One Year - Fire

As I set out of the house, brave and happy, the weather brought me back to October, and the thirty-pound hiking pack on my back brought Asheville back. That nameless sense of wonderment and adventure, the undeniable feeling that as strange and new as the land is, it is entirely yours, 'ere you may go

This is the ultimate measure of whether your travels have been well for you. If you feel this, then that is your success.  

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal . . . All nature is your congratulation

It has been a full turning of the seasons since I set out towards the mountains, with just a forty-pound hiking pack and a bicycle --- four hours to drive there, four weeks to get back. The cold has come back and has kissed my face many a time already. Between then and now, I have had many an adventure, and I have learned much. Not having a car has had such a positive impact in my life. It has forced me into a exhaustive investigation of my native land. James Island, Strawberry, Goose Creek, U.S. 176 past Goose Creek, the U.S. 52 / U.S. 78 split with the great oak tree, Hanahan, Bushy Park Rd, Sullivan's Island, the Ravenel Bridge, and every last inch of Rivers Avenue. Hundreds of miles have passed behind me in my soul flights over the past year. With autumn having arrived again, I look forward with love in my eyes over the changing of colors. Just this afternoon, I was bicycling on a road that borders one of the many swamps in Goose Creek. The trees across the water, their mosses caught in the midst of saffron fire! The goldenrod all along the hills, resonating with the light of the late afternoon sun. All these past days, I have been perpetually drunk off the air, methinks a sweet wine abounds in all of it. And if the air is ambrosia, then the train screaming is an injection. stealing my breath, holding it captive sometimes for multiple seconds, undaunted as I contemplate my world hanging on the precipice of a great ledge. It certainly evokes such apocalyptic feelings. And then there are God's stars, Avalokitesvara's ten-wondered universe of dark and diamonds, falling like cherryblossoms upon your head as His blessings. These are my tranquilizer. As seen from skies just beginning to clear, giving promise of sunshine come morning, (after soothing me) they carry me unto the top of the world, where I look at the valley below holding the mists of the morning world. The chill air that sets my bosom a-burning, the trees colored as if a flame of fire, the distant burning stars, it is all fire, it is all spirit. Peaceful fire, purifying fire.

Are You Ready?

I've seen a man in Charleston, always walking, with a wooden cross over his shoulder, a wheel fixed to the bottom end. Taking up your cross, denying oneself of all ungodliness. The brave notion of performing it literally. Our conversation:

Me: Howdy! A lot of people don't understand what you are doing, but I do
Man: Thanks. You ready to go home?
Me: You know it. How many miles a day do you usually walk that cross?
Man: On weekdays, usually six to seven miles. On the weekends, as much as thirteen.
Me: (noticing his shirt) Faithbook, I've heard of that. I heard lately that getting saved is just like adding Jesus as a Facebook friend. Its only the beginning.
Man: You ready to meet Him?
Me: Oh yeah. I love what you do, keep doing it. The name's John.
Man: Me too.
Me: Gift from God. I'll see you around, driving.
John: If not, I'll see you at home.

This man was a holy man. A legend in the thin fabric of lore in Charleston. That one question: are you ready to meet Him. I'll never forget it. All you can do is put up a front to that question.

Ghostly Journey through Nantahalla National Forest

I worked so hard on this trip. I called tons of people that were interested in a river-rafting trip in Bryson City, so that I could make it. I did everything within my power to be with so many of the people I've grown to love in Asheville over the past two years (and many others, all together all at once, a grand happy reunion down the river) before I leave for a foreign land in service of my Lord and God. Me and two friends from Magic City travel to Bryson City, that El Dorado behind the waterfall. As we get there, I get the sure impression that I will not to unite my soul with everyone, this one last opportunity. My since of urgency turns to apprehension. And I remember the mountains along the Great Smokey Mountains Expressway, where the car broke down. The mountains, towering high overhead under a near-overcast grey, were almost threatening. At that moment in time, I could almost empathize with people that find themselves terrified on a mountain at night. I turned on the bluegrass radio. It didn't help.
Just east of downtown Asheville, separating it from the strip mall, is a mountain. Beaucatcher mountain. There is a road that goes behind the Greyhound Station, sliding up the mountain, under a bridge, and into Windswept community, where you can see the dawn and dusk. A girl once walked up that mountain road, past a now-abandoned mental hospital, up on that bridge, and jumped off, so depressed was she over the loss of her boyfriend. It is said that her sad soul still creeps that mountain.
Needless to say, we were late and were not able to find the rafting company where everyone was. We did go on the river, just by ourselves. It was delightful and cold, but a pit had developed in my stomach. I felt sick. It subsided, no not subsided, merely receded into the shadows of my mind. The greatest thing we did was jumping from a big rock, dropping eight feet in the air into forty-five-degree water. Each muscle fiber felt like steel in my skin as we swam to the riverbank. As we got back into the car. I mused, "this subtropical forest mountainside has an ominous feel to is. There is something freaky about it. It doesn't feel like home at all". Even when the girls dropped me off in downtown Asheville, it didn't feel like the town I've loved and fantasized over. Didn't feel like the sweet town I looked down at from Beaucatcher Mountain. It felt alien and empty. But what was empty was me. I did not belong here. As I catch a bus through Beaucatcher tunnel, and get into the heart of Riceville, farm valley nestled in the mountains, a feeling of home returns, that satisfaction of returning. But it swiftly evaporates. I walk to the house on the mountainside, the highest house in the little town of Riceville, just below the Blue Ridge Parkway, where great joy had always blossomed and where freedom had always been felt. At least I would get to go to church the next morning and see some of the people I wanted to see. I was planning on staying until Tuesday. I left Sunday afternoon. I was done. I will not return to the mountains until I complete my two-year mission. The time for hill-tramping is over for now.

Sweet Summer and Charlotte

I think of my floating down the Edisto River, my soul buoyed up on the sweetness of life. The trees were gently swaying, whispering sweet comforting words that can't be heard. The simple goodness of sunshine and flowing water was the majority of what I remembered about last summer. My hair is getting lighter again, and my skin is peeling. All of the music I've listened to lately is happy and has that banjo ever-present. A banjo is a slow cool river in the sunshine. Listening to that banjo reminds me of last summer, all of the good times by the Toe River in Asheville, by Lake Norman in Charlotte, listening to an amazing christian songwriter, the love of God flowing forth from his mouth.

Geographically-Inspired Musical Location of the Day
I've listened to a song by Lou Reid & Carolina over and over, until it is one with me. It is called Amanda Lynn, which is amazing, because that mandolin -- that mandolin I've been dreaming of strumming down that river. "can't him wait for be playin' that mandee-lin down Shady River" -- has now become a banjo because of that song. The story of this song is so marvelous. A classic Romeo and Juliet, but with a warm bluegrass ending. A baby was born, and they named her by the sound of her cry. From her birth, the love of old string music is passed down through her parents and swirls in her heart, filling her with a holy longing to be united -- a child, night after night on the mountainside, listening through foggy mountain air -- with those making happy music in the valley. She just doesn't just wish for, nay, she prays for it. When she gets older, her dreams come true as she's opening for a sold out show in Charlotte. The most wonderful part of all this is that it all happens in the hills of Carolina. It is a direct linking of souls via the land.

Trains and Virginia

I've been doing much more reflecting than doing lately. Riding the bicycle has lost its appeal to me. I think after forty miles to Walterboro, I am just sick of it. Even though the north wind has sent its gift one last great time before summer comes with its heat and humidity, I am content to sit in the hammock and dream. The temperature has dropped some fifteen degrees. Not only that, but it feels a tad drier. Yesterday, as I set out of the house, brave and happy, the weather brought me back to October, and the thirty-pound hiking pack on my back brought Asheville back. That nameless sense of wonderment and adventure, the undeniable feeling that as strange and new as the land is, it is entirely yours, 'ere you may go. I wandered the urban wasteplaces of North Charleston, in the areas where the green meets the grey. I'm always amazed at how green always conquers. As I hopped on the bus to venture to a likely hopping point, I saw my train dash right by, where Hannahan (harboring the ever-so-beautiful Goose Creek Reservoir) and North Charleston meet. If I had only begun my hunt half an hour earlier!!
After the bus dropped me off, I did what any transient in a town would do first. I hit up the community thrift store and got some great cords pants. Close by was the mighty interstate, where homelessness and the travel-weary are sheltered underneath, the psychological equivalent of a cave. I began my travel underneath it, taking walking trails. I felt so honored. I walked along Filbin Creek, under the looming I-526, keeping my feet within running distance of those train tracks that head on up through Strawberry and Moncks Corner, bordering US Fifty Two. I was about to run along to the other side of the tracks, tucked away in the woods, until my keen eye spotted a dormant police car. Walking. I forgot how much I disliked walking. I remembered so fondly the soreness the pack gave to my shoulders. As I heard the second train blowing, I ran up the end of Gaynor Street to Rivers Avenue. The train was on the track along the Cooper River. There are many, many train routes in Charleston. The green-eyed girl with the fifty-pound backpack was certainly right about train routes here being confusing. I've lived here my entire life, and I still can't visualize it all. The multitudinous routes finally began making sense in my mind. That night, after a long tiring walk back home, the combination of the north wind and a train dashing by, filling the air with great rushing sounds, gave me great chills. I need to hop at least one train before I leave in two weeks.

Geographically-Inspired Musical Location of the Day
I have been reflecting a lot on Virginia. It wasn't the mountain heights that really got me, it was all of that great valley at night, when time slowed down for just a little while. The air was fresh. Life-giving mist poured down from the mountains miles away. Lightning peacefully glowed in the far-away sky. I think the valley is what everybody ultimately comes up the mountain to see. They watched others die in that valley, they cried there, they strove in that valley, under the hot sun, all the days of their life. Up in the mountain, it is cool, quiet, often silent. They can get a bird's-eye view of their life. Rising above it makes it all easier to enjoy, but its so welcoming and peaceful, looking down from above. Everything makes sense. And when they come back down to earth, and put their bare feet in the warm, moist soil. I made sure to bare my feet on the wet grasses by Marby Mill. How perfect was it all! I think the same allure that the mountains has for me, the dry west has for those that call the mountaintops their home. 
I have spiritually connected to My Own Set Of Rules lately. It is a great album by Lou Reid and Carolina that I recently bought. It is called Blue Ridge Girl. He hops a train westward-bound. He finds love out west, but the cool, sweet mountain calls to him, the east wind carries the scent of the mountainside to him, and he longs for his Blue Ridge girl, softly calling. Always softly, silently. When you go back to that land, the loves of that land come along with it. The love-nature metaphors, they always come back. They are such a part of the land. And there is always room in these hills for another memory. I'm going on one more hajj to Asheville, taking my journey west (because hey, not everyone travels east to the holy land), to make more memories, and going further west from there.

Thoughts

. . . and all those memories from the countless times in Asheville blend, rolling into each other, each memory rolling like the hills, one after the other, awash in light. hazy afternoon, misty morning.


I'm amazed by Tony Rice singing Shadows. His eyes are challenging the adventurous soul who dares to listen, inviting to come partake of his old wise stories, to come and listen to what he has to tell. There was even a tinge of the old white-bearded Irishman in his tremolo. Something wild . . . 


. . . day by day, train by train, yard after yard in Charleston, rails passing under the Interstate, the undersides of which being the last retreat of the wino and wretched-broke alcoholic, each day the gospel of train-hopping and hobo-ing soaking into my roots and growing my desire to sever them. Those train brakes sweetly screech their siren song to me. . . 




If All Those Trains Were Still Around (I'd Be An 'Ol Hobo) - Randy Kohrs
Through The Window Of A Train - Blue Highway

Contra Dancing

I remember this weekend. Lots of sun, lots of sleep-inducing sunburn, lots of bicycling. The air was so oppressive friday 'round two in the afternoon. Spent time with a friend, hunkered down while the heavens cascaded down. The bike ride after the rain was so refreshing. You could the simplicity of life, out in Goose Creek country. That night was contra dancing. I had not gone in months. The magic was so great it blew my hair back. I was so excited, I jumped up and down and joyful whoops came without warning. A few great opportunities are coming to me. In early July, there is a contra weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I've wanted to go to this area for a long time, well since last year actually, when a leisurely drive into the beginning of the state made me hunger for more. Also, in late July, I am riding up to Asheville with the guy who drove the Blue Ridge Parkway with me (though it seemed I did most of the driving), and he shall return to his Magic City, and I shall stay and wander the Asheville streets, the Riceville valley, and take the rails to the beginnings of the Great Plains then back home. For now, there is no car. I have gotten well acquainted with my bicycle, starting from when I bicycled some sixty miles back home from Olanta, South Carolina (my travel friend dropped me off there. It is about twenty miles out of Florence). Sadly, there is almost nothing I can say about the country I drove through. The first twenty miles, the only sign of people I saw was a dusty trailer park before the Manning Highway. It had been threatening to rain from the start, and when it finally did, it really let. I was just getting onto Fifty-Two, and I felt very close to the place where the bus would pick me up and give me rest. It came down strong and long. I sat down and watched it for an hour and a half at a big gas station along the highway. Watching the rain pouring down on the green fields on the other side of the road from the sonorous clouds above was so rewarding. The wind gave somewhat of a sense of comradery too. The next miles were very tiresome and made me slightly regret trying this. St. Stephen. I had to bicycle all the way in to catch the bus. I don't know how I finished the trip home from Moncks Corner, but I did, and not only that, I got there before dark. I somehow felt like I was returning from a much longer journey as I passed that great tree in the field of the 52/78 split, it felt so familiar, like I had done this journey a thousand times. I had never seen the clouds so monstrous and colored before. It was the same tiredness that both shrouded me and opened my eyes when I was bicycling my final miles to U.S. 176. Things become so beautiful in your weary desperation. Even the masterpiece of day-fall is burdensome. But it is all over now. It was a very wearying journey, and I feel my legs have still not completely recovered from it.

I have not posted much because I have not read much. My life has gotten much less roam-some too.

Return

It has been a week since I had driven the Parkway. I returned home to Charleston with no money on me at all, not even coins. How appropriate, how fitting, how matching of my mood. I had entirely maxed out. I was depressed for two days, in the drowsy Charleston hot-haze mornings, it all oozing by with no car to take me anywhere. I wouldn't be able to get back up to Florence to do anything with the car until my travel companion's family was down for the weekend doing sight-seeing with family.
Monday, my second set of wisdom teeth were taken out. I spent much time playing guitar in self-healing while listening to much much music. Alison Krauss singing Everytime You Say Goodbye always reminded me of ascending a mountain road (US Fifty-Two, wonderfully enough) up and over the horizon-to-horizon mountain wall that loomed above and beyond, so unsurpassable that a tunnel went through, capturing the mists of the morning world. That mandolin always reminded me of the enchanted wilderness, so fresh, so comforting, so assuring of the goodness of life nestled in the good mix of sun and leaf-given shade. That bass searingly pounding, pounding ferocious like the car and like my brave pure heart.
Just think about U.S. Fifty Two, starting in the dirty dusty holy Charleston of towns. From dinge-water lapping the Battery up through the cotton and corn of South Carolina, up through to Florence, to all of the marvelous mist-shrouded Mt. Airys and Pilot Mountains of the world, over the mountain fortress of West Virginia and through some of the most beautiful final ridges of the Appalachians. It encompasses all.

Fifty-Two going through Lake City: Among the rusty dulling dusk, the high clouds usher in Magic City. . .

Driving the Parkway

I made the trip to Florence, South Carolina, where all of my long-distance traveling adventures by car have begun (excluding the bicycle trek from Asheville) for the past year. We headed out for West Virginia first at the recommendation of a friend of my travel companion's brother who worked on the Darlington raceway for twenty years, as well as did much work as a trucker. It didn't yield much enjoyment for myself, but my friend enjoyed it. There was a mountain wall that stretched from horizon to horizon. I had never seen anything like that before. A tunnel had to be constructed to make it through. Charleston, West Virginia was the perfect sad little town, listening to Gillian Welch. Dirty town, coal town, river town. We got a very late start on the Parkway. It really put a strain on the car. I had to drive it very fast and very long distance without much stopping. Virginia was surprisingly beautiful from the knife's edge of a mountain ridge. The May wind and sun brought pinks and pastel colors out of the trees on the gentle mountaintops in the higher ridges -- a kind of reverse autumn. It was something I had dreamed of as a child but never thought I'd actually see. 

My friend was constantly anxious of my driving. I would see a stretch of straight road, accelerate to eighty, and slow up on the hill, but only to fifty-five and make smooth turns just at the edge of the tire's ability to keep full hold of the pavement. I remember missing making Boone, North Carolina by dark by two and a half hours. The night time I believe is the best time for the mountains. Things were so non-stop during the day. I looked up to God's stars, it cooled my mind down. Things slowed. We were in the foggy wet valley, about forty miles either way between high parts of the parkway. It was a starry, though hazy, night, behind the old marby mill, enjoying the rushing water. There was a thunderstorm rolling in the distance. Things are so open around here, it could have been a hundred miles away. I think of how modest the houses along the parkway in middle western Virginia, humble homes and simple fields. So simple, so clean, so good. Things got a bit crazy after Boone, North Carolina. It was the craziest driving I've ever done in my entire life. Like Neal Cassady, driving cars to breaking, but driving them with near-perfect mastery. I remember when dashing up a hill, seeing two bikers suddenly with their bright lights, and, not prepared, hitting the brakes hard, skidding down it, releasing the brakes (to regain friction) with the wheel turned to curve of the road. One tire had a small leak in it. We made sure to keep it in good pressure and check it often. In Boone, we visited an old friend of mine who was working in a breakfast cafe that morning. It was so good to see him, and we enjoyed some organic local breakfast food, anything besides our bagels. We of course spent far too much time there, but I let my friend have the wheel for a little while, all the way down to Mount Mitchell. I was completely freaked-out excited listening to Jim VanCleve and my train mix. It was so much better being a passenger than driving. Black Mountain, just as during LEAF, but viewed from the north end, gained my worshipful awe. How can it be claimed that a mountain of that sort is not alive? It was very very powerful, and it gave utterance. It was brown and ancient and six-thousand feet tall. It was a burnt umber cathedral in the sunlight, kingly and unwavering in the mighty air. The section that I bicycled was like stepping back into time. My driving terrified my friend. He yelled at me and I felt bad. I didn't slow down though, I just got better. The detour from the chunk of close parkway that had been closed since October required driving back up 276. It was annoying hot and time consuming. Driving up the part of the parkway where my bicycle was stolen, I could name all of the look out points. The Pounding Mill sign was gone. It was a race from that point on. From the highest part of the parkway unrolled dozens of miles of mountains, each ridge and valley ascending over the horizon. It completely blew my mind. The day continued to get hotter along the way to Cherokee. It was making the both of us drowsy. Cherokee was the biggest tourist trap I've ever seen, and I'm surprised the Cherokee people allowed all of it for the sake of profit gain. Seems that "progress" is appealing even to these ancient Americans. Their gods would certainly be infuriated at the prospect of desecrating their holy mountaintops with our roads. Things are so different now. America is so un-virgin. The Great Smokey Mountains Expressway was very nice but we were tired. It was a good three hours from here to Florence. The car broke down two thirds of the way home. There was an oil leak. The tow truck came, and it was quite a way to end it all. I pushed that car so much.
Another drowsy morning in Magic City. Everyone was unavailable to get me back to Charleston for work. Today was a throw-away. The moments and mountains are still filtering down my mind and heart. It was entirely worth it.

Waynesboro to Cherokee, Birmingham to Jackson

I have planned all the routes, side-routes, small hiking projects (gonna hike some trail-less mountain ridges and peaks), worked it south-going and north-going. I have listened to bluegrass radio non-stop today, and have done a good bit of listening to a compact I got in the mail. I just realized as I type this that I haven't bicycled big in an entire month. I will store the bicycle in the trunk of the car we are taking and use it whenever we stop for a long period of time. As you could guess, the fact that the trunk is that big makes it clear how much money this is going to take (about 80 dollars more because the car only gets 20 mpg. Oh well, it definitely roomy so sleeping in the car won't be uncomfortable). My friend does not have any money on him, so once again, I shall arrive in Charleston with mere pennies in pocket, tossing them on the side of the highway in the sun, free-hearted desperation.

Now in the post title, Waynesboro is the town that is noted as being the city at the end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, or the beginning. Jackson is the where the line runs out of track in Blue Highway's Through The Window Of A Train. Beautiful painting of a song. The older settings for bluegrass songs -- railroads, outlaws, coal mines, homesteaders -- always gets at my heart. I am going to update this when I get back with the link to the song, lyrics, and an excerpt from Kerouac's Dharma Bums -- all of it like a land exploding to view before you, showing a lifetime in a mere moment. Fayetteville is that town where I lost my favorite thrift-store flannel button-up shirt, that was with me all those weeks of bicycling the mountains in October, and where I will get it back on the way up. Florence is that town where it will all commence one more time.

Preface

With some good deal of planning and formulation, me and my trusted travel companion (who lives a daylight's worth of bicycle travel north) anticipated to traverse the Blue Ridge Parkway in its entirety. We had originally planned to start in North Carolina, but when our original travel date for the sixth of may through the eighth changed for a later date, my fine friend made the wondrous proposition that we do it "backwards". Starting in Swananoa, Virginia and ending in Cherokee, North Carolina, we would take the Parkway from its north end to its south end. The entire route consists of approximately four-hundred and score miles. It certainly was a fine suggestion. It made adding further people much easier location-wise, thus relieving both us the exhaustion of dong all of the driving. Our new travel date allowed us three days to complete and come home, but between two drivers, that still allows little time to be at ease in ratio to time operating the vehicle. Perhaps we could even add to the pleasantness with a trip up to Smokey Mountains National Park. T'would be quite the finisher to a grand adventure, no?

Aside from all the detail, this will be a most perfect time to travel. The spring will be at its pinnacle. Everything is deep and lush, and a certain offshoot trail is blooming at its apex with pink flowers. The trees are perfect in their color. By the by, did you know that in the old english, tree and truth have the same root? Quite fascinating don't you think? It would seem that we chase after all the mountains, but all that we, in actuality, seek after is to see more trees at once, stacked above each other to the very tops of hills. Imagine that cold firm spring wind rolling down the mountains like clear like a stream. Oh! The mere thinking of it, is it not the greatest delight?

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

Removing the Veil

I have been reading Into The Wild again. I feel it is important for me to read about both John Waterman -- who was on the negative end on the spectrum of admirability and sensibility -- in Glenn Randall's Breaking Point, and Everett Reuss -- who wins the most respect and admiration of readers, relative to McCandless and especially to Waterman -- in Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country and W.L. Rusho's Everett Reuss: A Vagabond for Beauty. Now I put forth this information to drive me to do it. It is good practice to place your goals in writing. I also write so I can, in the both near and distant future, discover -- even if only in that present moment -- which literary diet yields the writing style that is most favorable in my sight, on top of the obvious purpose to relive past lives and the bring back the songs which reincarnate them. Of course, I also keep a journal of more personal histories, inspirations from scripture, testimony, and other writings inappropriate for public viewing. I enjoy the format of this Blogger and the concept of being able to look it up from any computer in the world and sharing it with friends, when occasion demands.

Now, in regards to the title of this post, I would like to not explain directly, but indirectly through a few round-about stories. One of these stories I have already posted. It is when I traveled to Sullivan's Island. I now include an excerpt from that post:

As I got into Sullivan's Island, I made no turns, I went straight down the road until it became grass. By this point, I don't remember there being any sound, just light and clouds and green. Biking the boardwalk over brush and bushes to where it ends in sand, I can only say it was surreal. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. It climaxed here, and the other-world beauty of it all held precariously as I bared my feet and walked into the water and continued my gaze at the clouds. 

Another story I relate is from today. I was listening to Alison Krauss + Union Station Live and listening to the first track of the second disc while I was driving this city backroad with simple tree and vine close to the left and department store to the right. It wasn't pretty at all, just ugly with vine-like overgrowth. I just remember at some point those trees and mild brush becoming sharp and filled with a life I haven't experienced in so long. Perhaps it was my eyes taking in more light or momentarily having better vision. Maybe a certain peal of Jerry's resophonic guitar struck me as with lightning a memory from the sunny highlands of carolina. The duration of this moment was less than one second, but it was not unlike when I looked up through the pine trees while taking on a root-covered winding bike trail near the Cooper River. Each needle of each pine tree shone in exquisite detail and deep blue and pure white mingled above. Even the dead needles on the ground luminesced.

Visions and Vagaries

I am haunted by these visions. These dreams, night after night. Having visions looking out into the inky darkness of night on the interstate. These dreams are of mountain and precarious mystery. Last night I dreamt I was traveling west on US-70 and then cutting onto I-40 west heading towards Asheville. I imagined it as much larger than it actually is. Before me was a dusk much like the one I saw last time up there, snow clouds hazed a deep red by the darkening day. I saw red and burgundy, only disrupted by the silhouette of buildings and mountainside, a sliver moon right on the sun's tail, but it is impossible to paint. I relapsed into this dream a few times while on I-26 tonight whilst staring out into the blank canvas of the ink sky. It was one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had. I then remember flashing past the city in a blaze of yellow squares of light, thinking "Oh, this city is the most beautiful city in the world!" It was the kind of beauty that threatens to destroy you, incinerating you with its light. Many of us have these dreams, and they allure us. For me, those dreams are strong enough to drive me to the life of a vagabond, whether it be for a few weeks at at time or for a day. Perhaps I am just more resistant to the tie-downs of every-day life. I can often leave it in a heartbeat, without a second thought. I had a thought of simply walking around SC for a limitless amount of time. Walking. Making simple camps in pine forests. No matter where you are, the vastness and weightless feeling makes it worth a while.

Reliving and Caney Fork River

I finally got back on my bicycle and rode through the country, as I desired. I did not lose my job, and the ride through the country wasn't towards Orangeburg. It was in a wildly-named town called Pontiac. After thinking of riding my bicycle down Mt. Mitchell and the colors and the airbuzz, I got on that bike and I rode against gust and cold, the upward slopes returning my mind to when my leg muscles were strong and my body was in peak condition and mood. It was a reincarnation of my memories during those three weeks. I passed lakes, curving and climbing. It was wonderful. Riding back home into the twilight was poetically similar to leaving North for Orangeburg with the dusk to my back. Even my body blasting heat off my skin -- not shivering even in twenty-mile-an-hour near-freezing wind on my wet back, after riding a good distance -- reminded me of my mountain bicycling as I sat down near a I-77 exit and eating my bagel with peanut butter. I remember all of my meals during that time, for about the only time I rested was to eat or sleep. In my memory, thats all I ate while in the mountains, along with a few health-bar samples I got at LEAF. Also, a week ago when I bicycled in Strawberry, heading up the bridge over the train tracks, I pretended to be heading down a mountain hill. I passed by a barn and just pretended to be a hundred miles away. I like the dry mountain. I need to be camping in the mountains, where streams and sunshine abound. I love the song Bright Sunny South, sung by Dan Tyminski. I feel the same way the lyricist (whoever it is. It is a traditional song. A great one) does about living in the southern hills:

From it's cool shady forests to its deep flowing streams 

Ever fond in my mem'ry and sweet in my dreams

One of my favorite parts of the mountains are the streams. There's another song I want to tell. It is Fall Creek Falls, by Jim Vancleve. It speaks to me the magic of driving under the stars at night. It portrays an otherworldly kind of beauty, like the excitement of exploring the most beautiful and exotic kind of land imaginable (or unimaginable). The reverb they record it with gives the feeling of actually being on a mountainside and hearing the echoes of it off other hillsides. You feel the altitude. Its marvelous. Maybe thats what I'm missing: the altitude. You can really get high off altitude. I know I do. My most serene moments are above three-thousand feet above sea level.  

Geographically-Insipired Musical Location of the Day

I haven't done of these in a while. I haven't updated regularly in a while. I want to mark my restart of reliable updating with a renewal of Locations that speak the adventurous spirit with words. 

I had to do something beyond searching google maps to get find this location. The Caney Fork River branches off the Cumberland River, and cuts somewhat deep in the mountainside as it passes along I-40 and flows into Center Lake. It is rather small, but when you're running from the law, a bluegrass favorite topic, you want to lay low. The story of the song is one of a man who is working like a dog in North Carolina, travels across Tennessee to Jackson, as he had done many times before, sees his girl cheating on him, shoots them, and then runs back across the state to get back home, running from the sheriff. It is what I dream of: traveling from western North Carolina across Tennessee to the infinite plains. Balsam Range is a wonderful band out of Haywood County, very near Asheville and the starting point of my traveling life. I think like Kerouac, in how before the road seduced him into a life of movement and wonderment his life was completely different. 

How many times must I cross this Caney Fork River

Travelin' through the state of Tenessee

How many times must I cross this Caney Fork River

Before I know that I am home free

Before I know that I am home free

A Little About Me

I had to write my thoughts. I don't have much adventure to speak of. I started this blog with the intent of  only relating travel tales and vigorously weaving adventurous yarns. I saw a few things about myself that goes hand in hand with my insatiable desire to move.
I drove for thirteen hours today. I Got high off the phosphate, giddy driving, driving like I stole the car, driving with the deliberateness of a cop. The rain was refreshing. I was wet all day.
I got to thinking how I'm a child of the rainbow. People always think I'm a stoner. I smile too much. I laugh often and for no apparent reason many times. I have a short attention span. I have bad short-term memory. I blend right in to the music festival scene, yet I indulge in no drugs or sexual freedom. I have, as Krakauer states, an abiding distrust of conventional wisdom (for fun, I call it wisdumb). I don't take responsibility too well. I take it on when I have to or when the fruits of commitment are worthy of such commitment. I am short sighted, hence my judgment isn't always good. I cannot seem to plan well, especially while traveling. It always gets the better of me. My period of two weeks in the mountains was an exception. Hope you got to read this, because its probably the only direct look I'll give readers into my character

Pioneers: Stroud and McCandless

I have a few people that I want to bring to the forefront. They are both intriguing people who refuse to live vicariously, who refuse to only dream. One man is Chris McCandless. I discuss him extensively later on. Along with him, a similar character with more experience: Les Stroud (many know him from his show Survivorman). While Stroud is great in what he does. I feel that he only scratches the surface of a great adventure. He is certainly limited by the restraints he places on himself, after all. Luckily, the only way to truly experience living off the land is to do it oneself. What you see Stroud doing is a prototype, a starting point of a great struggle. Its as close as you get while remaining in "the safety of an armchair". I respect him because he shows the world what he does. He is careful and humble, which is unfortunately something that McCandless lacked (though these qualities certainly come with age. Stroud may very well have been a McCandless, but who, as Roman Dial states, was lucky enough to survive).

Once I read Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country, Thoreau's Kaatdn, and a few other books that have had excerpts from them emblazoned in the chapter pages of Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, I will recommend them. For the time being, I can only recommend the excerpts from those books. Below is a re-posting regarding Chris McCandless.

Like Jon Krakauer, I, too, desire to set the record straight in regards to a man that wandered into the Alaskan wilderness and, after 113 days succeeding, dies and is found 19 days later. I have selected a few telling excerpts from the last chapter of the book, with emphasis in bold and clarification in brackets.

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Among the letters lambasting McCandless, virtually all those I received mentioned his misidentification of the caribou as proof that he didn't know the first thing about surviving in the back-country. What the angry letter-writers didn't know, however, was that the ungulate McCandless shot was exactly what he'd said it was. Contrary to what I reported in Outside, the animal was a moose, as a close examination of the beast's remains now indicated and several of McCandless's photographs of the kill later confirmed beyond all doubt. The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn't among them.

Roman [Dial], thirty-two, inquisitive and outspoken, has a doctorate in biology from Stanford and an abiding distrust in conventional wisdom. He spent his adolescence in the same Washington, D.C., suburbs as McCandless and found them every bit as stifling. He first came to Alaska as a nine-year-old, to visit a trio of uncles who mined coal at Usibelli, a big strip-mine operation a few miles east of Healy, and immediately fell in love with everything about the North. Over the years that followed, he returned repeatedly to the forty-ninth state. In 1977, after graduating from high school as a sixteen-year-old at the top of his class, he moved to Fairbanks and made Alaska his permanent home.
These days Roman teaches at Alaska Pacific University, in Anchorage, and enjoys statewide renown for a long, brash string of backcountry escapades: He has -- among other feats -- traveled the entire 1,000-mile length of the Brooks Range by foot and paddle, skied 250 miles across the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in subzero winter cold. traversed the 700-mile crest of the Alaska Range, and pioneered more than thirty first ascents of northern peaks and crags. And Roman doesn't see a great deal of difference between his own widely respected deeds and McCandless's adventure, except that McCandless had the misfortune to perish.

I bring up McCandless's hubris and the dumb mistakes he made -- the two or three readily avoidable blunders that ended up costing him his life. "Sure, he screwed up," Roman answers, "but I admire what he was trying to do. Living completely off the land like that, month after month, is incredibly difficult. I've never done it. And I'd bet you that very few, if any, of the people who call McCandless incompetent have ever done it either, not for more than a week or two. Living in the interior bush for an extended period of [a few months], subsisting on nothing except what you hunt and gather -- most people have no idea how hard that actually is. And McCandless almost pulled it off [and would have, were it not for a freak accident involving a toxin from a mold that is known to grow on a perfectly-benign seed of an artic plant].

"I guess I just can't help identifying with this guy," Roman allows as he pokes the coals with a stick. "I hate to admit it, but not so many years ago it could easily have been me in the same kind of predicament. When I first started coming to Alaska, I think I was probably a lot like McCandless: just as green, just as eager, and I'm sure there are plenty of other Alaskans who had a lot in common with McCandless when they first got here, too, including many of his critics [(many that sent letters to the author of the Outside magazine, Jon Krakauer, viciously-disparaging McCandless)]. Which is maybe why they're so hard on him. Maybe McCandless reminds them [those in Fairbanks and other parts of Alaska who were the main source of the harshest letters regarding Chris] a little too much of their former selves .

Roman's observation underscores how difficult it is to for those of us preoccupied with the humdrum concerns of adulthood to recall how forcefully we were once buffeted by the passions and longings of youth . As Everett Ruess's father mused years after his twenty-year-old son vanished in the desert, "The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent. I think we all poorly understood Everett"

One of his [Chris McCandless] last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell. His face is horribly emaciated, almost skeletal. But if he pitied himself in those last difficult hours -- because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will had let him down -- it's not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.

-------------------------- -------------------------------------------

His pure ascetic nature and compassion (though his neglectment of his family was completely unacceptable, sending them into a "morass of anger, misunderstanding, and sorrow" [Krakauer, Into The Wild] regardless of whether or not the father hid a second marriage from him and the rest of the family) are something we can all be inspired by. I personally am enamored of Alex Supertramp. If anybody would like to talk to me about him and/or the book (or any of my other literary favorites, as listed on my facebook info section, for that matter), I would be more than delighted.

I have seen no extensive literature concerning Les Stroud, though I most certainly will contribute my meager portion the more I learn about him. I now post a few quotes from his shows and interviews.

In the adventure known as life, there are those who live it vicarously and enjoy the ride from the safety of an armchair, and that's good. There are those who have a few chances to realize incredible and life-changing experiences, and though they don't repeat them, they carry with them a growth and personal philosophy for the rest of their lives. And there are those, for whom a taste is never enough, for whom the lust for adventure is nearly insatiable, and if you add to that the overwhelming desire to create and share, then you get where I was at. For the end of one adventure only signifies the beginning of another.     

I would like to relate all of this to the little experience I've had. The pine forests of the Carolinas are probably a tame as one can get. I wish I could experience more. For now, that is not an option. It is for now a quest for beauty and not really a test of my constitution.

  

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