Author Archives: Mark P

Old river

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The New River rises in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Boone, NC, flows within the crests of the Appalachians through Virginia and then into West Virginia, where it passes through the New River Gorge. It is thought to be a very old river, maybe only as old as three millions years, maybe as old as 320 million years. Some people think it is the second oldest river in the world, but some think perhaps it is not even the oldest in North America. My brother Henry subscribed to the  very-old school of thought.

Henry wanted his ashes scattered in the New River because he wanted to be as close to the creation as possible. That has not been done yet. I’m not certain that his wife will ever do it. It’s a long drive from Chattanooga. We have not had any communication with her since the summer after Henry died, so we don’t know what her plans might be.

But for me, it was time to do something. So I scooped up some ashes from our stove and put them into a small cardboard box. Then, on Wednesday, I started out for the New River Gorge Bridge.

I got there too late in the evening to do anything, so I spent the night in a hotel not far from the bridge. Thursday morning I drove to the visitors’ center on the north side of the gorge to get a look at the bridge and the river, far below. Pedestrians are not permitted on the bridge except for one special day every year, and this was not the day.

A panorama, looking both up and down the river

I viewed the bridge from the overlook, and then drove the narrow, winding road down deep into the gorge. At the bottom of the gorge there is an old bridge that was once the only way people wanting to go from one side of the gorge to the other could go.

I crossed the wood-floored bridge and parked on the other side of the river. Then I walked out onto the bridge to take a look. The new bridge is so high above the river that it’s hard to see the scale. But Henry was not interested in the bridge, only the river.

The old bridge at the bottom of the gorge

I helped a couple of women get some photos of themselves with the bridge in the background, and then waited for them and one other tourist to leave. Then I opened the box of ashes and scattered them.

There was a steady breeze from the east. It took the ashes away. They billowed out in a thin cloud that almost sparkled. I had wondered whether I would have any sense of Henry, despite the purely symbolic nature of the act. But I did not. I thought to take a photo of the sparkling ashes, but by the time I got my camera out the cloud of ash had dissipated and disappeared.

Then I thought, that was like Henry. The ashes were there in a cloud, and then they were not. And Henry was here, with us, and then he was not. That was the closest I felt to him.

One day Henry’s wife may decide to take Henry’s ashes and scatter them into the river, and maybe she won’t. Maybe she already has. If she hasn’t, maybe she will ask us to come with her. And maybe not. However that happens, I think I have done my duty to Henry and his memory.

A treasure trove

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My Uncle Tommy, my father’s much younger half brother, died in April. A few weeks after he died, Leah and I started meeting his wife, Micki, for our regular Wednesday lunch of huevos rancheros. A couple of cousins are now joining us, so it’s a nice get together for the two of us.

Micki has been clearing out a basement full of Tommy’s huge collection of stuff. Occasionally she finds something that she doesn’t want or doesn’t know what to do with. One of those things was a laundry basket full of photo albums. The photos are almost all of my immediate family, plus several albums of photos my father shot while in Europe during World War II. Micki gave them to me Wednesday after our lunch.

The labels read “France – Germany, September 1944, May 1945” and “Belgium Germany, France England, May 1945 December 1945”.

The most amazing thing about the photos — or at least one of the most amazing — is that I have never seen the vast majority of them. In fact, I had no idea most of them even existed. I am almost certain my brother never got the chance to see them either. Leah and I looked at some of the albums, and I am entirely blown away by the photos. There are photos of my father as a young man, my mother as a kid, my brother and me as babies, family members I didn’t know, and baby photos of my nephews. There are photos of the kindergarten “graduation” my brother attended in 1952 and that I attended in 1955. There is my first-grade class photo. There is a photo of my father’s father, a man whose image was completely unknown to me until recently.

I can hardly wait to go through them in more detail and pick out some to scan.

I have no idea why my uncle had these albums at his house. The most likely explanation is that at some point my parents gave them to my father’s mother to look at, and they somehow ended up at her house when she died. A few years later her husband, Uncle Tommy’s father died. I suspect that Tommy cleared out the house when the estate was settled and took them home, maybe thinking he would give them to my father later. Based on their condition and the way they smell, I suspect that he put them in his basement and forgot about them.

You can be sure I will share some of them here.

Magic levitating maple leaf

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I was coming back up the mountain with Sam a few days ago when something caught my eye. It was a floating maple leaf.

It reminds me of the end scene for Forrest Gump, where a feather floats up and away. In this case, it wasn’t just the wind. The leaf was attached somewhere by an invisible line spun by a spider. It was flying like a kite. But it was pretty cool.

Wild tomatoes

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These little tomatoes are growing at the base of our driveway.

I picked three, and ate one. It was the sweetest tomato I have ever had. Leah agreed. Sam did not.

This spindly tomato plant is a second-year volunteer. I noticed tomatoes growing at the same place late last summer. I noticed these a couple of days ago. The plant was hidden by tall weeds, so I didn’t realize it was there until the tomatoes ripened.

I am pretty sure these came from a neighbor just up the road. I think she probably pulled up some old tomato plants late one summer a few years ago and threw them across the road. The old fruit decayed and the seeds washed away, eventually finding a home at the base of our driveway. Then they germinated and grew last summer, dropping their fruit at their feet. That fruit rotted and released its seeds, which sprouted this year.

And then I picked some and ate them. We will probably eat a few more, but we’ll leave the rest to drop to the ground. Maybe we’ll have more next year.

Smokey

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Smokey didn’t show up for breakfast this morning, which was a very bad sign. Early this afternoon we found his remains in the woods in front of our house. All that was left was a handful of fur and some blood. It appears that a coyote caught him.

Smokey has been with us for a long time. We can’t remember when he first appeared, but we think it might have been as long as 12 or 13 years ago. He and Sylvester showed up at about the same time.

Of all of our cats, he was the most affectionate. He was the only one that really sought affection. He would jump up on the sofa beside us and lie down right next to one of us. He usually was halfway on our legs. Sometimes he sat next to our legs, looking at us. If we didn’t pet him, he would reach out and pat us with his foot.

He loved being petted.

He also loved food. He would sit beside our dining room table, staring up at us as we ate. When we fed one of the other cats, he would lie down facing their food bowl. Waiting. Waiting. Somehow he knew when we put out food for Chloe and Dusty on the front porch, and he would appear from nowhere.

He was a reliably playful cat. He played with Mollie, and tried to play with Sylvester, who was not always a willing participant. Here he is staring down a hedgehog toy we got for the dogs.

Smokey was pretty much a homebody. In the last few years he didn’t stay inside much, but we never saw him walking casually up the street towards a neighbor’s house like Sylvester.

If he wanted in, he didn’t wait to be invited, he just shoved his way around whoever happened to open the door. But when he was finished eating, he usually went straight to the door to be let back outside.

In the past we had let him and Sylvester stay inside at night, especially in cold weather, but when we moved into our new house we put little cat houses with heated pads in the garage. That was where Smokey could usually be found once it got dark.

But of course, in warm weather he usually stayed outside, we knew not where. It wasn’t obvious where he was, but we could usually find him lying under our rainwater collection tank, or under my truck, or under our little Mule utility vehicle.

He might not have been immediately visible, but he didn’t disappear for hours like Sylvester. That’s why Leah was so worried when Smokey wasn’t waiting at the door Sunday morning. I tried to reassure her that he would show up, and that it was too early to start worrying. But secretly I was a little worried, myself, because it was so unlike him.

So when I took Sam for his walk Sunday morning, I looked along the side of the road for a little furry, gray body. When Sam stopped with his nose up in the air, I let him sniff. If he wanted to check out something at the side of the road, I let him. We checked out a few places on the road in front of the house, but I never saw anything.

After lunch, I usually take Sam out and let him run free around the yard. On this occasion, he was suspicious of something on the far side of the driveway, but I couldn’t find anything. So I went down into the front of our yard and started pulling weeds. After a few minutes Sam came over and went into the woods beside the yard. He sniffed around for a while, and then seemed to find something. When I went into the woods, I found what he had found. It was a big mass of gray fur with a few leaves spotted with blood. The ground was scuffed around where the fur was. This was almost certainly the scene of the crime.

One of our neighbors had stopped on Friday when I took Sam down to the mailbox and told me her young kids had seen a coyote in their yard. Their big dog had chased it away. We talked about when and where we had seen coyotes. One night shortly after we moved into our current house we had seen two coyotes running around in the front yard, just into the woods. I went out with a flashlight and Zeke (on a leash, naturally), and eventually the coyotes left. We haven’t seen any in the yard since then, although they are often more active at night.

But Smokey was almost certainly taken by a coyote. There really isn’t any other predator that could have done this. We have (or have had) foxes, but they typically mind their own business around the cats. I don’t think any of our birds of prey could take a cat the size of Smokey. So there really isn’t anything else.

Now we have to worry about Chloe, Dusty and Sylvester. We know Sylvester is a wanderer. That may be a problem. We also know that for some reason Chloe has taken to sleeping in the woods. Her favorite spot is about 20 feet from where we found Smokey’s remains. We would bring her inside at night, but she absolutely hates it. She runs from Leah if she tried to get her to bring her in. And Chloe and Mollie do not get along. So there isn’t much we can do for her. Fortunately, Dusty stays on the porch almost all the time, usually only going down to the yard for bathroom breaks.

Of course we knew that coyotes were at least a theoretical threat for the cats. Now we know they are a real threat, and they are in our yard.

Zeke and Smokey in better times — both gone now