DONKEYS IN THE MIST

jenny and jack

 

New changes in the donkey meadow suggest that Jenny might actually be pregnant. It used to be when I went outside that Jenny would be the first to see me. The last few days it has been Jack who notices first and Jenny goes on acting like she didn't see a thing, same as Jack before. I'm looking for explanation for the change in last 4-5 days. Jenny's jealousy has waned. Jack's attentiveness has increased. The mornings I go out with carrot, Jack sees me first, tears out running and braying, Jenny looks up and walks toward the gate. Jack was maybe twenty feet beyond Jenny when I appeared. He started running. He stopped beside Jenny and looked at me quizzically, not certain of his perception. I've found he does not recognize my face beyond fifty or so feet. He looked like he was questioning. I called his name twice and held the camera up to take a picture. He started braying and ran to the gate in full bray. Jenny raised her head and took her time. She had a new demeanor. I've wondered if her foot hurt again. Doesn't appear to. Finally, it came to me that Jenny might be going into a new phase of her pregnancy. What she's feeling going on inside, I presume she does not understand, though donkeys have a complexity of knowing that I'm not able to understand. I dare not presume. Nonetheless, she's deferring Alpha to Jack, which I've only seen her do when she's not feeling right. She was gentle toward Jack over the carrots, didn't blow, grunt and dive at his neck with her teeth for receiving a chunk of carrot. She acted like it was ok for him to have all the carrot he wanted. I think I've detected a part of her belly showing some expansion, but don't know donkeys well enough to tell with any degree of certainty. Time will answer the question. The only way Jenny could not be pregnant would be if she or Jack were infertile. My thinking is she possibly conceived in February, the coldest part of this winter, meaning baby donkey will arrive in February. It takes twelve months for donkeys.

 

 

jack starts to run

jack brays

 

Jack has become my friend. In the three months before Jenny's arrival, I took my time getting acquainted with Jack, a little at a time. I was wary of him for awhile and he was wary of me. We learned to trust each other and he became my friend. He learned to trust my hands. Jenny's arrival took all Jack's attention. I left them alone for a month. They rampaged all over the meadow. Jenny did not know me. I assessed the safest place was my side of the fence, so I let them fight it out. It's been slow getting to know Jenny due to her circumstances of being taken away from her life before and muscled, against her will, into a strange meadow with a sex-crazed wild ass. I respected her grief and did not push her, let her come to me in her own time. That time is long past and by now my relationship with Jenny is equal to my relationship with Jack. Only difference, we have different histories and the donkeys have different personalities. Having seen Jenny's relaxation with women she meets, I wonder if Jack feels identity with my gender, too. We do have a personal feeling of friendship I don't yet have with Jenny. It feels like I have mutual affection with Jenny. I've only known Jenny as Alpha, which I've learned by now is not who she is, but a role. Jenny without the role is as calm as Jack. The Alpha in Jack appears to make him protective of Jenny. His attitude toward me seems friendlier in his Alpha role. Before, we were friends across a divide, and now it's like the divide has narrowed considerably. Jack has a happy demeanor about him in these days of feeling protective with Jenny. It was love at first sight for Jack when he met his babydoll. He's been smitten since their first night together. I wonder, too, how much of his apparent delight has to do with Jenny falling in love with him. She still kicks at him when he's a nuisance, though she looks at him now with affection. Asked how I know, I don't know. I feel it, sense it, interpret observation.

jack

jenny

 

Today is the third day of all-day fog. It is a cloud passing over the mountain, a very long cloud. Fog is one of my favorite features of living on a mountain. Sometimes it looks like landscape drawn on white paper with soft graphite lines. I like being inside a cloud. I loved flying through canyons of boiling cumulus clouds and I loved flying through cloud on ascent and descent. I'd feel a very minor reverie for being inside a cloud. Working on the farm, I found when tired and needing a break, I could lie on the ground on my back and watch the clouds until I see them moving. I would lie there and watch the clouds move for a few minutes, then get up and go back to work refreshed. Watching clouds move was refreshing as watching a waterfall. Seeing the fog, I feel the minor reverie as dreamlike where only the subject I'm looking at is visible, all around it, in Shakespeare's words, circled in sleep. I also think of Chinese poet Han Shan when fog is on the mountain.  

 

 

               75

 

          I wanted to go off to the eastern cliff---

 

          How many years now I've planned the trip?

 

          Yesterday I pulled myself up by the vines,

 

          But wind and fog forced me to stop half way.

 

          The path was narrow and my clothes kept catching,

 

          The moss so spongy I couldn't move my feet,

 

          So I stopped under this red cinnamon tree.

 

          I guess I'll lay my head on a cloud and sleep.

 

 

                                               ---Han Shan

                                                   tr Burton Watson

 

 

rhododendron leaves

 

 

 

*

KEEPING IT IN THE ROAD /-\ BRISTOL

bristol 17march2012

picture thanks to nascar website

 

I drove to Glade Creek today to see the Bristol race at Justin and Crystal's. I stopped at the grocery store and bought three pizzas and some potato chips. Vada and Melvin would be there too. Just before I arrived, maybe three miles before I reached the house, fog had set in. It wasn't bad. I thought nothing of it. Later, however, driving home at 9:30 in the dark, the fog was still around. I decided to take Hwy 18 because it has yellow reflectors in the centerline that help on a foggy night. And I didn't know if the fog might be localized or general over the whole county. It was everywhere. A year or so ago I was given a GPS device for the dashboard of the car, which I took for a novelty at the time, given that I seldom go anywhere that I don't know where it is. I found on the drive home tonight the GPS helped tremendously in fog so thick I could only see two car-lengths ahead. I drove between 25 and 35, only a few other cars on the road, none behind me. I could see on the GPS the curves ahead. This is the greatest advantage I've found for it. Sometimes I just use it for the fun of it. Times like tonight I rely on it like it is a device that really does make driving better. I can tell when the road will go straight for awhile and it will tell me where to turn when I can't see the stop sign or the intersection.

 

All the way home, 19 miles, I was a little disconcerted, driving quite a lot slower than usual, so distances between points I recognized seemed quite a lot farther than usual. That was the most disconcerting aspect of the drive. Anticipating the next curve to the right or left, it taking longer than usual, made me sometimes wonder if this was the right road. In the fog, only the curves are recognizable, because there is no landmark to go by. Driving up the mountain, the last 3 miles of the trip, the fog thickened, and keeping all four tires in the road became the primary concern. At one point after driving upward the road leveled out just before an upward curve to the right. The headlights could not see the level part until the car leveled. I had to stop, because the road vanished. Even though I knew exactly where I was in my mind, I couldn't see anything but white. I found the edge of the road and set in motion again, staying between the two ditches, thinking if somebody were riding with me they'd be shitting pellets. It was another test of what I've learned after living half my life, most of my driving life, in the mountains. I'm checked out on driving on ice and in fog. I've passed the mud test many times. The mud test is when driving up the mountain is a mudsling on the road that is gravel in the summer and mud in winter.

 

I take driving on ice, snow and mud in fog and rain a challenge, a tournament of one scored by you make it or you don't. I think of it as a Zen archery experience where you have one arrow, one chance to hit the flying bird. I do not want to walk home in drizzling mist and fog in 40 degree night because the car left the road and I can't get it back on the road, like a wheel in a culvert or just leave the road. Sometimes I'll keep a chant going, keep it in the road, keep it in the road. There are times that I don't want to let my attention waver for half a second, so I remind myself over and over in my mind to keep my mind on what I'm doing. All the way home, I was praising the GPS on the dashboard for being my seeing-eye. I thanked my friends Lucas and Judy Carpenter several times in spirit for the gift of this incomprehensible gadget that really does make a difference. And it comes from a satellite, even through the clouds and fog. A GPS is the deal for driving in fog. I've driven the Parkway in peasoup fog with and without the GPS. It makes a great difference in that I can see when the road will be straight for awhile and the curves as I'm approaching them. It relieves the stress of staying in the road when I can barely see the road. Tonight in Whitehead I was driving along around 20mph and saw a deer standing in the road looking at me. I was easily able to stop. She looked at me awhile. The young one was standing beside the road this side of the fence. It looked at me like a deer in the headlights and followed mama to the other side of the road, nothing urgent.

 

It was a good race at Bristol. Kasey Kahne won. Something has changed this year. The cars ran the track at over 100 mph through the curves. Bristol being a short, half-mile, track, they don't get going at 200 like at Talladega or Daytona. Bristol used to be fender banging, bumping side to side and front to back, but this year they were going faster than usual and it seemed more like at least a mile track. The bumping and banging at Bristol did not used to cause the cars to lose traction and spin out, but this year it seemed like a lot of times when cars touched, somebody would lose traction. Right away Tony Stewart blew his right rear tire that slammed him into the wall. It happened to a few others. They'd be driving through a curve, then pop, into the wall they'd go, outta control. All the driver can do is hit the brakes and hope he doesn't get hit but a few times. At Bristol I feel like I can see the cars outrunning one another. On the long tracks they get going at top end and often get in a long line where nobody can pass anybody because they're all going as fast as they can go. At Bristol there is room for maneuvering that I don't see so much at the longer tracks. Bristol feels more like a race where I can see strategies better, and it generally feels more like a race, a real run to be the first to the finish line when all the cars are equals and the drivers are equals too. Winning is a matter of strategies and entire team efforts. The driver is just one aspect of it. Every part is equally important; the driver, the car, the mechanics individually, the pit crew individually, the spotters individually, the strategists individually, too. Every individual involved, including several I wouldn't know about operating the communication technology between driver and staff.

 

At the end, Kahne drifted his car in circles sending up a cloud of white smoke that is moving on wind currents over the state of Virginia about now on its way to the sea. He made it to the "winner's circle" where the first thing he did was go around to everyone on the team and shake their hands in appreciation. He knew that he would not be the star of the day without every single one of them. I was glad to see there were no big wrecks. Several small fender benders occurred, mostly due to blown tires sending the car into the wall. I like to see the winner win and everybody else have their places on account of a race well run instead of several eliminated by chance pile-ups that end the race for the ones caught up in it. Somebody goes sideways in front of you at 150 mph, tires smoking, there you are. Shit happens. Fortunately, the cars now amount to a cage of bars around the driver, so no matter what happens the driver comes out of it all right. Sometimes one gets hurt. Nobody is happy when it happens. That's part of it, too; the dangerous edge makes it exciting for all concerned. Racing motor vehicles is the only sport I know of where occasionally somebody is killed. Once or twice a year a basketball player will die of a heart attack. A football player sometimes gets shot. In nascar races and in all other car races, death is a possible outcome. All the participants came to terms with it when they started racing. I saw Jeff Gordon have an experience last year that I project made him question getting in a car again. If his knees were not wobbling after that crash, he would have had to have been in a coma. He walked away from the wreckage. All that was left of the car was the cage he was strapped into. It will be a good one for him to write about in his memoir.  

 

 

*  

VISIONS OF THE PAST

little richard 1956

Driving in the light fog tonight coming up the mountain on the gravel part of Brown Road, what we used to call the Pine Swamp Road, it became disorienting. The sides of the road were not clearly visible in the fog. Sometimes it seemed like a big space and no road, driving over barren ground. Up the hill toward the stop sign at Air Bellows Gap Road seemed about double the distance as otherwise. I knew to stay away from the right side of the road because it dropped off pretty steep. Hugged the left side of the road almost too close sometimes. It seemed so much longer than usual I began to wonder if I was really where I thought I was. I might have come home another way and be on Bullhead Road, but knew better. Once I found the stopsign it was like finding home after being lost.

Driving down the mountain earlier in the fog I found myself a bit disoriented going down Wolfe Road from Pine Swamp Road to Mahogany Rock Road. Turned there automatically. Recognized all the houses along the way. When I pulled up to the stop sign, a sign across the road looking at me in the fog said, Mahogany Rock Road. In my mind I was on my way to Tedder Road. What the? How did I get here? I looked to the left and saw the familiar new Camaro and knew this was the right place, but where was Tedder Road? Duh. Turn left,the other side of the Camaro, left again, like always. The fog changed everything.

Rain is wetting the ground after what some weather people call a drought. I tend to think of a drought as when the ground cracks. We're nowhere near that. The rain is a soft, quiet rain that soaks into the ground, refreshes the roots of everything growing. 55 degrees outside the end of September. Yellow leaves appearing in some of the trees and some rhododendron leaves turn yellow too, before falling to the ground to add nourishment to the tree's own roots, and the roots of others nearby. In a few weeks recarpeting the forest floor will begin in earnest.

Just before I started writing, I watched a 9 minute video by George Clinton with the Funkadelics performing Atomic Dog. "It's nothin but the dog in me." It was great music, but boy was it elemental, down to basics. That's what they do. I believe there's something incredible going on with that band. They've been at it since the 60s. George Clinton is a cool old man. He's somewhere around 70 now and still funkin up audiences everywhere he plays and every recording by Funkadelics and Parliament, the same band, just different names with different labels. I saw them play in Boone 6 or 7 years ago. It was a concert to behold. He performed the concert in his pajamas and his voluminous head of dreads was wrapped in a rag that came undone a little bit as the concert wore on. They're the masters of funk. Prince in there with them.

On YouTube I've found some film footage of Little Richard in 1956 singing Long Tall Sally, those songs from that time, Rip It Up, The Girl Can't Help It, Lucille. That's when I was listening to these songs on the radio and buying 45s to play on my little box 45 player. My parents drew the line at Little Richard. I couldn't help it. It really wasn't parent defiance. At the time, I felt like it was an unfortunate consequence of something I can't help but like a lot. They disliked it a lot. I could only play Little Richard in my room down low. When I was 14 he was playing at an auditorium downtown Kansas City. I knew how to get there by bus. I wanted to go really bad, but I'm not much of an adventurer into the unknown.

The city was full of teenage gangs and hoods and knives, etc. It was the time of James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, Marlon Brando, On The Waterfront, Mamie VanDoren, ducktails that hoods had. Elvis imitated hood style with his duck tail. Collar turned up. Zip guns, bicycle chains. It was the time of Juvenile Delinquency. The Fonz isn't even close. I knew a little bit about what was going on in those ways and hesitated to enter the unknown of a sea of probably black kids just a couple years after integration. Racial tension was sky high. 1956. I didn't feel like playing target. Then, I believed there would be no trouble, and have believed it to this day, but was too young to be certain of it. I've learned by many experiences later that I've been able to go into racially charged atmospheres and do fine. I go in peace. It works. Turns out it's a martial arts principle.

I did get to see Little Richard preach. I'd been in the mountains about a year when he turned up at Winston-Salem State Auditorium. He was good. He prowled like a jungle cat, a black leopard, wearing a black suit, back and forth along the lip of the stage like one of those cats in a cage. He has a tremendous charisma. When I was looking at his early videos, I came upon one of him at the Grammy Awards show with David Johanson (New York Dolls early 70s) in 1988. Little Richard took off making a joke, "and the winner is...ME" and laughed at his silliness. He took off talking to the audience, you never give me any awards and I'm the architect of Rock and Roll. The audience jumped to their feet to applaud him. He ended calling himself the originator. He is. There's no two ways about it. The audience knew it. Everybody knows it. He sobered up and went to open the envelope, the winner is, and he bent over in giggles like he couldn't believe what he saw. He said, Me, and broke loose laughing.