Pine

"In South Carolina, there's many a tall pine"

That is the first line of Hickory Wind, performed by countless people. My favorite is by Gillian Welch. It gets you that late afternoon feel that turns all the pines golden green and bark bronze, galvanized in the afternoon sun. I saw so many of them today. It turns out that there are plenty all along the Appalachian Trail (AT), and the trail marker, with the "A" resting on top of the "T," forming a picture of a pine tree. In Cherokee legend, all the animals and plants were to stay awake for seven nights, and among the five species of trees to stay awake to the seventh night, one of them was the pine tree. The rest were punished by losing their hair every winter.

Today was my first bike ride in a long while it seems. The last time I attempted a bike ride, I not only blew out my tube, but my tire wall. That old tortured spray-painted egg-blue tire wall, that I stole off an abandoned bike (quite comic, though sad -- an abandoned bike is always a sad thing, depraved of its only true function: to move. It was spray painted all these wild colors, and had been left for so long that last spring's seedpods lay in the deflated tire tread) in Clemson and then stole away to Anderson. It was my ticket back home. For this first ride of the spring, I didn't exactly start off easy. I had planned a fifty-mile ride with a near-empty stomach no less and just a camelbak to fill my belly up through Monck's Corner and southwest to US 176, which would take me through Goose Creek on home. It really doesn't get interesting until I get out on SC Route Six.

I knew my adventure had truly begun when having passed through the "Main Street" part of "Six" and the road split, to the right was Pinopolis Road, and to the left, SC Route Six sliced the pine forest asunder, all the way to the edge of the world, with promises of dry crisp vastness ever towards the horizon, and the only word I could muster, nay, the only word to muster was "yes, yes, YES!" I had my one blissfully quiet moment -- the moment where you hit that escape within your "planned escape" -- at the beginning of Cooper Store Road where no traffic passed by. Through the sunniness and green I quickly came to road that would waste a good bit of my time. It not only cost me daylight, but exhausted me. It was a set of hunting trails, mostly a chalk-white dirt road. At the beginning, I saw these small pines to the right. I could look just deep enough into the lined-up shaded rows to tantalize me into wondering what lush dark secrets lay in that "forest." Perhaps the secret of silent soldiers, lined up in rows, awaiting death, sacrificing their being for the lumber industry. I quickly began to wonder if all of the connecting roads to US 176 would be flooded. After all of that, I saw large stretches of cleared out land, with millions of weeds and grasses taking their turn at life, and always these eight-foot high pines to the right. There was an eerie deliberateness to it all: These small pines to the right planted in rows and columns, only being cut away prim and proper to make a clearing for high tension wires that march off single file over your head and out to the horizon and beyond, the chalk-white road. The path cut out for the high-tension wires, the grass was no taller than an inch all the way to the horizon. In all, it was strikingly unnatural. The prospect of man coming here, caging dozens of hounds (passing by the cages on the right was disturbing), and killing animals not for food but for sport, won none of my sympathy. All of this was but a moral wasteland in my mind.

Coming out of those hunting grounds, having hit too many dead ends, I feel put in good hands, staring up to the tall skinny trees, swaying vigilantly in the new wind. Even though I'm tired near to drowsiness, I press on. I give and I give -- pressing down on those pedals -- making my way back home, down Cooper Store road. The most crushingly-tiresome moment was when I approached on this field of yellow flowerings off in the distance, only ten times bigger and it would have filled the horizon, then I came upon the the most lush grass of my life, so soft and shining green, playful green looking with the sun to my back. The field continued to fulfill my Great Plains Fantasy. How I wanted to quit the bicycle and fall down, smothering the ground! Oh, those hungry tired eyes laying sight of it! I sighed and "wow"ed in desperation upon seeing those most comforting pads of vegetation along the side of the road. I passed a modest house with beautiful trees all in the sunlight, mosses hanging luminescent on a lone oak.

All this time, the golden pines lay silently to the left. It all was crushingly beautiful in the afternoon sun. When I finally reached US 176, my body gave up. I still had twenty miles to go. I didn't care anymore, I walked up Black Tom Road, whose beauty I had been chasing, and sat on the side of that road, I plunged my head back into the small ravine where the grasses grew deep and green. I was too tired to think about fire-ants, other insects, or anything. I just needed to put my head down. It was so immense looking up at big blue and stalks of weed destined to never reach above the calves. I must have been subconsciously thinking, "what if this is the last thing I ever see"?

Small Entry

I'm going bicycling tomorrow. I'm going to pass through a town that I turned around at during my morning drive barefooted and bright-eyed. The town is called Cross, South Carolina. I can't wait. I'm going to be horridly exhausted by time I get back home at four in the afternoon. Every night on the drive home I smell that sweet gentle fragrance that the world breathes into me. So long has that smell been dormant in the earth that it reminds me of the cow pastures of Riceville in the summertime. Oh, that kingly sun with its strong heat. Oh, that sentinel moon with its cool caress. Contact! Contact!

Legend and Lore

Again, literature opens up new worlds and leaves me starving to write. I have been reading Story Line: Exploring the Literature of the Appalachian Trail and marveling at how perfect of a fit it is for me. I am looking to find my voice, especially by story-telling. I need inspiration to travel and I largely benefit from descriptions of places that kindle my combustive land lust. I need a trail/bush name, like Greenbean perhaps. This book may provide all of those answers. Many people go out into nature not knowing what they are looking for. I only knew that I needed it. I am after this land. I once was not sure what I was here for, but the tales of the mountainside, the stories of the Cherokee, the unuttered (yet somehow voiced) prayers of these "ten-thousand cathedrals rolled into one," these have awaked an understanding. I know now. I'm here for the story. The collection and manifestation of lore. I know I have been hunting for the lore in the subjected people of the Charleston land: The man staking out an existence along the forest near the high-tension wires of my neighborhood, or the wild-haired man along the airport road wheeling a giant wooden cross, having the top supported on his shoulder. I am here to hunt out lore in the holes of rocks and the hiding places of the earth, to bring to life the land by bestowing upon it legend, at least in my own right, claiming a piece of its spiritual essence for myself, and for any of those that hap upon my words.

Not only do I seek out the story, I feel an important role in creating it in the eyes of other people. Imagine the images that I created in people's minds on Clemson campus as they saw me with my wet, dogged backpack on, walking with shoes so worn every twig and rock is felt with the toes. The memory of seeing me will stay with them forever. An old friend of mine from high school lives in Boone, North Carolina now. He with a bunch of his friends traveled by bicycle down to Charleston, South Carolina (a good three-hundred miles). Just imagine all the eyes they got as these rugged, dusty wheeling tramps passed through one of countless yellow afternoons, and took a seat in a field by a country store and napped under a tree, some using each others' laps as pillows. How long would that tale be woven into the storybook of that town. What about the group of hitchhikers playing Wagon Wheel down in Panama City, sharing their interesting life with one of the few WASP-y kids down there for spring break. What wonder, what legend. It is one thing to write about it. It is an entirely different matter to do it. After a friend and I get done with our two-year missions serving the Lord, I'm pairing with a fellow star-guided voyager and hitchhiking across America, "whatever that is," for who knows how long.

Spring

This early morning was bright-eyed and fresh-eared. Rob Ickes romanced on Ireland as I passed through the knives of light cutting through the trees. The kind of beauty that threatens to destroy you, but not by a fervent heat; not by incineration, but by laceration. The mistress as she rises throws a veil over the warm stars of the west, shrouding this "universe of dark and diamonds" in an intense glow, something dangerous and sinister. I continued down 176, absolutely in love. Never had I seen such sinister cutting light, dashing through the trees, cutting me open to what life really is. I remember passing goose creek, crossing 17A, beholding wonderful open spaces where trees did not hold sway, though smelling bleeding trees by the tens of thousands, giving up their life for the benefit of man (though its not like they had a choice). It was cold, and the heater ran full blast on my hands and feet. The windows were down, you have to see this with no obstructions, not even glass. I got out of the car and with my bare feet ran into the gas station and handed eight dollars to the cashier. I couldn't wait to get back in the car and see more. There was so much to see. When I turned right onto 311 and crossed 6, not the route six that wraps America from side to side, but SC route six. I decided to turn around and go back the way I came. On the way back, I remember catching flashes of infinity amidst adolescent Douglass Firs, openings that bounded beyond the haze and all I could say was "wow". There was an ancient tree, covered in moss both of a neutral grey and a deep green, highlighted by the sunrise, it was too perfect. My final surprise at the end of my journey (the journey really ends when you hit carbon country, where cars dominate) was a fresh, slightly hazy field on both sides, full of springs first shoots of color. Bouquets of yellow flowerings lay beside the pillow of grass bunched up in the small ditch to each side, such lush green grass amongst deep red sprouts. It was the vision of my great plains fantasy.

Stars

Because I am running out of new music (and new ways of reinventing the old) to listen to, this blog is going to start connecting to the spirit of adventure more through literature, especially Kerouac. Though On The Road is more than worthy of endless discussion, being a bible of the wanderer, I picked up Dharma Bums at request of a fellow Kerouac enthusiast and at the unwitting recommendation by a rainbow-speckled infant egg who was reading it and enjoying it. What On The Road covers by road be it hitch-hiking or driving, Dharma Bums covers it via train and straight walking, which Kerouac later perceived as the purest way. Dharma Bums expresses Kerouac's naive fascination with Buddhism, inspired by his other soul-mate and crazy Zen poet Gary Snyder, which soul-friendship began soon after his time with "poorchild Angel Neal" more or less ended. With that introduction, I would like to savour a passage from the first marvelous section of the book. I would really like y'all to listen this song (right-click, open in new tab) as you read the below passage (and it is best to put the music at low background volume). And for goodness sakes, savour the words. Read them slowly.

I bade farewell to the little bum of Saint Teresa at the crossing, where we jumped off, and went to sleep the night in the sand in my blankets, far down the beach at the foot of a cliff where cops wouldn't see me and drive me away. I cooked hotdogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire, and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the redhot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine, and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life. I waded in the water and dunked a little and stood looking up at the splendorous night sky, Avalokitesvara's ten-wondered universe of dark and diamonds. "Well, Ray," sez I, glad, "only a few miles to go. You've done it again." Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running -- that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wing fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all. I let the food cool a little to enjoy more wine and my thoughts. I sat crosslegged in the sand and contemplated my life. Well, there, and what difference did it make? "What's going to happen to me up ahead?" Then the wine got to work on my taste buds and before long I had to pitch into those hotdogs, biting them right off the end of the stick spit, and chomp chomp, and dig down into the two tasty cans with the old pack spoon, spooning up rich bites of hot beans and pork, or of macaroni with sizzling hot sauce, and maybe a little sand thrown in. "And how many grains of sand are there on this beach?" I think. "Why, as many grans of sand as there are stars in that sky!" (chomp chomp) and if so "How many human beings have there been, in fact how many living creatures have there been, since before the less part of beginningless time? Why, oy, I reckon you would have to calculate the number of grains of sand on this beach and on every star in the sky, in every one of the ten thousand great chili-cosms, which would be a number of sand grains uncomputable by IBM and Burroughs too, why boy I don't rightly know" (swig of wine) "I don't rightly know but it must be a couple umpteen trillion sextillion infideled and busted up unnumberable number of roses that sweet Saint Teresa and that fine little old man are now this minute showering on your head, with lilies"

Notice the stars, the diamond stars, the warm stars falling like cherryblossoms. There's a song out there, Angel Eyes (Performed by New Grass Revival) that sings, "And tonight I ask the stars above, how did I ever win your love? What did I do, what did I say, to turn your angel eyes my way?". Again with the love-nature metaphors, falling into a mind-swirl of warm love of God and love of woman and cool enchantment of nature, being sucked under, smothered warm and cool, with no inclination to escape or resist. I can't wait.

Burst

We were on top of Caesar's Head. Where North and South Carolina meet. Having ascended above the unused potential and naivete of the piedmont, bluegrass radio pinged our ears loud and clear. The car was now parked, and we left the radio for the real music. Symphonies of silence. Just like last year, right at the tail end of the land's hibernation, I was at cold, cloud-covered Caesar's Head. Watching. Sitting in silence at the tutelage of nature, listening for our daily lesson: a stroke of brilliance that is planted in the mind and which blooms ever so gradually in magnificent secrecy.  Watching the sun tear its way through the clouds, shining on wisps of cloud in the valley, climbing up the hillside. As the mist climbed up the valley, the sunlight continued to pour down the far valley wall at the near parallel, lending magnificent relief to the trees that would soon explode. The greater mists were brewing not too far above the far hill and beyond. Many had already begun to break forth. There was more variety of color in the clouds than in the trees and large reservoir that provided Greenville -- where we traveled from -- with fresh water. A fresh, light blue cloud lay to the far left, with a backdrop of heavy, burdened cloud. Far beyond, perhaps as far as Northeast Georgia, large looming clouds burned with the gold of a more direct, earlier-in-the-day light. There was even a wisp directly below us, alone wandering to some unknown location as if lost, unaware of its observers. All of this was short lived. The sun was soon masked again, forced into obscurity. In nature's hibernation and conservancy in her overcast slumber, the sun momentarily stirred her alive, dancing, singing. We caught it and seeds were planted. The days are getting so much longer, and the sun is getting so much stronger. Anticipated joy at what blooms come spring is growing, and will soon burst. The outpouring of excitement and joy of breathing is the least I can give in return for nature's gift of beauty.

Electrical Towers

A few days ago, I got on the bike early in the morning and set out for a neighborhood of trailers. It was open with willows and lakes. Were it not for the actual trailers, it in all actuality would have been picaresque. But I was not there for the lakes or the willows, I was there for the trails. Foot trails cutting through to other neighborhoods and the corner store, though humdrum, held a strong pull on me. A trail of any kind always does. I saw them many times but wasn't in a situation to travel them. They took me under tall telephone poles, the kind that large amounts of land are cleared to lay. I so love these telephone poles that reserve plots of land, the only fields left in this degenerate North Charleston. Islands of nature in the midst of industry. The first foot trail was short and I quickly turned back. The second put me right in the tall grasses under the towers. It was a culmination of sorts. At that moment, squinting northwesterly into the hazy morning, I came to realize the sheer spiritual emptiness of the land, how unsatisfactory and unable to quench my dry soul. As I type this, I imagine those towers stretching beyond and ascending, perhaps to the mountains.

I did not catch that Asheville-bound ride. It rained nearly all day today. I enjoyed all of the rain for the first six hours. Although there was no contra dancing tonight, I listened to Ricky Skaggs singing about square dancing with utmost joy and excitement. I listened to Sis' Draper over and over, enjoying the fiddle so much. It had be so long since it rained, the overcast and wetness reminded me of the day I left LEAF in May. It just made me think of a lot of mountain experiences. I loved the wind that follows the rain, how refreshing, how rewarding, how gentle. Ah, that prophesying wind. I have been listening to Gillian Welch again. A melancholy rainy day is something I haven't had in months. It was very good for stoicism.

Backwoods Bop

I got back on my bicycle and really hit the trail. It had been such a very long time since I dedicated a large part of my day to bicycling. I spent four hours in the woods and swamp and field, mixtures of moist and arid, mingling between the wet and the dry. The part of the forest nearest to Red Bank Road still held a black chemical burn to it. I rejoiced upon seeing the open landbridge, where I first took my rest, and gotten bitten by fire-ants. This spot of open sky, bordered on the right by much dry marshgrass and small trees rested a poignantly beautiful dead tree at the beginning of the landbridge with its gnarling, twisting growth. It was a grimace of an image only a lustful black-and-white photographer can marvel upon. The open marsh was to the left. Again were fields of waving tan grasses to the left, and the footbridge over the trickle of water where I busted out and fell down my first bike ride through. I was quite tired after it all. On the way back across the reservoir swamp, Walls of Time played. I need a CD Player to carry with me.

Today was truly the first day of summer; the beginning of the championing of the sun as victor over the cloud. There is much bicycle riding to do. There is much hitch-hiking to do. I sharply remember everything the summer brought me and the adventure it sprung my wildfire heart to in late October. The day after bicycling the trails in the chilly sunlight, the gilded gate to the golden mountains of Buncome County opened to me. A car leaves Thursday towards Riceville, and I'm going on that heaven bound vessel!! I wish nothing more than to be bathed in the memories of last summer. The pasture blanketed on hillside, the sweat, the cool streams, the paradisaical emotion, the intensity and gentle infinity of open sky and seclusion and serenity of the shadow of the mountain ravine, all at once. Actually. that reward of green and blue may be in waiting for later. What I have to look forward to now is light snows covering everything. It will be absolutely astounding. I don't exactly have much music to go with a snow-scape (I think of the icy three-part harmonies of Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Into the Woods by Nickel Creek) to listen to on a CD Player. In a way, when this portal to the hills opened to me Friday night, I felt not prepared to return; not ready; even unworthy. I am much less physically fit than I was while up in the mountains last time on bicycle. I was an entirely different person -- a human adapted with devouring eyes and powerful legs and a furnace of internal heat.

My plan is to contra dance Thursday night, then lay a sleeping bag straight in a field by night. I must quickly catch a bus in the morning to Brevard and perhaps spend no more than an hour there. I will catch Greenville-bound traffic and bicycle the rest of the way. Caesar's Head frightens me delightfully. The last time I biked down a road descending off a mountain, I broke my bicycle and nearly rammed into the rock face on the inner shoulder or ran off the hill to the outer (and I had brakes that time -- mostly ineffective breaks, but breaks nonetheless). Worst-case scenario is that I'd have to bicycle from Brevard, a nearly fifty-mile endeavor, not mentioning the ascent over Caesar's Head. All in all, it could easily take seven hours, rest and lunch included.

Though this certainly isn't bluegrass, as the title of this post may have teased at, but watch the vid and wait for the very end. I may be in for seeing something very much like it.
Russ Barenberg - The Pleasant Beggar