NEWFAZE

Darn his hide!

Posted on June 15, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

15 June, 2014 Darn his hide!

At my grandfather’s funeral in 1980 one of his buddies said “We miss old Jimmy, darn his hide!” Today is the second Father’s Day since my dad died in November of 2012. I still miss old dad, darn his hide! Here we are at his parents house in 1962:

A boy and his father, photographed by his FATHER’s father! How’s that for Father’s Day?

Dad’s father took that picture – he was a terrific photographer.

Since that was taken in 1962, dad was 26 years old. Today I’m 52, or 26 years older than 26. So that could easily be me looking at a picture of my son – holding my grandson. Who, in this picture, is in fact looking at his grandfather. Isn’t that cool? An echo chamber of generations.

I am not a father, but I was raised by the best one I’ve ever known and I will be grateful as long as I live.

Today my feeling about dad is similar to what Granddaddy’s friend said – I miss him, darn his hide! I also believe Granddaddy’s friend was saying “I miss him, but I know we all go away.” There’s not a great deal of melancholy, just stuff I liked to share with Dad. He was encouraging when I began this blog in March of 2011, as he was with any effort his children undertook. I think he’d enjoy the way this blog is evolving. I know people who like to learn, but I don’t know anyone who likes to learn as much as he did. My last blog post before he died was my race report from my 2012 Ironman, More fun every year! The first one I did after he died was Good man. I’ll bet we hadn’t had a “nuclear family” picture taken in three decades or more, but we put one together by chance just three weeks before he died. The picture’s in that blog post. There’s also a link to the superb obituary my brother Kevin wrote, ending with “Mike’s kindness, sense of humor, curiosity, love of reading, and love of animals lives on in his children and grandchildren…”

Speaking of Mike’s sense of humor, I don’t recall ever talking about that picture with him. I think it turned up after he died. Dad was as sentimental as the next guy, but his sentimentality – and nearly every other emotion – was always laced with pragmatism. It’s tempting (for me, anyway) to look at that picture and see a bright-eyed little boy and his loving father. If you knew my dad, you know he would also immediately say “they’d also both have those expressions if the little boy had just pooped in his pants.” And then – this is just the way dad was – you’d go back and take another look at the picture. And that could easily be what just happened. He wouldn’t smile when he said that, very deadpan, wouldn’t let on that he was joking, even though he knew he was joking, and he knew you knew he was joking, and that made it even funnier. Dad took being a father very seriously, but he knew how to find humor in nearly any situation.

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Pony Pasture clears out a lot in the winter but I always tell people it’s a great time to visit – no mud and no bugs. This summer (and other summers) I’ve had a lot of fun taking pictures of bugs. And learning about them. There’s a phenomenon in animals – including bugs – called “sexual dimorphism.” It means for instance the ability to distinguish between genders by looking at an animal. Here’s an obvious example: mallards. If you saw a dozen mallards sitting on a pond, anybody can tell a male (green head) from a female (mostly brown). My Birds of North America guide says of mallards: “Strongly sexually dimorphic.” If you moved down one pond and saw a dozen Canada Geese, you would have no idea how to tell males from females. I’ve been learning the sexual dimorphism of a lot of birds for some time but only recently begun to learn how to distinguish gender in bugs. The obvious ones, anyway. You may recall an earlier post that had a pair of dragonflies called Whitetail Skimmers. They too are “Strongly sexually dimorphic.” Here’s a male (white tail) and female (brown tail):

Male Whitetail Skimmer

Female Whitetail Skimmer

Here are a pair of damselflies – which are not dragonflies, but close. They are also sexually dimorphic (I learned) although not as strongly as the skimmers. Females have a white spot on their wings and males don’t. I was fortunate to get one of each. They’re so pretty:

Male damselfly

Female damselfly – you can JUST make out the white spots on her wingtips.

It’s really more obvious in the woods than it is in that picture. If you were looking at damselflies you’d know right away which was a male and which was a female. These are called “Ebony Jewelwings.”

People tell me from time to time that they enjoy the things they learn on this blog. I can assure you, no one enjoys it more than I do. It’s a pleasure every week to find out about this stuff.

Before I learned about gender differences in dragonflies (who even knew?) I learned the difference between dragonflies and damselflies. A few readers of this blog know the difference but many don’t – but you will now. It’s easy. I showed my sister Katie a picture I’d taken once and said “it’s a turtle with a dragonfly on its shell.” She looked at the picture and said “that’s not a dragonfly – it’s a damselfly. Dragonflies have their wings level at rest and damselflies have their wings folded at rest.” As you can see in the preceding pictures. New fact! Isn’t that fun?

Also – if you’re not overwhelmed with bugs – a little bit more information. Both dragonflies and damselflies are carnivorous and eat lots of mosquitoes. And I’m going to put a link here to the page where I learned about the damselflies. It’s called “BugGuide” and it’s loaded with fascinating stuff. Great pictures too.

Here is another dragonfly I photographed this week but haven’t yet identified. It’s so fun to get a nice picture like this:

Another big dragonfly. Waiting for a hapless mosquito to pass by.

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I noted in last week’s blog post (Eventful) that the Race Across America was beginning Tuesday, June 10. It is under way, and the racers are beyond compare. The current leader, 31 year old Christoph Strasser is really beyond compare – he has crossed the Mississippi River and is an astounding three hundred miles – that is not a misprint – ahead of the person in second place. Of course, RAAM isn’t over until it’s over, and a lot can go wrong between Mississippi and Annapolis. But Strasser won last year as the first person to finish in less than eight days in the race’s thirty year history, so I wouldn’t bet against him. He is amazing.

Anyway, Happy Father’s Day to everyone. I hear from time to time about how things are getting bad in America. It must be a different America from the one I live in. Because I know so many excellent fathers, and to a man they’re raising excellent children. Our future is in capable hands. My brother Kevin is a great father, and my sister Katie’s husband Jim and my sister Sheila’s husband Greg, and my friends Gus and Mark and Lee and Lou and Pat and Gilpin and Jason and John and Andrew and his brother Peter – both great fathers – I even know two great fathers named Chris G! I’m sure you know a lot of excellent fathers yourself. Or maybe you’re one too! Keep up the good work. And have a great week! All best,

Jay

PS – an aside – Ev’s visiting her family in NJ. This morning I went to the river and took this picture:

A picture I took in Richmond around 7:30 this AM

Meanwhile – and neither of us knew – Ev was taking this picture in NJ at 7:30 this AM:

A picture Ev took in NJ at almost precisely the same time

Isn’t that remarkable? Neither of us knew what the other was doing until we saw one another’s pictures. Very fun!

Posted in Endurance, Fun, People, Rivers | Tagged Endurance, nature, outdoors, Pony Pasture, RAAM, Race Across America, Rivers | 6 Comments

Eventful

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

8 June, 2014 Eventful

My favorite summer sporting event is the Race Across America or RAAM. It’s bicycling and serious, serious ultra endurance. An Ironman isn’t even a warmup for the men and women who complete this race. It’s eight hundred miles longer than the Tour de France – and finishes five days faster. The main difference: in RAAM, the clock starts when the cyclists pedal away from the edge of the Pacific Ocean in California – and doesn’t stop until they reach the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in Maryland. In the Tour de France, they stop riding (and stop the clock) at the end of each day. They eat a good meal, get a good night’s sleep, then get up the next morning and do it again. The Tour de France is much, much less demanding. RAAM starts this Tuesday (10 June) at 12:00 noon California time (3:00 PM here) and the course closes twelve days later. The winner is expected in Annapolis, MD on Wednesday, June 18 in the early evening. The current men’s solo record of about 7 days, 23 hours was set last year by Christoph Strasser, a 31 year old from Austria. That’s an average of nearly 16 mph non stop. From California to Maryland. If you ride and if you have a speedometer on your bike, crank it up to 16 mph next time you go for a ride. And think about what it would take to do that non stop – for the next week – and you still wouldn’t be done. Including crossing the Rockies. I am an experienced endurance athlete and this race stupefies me. Take a look at the site, read a little bit about it, check back during the week – it is a stunning example of what human beings can achieve. A week from today when I put up another post, the front running solo men will just be arriving in Kansas and western Missouri. Enough about that.

I’ve never ridden for competition – only for enjoyment. Only, as I’ve said on countless occasions, to “have a good time.” I like Ironmans because it gives a (theoretically) valid reason to ride lots and lots and lots of miles. But this year I’m not doing an Ironman so I’m enjoying my bike time a lot more. Last week I had an unexpected weekday afternoon free so I took an hour ride – and took my “big” camera along – not just my iphone. I only stopped a couple of times, but at one point in eastern Goochland this bluebird posed on a wire:

Beautiful bluebird seen on a beautiful bike ride!

This sassafras was growing beside the road where I stopped:

DELICIOUS sassafras – the roots make tea that tastes JUST like root beer!

This is what the road looked like where I stopped. There are countless miles of views just like this one in a close radius of Richmond. And I never, ever, ever get tired of seeing them. I did my first triathlon twenty-seven years ago and I’ve ridden hundreds of thousands of miles on these roads – and they’re as pretty today as they were the first time I saw them. I’m sure you can see why:

Who could ever tire of this?

I should interject that I have done one event this year that included cycling, the Monticelloman Triathlon. And later this summer I’ll be doing the Anthem Moonlight Ride (another of my favorite Richmond sporting events). I got this great hat:

Such an excellent hat

I made it to Bryan Park this week, as I often do, and saw a sight I’ve not seen before. There was a shape in the middle of one of the ponds that I didn’t recognize so I used the zoom lens on my camera for a closer look. I saw it was a dead Canada Goose. I don’t know how it had died; sometimes they get hit by cars in that neighborhood. Anyway, on closer inspection, I saw the snout and eyes of a large snapping turtle peering out of the water – it had found its dinner. Life lives on life:

A dead Canada Goose and a live Snapping Turtle – Life Lives on Life

There are also lots and lots of bugs around – they’re everywhere. I saw this beautiful damselfly at Pony Pasture this week. It almost looks like it’s made of metal:

Looks like it’s made of green metal. And check out that shadow.

This week, honestly, I had too much stuff. I could have done ten blog posts. Hopefully this will keep up. Until next week,

Jay

PS Click on those RAAM links and check it out – it is so amazing.

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It was fun on the last post (So startling) to get a comment from an old family friend about the cabin. Ed lived a few doors down from us when we lived in Vienna, VA in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. He read my musings about trains and the cabin and wrote:

“…would love to see a pic and your thoughts on the train tunnel between the cabin and the river. Never been more scared than as a kid walking through that at night.”

I’m disappointed that I currently don’t have any good pictures of that tunnel. But I’m going up there this summer. And will post lots of pictures. Meanwhile, this is from Google Street view (!). It’s standing on the paved road, looking up the gravel road in the direction of the cabin. On the right side of the tunnel in this picture, a frigid creek runs through and down to the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. You can see the train tracks on top of the tunnel. At night it was pitch, pitch black:

Tunnel under the train tracks

If you stand in that precise spot and turn in the opposite direction, you are looking at the South Fork of the Shenandoah River:

The South Fork of the Shenandoah River

This may give some idea of my lasting fascination with trains and rivers.

That creek through the tunnel, it started up higher, obviously, went across “the park road” where we’d find caddisfly larva and watercress. Where we’d just get on our hands and knees and drink straight from it – not even cup our hands, just stick our faces right in as it flowed over the gravel. And it would be so, so, bitter, bitter cold, and you’d go down to the river, which would be warm by comparison. And you’d stand at the river’s edge, and if went up to where the creek was flowing into it, it would turn frigid. It’s making me want to go up there just writing about it. I’ll be back up there soon. Have a great week.

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Posted in Birds, Endurance, Fun, People, Rivers, Trains | Tagged Anthem Moonlight Ride, bluebird, bryan park, nature, outdoors, RAAM, Race Across America, Rivers, sassafras, Shenandoah River | 2 Comments

So startling

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

1 June, 2014 So startling

Fortunately Turner began eating mulberries and reminded me how startling it is to live. I’d nearly forgotten. At nearly the same time, this quote appeared on – talk about startling – the Emily Dickinson facebook page. I mean, nobody saw that one coming. In the late 1970’s when I was reading “Hope” is the thing with feathers and Pain — has an Element of Blank. An Emily Dickinson facebook page. But here’s a fun image/quote:

To live is so startling
it leaves little time for anything else.
– Emily Dickinson

I had been thinking that living wasn’t so startling. Then Turner began eating mulberries and once again I was reminded.

Turner likes his dog food as much as the next dog, and like canines everywhere craves cheese and peanut butter. They all love it. But Turner doesn’t stop there. He eats apples, bananas, mangos, carrots, nearly any fruit or vegetable you put in front of him. And every mulberry tree in central Virginia is dropping delicious fruit everywhere right now, including the one in our backyard. Turner thinks it was put there just for him. Richmond has mulberry trees everywhere; keep your eyes out. There are several in Pony Pasture. I took this picture of a mulberry beside the railroad tracks near Brown’s Island:

A delicious mulberry. Looks like a blackberry but no thorns, plus tastes much different. VERY easy to find in Richmond.

Meanwhile I was studying birds and learning more startling things. I was reading about crows. And learned this about nest predation: “…predation of eggs and nestlings greater in rural than in urban areas, probably because of… a lack of food (garbage) provided by humans presumably forced raccoons to search for natural foods (Chamberlain-Auger et al. 1990).” So mull that one over for just a moment – if people are neat and tidy, crow eggs are stolen by raccoons. If people are slobs, the raccoons have plenty to eat and they leave the crow eggs alone. That’s almost as fascinating (to me) as dragonfly larva who eat tadpoles who sometimes escape to become frogs and go back and eat dragonfly larva. I’m referring, if you missed it, to Autism 5k – you can read all about it there.

In other startling living news this week, Ethan and I were hiking at Bryan Park. That in itself is not startling, we do that a lot, and although we are often startled by reptiles and amphibians there, this week has been somewhat tame. Ethan got a nice image of a Great Blue Heron:

Great Blue Heron – Bryan Park, VA – by Ethan

It is relatively un-startling to see a Great Blue Heron here in central Virginia in May, but it’s not always easy to take a nice picture like that one. Congratulations again Ethan!

What I found most startling was a bird on a wire. Because I think – I think – this is a baby phoebe. It looks young, and it was acting young – very unsure of itself. None of the “swagger” you notice in confident adults. Adult birds on a wire gaze knowingly about, eyes open for predators or prey. Baby birds I imagine are less confident in what will happen if they let go and cling for dear life. And are wide-eyed. And very cute:

A baby phoebe. I believe.

Speaking of birds (they are out in droves right now in Richmond) I’ve also been reading up on Mourning Doves. And learned a couple of startling (I’m enjoying that word this week) new facts. One is this: “Approximately one million hunters annually harvest more than 20 million birds, which exceeds the annual harvest of all other migratory game birds combined (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2007).” [emphasis added]. That’s another one to consider for an extra moment or two. All migratory gamebirds – that is a huge category. Ducks, geese, plovers, rail, snipe, swans, it’s just an enormous category. There are a lot of mourning doves. Not unrelated, in the same vein, I learned another interesting mourning dove fact: “The Mourning Dove is a short-lived species, with an average adult life span of about one year.” Amazing. Think about those facts next time you see or hear a dove. I’ll get a picture in soon. It’s not difficult to get a photograph of a mourning dove, but it’s difficult to get one worth putting on a blog post. When I used to hunt doves (in the early 1980’s) I learned how difficult they are to shoot. And how delicious to eat. With a camera it’s much easier.

Here’s a picture that’s interesting (again, I mean interesting to me, that doesn’t apply to everyone). It’s Mackey at the far eastern edge of Pony Pasture, not long after one of our recent floods. This is about ten minutes walk up from the river bank. Notice the mud line behind Mackey. That’s how high the river rose when it flooded. That mud line is when the river floods to about fifteen feet deep. This morning it was a little bit over five feet deep. During most of the summer it will be around three or four feet deep. During Hurricane Agnes in 1972 the James River here in Richmond rose to 28.6 feet deep! So look at the mud line in this picture – that is a fifteen foot flood, and the water goes in the parking lot. And think about the water being thirteen feet deeper than that. That is startling:

Mud line on the leaves on the left side, Mackey to the right.

Like all good things, I believe honeysuckle is coming to an end in Richmond for 2014. Although I may be wrong; I haven’t paid close attention before. But here’s a gorgeous picture I took this week. Also the good thing about honeysuckle is, it’ll be back next year, like it or not:

At one time lush and graceful.

The cliff swallows are still looking good. But I have a lot to learn about them. Probably a few years. But this was earlier this week:

I’ll bet that nest is a nice place to be.

Another writer I read a lot is John Irving. He says that “…before you could write anything, you had to notice something.” It’s true about photography too, in a sense. I have a lot to learn about cliff swallows and a lot to learn about photographing them. I hope my photographs in 2015 – assuming I have the opportunity to photograph Cliff Swallows in 2015 – will be much better than these.

This picture doesn’t have a lot of significance, I just like the way it came out. It’s a thistle down by the train tracks:

Thistle by the train tracks

I believe that’s enough pictures and writing for this section of the blog for this week. I only have a little blurb on the next section. I’m gradually getting into the habit of a post a week, and enjoying it. Since life is still so startling. I hope yours is too!

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Trains and chocolate and honeysuckle

This is an iphone picture (less than stellar quality) from this week. I photograph lots of engines but I’ll take some more rolling stock pictures. This was a CSX coal train parked downtown waiting to switch crews:

Coal train and signal, downtown Richmond

I was speaking with one of my brothers recently about our upbringing and he sent me an email about Maya Angelou and her memoirs. My friend Clark and I were on a gravel road next to a parked coal train. With the river in sight. At the cabin in the seventies and eighties, the railroad tracks (at that time, the Norfolk and Western, a.k.a. the N&W) and the South Fork of the Shenandoah River were the background for a lot of what we did, winter and summer and in between.

That’s a fun N&W link, it has great pictures of N&W diesel locomotives of the era when we were at the cabin a lot. It merged with the Southern Railway in 1982 but the merger wasn’t complete until 1997. So there were N&W locomotives and rolling stock (lots of coal cars) around during our most active years at the cabin. Freight trains, especially coal trains, always call to mind those years.

I was hiking with Mackey and Turner at Pony Pasture this morning (what a surprise) and since it was June 1 I was taking pictures of honeysuckle again, since soon it will be gone until 2015. And I love honeysuckle. But I was also thinking about clinging to things that are going away no matter how hard you cling, and that it’s better to let go and enjoy the moment. That (in my travels) is the whole point of looking at the river. Because it’s always going away but it’s always arriving and it’s always just right. That’s why they call it the present. Anyway, taking pictures of the honeysuckle so it won’t go away reminded me of a passage from my favorite book, the late Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard. He’d been in the wilderness in the Himalayas for two months and was preparing to return home. He wrote “With the wind and the cold, a restlessness has come, and I find myself hoarding my last chocolate for the journey back across the mountains – forever getting-ready-for-life instead of living it each day.” When I’m trying to get pictures of the “last” honeysuckle of the year, I feel like I’m “getting-ready-for-life” instead of being in the moment. That being said, I don’t just enjoy honeysuckle – or birds, for that matter – I enjoy the experience of photographing them. And even of looking at them on my computer and of posting them on my blog. I hope you do too! All best,

Jay

Always miraculous.

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Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | Tagged bryan park, nature, outdoors, People, Pony Pasture, Rivers | 3 Comments

Autism 5k

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

25 May, 2014 Autism 5k

Yesterday was the 12th Annual Autism 5k, held this year at the Innsbrook Pavillion in Glen Allen, VA. I did it the first year with my old buddy Skye, back in 2002, and I’ve done it intermittently since. Last year I did it with my friend David and we had such a great time we decided to return this year. We were well rewarded; it was even better. Last year there were over 1,600 people in the race. I haven’t heard the final tally but I suspect this year’s turnout was even larger. The weather was beyond compare.

The light’s been beautiful nearly every day this week, but my photography hasn’t been brilliant. I’ll put a few pictures in. The cliff swallows near Brown’s Island are coming along but I haven’t gotten any pictures I’ve loved. Perhaps this swallow was scolding me for my other-than-stellar effort:

Whatever this Cliff Swallow is saying, it doesn’t look polite.

One good thing about being in that area was seeing my first privet of the year, rounding out (with multiflora rose and of course honeysuckle) what I consider the “big three” of fragrant spring flowers in central Virginia. The link I provided above was to an NC State web site about urban landscaping and it notes that “Many small, white, and fragrant flowers appear in April to June.” Please please please smell some privet if you have the opportunity. It will 100% put a smile on your face, and that can only be a good thing. Here’s what to look for:

So rich and so delicious and so fragrant

That bush is at the edge of the train tracks, not fifty feet from the cliff swallow nests. You can smell flowers and watch cliff swallows and trains too! How could you possibly have more fun? You can even see the river from there!

My buddy and I were walking along the path beside the railroad tracks and a rabbit hopped out of the bushes maybe a hundred yards in front of us. Luckily I had a zoom lens and was able to take this picture. Because the rabbit took a few steps and lay down. I didn’t know rabbits even did that. I think it was sunning itself or just rolling in the sand. Because a few minutes later it got up and walk/hopped across the trail:

Isn’t that unusual? I never even knew rabbits did this. Look at those big ears and big eyes.

While I’m putting up pictures of fragrant flowers, I can’t skip magnolia. Though it’s not as ubiquitous as privet. This magnolia drops leaves on our cars in the driveway:

Extravagant + lush

I looked up the dragonflies I posted last week. They are “Common Whitetail Skimmers,” or “Long-tailed Skimmers,” (Plathemis lydia). The male is the one with the white tail, the other one is a female. I never knew.

Male Whitetail Skimmer

Female Whitetail Skimmer

Dragonfly larvae (I’m learning) hatch from eggs and become nymphs. They have gills and live underwater. Damselflies are similar and they are prolific at Pony Pasture and I’ve put a few photos of them in previous posts. When damselfly eggs hatch they’re called naiads. I digress. Here’s the fascinating blurb I read about dragonfly nymphs in wikipedia: “The nymphs… feed on aquatic invertebrates such as tadpoles… Because of their abundance, [they] are in turn an important food source for various… frogs…” Isn’t that amazing? Before they turn into dragonflies they live in the water and they’re “nymphs.” As nymphs, they eat tadpoles. The tadpoles that survive climb out of the water and become frogs. Then, as frogs – stay with me here – they go back to the water and eat the nymphs. That were trying to eat them when they were tadpoles. What a life cycle. Everything eats everything and is eaten by everything. Human beings are the only animal that chooses to be a vegetarian. As Joseph Campbell said, “life lives on life.” It is a free for all out there.

This has been a slender blog post – more next week, hopefully. Until then, have a great week,

Jay

PS I don’t take pictures at the Autism 5k – I’m too busy doing other stuff and I don’t photograph people well. But they took some great pictures. As of this moment, there are only pictures from the 2008 through 2013 races on this site but I’m sure they’ll get this year’s pictures up within the next day or so. Click on this link if you’d like to see some fantastic photography from one of my favorite sporting events anywhere: Autism 5k photo page

Posted in Flowers, Fun, Rivers | Tagged Autism, Cliff Swallows, Endurance, Fun, nature, outdoors, People, Pony Pasture | 8 Comments

Mexican tadpole

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

18 May, 2014 Mexican tadpole

In English: “tadpole” In Spanish: “renacuajo”

My mother, like my father and my siblings, is a lifelong learner. A week ago today (on Mother’s Day!) she was with friends in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Mom attends the Universidad Internacional Center for Linguistic and Multicultural Studies in Cuernavaca. She’s gone every year for ages and ages. She showed last week’s blog post (Swallowing my pride) to her friends in Cuernavaca and if you recall (or not) it has a picture of a “renacuajo” (in English that means “tadpole”). And she learned a new word! And so did I! And now so did you!

Have I also mentioned mom is a doula? An EMT? A life member of Rescue 15? Has two cardiac saves? Lived in Switzerland for a year? Taught French? Swims every day? Is a mother of five? A grandmother of five? I got the swimming ability, but not the language ability. I’ve tried to learn other languages (e.g. Spanish and French) before but when I look at a textbook it’s all Greek to me. Also, if you don’t know what a doula is, click on that link. It’s worth knowing about. I’m guessing you know what an EMT is.

Prepare to be overwhelmed with this blog post (if you’re not already). It’s an overwhelming time of year. Overwhelming in a good way. Here in central Virginia, everything is growing. There is a tidal wave of DNA being passed along to fresh new generations everywhere. The leading edge of the wave rode in on the back of a trillion grains of pollen, unwelcome to many. But look what came with the pollen – dogwoods, roses, honeysuckle, pine trees, gardenias, red maples, peonies, redbuds, clover, buttercups, it is a privilege to be here in central Virginia in May. And mammals and insects and birds and reptiles and amphibians and fish, all beginning new generations. This is no time to be indoors. I’m typing this indoors, I regret to say, but Evie and Mackey and Turner and I had a Grade A hike at Pony Pasture this morning and I’ll be back outside again in a few minutes.

There is so, so, so much going on – so much growing. Look at all these dragonflies:

A dragonfly at Bryan Park

Warming up on a cool morning at Pony Pasture

Same log, different dragonfly

A different angle, fine when you have 28,000 tiny eyes.

Dragonflies leave a mystery for me every year. Surely someone who reads this blog must know the solution. The dragonflies don’t leave the mystery; I believe it’s some predator. Each May when the dragonflies are out in force, the sunny spots on the paths at Pony Pasture near the water are just strewn with dragonfly wings. Here’s one picture, but the trail just glitters when you’re hiking near sunrise. I don’t know if it’s birds or snakes or frogs or turtles or other bugs but something just gorges on dragonflies. If anyone can solve this mystery, please enlighten me. Better yet, enlighten US, and put the answer in a comment on this blog. Or if you’re shy, send me the answer and I’ll post it credited or uncredited – as you wish – on my next post:

On a wing and didn’t have a prayer

Honeysuckle is my favorite plant anywhere, ever, of any kind. Even though I love corn on the cob. And tomatoes. And gardenias and pawpaws and redbuds and dogwoods and oak trees and Christmas trees and lily of the valley and hydrangeas and peonies and red maples and I even like dandelions but if I could only have one it would be honeysuckle. Watermelon, I like watermelon too, and pumpkins, and apples and oranges and bananas and peanuts and rice and oatmeal – there are a lot of plants. I mentioned this a year or so ago but perhaps you’ve seen both white and yellow honeysuckle. As it turns out, all honeysuckle blooms white and turns yellow as it gets older. I will never, ever, ever tire of that smell or sight.

Here’s just one of the probably two hundred honeysuckle pictures I’ve taken this year (so far):

That is spring, right there.

On one of my many hikes at PP this week Mackey stopped in the sunlight to wait for me. Mackey is a very sober-minded dog and takes life seriously more often than not. But he was cheerful that morning at Pony Pasture when he took a quick break. In this picture he looks like he’s laughing. And even though it’s from a song about a girl (specifically a brown-eyed girl), it reminded me of the line “Standing in the sunlight laughing.” It’s a pretty song, take a minute (take three minutes and six seconds) and listen to Van Morrison‘s Brown Eyed Girl

“Standing in the sunlight laughing”

The same morning we were leaving and we got back to the parking lot and looked up and there were Red-bellied woodpeckers in a tree. I took this picture while I was leaning against my car. It was like shooting fish in a barrel:

Took this picture while leaning against my car in the parking lot. Isn’t that fun?

I mentioned peonies earlier in this post. They are everywhere in our yard, mostly thanks to Evelyn saving them from my botanical ineptitude. Like the honeysuckle and multiflora rose, their fragrance fills the space anywhere nearby. We have them in the living room, the bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen, they’re all over the house. Our friend Marion is an accomplished gardener and tells us these particular peonies are Festiva maxima.

Festiva maxima

I like clover for many of the same reasons I love honeysuckle. It’s cheerful, for one, or at least it appears that way to me. And it’s springy and it’s outdoorsy and it smells wonderful. Mainly I like honeysuckle and clover and multiflora rose because you can be the most botanically inept guy on your block and still be overrun with all that nice stuff. This white clover was at Pony Pasture:

Gorgeous

And this purple clover was at Bryan Park:

Which is more gorgeous? Both.

I was hiking around there with my buddy Ethan (the guy who was my Guest photographer in April) when we saw the clover. We also saw this Eastern Phoebe sitting on branch waiting for a bug:

That is a lovely bird

When I was in the driveway this week photographing honeysuckle and peonies, birds were going back and forth to the feeder. I know it should be obvious what this is, but I ran out of gas (in the ornithological sense) while trying to identify it. Feel free to identify it in the comments space or send me an email. Or leave it a mystery. Perhaps it’s a house sparrow, or not:

That is a classic “lucky shot.” Nice bird, nice light, nice rose in the background.

Sometimes on blog posts you can’t find anything to write about or photograph, especially when you’re committed at a blog post a week. Other blog posts are like this one when you have to leave out pictures and words. So be it.

I was thinking about how much it’s like heaven to live here this time of year. I was recently reading Mark Twain’s immortal Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At the beginning of the book he’s in the house with the Widow Douglas’s sister Miss Watson. She’s talking to him about heaven (“the good place”) and “the bad place.” She says that in heaven “all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.” Huck Finn wrote “So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.” I suspect he’d enjoy himself here in central Virginia.

Anyway. I expect that everyone who can get outdoors is getting outdoors right now. I encourage you to go beyond your normal “loop” if you’re here in central Virginia if your “loop” doesn’t contain both honeysuckle and multiflora rose. Because just this week, maybe – maybe if we’re lucky – for the next ten days, you’ll be able to smell these two at once. A little preview for when you get to “the good place.”

Meanwhile, have a great week, all best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 4 Comments

Swallowing my pride

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

11 May, 2014 Swallowing my pride

I heard an unusual racket coming from the underside of a bridge in downtown Richmond earlier this week. I looked up and there were dozens of swallows flying around dozens of mud nests. My buddy and I were watching trains downtown and we’ve been at the same spot week in and week out for years – and there’s never been a swallow or anything else nesting on that bridge. This was a treat:

A Cliff Swallow on its well-constructed mud nest

Here are a few together:

A few birds together on a couple of nests

I’ll get more next week. There were maybe nearly a hundred nests. Very, very exciting. When I first saw them I assumed they were Barn Swallows, since that was the only swallow I was familiar with. Barn swallows flew alongside the tractor every evening at camp during the summer. I was sure I would have noticed the white spot on the forehead though, so I was surprised to see that and looked them up. I learned that these were in fact Cliff Swallows. I may have mentioned (I hope I’ve mentioned) a bird ID site called Birds of North America. I’ve subscribed to it (it is quite reasonable) and am learning a great deal about birds. Here’s a great quote from the introduction to the section about Cliff Swallows:

Doubtless the Lord—to paraphrase Lincoln’s aphorism—must love the Cliff Swallows, else he would not have made so many of them.

William C. Dawson (1923)

And I’ve been hanging around outdoors for fifty-two years and never even heard of them. Crazy. Glad I know what to look for now. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression (the song title) “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” – those are Cliff Swallows! Also I’ll bet they kill way more mosquitoes than any backyard bug zapper. And their noise is much more pleasant. Speaking of pleasant noises. I didn’t know this – I admit my ignorance – until I wrote this post. Not even until the final edit! I just learned this – this minute. That “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” is (among other things) the name of a 1940 single by The Ink Spots. Quite fun.

Speaking of spring animals. I was hiking at PP a few mornings ago and this guy was swimming in a puddle (these guys will also eat mosquitoes):

Tadpole cruising a Pony Pasture Puddle

Soon to be a frog. I also took the time at PP to do a fun selfie. This is from far away:

Long distance selfie

Same selfie, zoomed in:

House of mirrors

I had another birding experience recently that’s not quite as pleasant as discovering Cliff Swallows for the first time. I ride my bike at West Creek a great deal and there are two large lakes. There are herons and egrets and mallards but there is always – always – a large flock of Canada Geese. I’ve been seeing them for years – for decades now – and I often notice at least one with an unusual looking upturned wing. I finally googled it and learned it’s called “Angel wing.” I’ve read a lot of different articles about it and their hypotheses differ. But the consensus is it’s a nutrition problem of some sort. Crazy. This is a cell phone picture, I’ll get a better one with my real camera:

Canada Goose with “Angel wing.” Very odd.

I have for most of my adult life not been the world’s biggest fan of Canada Geese. But I’ve lately been reading (as I mentioned last week) Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and it’s heightened my sensitivity about a number of subjects. Canada Geese among them. Here’s a healthy young Canada Goose building up its muscles as it works against the current of the James River:

Healthy gosling getting healthier

I’m learning (that’s my goal) as I write more regularly that sometimes the well runs dry. But it’s spring and no wells are running dry in central Virginia any time soon. I misjudged my timing and didn’t quite get to write as much on this blog entry as I’d hoped. I am, however, sticking to my “publishing” schedule and getting a blog post up for the sixth consecutive Sunday. My mom is away today – on Mother’s Day! – and so is my favorite editor, Evie. So all errors (as always) are my responsibility alone. Happy Mother’s Day, and I’ll see you next week,

Jay

PS Here’s a song for my mom, but you may enjoy it too: Mexico

Posted in Birds, Endurance, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows | 7 Comments

May the Fourth Be With You!

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

4 May, 2014 May the Fourth Be With You!

Thanks and groans to my friend Andrew for the title to this post. And for helping today be meaningful! Because he invited me to do a triathlon today! More at the end of this post. Andrew (and his brother Peter) are big Star Wars fans. So am I, but mostly of the original 1977 Star Wars, which predates I suspect some readers of this blog. “May the Force be with you” is from that original movie and even has (who knew) its own wikipedia entry. Which opens thus: “The expression “May the Force be with you” has achieved cult status and is symbolic of the Star Wars legacy. The line has been said by at least one character in each of the Star Wars movies.”

So, first my usual few pictures I’ve taken during the week, then this blog post. Normally I only put up pictures I’ve taken during the week since the last post. But I took this one last Sunday and didn’t put it up and decided it deserved to be on a post. This is a bumblebee on the rhododendron in our backyard:

Pretty in Pink!

As much as I enjoy living in the present, I still miss the dogwood blossoms when they go. This beauty’ll be gone soon. There were gorgeous dogwoods all over the race course today. But none as lovely as this one is from my front yard:

If I live to be a hundred I’ll still smile every time I see a dogwood.

Of course, while the dogwoods are going away, dozens of other plants are just coming in. I’m currently reading Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac. Great timing. I had never in my life heard of a “pine candle.” When I went to bed one evening last week I read the passage “The pine’s new year begins in May, when the terminal bud becomes ‘the candle.’ Whoever coined that name for the new growth had subtlety in his soul. ‘The candle’ sounds like a platitudinous reference to obvious facts: the new shoot is waxy, upright, brittle. But he who lives with pines knows that candle has a deeper meaning, for at its tip burns the eternal flame that lights a path into the future. May after May my pines follow their candles skyward, each headed straight for the zenith, and each meaning to get there if only there be years enough before the last trumpet blows. It is a very old pine who at last forgets which of his many candles is the most important, and thus flattens his crown against the sky. You may forget, but no pine of your own planting will do so in your lifetime.”

Leopold, Aldo (1966-12-31). A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press.

Isn’t that a gorgeous piece of writing? I would give anything to be able to write that way. I once heard that book referred to as a “prose poem.” Anyway, true story, I go out the next day and I pull up in a parking lot near Innsbrook and get out of my car and there are pine trees right in front of me. And I looked at them and – pine candles!:

Look at this! A pine candle!

I didn’t exert myself as much as I could have today, but it’s been a long, long, long one and I’m wiped out and headed for bed. Next week will be a little more detailed. Until then, have a great week. And May the Fourth be With You!

All best,

Jay

Wait – this just in! Literally! Andrew, who pushed himself way harder today than I did (you can look up the race results) just sent me a bunch of pictures! And he took one of me crossing the finish line!:

I finished in the DAYTIME! This is INCREDIBLE! Thanks Andrew! May the Fourth Be With You!!!

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May the Fourth be with you

Earlier this year my old friend Andrew (the one responsible for or to blame for the title of this post) gave me a gift he didn’t know he was giving. On January 16 he included me in an email that began “Hello, gentlemen.

I have signed up for the Monticello Man Triathlon. It is on MAY 4th at Lake Monticello in Fluvanna.

Anyone else interested?”

After eleven consecutive years of Iron distance (140.6 miles) triathlons, I’d decided to take my foot off the gas a little bit in 2014. But I was aimless. Andrew’s invitation came at just the right time! Since I’m giving Andrew credit (and blame) I will include a line he wrote in another email the same day: “ALSO, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the race is on MAY THE 4TH! StarWars Day!!!!!!!!!!!” I will finish this post with a nod to that important date.

Triathlons have been an integral piece of the structure I’ve used to rebuild my life following my accident in 1988. I was training for a triathlon when I had the accident and going back to triathlons felt like the best way to prove to myself that the accident hadn’t slowed me down. The truth is it slowed me down (a lot) but it brought my stubbornness to the fore. I had done two “sprint” triathlons (½ mile swim, 15 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) before my accident. In the years following it I did a hundred plus short distance triathlons then in 2003 moved up to Iron distance (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run). And did that once a year for eleven years. This year I decided to take it easy I had the maximum imaginable amount of fun today at Monticelloman.

I’ve written before and I’ll write again – my goal in any triathlon is to “have a good time.” Which, since they’re timed, might imply a fast time. I am most assuredly not fast. But I do know how to enjoy myself – that is also what it means to “have a good time.” So I go out every race and focus on a “good time” and so far I’ve been one hundred percent successful. If I do a race some day and don’t have a good time, maybe I’ll stop. But if history is any guide, that won’t happen soon.

Here are a couple of pictures of Andrew and me from this today. The first picture is just when we pulled up, around 7:30 this morning:

Chillin’ (pre-)

And the second picture is post race – that lake we swam in (Lake Monticello) is in the background. Notice Andrew wearing that awesome custom-made Darth Vader t-shirt in honor of the date:

Chillin’ post- (see the lake in the background?)

Very, very excellent finisher’s medal:

Bling

Anyway – I shamelessly snagged this image off the internet because I liked that at the bottom it said “HOW WILL YOU CELEBRATE?” And we celebrated in fine style by swimming and biking and running around central Virginia for half the day:

Additional text superfluous

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Posted in Endurance, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Leave a comment

Guest photographer! (and MUCH more!)

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

27 April, 2014 Guest photographer!

Normally I only put pictures that I’ve taken myself in my blog posts. But earlier this week I was hiking at Bryan Park with my friend Ethan and we saw a snake! Ethan took a brilliant picture of it. A caveat first for readers of this blog – there’s going to be a scary picture of a snake! Ethan took a picture that would look great on the cover of National Geographic. Before we saw the snake (a Northern Water Snake) I took pictures of Purple Martins in the nesting boxes at Bryan Park. I’ll put one of those first so you snake-o-phobes have fair warning and can scroll past the snake picture. Should you be so inclined. Then it’s on to the blog post. Ending with a story about the summer camp my brothers and sisters and I attended when we were young.

Meanwhile – look at this Purple Martin!:

A beautiful Purple Martin at Bryan Park

Now (snake-o-phobes, this is your opportunity to skip past this section) for Ethan’s incredible snake photo. Check this out!:

What an image! Better than any snake picture I’VE ever taken! Nice job, Ethan.

Isn’t that just amazing? Way to go Ethan!

Farther down the creek in the same area we watched a cardinal hopping around on the rocks. I was lucky enough to press the button just as he was getting a drink:

A cardinal wetting his whistle

Of course I made it to Pony Pasture a time or two. I’m there so often, always with my camera, that it’s rare for me to get a picture of a bird I’ve never seen before. This week was an exception! When you hike in the same place all the time you know what birds are there and how they sound and how they move. You miss a lot of small ones but I finally noticed a new one on Tuesday. It’s called a Prothonotary Warbler. If you look at that link you’ll see a bird that looks different from this. I believe it’s a seasonal or regional or gender variation. E.g. the one at that link is a male and perhaps this is a female. I don’t know enough about them to tell, only that I do know this is a Prothonotary Warbler. On a website called The Warbler Guide (seriously) it says: “Warblers are among the most challenging birds to identify, with their seasonally changing plumages…”. But check this beauty out:

Prothonotary Warbler – I was lucky to get this picture!

On the same day I was hiking and there were cormorants on the river. They’re not my favorite birds, but sometimes they pose nicely. I took this picture on a Tuesday, but pretend it was a Sunday, and while you’re pretending, pretend that turtles go to church on Sunday, and pretend they go to church on a big rock in the middle of a river. And, let’s keep pretending here, that their preacher is a cormorant. Perhaps he was preaching the Gospel of Matthew, and the miracle of loaves and fish. To the multitude:

Preach it!

Later in the week I saw a hawk in the field. It’s not a great picture, but raptors are always photogenic:

Probably a Red-shouldered hawk

Speaking of not great pictures, I took a slightly improved shot of our red maple. This still isn’t the one I really want but it’s getting closer:

Graceful red maple

That’s the end of the first section for this week. For those who are following this, here are a few paragraphs about another great influence in my youth. Enjoy! Until next week,

Jay

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Camp

I could write a hundred posts about the cabin, I could write as many about Camp. Once again I’ve consulted with my family for “origin” stories about Camp, e.g. when it all began. Sheila (my younger sister) began there in 1971. The rest of us may have started in 1971, or a year later at the latest. Shane was only three in 1971, and you couldn’t go to Camp until you were six, so he didn’t start right away. But I’m getting ahead of myself – some readers of this blog (assuming there are readers other than my mother) are not familiar with “Camp.” It has evolved into a different form than when we were younger, but it still has the same name and is in the same location. The same beautiful 200+ acres in the same rural section of northern Montgomery County, MD. Click on this link if you want to see where it is, and see its current form. The same family still owns it – and they owned it before my parents were even born in the mid-1930’s! Formerly “Camp Waredaca,” now: “Waredaca”

The Indian-sounding name gave it a mysterious aura when I was a child. It brought to mind images of tomahawks and teepees. It still makes me smile that this is how it was named: WAshington REgional DAy CAmp. WAREDACA. Isn’t that great? No marketing department came up with that one.

It wasn’t a day camp when we were there. Our parents dropped us off on Sunday afternoons and picked us up on Fridays. As early as possible on Sunday and as late as possible on Friday, if it was up to us – we loved being there. Mom and Dad were probably not broken-hearted to have us leave either. Although my guess is the house was really, really quiet when we were gone. The whole camp session lasted eight weeks, although we never stayed that long until we began working there. We stayed for either two weeks or four weeks when we were young.

We were campers through age fourteen. We continued at age fifteen as Counselors In Training or “CIT’s.” CIT’s didn’t pay to go to Camp and they didn’t get paid. They earned their keep – I earned my keep – by doing the work that neither campers or counselors had to do. That was where I really learned to wash dishes. Every meal at Camp was served to around a hundred people. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, always on industrial plastic plates, always with reusable plastic cups, and with genuine stainless steel silverware. A rotating pair of CIT’s washed every dish after every meal in giant stainless steel sinks in the kitchen. That’s one reason that hand washing dishes for two people never seems like a chore.

Another job as a CIT was cutting grass. Some fields were very big, many acres, all grass, and I’d get to cut them with the tractor. The same tractors as the ones pulling the wagons at the bottom of this post. I loved it. Maybe for the same reason I like swimming – you don’t talk to anybody and nobody talks to you. If you have anything to figure out, you can figure it out then.

There was never any air conditioning at camp. Young boys – up to I guess age ten or so – stayed in “cabins” that were made of plywood and had screen windows and screen doors – and that was it. At around age eleven on the boys side of camp we moved into military style tents reminiscent of the ones on M*A*S*H. I believe they were military surplus tents. We slept on military surplus metal cots, in the cabins or in the tents. Normally they were bunk beds. There’s a picture of one of those tents at the bottom of this post, and cots. I blurred the guys faces out but shoot me an email (or one of my brothers or sisters, or fb message me) if you want to see the original.

In hindsight, air conditioning and dishwashers and electricity were great things to not have at camp. Another great thing to not have was pavement – none anywhere, no tennis court, no swimming pool, nothing. And there were no showers and we swam in a lake and we took baths in the lake! We took baths with Ivory soap, because it’s the only soap that floats. We had a barn dance in a real barn – who even knew? – at the end of every summer. I’ll put a picture of that barn here too.

This is just an intro to camp. I’ll return to it in future posts. Although I don’t have a lot of pictures. You can send some if you want! In the future I plan to write about inspection, flag, assembly, reveille played (not by me) on a real bugle, taps played on the same bugle, sitting on logs at chapel, the sliding board tree, leather shop, craft shop, print shop, the rifle range, the buddy system, the raft test, the canoe test, campouts, flying, snapping turtles, tether ball, fishing, capture the flag, treasures, care packages, cartoons, the number of subjects is nearly infinite. Although I’d love to hear suggestions! All contributors will receive full credit for their ideas!

Last week was about the cabin, this week is about camp, next week will probably be about triathlons. I’ll be revisiting subjects each week. I’ll be back to camp soon and back to the cabin probably sooner. Come back next week! Until then, all best,

Jay

PS I’ll put all the camp pictures at the bottom of this post. Also, if you’re new to this blog, go to the archives (on the right) and click on a month you enjoy and look back at an old post or two. Some of them have fun pictures and stories. Pictures today from Camp:

This is the barn at Camp. It looked this way when I was first there in the early 1970’s. This is not a recent picture but I believe it still looks this way:

The barn at Camp:

Here’s a picture of a tractor at Camp. That’s one of the boys cabins in the background, I believe Cabin 1, for the youngest boys. I don’t know the precise year of this picture. 1975 is a decent guess. If you know better, please inform me:

A load of campers headed up for a meal. Is my guess.

This is the same tractor. I’m driving. That’s my brother Shane in the yellow hat. This might have been 1980. Again, I am uncertain, and welcome revisions, corrections, suggestions and updates:

Heading back to the Boys cabins. That’s Bunker Hill and Chapel in the background.

This third picture, I don’t even know if I was there. Maybe that’s Kevin driving or maybe it’s me, I can’t tell. It looks like a Barn Dance wagon ride because I see a tie or two and no shorts. This is taken from in front of Boys Cabin Two, facing the lake (where we took baths with Ivory soap, and swam and canoed, etc.), and the main campus – where we ate and washed dishes, etc. – behind that:

Another wagon load heading out

I’ll close with a picture of one of the tents. There were usually as I recall three or four. Most were OD Green – not sure why this one is such an unusual color:

Just another afternoon at Camp. Maybe Rest Period or Inspection or who knows.

Hope you’ll visit next week! Have a great week,

Jay

PS If you know anyone from Camp (or anyone else) who you think may enjoy this, please pass it on.

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Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 10 Comments

Only the beginning…

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

20 April, 2014 Only the beginning…

The title is a snippet from the song Beginnings by Chicago from 1969. Wow – I was eight years old. I’ll return to that at the end of this post.

I’m doing a post a week now (for the second consecutive week!) so the week-to-week pictures will pile up a bit less.

Some of us have noticed a bit of pollen around. In Richmond, it’s hard not to. Even if you don’t have allergies, your car will be covered with it quick. But guess why there’s so much pollen:

Dogwoods:

A dogwood in our front yard. One of Dad’s two favorite trees.

Red maples:

Red Maple closeup – another of Dad’s favorite trees. Maybe a better picture next week.

Purple lilacs:

So beautiful and so fragrant – the other plants can hardly compete.

White lilacs:

The only plant that really gives a purple lilac any competition

Pawpaws:

Pawpaw JUST beginning to open up on the edge of the river at Pony Pasture.

I love every flower in this area. Including dandelions! And there’s more to come. My azaleas are not yet in full bloom, and not a honeysuckle or multiflora rose in sight. They’ll be here any week. Dogwoods and red maples and paw paws and redbuds and azaleas so forth are beautiful but they don’t smell. When the honeysuckle and multiflora rose begin to open up the smell is spectacular. I can hardly wait!

I’ve hiked Pony Pasture for miles and miles and years and years and never gotten a decent picture of a Pileated Woodpecker. Until this morning! This is not the quality I want. But it’s much better than I’ve ever done. They’re roughly the size of a crow. From far away it’s difficult to tell a male from a female. But with a closeup like this it’s obvious. See the white band below her eye, and the black band below that? Males look just like that, except the black band below the eye has a big red spot in it. Here she is, so gorgeous:

Beautiful female Pileated Woodpecker at Pony Pasture this morning.

Also I haven’t done any movies lately but I got a quick one while riding at West Creek last week. Some people have already seen this on fb. This time of year at West Creek they cross between the ponds and get stuck. I picked this one up and carried it across and let it go. Elegant half-gainer with tuck, followed by a reptile (turtle) demonstrating a perfect frog kick (amphibian):

Mackey and Turner and I went to The Ridge Dog Shop last week. Ridge always does an exceptional job and this is what they looked like afterward. They’re handsome boys!:

They’re handsome and happy and ready to go home!

Until next week,

Jay

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The cabin – only the beginning

I began this post with a Barbra Streisand song but swiftly (happily, for me) switched to a song by Chicago. This post is about the cabin, but it is only the beginning (see?) of posts about that subject.

Here are two old pictures of the outside of the cabin:

The cabin in the summer

The cabin in the winter

I could write a year’s worth – more, really – of blog posts about the cabin. I could write ten blog posts about just one season there, or one drive up, before we even arrived. Its impact on my life is rich beyond measure.

Mom says we bought it in April of 1974 and sold it in 2005. So we got it when I was twelve and sold it when I was forty-three or forty-four. I cannot overstate its impact on my life even today, nearly a decade after we sold it.

We never had a television at the cabin. I don’t have one now. We washed dishes by hand, and I continue to do that. We heated it with a woodstove. I do that here too, although I have a great furnace if I get too lazy. There was no air conditioning, but I won’t do without that here. There are no cool mountain breezes in my particular zip code. The cabin was ten minutes from the river, and I’m ten minutes from the river here, except I walked to the river at the cabin. We didn’t drive very much up there. The river at the cabin was the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. You could stand with one foot on our property and one foot in the Shenandoah National Park. You cannot miss our location with this map. It is impossible for anyone to miss – no matter how poor your map skills. It’s worth a look, just to get oriented – that’s what this blog post is for. When you click on the map link you’ll see “Maps – Getting to Shenandoah”. Beneath that, a green map of the entire 100+ mile long park. It extends from Front Royal to Waynesboro. Almost precisely in the center of that map – this is what you cannot miss – there’s a long finger of the park jutting out to the left. Our property was precisely on the tip of that finger. Click on the link here: park map

And from there we did everything. When you don’t have a television it’s astounding how many other things you find to do. Any time of the year in any weather. We had friends named Doug and Doris. They were native to that area and a little bit older than mom and dad. They lived there year round. If you look again at that finger of the park sticking up, our property was on the north side of it and theirs was on the south. I guess it was fifteen minutes or so walk from the cabin to their house. We visited them whenever we were at the cabin, and we were there frequently. Doug and Doris were in many ways an extra set of grandparents to us. Grandparents who in no way resembled the set who shared our DNA. When we first visited Doug and Doris in 1974 I recall their party line telephone quite clearly. If you picked it up, you might hear a neighbor talking with someone else. There was no paved road in view from their house. I’ve been up there within the last five years; there is still no paved road in view. Only railroad tracks. When we were there it was the Norfolk and Western Railway. Now it’s the Norfolk Southern. And – this is another way they didn’t resemble our parent’s parents – they had a horse. And a cow. They drank milk from the cow and made butter. They had chickens. If the cow had been eating onion grass, the butter tasted like onions. They had chickens, including Araucana chickens, which lay colored eggs. They had pigs. Every autumn they slaughtered one and let us help. And made ham and sausage and bacon and lard and scrapple and ate it all year round. They got their water from a spring. They had dogs and cats but their dogs and cats were dissimilar to the ones my biological grandparents had.

To help you understand how close we were, Doris asked when we were younger that dad and I be pallbearers at her funeral. We of course accepted that honor, and she died up of natural causes in the valley in 1999. The funeral was at the Rest Haven Cemetery in Shenandoah. She was seventy-four.

I’d planned on keeping this section brief and now it’s not. I’ve stuck to my goal of adding a section at the bottom for two consecutive weeks now – so I’m happy. More next week, hopefully. Until then, all best,

Jay

PS I couldn’t stop so quickly. I’m enjoying this section. I found an old, old picture of Doug and Doris. Mom might know where this was taken, I don’t. Doris smiled a lot. Doug smiled when we were working outdoors but I don’t think he cared much for being indoors. A man after my own heart.

Doug and Doris. My third set of grandparents. A lot of my current personality came from those two.

Another picture of our 1971 Ford Econoline van parked behind the cabin. We bought it new and had it forever. We made many memorable trips to the cabin in that van. We got a good deal on it because the shade of blue on the top didn’t match the shade of blue on the bottom.

Our 1971 Ford Econoline parked behind the cabin.

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Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Trains | 3 Comments

ganbatte

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Jay McLaughlin

13 April, 2014 ganbatte

For those of you who don’t know (most of you do), I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle in 1988. Nearly half my life ago. I was in a coma for five days and everything changed. I’m pausing to reflect a little bit. And put up a few pictures!

I plan (we’ll see if it works out) on putting up weekly posts beginning now. If I put up another one a week from today you’ll know I’ve been successful… once. Since I’ll be posting more frequently, there will be fewer pictures per post. But over the course of a month the number of pictures will be about the same. I’m sticking to 1 post/week to encourage myself to write a little bit more, and with a little bit more structure. I hope you enjoy what I write. Negative and positive feedback are both encouraged, I have a thick skin. So here are a few pictures plus a little blurb on the end. The “blurb on the end” this week is slightly longer than my average blurbs will be. I have a huge list of ideas for subjects. From before my accident, from after my accident, my family, my Yukon trip, my education, my work, my triathlon experiences, pets, friends, travels, Camp, the cabin, I won’t run out of material soon.

My last blog entry was “Prediction is very difficult…” a week ago today on Sunday, April 6. Some of the pictures in this post have already been on facebook. A few are new and of course not everyone sees facebook. Mackey and Turner and I had the good fortune to look at a Barred Owl for a long time when we were at Pony Pasture on Tuesday. The leaves are still mostly not on the trees and a lot of light comes in. Plus Barred Owls in my experience around Pony Pasture have always been relaxed. And they stay out in the middle of the day. I took these pictures at 11:30 AM. Here are a couple of pictures I enjoyed. They’re both the same owl:

Wise, I am sure

The same owl a moment later. This was ~11:30 AM. Perhaps she was seeing potential lunch on the ground.

We have robins in central Virginia all year round but they are everywhere now, and very noisy. Cheerful-noisy, though, not annoying-noisy. They sound like spring. I was with a friend at Bryan Park last week and this robin was sitting on a branch singing non stop:

What a classic spring scene.

Another bird we’re hearing a lot now is of course our state bird (our state and six other states) the Cardinal. This picture doesn’t do the male much justice and the female even less but I felt lucky to catch them together. I took this picture at Pony Pasture this morning with Ev and Mackey and Turner:

An elegant cardinal pair, ignoring us

I tried to catch these guys together but it’s almost as difficult as a pair of birds together. They look handsome and the grass is refreshing:

Another elegant pair who ignores me, unless I have peanut butter or cheese

Speaking of dogs, I don’t want to wait another week to post a picture of one of my dad’s favorite trees, a dogwood. This one is in our front yard. It’s blooming more and more every day. I took this picture yesterday. You can tell those buds just opened up since they still have a faint tinge of green. When they’re fully mature they’ll be white. Hopefully I’ll get a nice white one in my next post. They’re so graceful. That tree is on the north side of our front lawn. Dad’s other favorite, a Japanese Red Maple is on the south side of our front lawn. The leaves are just opening up. Maybe I’ll put that up next week too.

Dogwood on our front lawn

The James River is a great source of calm for me, and sometimes the water itself looks beautiful. I brush these photos up a bit, in a manner of speaking, but I don’t really “do” anything to them – this is the precise color and glow it had right while we were looking at it. We were there early and the sun was shining on the water:

Anytime you're looking at the river is the best time to be looking at the river.

Anytime you look at the river is the best time to look at the river.

Until next week!

Jay

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ganbatte

I’ve had the opportunity and the blessing to have my life divided into two distinct halves. I was born on August 23, 1961, and my life was great. It’s great now. I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle on April 5, 1988 and for a long time my life was not so great. As a result of (in descending order from most important to least, but they were all important) my family, the Tuckahoe Volunteer Rescue Squad, and the Medical College of Virginia, I went from a very difficult place to one I am very happy about. In my next few blog entries (maybe more) I’ll address a few great experiences before my accident and a few great experiences since.

The title of this post is a Japanese word an old friend taught me early in my recovery. My friend is an American guy like me but he’d lived in Japan a while and learned this word. In the early years of my recovery, a favorable outcome was far from guaranteed. I lost a lot, and repeatedly mistook the light at the end of the tunnel for what turned out to be yet another oncoming train. I continued to lose a lot. My friend taught me the word “ganbatte.” Its meaning, briefly, is captured in that blog post as “It is a saying used to encourage people to try hard.” It means “don’t give up.” To remind myself, I put it on my license plate:

My constant reminder.

I’ve had very, very interesting experiences in my life. Of course I’m fifty-two years old and that’s more than enough time to have interesting experiences. I’ve read there’s an oriental curse (who knows) that says “may you live in interesting times.” It remains to be seen whether I will relate my interesting experiences in an interesting fashion. But I’ll attempt to do that in this space over coming blog posts. If I sense any gathering of story-telling momentum, I’ll stay with it. If no momentum gathers, I’ll let it go and not a great deal will be lost.

Telling a story has a beginning (think “once upon a time”) and I don’t know where this one begins. A wise man (nearly as wise as my late father, and that is high praise) once told me that in order to write, you must first pick up a pen. I type (trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to see my hand writing) so here I am. My late father’s advice on writing was an unbending “begin-with-an-outline” and I’m beginning without one. Because I am beginning.

Long time or thorough readers of this blog I hope will forgive me if I cover some already-covered ground. This blog is over three years old, I’ve written 120+ entries, and the important events in my life stuck out then and they stick out now. The first vignette that comes to mind is not my first post-accident memory, but I was still an inpatient at MCV, so it was between April 5, 1988 and mid-June of 1988. If birth-to-accident was the “first half” of my life and accident-to-now is the “second half” of my life, my inpatient time at MCV was vaguely a nexus. “Nexus” defined by my Mac dictionary: “a connection or series of connections linking two or more things”. I arrived in an ambulance in a coma with the lessons of the first twenty-six years. I’ve learned many, many new ones since. One that stays with me is something a nurse told me late in my stay.

To give perspective, I had been healthy before my accident. When I got hit by the car on my bicycle I was training for a triathlon. I’d already done two the year before. I’d also been married the year before, and we had moved from an apartment to a house five days earlier. I’d been working at the same company for seven years and had a job in an office downtown. I was not by any means arrogant, but if you’d asked me on April 4 what the future held I’d have painted a very rosy picture. Now this nurse is talking to me and I’d lost about forty pounds from a frame that didn’t have a lot of extra weight to begin with. I had scars on most of my limbs and on my face and my head was shaved and my eyes were still black. The bones in my lower leg had come out through the skin. They’d been put back in and the scar was shut – I was still in a cast and in a wheelchair, and one of my arms was in a cast too. For a successful, healthy, newlywed twenty-six year old man, the reversal of self-image is difficult to grasp. And the nurse leans over and says:

“Remember – we’re all a lot more the same than we are different.”

I don’t know why that memory is etched so vividly. My brain was still very, very battered at that time, and as an inpatient I was still on lots and lots of drugs. But I can hear every word, I can see the nurse’s face, a little bit of the background, everything. So many other memories of that nexus-era are so gray and fuzzy and hazy. The crispness of this memory is exceptional. It’s equally exceptional how unfaded it is.

As some of you know, I had the great good fortune to eventually return to college and earn a degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. And now I have the even better fortune of spending time with people with disabilities. I always think about how similar we are.

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Posted in Birds, Dogs, Endurance, Flowers, Fun, People, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | 2 Comments

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Only the beginning…

ganbatte

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