my last two new albums in the mail (tomorrow from the date mentioned, I took forever to complete this post). Alison Krauss and Union Station (album I got is New Favorite) is great for me because its two very prestigious (with unusual voices to boot) vocalists, along with Jerry Douglas. I look forward to listening to Last Train To Kitty Hawk.

US 52/US 78 Split and Kitty Hawk

Something incredible happened this week. The temperature increased by an average of 20 degrees. I worked up a sweat while biking. It brought me momentarily back to this summer, that it was the strangest and best one I've experienced yet. This summer and the next I shall be preaching the gospel, a stranger in a strange land, so I know it will get even better. The summer after that I will be driving EVERYWHERE, including the west of Alex Supertramp. It just gets better and better. It makes me think of, while on my two-and-a-half week bicycle trip, how many times I saw summer pictures of the North Carolina hillscape and yearned to see all the lushness. But back to the warm Charleston weather that is now, as I type, going away. The first experience, greeting the warm weather, was on a usual bicycle ride on my Bushy Park route on Saturday early afternoon.  I had passed by a walking trail many a time while completing my 30-mile run, but this time I went down the path. It was very adventurous for me bicycling on this root-covered walking trail. Twists and turns. I'm hooked. I get lost temporarily, which is the point of the whole venture. Not all that wander are lost. After finding my way back onto the main road, I return home, in awe. On Sunday, I roamed some more, but in a car. On my way back from church, I continued down Rivers Avenue, passing the US 52/US 78 split -- 52 going to Goose Creek and Florence and northward, 78 sprawling west into Aiken and Georgia and onward -- and sweeping by the winter swamp that has been calling to me for months now, not planning anything. I came up to where 176 begins, and felt the knee-jerk reaction to take a left and drive on up through the Holly Hill of my bicycling lusts, running alongside I-26, making its way through Columbia, Spartanburg, and finally, the mountains. However, I turned right onto Red Bank Road and enjoyed the sunshine poking through the mostly-cloudy skies down Old Back River Road and all of the country that I'm blessed with living so close to.

On the music side of things. I am finally, after amassing days worth of hours listening to it, buying This One Is Two, by Ralph Stanley II, the progeny of the famous Ralph Stanley. I also bought much Alison Brown, a fantastic composer and banjo player. To sate my Dobro addiction, I bought a Union Station album. I bought a few albums that contain numbers I have mentioned in my Locations, such as Jim Van Cleve's No Apologies (Devil's Courthouse) and Balsam Range's Last Train To Kitty Hawk.

Musically-Inspired Geographical Location Of The Day
Today, I go to an unexpected place, mostly for the fact that its on the coast of the Atlantic. The place is a very small town called Kitty Hawk. The only attraction there is the Wright Brothers monument and a maritime forest. All of this by the sea. This song talks about progress artistically. I love how it is written. I love the pairing of airplanes and locomotives in this song. I've always wanted to travel somewhere by train. I've been wanting to travel the Outer Banks of North Carolina for some time now. This song captures the feeling of desiring to be swept away for me.

No, no, nothing lasts forever

Nothin' says goodbye like a ticket in your hand

They say makes progress makes us better

Time ain't standin' still for anyone
All aboard the last train to Kitty Hawk

The yesterdays takin off

And tomorrows gonna fly

Romanticization and Richmond

I have been thinking of the following for more than a week now:

I love all the different instruments that bluegrass music offers. The pennywhistle is the Irishman's laughter, but it is also the mother's indignation, and the wind. The Dobro is the romantic or tear-jerking outcry, the father's anger, the odyssey. The harmonica is the sweet peals of victory, Gabriel's trumpet. The upright bass is the beast's breath, the mountain.

In a few hours I leave for Atlanta. I wish I could have seen it in the fifties.

Musically-Inspired Geographic Location of The Day
Today, I keep focusing on the land where I shall rest under the banana tree: Tennessee. Its really interesting what keeps happening to me with certain musicians. Old Crow Medicine show I liked, were it not for the sharp pangs of the harmonica and the rattle of the man's voice (surely he must contort it in someway to get that authentic sound). I have come to enjoy those sharp retorts, and even am considering buying their album Tennessee Pusher. I have been thinking of the hills of Tennessee, but the cover of this album leads me further west still. It may be merely Tennessee, but for somebody who can barely afford forty dollars in gas to a magical plateau town that people say is not unlike San Francisco, western Tennessee is very very far. Plus, its fun to play the Dobro. I imagine the flat land and jaloppys. But, back to the Location. The song is a relaxed down-home tune that floats through a town, at the intersection of two interstates, a rail-line, and a river. Richmond, Virgina. It sings about the James River, and the sea life images evoked from the rocks and docks. The freedom and escapement, and the violin that comes in after "I think I'll float on down to Richmond town" that lets you feel the boat man's happy abandon. The "lets get out of this dusty old town" emotion showed so perfectly in the shape of the even epic-like melody is wonderful and filled with sunlight. When we leave this life, a memory is all we become to the earth anyway. Floating is definitely the way to live.

James River blues

That train came on through

And works gettin' slow

So where's a boat man to go?

I think I'll float on down

To Richmond town

They don't need us anymore

Haulin' freight from shore to shore
That old iron boat hauls more
Than we ever could before

On The Road

These past five days, I spent time away from home, doing so much traveling.

I arrived in Florence around 5pm Thursday. After a lively dinner with the family I spend a lot of time with up there, Tommy and I went off to Charlotte licketty split, to a party. It wasn't too great, but I talked with some people and others I haven't ran into for a good while. At the party we met up with a guy from Hendersonville, Norm was his name. We took him back to Florence to hang with all of the gang for the weekend. The ride home was sleepy, but filled with chatter. Norm and I talked much music. We got home at 4am and sleep that night was awful and unsatisfying, to both me and Norm. Tommy always wakes up before the crack of dawn and he was off to a fast start, while I crawled out of bed at almost noontime and there was breakfast left for me on the table, which was right decent of the dad, Al, and I scarfed it up. The whole day was spent with the regular Florence gang -- plus Norm of course. He is a real hoot and makes Suzie laugh more than she already does -- and the gal Suzie had her boyfriend Bill along. We went a small distance out of the town to visit the site of an atom bomb dropping, but not going off. We went to the mexican restaurant. Everything was delicious. Everything seems more delicious away from home. It was a boring day, but it was spent with friends and it was good seeing all of them, and I'd soon be very joyful to see all of them, because we'd spend a lot more time together that weekend. The next day, I woke up a bit earlier the next day, which was Saturday, and Tommy and I traveled with some guys from our church to Columbia for religious work. It refreshed the day and made me think about God. The rest of that afternoon was mostly spent alone. I wanted to go out for a drive in my car. It always happens the third day. I brought a few people along, Norm and Tommy's brother, Carl. We drove to the Darlington raceway. it was big. I thought it was small, but it was as big as any racetrack you see on Nascar television. The dusk was yellow then red and dull. We drove back to the mall before going back home, meeting up with Suzie and Bill. It was wonderful seeing them again, they are good to each other. We all had our kicks at the mall, and left without getting asked out this one store. We usually travel all together. Its a shame we didn't this time, or at least not yet. Hendersonville was next. We had to take Norm back home. We were going to go in Tommy's car until the last minute, but decided to go in Carl's four-by-four. It was a fun trip. We fit all three of us into his two-seater truck and drove all the way up to Hendersonville. Snow from three weeks ago was still on the ground, hard as a rock. We got stuck; Carl's truck had a small leak in it. We somehow found Norm's house after Carl was actually worried that we weren't going to find it and freeze to death overnight. It was a nice house and Carl and I really opened and talked great things of the soul, and important things. Everything important maybe. Sleep was refreshing on those leather seats, and the morning was brisk and beautiful. I wandered out, my joyful self, into the twenty-degree weather in a teeshirt and corduroys. We got the truck fixed, and because we both missed work that day on account of the breakdown, we had nowhere to go and decided to go dig Asheville. The snow-clouded mountains in the distance with the dusk hanging red and dull was everywhere. Things were all right. It began to snow, we enjoyed it. The town sparkled. I wanted to visit a wonderful family I often stay with. They were way up the mountainside just out of town. The snow got heavier and powder drifted back and forth on the pavement. Carl, from Logan, Utah, was familiar with the snow. When we got there, only the mother and the younger kids were there. Julie, the older sister, had left back for Utah for college a few days ago, and Sam, the younger sister, had left that morning. The oldest brother, Chris had just left and we caught up with him and rode around in his car looking for a car part to allow the heater to work in Carl's truck. It was very cold to him. The snow let up a little bit, or was probably just lighter down on the main road, and we walked into stores, me with those same pants and teeshirt, but with Chris's scarf on. After driving back up to their house and not being able to find parts to that old boat or fix the heater system, we got ready for a bit of a cold, four-hour ride back. We said goodbye to the family and the snow was majestic and getting heavier. The ride out was excellent and full of energy, but it got dark and there wasn't much to see. Before we crossed the NC/SC border, the winter trees fell away to the right and lights from hundreds of towns and thousands of homes burst in front of us, shining lonely and still a thousand or so feet below and miles away. It was all downhill from here. Carl hauled that boat seventy-five miles an hour down a more-than-eight-degree grade until we landed in South Carolina. We talked and listened to a lot of bluegrass like Ricky Skaggs. We got home quite late and ended up reading the bible before heading to bed. I woke up unrefreshed the next morning, and nobody was really in the house except Tommy and Carl. It was time to go home. The drive was sunny and chilly. I road with the windows down until an hour before dark. I took a stop at the Santee Wildlife Refuge and walked along the lake shore. I got home and ate a lot then took it easy

Now I scratched out the following on my note pad while in Asheville. When things demand my attention and speak to me without words, it just becomes me and the landscape. No we, just me:

"We drove up to Asheville. The snow was falling. It was neat. The cold made me wild and bold. We finally found the Riceville Road. Nickel Creek [was playing in the truck like a lullaby]. We really took it slow up in these high hills, the snow began to fall more. I felt so blessed [and was filled with near-overwhelming gratitude]. There's something about these mountains. As we drove alongside downtown, the snow still fell, like flakes from heaven being lightly shaken down. The white benevolent light from the highway street lamps bathed the interstate. It was all so beautiful. The light and white left me making love-nature metaphors. So much light"

Meandering through downtown Asheville, I saw the mountains off in the distance at dusk, one higher hill behind another behind another, and the day's last sun rays leaking through. The snow clouds lended a mystic air to all the light, as if the whole world should stand still in wait of something great and terrible. Intense and gentle beauty. It was the most beautiful image I shall ever see in these, Heaven's hills.

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I know I talked a bit about music in today's (well, I would have liked to post all of this Monday when it happened) post. A few songs I want to put out there:

Nickel Creek - Out Of The Woods
Nickel Creek - The Hand Song
Ricky Skaggs - Sally Jo

I want to share a lyric from Out Of The Woods. Again with the making a nature lyric from one of love:

Time out of mind must be heavenly
It's all enchanted and wild
Just like my heart said it was gonna be

More Music, Banjos, and Rocky Top

I, of course, listen to a lot of music whenever I'm driving. My mind was in a delightful mess as I prepared to leave for Florence, South Carolina all while preparing items to take to other places along the way. I actually did not forget anything, which is amazing, considering me. Before I left, I checked out a few CDs from the library: Rhonda Vincent (Stuart Duncan plays on the album. He is incredible and clever), Ricky Skaggs, and a more serious work of Sara and Sean Watkins and Chris Thile (Nickel Creek). As I drove up, I didn't listen to them though. I was saving them for when I was up in the mountains. But of what I did listen to, I want to show a few thoughts and paint a few pictures.

Ralph Stanley's music really sets me in a contemplative and inspired state. One thing that gets me about his music is that its often like a Negro spiritual. The banjo, after all, came from Africa. His music style, from his clawhammer banjo to that voice so full of grit -- raw as the Virginia mountainside -- brings a pleasure to the winter and grey trees that pass by me. I'm glad that I'm coming to embrace the gray. His voice always takes me to thinking of winter and oldness, ancientness even. Ralph is as a prophet, an old man on the mountain, like the white, long-haired, bearded man delivering the Word. In the bluegrass world, there is a smal dispute of whether Bill Monroe or Ralph Stanley should get the most notoriety. While I greatly respect Monroe (and his seemingly endless number of compositions) , you can guess which one I feel deserves more awe.

As I drove to Florence up I-95, I continually saw the clouds in the rearview mirror, a vague beautiful glow proceeding forth from them, and those same rays of light pouring down from clouds looming in the distance, as if beckoning me.

I haven't gotten these feelings -- emotions like awe and sheer exuberance -- while traveling for too long. I know the road is where I belong. I think about being a trucker after I get off my mission. I think about it all the time
I'm getting new sad feelings. Feelings of things not being as joyous and exciting anymore because they are not new. An idea that things are burned out, and its all been done, and that the things that I hoped for in newness have only turned out to be an exact replica of what now wearies me and what I have been attempting to find relief from. I've already been up to western North Carolina. I've already been to Charlotte. I've already been lots of places. However, my heart still burns upon looking at old pictures of past travels, like I'd wish to go back once more to a few of those places. I have yet to go to Holly Hill, and the ancient peals of Stanley's voice and banjo inspire me to chase out these plans that I, until recently, had considered stale. I am going to visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina by the end of this month, so that excites me.

Geographical Musically-Inspired Location Of The Day
Since people are saying everything is new, I think I'll show y'all something that's new to me. When I got into bluegrass, I mostly listened to newer and progressive bluegrass. I'm finally settling into a lot more old-style bluegrass from the 60s and 70s. I got a CD from my niece for Christmas, with a lot of Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, and Osbourne Brothers. This song that I have chosen really connects me to the mountain, particularly in its most gruff and raw form. The song is Rocky Top, performed by Osbourne Brothers. I think of rocketing over a mountain hill so fast that the car leaves the ground, and making switchbacks at death-wish speeds. I always love the speed. Fast bluegrass captures the joy of velocity for me. Here it is!

Wish I was on ol' Rocky Top down in the Tennessee hills
Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top, ain't no telephone bills

Rocky Top you'll always be home sweet home to me

Good ol' Rocky Top

Rocky Top, Tennessee