It’s fall here. The trees are just starting to turn, but last week, something other than a tree rushed to show its color.
This is a Virginia creeper. It’s a common vine on the mountain. In fact, it’s a common vine in about half of North America. Its range covers the entire eastern seaboard, as far west as Colorado, as far south as Texas (at least), and all the eastern Canadian provinces.
One of the most notable features of the Virginia creeper is that it is among the first plants to show fall color. I was driving down Fouche Gap Road last week and saw this brilliant red streak running up the side of a tree. When I took the dogs for a walk down that way, I took this photo. The red had faded by the time I took it, and the vine was bare about a week later.
Another vine is also showing some color.
Poison ivy. Not all that pretty. I have seen some poison ivy turning red as well.
The maples and sweetgums are beginning to turn, but the oaks haven’t really started yet.
Another sign of fall is dead deer dumped on the side of the road. I noticed a plastic garbage bag lying beside the road a couple of weeks ago. I thought it had fallen from the back of a pickup truck on its way to the county garbage transfer station; that happens sometimes. But when I nudged it with my shoe, I realized it was too heavy for garbage. I figured it was almost certainly something dead. I did not investigate further because I didn’t really want to know. I hope it’s only a deer.
The plastic protected whatever it was for longer than I expected, but by Wednesday, the sharp senses of the vultures had led them to it. They had torn the bag open, and the smell was not pleasant.
Zoe went crazy when she saw the vultures. In her opinion, they were not supposed to be there. The birds flew up into the trees. They are hard to see in this shot.
Here is a closer view of the birds.
They waited till we passed, then returned to their business. I was hoping they would find whatever is in the bag, because that’s the only way it was going to be cleaned up.
This story, like so many of my stories, starts with taking the dogs for their regular morning walk. We walked down the driveway and then along the front of our property on Lavender Trail. The first thing we noticed when we reached the intersection with Fouche Gap Road was a set of three highway hazard triangles blocking access down into Texas Valley. We proceeded, wondering what we would find. Or, at least I wondered. The dogs probably not so much.
What we found was a tour bus that didn’t quite make it around the first hairpin curve down on that side of the mountain. This is what it looked like when we came back up. I think the driver kept his lunch in the compartment that’s open.
I asked the driver whether he was following a GPS. He said yes. If you happen to come from the south side of the mountain and want to get to some place in the valley, a GPS will usually route you over Fouche Gap Road. There is a perfectly good road with no sharp curves and no steep grades that can take you into the valley, but Fouche Gap is a good shortcut. This is the second time a vehicle too long to make the curves in this road has followed a GPS into disaster. Or at least a big inconvenience.
He had been taking six passengers to a farm in the valley that hosts weddings at a venue, as they say. Fortunately for the passengers, someone was coming up from the valley and could take them back down to the wedding venue. I know you’re wondering why they needed a bus that size for six passengers. Me, too, but I didn’t ask.
The front wheels of the bus were right at the edge of a fairly deep ditch. The back of the bus was scraping the pavement. He couldn’t come or go. I was a little surprised that he had made it up the south side of the mountain, because there is another serious hairpin curve on that side. The big difference is that that curve is closer to level, while the one that trapped the bus takes a steep dive down through the curve.
I suggested that he get a bulldozer, and then set his bus on fire and push it off the road, but he said he had already called for a big wrecker.
The dogs and I continued down to our normal turnaround, and then came back up. A couple of cars passed us on their way up. I tried to flag them down, but one couldn’t figure out what I wanted him to do. No worry. He found out soon enough.
The guy in the pickup that’s turning around in the photo above is someone I speak to when he passes me and the dogs. He stopped this time, and asked whether something was still across the road. I couldn’t quite understand what he said, but I figured he must be talking about the bus, so I said, “Yes.” Then he said he had brought his chain saw to get it off the road. I was a little puzzled by that, but as he drove off I called out, “That might work.” I think I meant,”That probably won’t work.” But then I replayed his words in my mind and realized he had asked about a tree across the road.
The big wrecker showed up just as I came back up to the bus.
I thought about staying to watch what happened. I think the wrecker was going to pick up the back of the bus and move it over. It would have been interesting to watch, in a large-machine-at-work kind of way, but I thought it might take a while. That was a good decision (on a day with some not so good decisions, fortunately not my own), because it was about two and a half hours later before I heard the wrecker and the bus come back to the top of the mountain.
A couple of months ago Leah and I were coming up the mountain and found the road blocked at the second hairpin curve on the south side. It was a big tractor-trailer truck carrying chickens. The driver said his GPS had routed him over Fouche Gap. The front of his truck was pushed up against the bank at the side of the road, and his trailer wheels were off the pavement, perilously close to a steep drop-off. The wrecker he called was probably the same size as the bus wrecker. It might even have been the same wrecker. In that case, we had to take the 10-mile detour out the nice, level, no-sharp-curve road into the valley and then up the far side to our house. I never found out how the truck driver got back off the mountain, but the truck was gone the next time we drove down, so he must have managed somehow.
On the bus job, the wrecker had backed down from the intersection at the top of the mountain, somewhere around a quarter to a third of a mile. When he got the bus unstuck, the bus driver had to back up to the top of the mountain. At least he wasn’t towing a trailer.
I think a sign on Huffaker Road warning of very sharp curves might save some trouble on Fouche Gap Road. I think I’ll suggest that to the county, even though it will reduce the drama on the mountain.
Lorraine was Leah’s mother’s sister, the last of that generation in Leah’s family. Although they lived in Winston-Salem, NC, and we didn’t get a chance to see her often, she was Leah’s favorite. The last time we saw her was at least five years ago, although Leah spoke to her often, or at least as often as she could actually get her to answer her phone.
Her health had been deteriorating for some time. She was in and out of the hospital and nursing homes. At the end, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, untreatable at her age and in her condition.
Leah is still in the stage of thinking about calling her to tell her about something that has happened here. That passes, of course. She will miss her aunt.
I wrote about milestones in my last post. This is another milestone, but not a welcome one.
I have mentioned before, probably too many times, that we have a regular Wednesday lunch of huevos rancheros at our favorite Mexican restaurant. But for at least five weeks Leah has not been able to attend. She has had a really painful time with sciatica.
I had heard of sciatica but never understood how debilitating it could be. She has been taking a lot of pain pills for a long time with very limited relief. She had an epidural two weeks ago last Monday which hurt like hell and provided no relief . She has promised she will never have another one. On Tuesday she finally got a prescription for gabapentin, which is used for nerve pain. That seems to have helped, because around noon on Wednesday, she suggested that maybe we could eat at the Mexican restaurant. And so we did.
This was the best lunch we have had in a long time. Maria, the waitress who knows us best, served us. The hot sauce was the best we have ever had. I have heard TV chefs talk about chilis having a fruity flavor when prepared a certain way, but until we had this sauce, I had never tasted it. It was exactly the right combination of heat and flavor. The burrito sauce was also good. And the eggs.
So, we passed a milestone: Leah was able to get out of the house and have lunch. I don’t know whether it was a major milestone, but it certainly felt that way.
The second milestone involved a dog.
Zoe has a history of running away. I have told the story of her four-day road trip to who-knows-where, and at least a couple of other all-day affairs. On Wednesday afternoon I took Zoe and Sam into the front yard to play. I put them on about a 10-foot leash so they can get some running in. They had played for a while, and I was fairly relaxed, when they saw a squirrel near a tree at the edge of the yard. Zoe took off and jerked the leash out of my hand. She ran to the tree, and when the squirrel climbed the tree, Zoe kept going into the woods.
I called and called as she disappeared. I couldn’t run after her because I had Sam on his leash (plus arthritis in my knees), but Leah heard me calling and came out. She held Sam, and I was just getting read to hobble into the woods after Zoe when Leah said, “Here she comes!”
Yes, Zoe came back when she was called. It took a little more calling than would be ideal, but she actually came back to us.
So, we turned a corner. We passed a milestone. But I’m still going to keep her on her leash when she’s outside.
She’s lying on our living room couch in the photo. Leah is not thrilled to have her on the furniture, so she stays off until Leah goes to bed. Then she steps up to the couch and asks permission. I pat the cushion and she jumps up. Leah knows she’s doing it, but doesn’t really complain, as long as she doesn’t actually see it.
Copyright 2013 Mark V. Paris
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