WHY I WEAR A SEATBELT

the donkey hay barn

 

A friend of mine hit a tree with his Chevy pickup dead center the front bumper at 70 mph without seatbelt. The motor was pushed back almost to the seat with transmission under the seat. The air bag knocked him out. He woke lying on the seat with the gear shift lever in his hand, separate from the transmission. Totally wrecked his truck and he survived without a scratch. Ever since then, he has been an advocate for not wearing a seatbelt. The wreck occurred when he was carrying in the back of the truck a big, heavy front-end loader for a tractor. He took off racing with a friend. In the excitement of the race, he forgot about the weight. He went around a curve, the front-end loader in the back fell over and radically changed the truck's center of gravity in an instant. The shift caused the right front tire to leave the road, which pulled the rest of the truck off the road into the locust that remained in place. He has not convinced me I don't need a seatbelt.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I grew up in the 1950s when there were no seatbelts. I remember seeing car races on television where the drivers wore seatbelts. It seemed reasonable to me that we needed seatbelts in cars. A lot of times people drove as fast as on a nascar track then, and when they wrecked, bodies were slung like shrapnel from an exploding grenade. I never wanted to fly through the windshield face first, nor fly out a door that suddenly vanished. In high school, 1959, a guy a year ahead of me had graduated and, like high school graduates, friends tend to hang together during the first summer they're out of school. One night he with a carload of his buddies went to a bar where he had an altercation with the man working the bar who pulled a shotgun on him and told him to get out. He drove his 57 Plymouth with his friends in the car back to his house to pick up his shotgun and go back to create a problem. Drunk out of his mind, of course. In Wichita, Kansas, where all the roads are straight lines.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

He crossed a river bridge going over 100mph when he lost control and the car wrapped around a huge oak tree trunk just a few feet from the bedroom window of the people sleeping in the house nearby. Killed his friends. He was thrown from the wreckage. The driver's side door wrapped around his body and kept him safe as they flew, slid, bounced and rolled down the highway. He survived, but it wrecked his life utterly. I was dating his sister at the time and she filled me in on the details of the event. I knew a guy here in Alleghany who, several years ago, left the road in Glade Valley in a curve, too drunk to even stand up. The road on the left side had a bank that went almost straight down to a meadow with cattle. He went through a power pole twelve feet above the ground, breaking it in half, and woke up lying on the hood next to his 12 year old nephew, also on the hood. No seatbelts. Both survived without a scratch, though he lost his driver's license for life, and the car was totally destroyed. It was a good car too. I hated to see it die.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I'm recalling my friend Jean who once made fun of me using a seatbelt when I told her I was not going to start the car until she fastened her belt. She said she didn't use a seatbelt. I told her you do now or we're not going. She said, "Are you afraid of dying?" Like it's unusual to fear death. I said it's not dying that's the problem. Chances are, if something happens, death will not be the outcome. I told her of a time I had to leave the road over somebody passing a line of cars in my lane. That's happened more than once. I said when you leave the road, it's bumpy, really bumpy. I don't want to be thrown all over the inside of the car, lose control and hit a tree. A seatbelt keeps me in place when something unforeseen happens. I want to be in place to avoid losing control. I think she got it. She wore one afterwards. Old man Tom Pruitt, who, by the way, cut the trees and built the barn in these pictures, also never wore a seatbelt, drove his pickup over meadows like it was the road. I used the belt to keep my head from getting bashed over and over by the truck's roof. It was soon after NC passed a law requiring seatbelts. Tom asked, "You use your belt on account of the law?" I said, "Yes," though I was considering the vertebrae in my neck. The law never entered my mind.

 

the donkey hay barn

photos by tj worthington

 

 

*

 

 



A FOGGY DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN

crow feather

This is the feather a crow left me yesterday on the walkway to the donkey gate. 11.5 inches. It was waiting on a rock I walk on. It brought to mind a cat leaving a mouse on the walkway for me to find, a gift, a reminder of friendship, of the bond between us. I feel the same about the crow feather. My Air Bellows crows know I'm the one throwing out seeds for them. They don't get enough to live on, but it makes a good snack to a crow out looking for something to eat. Crows are to me the essence of bird. They are a silhouette of bird with a beautiful flow of flying. One day, years ago when my road was gravel, I turned down Waterfall Road a half mile from the house and a crow took up flying above where a hood ornament might have been, just a few feet in front of the windshield. I watched its bird body bob up and down with the wing beats; it looked around at me from one side, then the other. A red-tailed hawk did the same thing in the same place another time. They gave me the sensation of flying directly behind them. Of course, I know the crow that placed the feather on my walkway did not intentionally put the feather where I found it. The crow was in the white pine above, possibly preening its feathers. I'm surprised a crow came this close to the house. I never see a crow in my small forest around the house. I don't know why they stay out of the bird feeding area. I can only guess they're uncomfortable in a place they can't see out of. They prefer it out in the open where they can see in all directions, or high in trees. I started feeding them the other side of the road where they could scan both directions up the road after seeing a couple of crows at different times walking in the road out front, looking into the bird feeding area with a longing to have some seeds, but hesitant to step in among the thick growth. I imagine the feather floated down through the tree's branches from up high and happened to land where I'd see it first thing in the morning. I don't like to assume the crow was communicating with me in its mind. I also don't like to assume it was not.

 

rhododendron in the fog

 

A beautiful, damp, foggy day all day long. I went out with camera and made some pictures in my small wooded area. The fog gives the trees, the leaves, the branches a sense that they were drawn on plain white paper. I can see the above as a Japanese ink drawing. The fog makes trees appear to be drawn on paper too. It's in fog I think I see trees best. Yet, there is nothing like a vibrant green tree  in June, the leaves fresh with the yellow-green of spring in them. Distances are loaded with details, though in the fog the details of distance are eliminated, leaving the subject itself, the tree to stand in its own beauty. Asters are blooming now. Meadows all over the county are loaded with Queen Anne's lace. A big meadow white with Queen Anne's lace is a stunning sight. A meadow full of Black Eyed Susans is a beautiful sight to behold, too. Joe Pye flowers are opening. They grow on stalks up to ten feet with pointed leaves that ring the stem all the way up. Big cluster of pink flowers on top that attracts butterflies. They flower for a few weeks, and in that time they have an aura of fluttering butterfly wings, yellow, black, orange and blue. The birds, chipmunks and squirrels are quiet today. Rarely do I see a bird today. Outside with the camera I saw a cardinal hopping around in the maple tree, hiding behind the trunk and branches, anxious for me to go back to my barn; he wanted to visit the cantina. I only saw the donkeys at carrot time. They disappeared in the foggy meadow. Something about the fog makes me feel safe, like under a big down comforter in winter, like sitting here in my mancave with walls covered with paintings and photographs, shelves and shelves of cds and several stacks of books. Memories, associations, five African masks, two of them "authentic." The one with pointed teeth I feel is about balance. It's on the wall where I can see it much of the time. It's my reminder of interior balance. People coming in here that don't know me become visibly uncomfortable seeing the masks.

joe pye

 

A memory surfaced of a morning at seven when two guys came to the door. I happened to be up. They were with the work crew working on a new house up the road. This was something like fifteen years ago. These were from back in a holler hillbillies, the kind you only see in town for court. No real crimes, just gettin into shit. Driving drunk, carrying a small amount of reefer, breaking and entering for liquor, beating up a girlfriend, the people of court day. They were good guys, pleasant and friendly. One of them had a J and we passed it around while we talked. It turned out one of them had heard I was a white witch. He explained that's the good kind. He heard that good things happened to people that have to do with me. First I ever heard of that. I'm recalling a time maybe seven or eight years ago at the table with friends Jr Maxwell and Jean Philips. We were good friends who got together in the evening after work for drinks with Jr. I told them of the experience. When I said good things happen to people around me, both answered, That's right. I still don't get it, don't see it, don't understand it. All the better. Best not to pay it any mind. If it is so, in whatever degree, it is something passing through me that is not me. It only means I allow the flow of whatever it is. I've got these two complete strangers in my house, don't recall ever seeing either of them before, 7 in the morning getting high and telling me I'm a white witch. The one who brought it up said he was in a place in his life where he needed something good to happen and hoped stopping in to see me would help. Whatever. I don't think about it because I don't want to start thinking I can control whatever it is. After much thought, I have come to believe that if there is something to it, it's because I pray inside for everyone I know, everyone I meet. Not on my knees smelling farts in the chair cushion at prayer meeting; merely a notation, a request to notice this person. Missionarizing I absolutely forbid myself. I find talking with a missionary attitude the ultimate in arrogance. All it's saying is, if you don't have what I have, you aint got nothin--you're going to hell, so there! The guys stuck around for an hour or so, I was glad to be acquainted with them on friendly terms. They decided not to go to work and went up the road in the other direction.   

 

rhododendron

 

In the years when I roamed these mountains on foot with dog companion Aster, a good dog to walk with, I came upon several stacks of rocks I can only call cairns. They were deep in the woods the other side of the Parkway and up the hill to the east of Brinegar's Cabin. It's about half a mile from the house. They are largely flat stones stacked in a circle and upward like a big barrel with a curved top, solid stone made of hundreds of rocks. I think of them as cairns, landmarks and monuments to the man who cleared the field maybe a couple centuries ago by cutting the trees, pulling up the stumps with horses and chains, picking  up the rocks, throwing them onto a wagon a horse or an ox was pulling. I wanted to photograph them in fog and snow. We had a couple inches of wet snow and a little fog. I headed out with Aster to cross the farm next door on foot and the Parkway. Easy walk, beautiful day. I found the cairns with snow lining every rock. They were beautiful. The fog gave them a timeless sense. They could be Neolithic or just a century ago, or any time in between. I couldn't find my way out. Walked in circles. Kept coming back to the same places. It became frustrating. I was not going to spend the night in the freezing forest in snow. It was not going to happen. After much walking, I realized I was getting nowhere walking. I stopped walking. Walking wasn't getting me out, so let's try not walking. I knew I wanted to go north. Looked at the trees for moss on the north side. Moss grew all the way around the trees. The sky was a cloud of fog. I stood gaping, wondering how standing still was going to help. A hole opened in the fog just big enough to show the sun and closed. It told me where south was. I went north and walked out of the woods in a bee line telling self if I want to go walking any distance on a foggy day, I'd do well to learn how to use a compass. Fog is treacherous for driving and divine for walking. It's a good day to stay at home in a sweater and heavy socks, the second day of August.  

path to a bird feeder

 

 

*