Power back on again - updated and complete 12/5/01

A little bit of house keeping here for a moment. First, there has been a lot of trouble with the e-mail out here of late. Last week the problem was with the local server in Jasper - they have switched over to some new equipment and a number of their customers have had problems, including us. Many of the e-mails that I have replied to have been rejected - and I normally delete an e-mail as soon as I reply to it, so don't get the chance to reply again once it has been rejected. So if you sent me an e-mail and did not receive a reply, forgive me. I solved the e-mail problem by switching my outgoing server to my server in Fayetteville (The Net Connection), and everything worked just fine. (I will often receive 50-75 e-mails in a single day.)

However, yesterday the Fayetteville server was bombarded with a half million junk mails at once and their system was in a mess for part of the day - more rejected e-mails! I think everything is cleared up for now, at least until the next thing comes along.

THE FULL MOON. It was widely reported in the media that there was a full moon on Halloween - the first one on Halloween in many years (this would have also been a "Blue Moon" since it would have been the second on in a single month). NOT TRUE! The actual time of the full moon was at 5-something this morning, which puts the full moon on November 1st and not October 31st. As my wife points out, that is a very minor point, but not really - we will have a Blue Moon in November and not in October. A Blue Moon is a very special time that doesn't come around too often, and we need to make sure that we celebrate it in the correct month!

GRAVEL in the driveway. It has taken quite a while, but we finally have our road down to the cabin fixed. It sustained a great deal of damage during the Haley Zega search from all of the constant traffic. We have attacked it from several fronts, or should I say from several different pocketbooks. Pam's parents paid for the first stretch of gravel (as a wedding present - VERY smart in-laws I have!). Pam and I paid for another dozen loads of gravel. Roy and Norma gave us gravel as a wedding present too (VERY smart friends!). And finally, a coalition made up of friends of the Zegas, Governor Mike Huckabee's office, and the Newton County Judge Harold Smith, all worked together to get the final stretch of the drive graveled. THANKS SO VERY MUCH TO ALL! The driveway is still rather rough, but you can drive down it without spilling the contents of everything in the car now.

And finally, we did purchase a new vehicle. Actually I got it for Pam's birthday present. I had originally wanted to buy another SUV just like the one that I have been driving for the past couple of years (now has nearly 100,000 miles on it). This SUV is far and away the best SUV on the market, is the safest, and drives like a sports car, and is a LOT cheaper than most people think (Lexus, BMW, Toyota, and most of the full-size SUV's cost a LOT more). But we discovered that it was simply not large enough for a few of the things that we need to do during the year. I can't stand those large SUV's - plus they handle like a truck and get terrible gas mileage (our SUV gets in the mid-20's). I have had a number of mini-vans over the years and have always loved them and found them to be practical for me. So that is what we got. It was a struggle with the dealer to the very last minute, but I came away with a pretty good deal after all (nearly $8,000 discount). I was appalled at some of the tricks they tried to pull on me. And the final blow was when the finance guy called me a fool as I was walking out of his office - VERY POOR BUSINESS in my book! Yep, I was a fool alright - I was NOT taken in by all of his lies!!! (I think the dealer was sort of peeved that I got the best of them...if anyone can ever get the best of a car dealer.) As it turns out, Pam likes the old SUV even better than the new mini-van, so I will be driving the van most of the time. I put more than a third of a million miles on the last two mini-vans that I had, and I love them! Happy birthday dear - thanks for the new van!

Oh, yea, I must tell you about the shooting star (or whatever) that we saw the other night. It was in the eastern sky, low to the horizon. It was a bit hazy out, with not too many stars visible, although the moon was shining through the haze. This shooting star begin to light up the sky - then it grew brighter and brighter and brighter. The head of it was green, while the long tail was red. It kept on going for several seconds. I had never seen a shooting star like that one before, so figured it was a satellite burning up in the atmosphere or something, or a really LARGE chunk of space!

11/2/01 No shooting stars this morning. I was up and soaking in the hot tub at 4am, and am happy to report that the wind has finally died down a bit. Good grief that was a long blow! Lots of dark clouds chasing each other around, and the only thing visible upstairs besides the clouds was the moon, low in the western sky. It was peeking out from behind those fast-moving dark clouds every now and then. Kind of like a strobe light effect - the flash of the moon, then dark, then another flash. Hey, I thought disco was dead?

We had an electrical problem up at the office yesterday that I will have to deal with in the coming days. One of the three big wires feeding the office from the main power pole up on the hill burned through, and we lost all power to the office. The electric man was nice enough to track down the problem for me, and I was able to rig up several of the outlets and get them working. The burned wire is somewhere underground between the building and the power pole (all utilities here are underground here). So I will have to dig it all up and look for melted wire, hoping that it won't melt the other wires in the meantime.

Speaking of digging, no new news on the well. The pump man has not been back out to try to get his rig setup (he was supposed to be here Wednesday, then Thursday, and now today, but we have heard no word - typical).

It is getting light now here at the cabin, and those dark clouds are sinking down to our level - can't see much other than one distant hill, and a very dark valley below. I want to get out for a hike today and report on the last little bit of fall before the forest goes dormant. It feels a bit like rain, and we sure could use some. Aaaahhhhhhh, what a great thing is it to stand out in the middle of the forest and take that heavy air deep into your lungs! The woods are very earthy now, even more than ever because of all the leaves on the ground.

By midday it began to rain lightly, just enough to wet things down a bit and bring out some incredible, rich COLOR!!! Pam had to make a trip into town, and before she could get to the highway she had already called me three times because the color was so intense, and she wanted for me to get out of the office and go take pictures. I decided that it was the right thing to do, so I grabbed my camera gear and headed out.

I only made it a hundred yards before I stopped and got out to look at a scene. Beautiful colors, but nothing that I could really photograph. I drove on, but had to stop again before I reached the end of our property. Same deal - really nice color, but the composition wasn't quite right. Our eyes play tricks on us and will often see a perfect scene when there really are many distracting elements there that we automatically delete in our brains.  Over the years I have kept an unofficial tally of how many times I have to stop and look at a scene before I actually take out the camera gear to shoot it. EIGHT times. That is how many times I will stop to look at a scene for every one that I take a picture of. And it usually takes many different scenes that I actually shoot before I will use/publish a photo. In other words, when I am out looking for a photograph, I will often stop and look at a couple dozen scenes for every image that I use. Such is the life of a nature photographer who is obsessed with getting a perfect image!

One of the maples along the road

By the time I had reached the highway I had stopped 17 times, but only photographed one scene (boy, that shot my average all to heck!). The color all along the way was vibrant, rich, and incredible, but the SCENES just didn't do it for me, at least through the eyes of the camera (which is actually different then what we see). I don't know if I will use that one scene or not, but at least I got something on film.

When I returned to the cabin I found another scene - and one of the most beautiful ones that I had seen in a long while - it was about 100 feet from the front door of the cabin. I shot and shot and shot and shot - more than 100 pictures of it. Part of what made the scene of red, yellow and orange maple trees so neat was that the fog was rolling in and out, increasing the saturation of the color in the leaves. I did not take a picture of that scene with the digital camera, so you will just have to wait to see it until the book comes out next year.

Sometime after dark a major thunderstorm rolled in. Or should I say BLASTED in! There was a great deal of lightning, and a few thunder boomers, but it was this one really loud bank that shook the cabin and all of us that really got our attention. Since momma nature was putting on such a great show, Pam, Amber and I turned off all of the lights in the cabin and all curled up under the covers in the loft bed. With all of the windows up there, we had a front row seat. The sky was filled with flash after flash for 30 minutes. And eventually, some hard rain - about an inch and a half before it was all over. Right in the middle of it all, I laid back, shut my eyes, and went right to sleep, surrounded by the warmth of my wife, daughter, and two hound dogs. Life is good at Cloudland.

11/3/01 Daylight was delayed a bit this morning, as we still had a heavy cloud cover hanging around. Just as I was about to get up and go jump in the hot tub, it began to rain pretty good. I went back to sleep. Once it got light and the rain stopped, I realized that there were many incredible colorful scenes right outside that I need to photograph, so I jumped out of bed and ran out into the fog that had engulfed the cabin.

First I made a quick trip all around the immediate area, scouting for a good shot. I found a dandy - to the west of the cabin - and trotted back to the cabin to get my camera gear. The woods were simply beautiful this morning - rich yellows and oranges mingled with the fog and mist.  The forest floor was covered with leaves too, some really bright red and yellow ones, and lots of brown ones that had been there for several days. There was no sound as I made my way through the wet forest, and it smelled terrific.

I was back to my spot in a flash, and quickly set up a shot. One thing that I have a problem with, especially in a situation like it was this morning where there is a gorgeous scene everywhere you look, is trying to figure out just exactly which one of those gorgeous scenes to shoot first. Often while I am standing there making up my mind, the light will change, or the wind will begin to blow, and I will miss the shot entirely.

But this morning the weather cooperated, and while I never did set up and shoot the scene that I had come to this spot to photograph, I did find a nice photo of a lichen-covered rock that was blanketed with bright maple leaves. I know that when many people look at this image they will accuse me of placing all of those leaves. Yea, right, I spent three hours laying out these leaves all over the forest floor. Two things did happen to make this scene just right. First, I did remove a few dead leaves from the top of this rock. And secondly, even while I was taking pictures, more leaves were added - they simply came floating down from above! Good old momma nature was helping out my picture!

The fog moved in and out during the hour and a half that I spent taking this photo. I shot several rolls of film of the same scene with different amounts of fog. I won't know what the "real" film will look like until I get the film processed. And even then there will probably be four or five different shots that I like, and will eventually have to just pick one to put in the new book. Or all of them may be bad and I won't use any of them - that happens.

Speaking of pictures, I thought that I would include this one of Amber and her new pillow in the back of the van. This child is a great little traveler - she will grab a book and read and read and you hardly ever know that she is there. Until you pass a Taco Bell...Good dog.

Amber and her new pillow

Today Amber's will have her first sleep over. Three girls from her class in Jasper will be here this afternoon to spend the night. We are all loaded up with candy, pizza, and cokes (those are for me, I don't know what the other kids are going to eat!). I suspect Aspen and Lucy will get a lot of attention.

It is dark outside, and very warm in the cabin. I have taken refuge here at the computer, as the rest of the cabin has been taken over by a band of eight-year-old girls! Amber and her friends are having a great time, and have not burned the cabin down or put Aspen's hair in pigtails yet. There is also a group of boy scouts camping in the area - over in the East meadow. They went on a very long hike today, and stopped by the cabin for a break. It is great to see so many young folks getting out and enjoying the great outdoors (or indoors as in the case of Amber and her friends - although they will get out for a short hike in the morning).

Some of the trees below the cabin

11/4/01 Well, everyone survived the bunking party, although just about all of us sustained some sort of injury or sickness. (And I was exhausted after staying up half the night to watch the Arkansas Razorback football team win a big game after SEVEN OVERTIMES!) I got up early this morning for a long soak in the tub - it was a total white out as the cabin was engulfed in a thick layer of fog. Then I returned to bed. When I woke up the second time, there were six pairs of eyes crowded around the bed and staring at me (the four girls and two dogs).

A few minutes later I could tell that the sun was about to burn through the fog, so I jumped up and ran out the door with my camera equipment. I only had one roll of film left, which meant I could photograph one good scene. I scrambled up and down several steep slopes looking for just the right spot, then finally set up the tripod and pointed the camera into the fog, hoping that sunbeams would come through.

The beams never did appear, but the scene was sort of neat anyway, so I shot and shot and shot, reserving three frames of film for one last great view.

The fog was playing tricks on my this morning. It would move in and create a wonderful, mystic scene. Then just as I was all set to take the picture, the fog would lift or back out of the way. Just as I was all packed up and ready to go find another scene, the fog would roll back in again. So out came the camera, and I frantically set up to take the picture. Of course, just as I was about to snap the shutter, the fog backed out again.

I finally decided to simply sit down and wait it out to see if another fog bank would move in. When I did that, I looked around and discovered that I was surrounded by many dozens of really spectacular spider webs, all of them built on low bushes, with the webs themselves about the size of a baseball. The sun that had burned through the fog was really lighting them up, and they looked like so many sparkling jewels out there in the forest. Perhaps this was the reason why the fog had played tag on me - so that I would stop and sit down and take a minute to look around and notice this great bit of beauty right at my feet that I had ignored all morning. Momma Nature is one smart cookie!

After I finished up my film, I remembered that I had five rolls of film stashed away in the refrigerator that Kodak had given to me seven years ago to try to get me to switch from Fuji to Kodak. Obviously I had stuck with Fuji (MUCH better film!) since I never used the Kodak film. But this was an emergency, so I raced back to the cabin and dug out those rolls, then ran off in search of another great picture opportunity.

In my haste the right time I shot out the door I failed to put on good hiking boots, and instead still had on a pair of slip-on shoes - they don't have much traction, and really gave me a hard time as I climbed up and down the steep slopes looking for pictures. I probably spend more time on my backside than I did upright! By the end of my shoot this morning my ankles were sore and my back ached. Such is the live of a nature photographer.

I didn't get out the digital camera until after I was finished with all of the normal film, but here are a couple of the snapshots:

Back at the cabin the ladies were having a treasure hunt, or actually several of them. Since I was only a couple hundred yards away from the cabin while I had been taking picture, I could hear them out in the woods looking for clues. And once I heard the group yell out that they had "found the diamond!"

The view this morning up the Buffalo Valley (left) and up Whitaker Creek (right)

The upper level of the fog had burned off, but there was still one of those classic Cloudland fog banks hanging down in the valley. Pam and I sat out on the back deck admiring the view for nearly an hour before the sun finally started to burn away at the clouds. The entire valley of clouds disappeared within ten minutes - it just VANISHED!

It is almost noon as I am writing this, and the view out the window of backlit maple trees is stunning - the color right here at the cabin continues to hang on! And downstairs, the sounds of a herd of little girls cleaning up the mess from the night before is drifting up. Life is good at Cloudland.

11/7/07 Seemed like old times this morning as I could not sleep and was splashing around in the hot tub at 4am (like I used to do when writing the Haley book). Absolutely STILL outside - not a thing was stirring at all, other than the river far below. The hushed songs of the river nearly put me to sleep, although the cold mocha pulled me in the opposite direction. There were a few clouds above, passing in front of the half moon and Orion.

The hike up to the office in the moonlight was a delight - there were hardly any shadows, just diffused light, and plenty to hike just about anywhere without a flashlight. After a couple of hours of work at the computer, I returned to the cabin to find one of the most incredible light shows ever going on. My wife tells me that I talk like that a lot, but it is true - these light shows out here are just amazing. I grabbed the digital camera and my tripod and sprinted down to Fox meadow to shoot a few snapshot.

The Fox running through fire this morning!

Sunrise over Fox meadow this morning.

It's about 30 minutes later now and the sun is just coming up, pushing a few breezes in front of it. I believe it is going to be a warm day out here, but a perfect one to be outdoors. I'm headed up to Aspen's meadow here in a few minutes to work on a couple of projects - the first being to dig the connection trench between the new well and the waterline going into the storage tank a little deeper; and the second being to attempt to splice together one of the main electrical wires that feeds the office (I dug it up a couple of days ago and found where the water had burned in two).

The well pump guy was out yesterday and son of a gun he found water sitting at 500 feet in the well, which is 400 above the original bottom. We think that a cave in happened around 650 feet, creating a plug. The volume of water that he found at that point was only about 1/3 of what we had hoped for (20 gallons an hour), but I think that will just have to do for now. So we are going to lower the pump just a little bit more today, then say to heck with it and go ahead and connect it with the storage tank. The only other option is to pull the pump and pipe out, then bring in the driller once again to drill out the collapse, then install a liner ALL THE WAY down to the original bottom, then put the pump back in - that all would cost several thousand dollars more, and we're toast at this point! Seems like a lot of you are interested in all of this, so I will let you know how the new setup goes.

An update on the Haley Book. The first copy to be sold at charity auction went for $50 (signed by both me and Haley - her autograph seems to be worth a lot! Retail price of a book is $19.95). That is a good sign. This book seems to be stirring up quite a bit of interest, and I think it will sell well, although right now most bookstores are not stocking it. In fact, you can't buy a copy in Little Rock anywhere, but we hope to change that soon. At some point I may have to beg you journal readers to call your local bookstores and ask if they have the book yet - quite often bookstores will not stock a book until they get a certain number of customers asking for it.

WIN A FREE 2002 ARKANSAS WATERFALL CALENDAR! Yes, you too can win your very own copy of this new calendar. P.J. Robowski from KUAF radio (91.3) will be giving one away as her Trivia Contest prize on her classical music radio show every weekday morning from now on for a while. All you have to do is call in and answer the question correctly (since there are normally several winning callers, they put them all in "The Wooden Chicken" and draw for the person who gets the prize). While all of P.J.'s show is worth listening to (9am-noon), the trivia question is done after the news at 10am. KUAF is one of the main radio stations that we listen to out here at Cloudland. Good luck!

11/11/01 HAPPY VETERANS DAY!!! And a great big THANK YOU to ALL vets who have helped protect our country and our freedom, from the present war, back to WWI, and all wars in between. It certainly takes a great deal of courage, heart, and goodness to lay down your lives for millions of people that you do not know, all in the name of freedom. Your contributions have been priceless.

The sun has just cleared the far ridgetop this morning, and lights up a forest of brown, mostly void of leaves. Although there still are a few trees clinging on to many leaves, most have turned brown and are about to fall off. Beech trees and a few young oaks and maples will keep their leaves all winter, adding a bit of golden glow to the winter landscape. The sky is blue and clear, and the temp will a wee bit chilly, is warming quickly. The Buffalo River far below is singing a hushed song, filled with anticipation of the higher water levels of the months to come. The views are opening up all over the place, and bluffs and giant boulders and brilliant-white sycamore trees are popping up all over the place where they have been hidden by heavy leaf cover since last May. There is a great deal of movement in the air, mostly from falling leaves, but also lots of birds of all sizes flying and playing about. It is a delightful day in the wilderness!

WELL WATER UPDATE. At last we have the new well hooked up and working! It ended up producing 18 gallons of very good water an hour - that's just over 400 gallons a day, which will do just fine for us for now (old well was 60 gallons a day). Our 1000 gallon storage tank is now full, and that will give us a nice buffer. We will still practice good water management, but hope to not have to send an egg timer into the shower with Amber! We also found an in-line pressure boost pump, after several months of looking (as an example, NO SUCH thing exists in any store in Arkansas - we had to go direct to the U.S. distributer of a German pump in another state to find it). The pump takes the 30 pounds of gravity-fed pressure from our storage tank and bumps it up to 78 psi. In fact, since this booster pump is not adjustable, we are probably going to also install a reducer to bring that pressure down just a bit. Total cost of the well drilling and pump installation - about ten grand (the well was drilled to 890 feet, caved in at 650 feet, and the pump is sitting about 550 feet below the surface).

11/12/01 The following is from Pam, which describes a moment of terror in the night:

"Into the cold night she crept. Her coal black fur blending into the darkness. She was part of the night and knew that something was about to happen and she must fight. Around the corner of her home she crept, feeling the enemy in the air but not being able to see him just yet. She felt comfortable and confident in her domain, knowing that she would not be detected.

As she rounded the corner she could see the eyes in the night. Not just one pair but many pairs. Circling.....waiting.....for what, she did not know, nor did she care to find out. This pack of evil canines were not like her own breed - wild dogs perhaps? Coyotes? WOLVES!? All she knew was that they were stalking her fortress and she was prepared to stop them. A fleeting thought of ‘What would Aspen do?” She knew that her actions would have to be quick and decisive.....and right. They were many and she was only one.

She could see them in the forest coming ever so closer, spreading out in a semi circle, preparing for attack. Her moment was almost upon her. She must be patient, let them get  closer.........patience. Slowly the wild dogs approached. She could see the evil in their eyes and smell their dirty fur and rotten breath. Just a little closer........NOW. The time was hers, it was now or never and she knew what she had to do. From deep within her small frame she found a cry like she had never expressed before. A cry that would wake the dead and every creature in the wilderness. A cry that shook me from a deep slumber. At the stroke of midnight....she HOWLED!!!!!

The canines in the dark were stunned and shaken. She HOWLED again. It was a cry they knew that meant business, “you come here, you mess with me!” They turned and ran for their lives. She HOWLED a third time just because it felt so good to be free and a part of the night.

It was the second cry that woke me. Aspen was curled up at my feet, exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be. Was that a wolf? It had to be. The howl was so haunting. It was so close. I called to Lucy in the night. She didn’t come. Then the third cry shattered the darkness followed by a small yip. It was Lucy. I knew something was terribly wrong. I flew into the night to find my little black wonder.

She came around the corner of the cabin with every hair standing on end but a smile on her face. She had defeated the “dogs that were unlike her.” She was victorious.

I really have no idea if this is what really happened but the fact remains that at the stroke of midnight my little city dog let out her first HOWL. There was a response in the forest from a pack of wild canines of some sort, and they left. The fact also remains that Aspen the Superdog was upstairs sound asleep at my feet (where he wasn’t supposed to be), no doubt protecting me just in case the creatures in the night had managed to sleep past Lucy and attack."

Today was the first entire day that I have spent at the cabin in a long while. We have had quite a hectic schedule of late, spending a lot of time driving back and forth to various towns giving slide programs, doing book signings, restocking book dealers, etc. And the next few days will be about the same, and will include a long trip down to southern Arkansas tomorrow to give a slide program at a banquet, then another one in Springdale later in the week. Things get rather busy this time of the year, and I love it!

We worked all morning in the office, then took the long way back down to the cabin - by way of the East meadow and back through the forest. Most of the leaves are off of the trees now, and are piled up 6-8 inches deep on the forest floor. It has been very dry, and the leaves are really crunchy. Pam and I and two dogs make quite a racket hiking through the woods!

After a bit of lunch and a much-needed nap, we all headed out the door into the warm afternoon sunshine for a short hike down to some nearby bluffs for a bit of rock climbing. The flowers in Fox meadow continue to BLOOM, and attract a multitude of butterflies - we were engulfed with flying spots of yellow as we made our way down through the sea of bright red, orange, and yellow flowers.

Pam has been a rock climber for a while, but has not felt any rock since she hurt her back last February. Today would be her first try at it. We selected a section of the bluff with a rough texture, and not too tough. She latched right onto it, and quickly began to move around like a human spider. I followed along beneath her as she made her way across the bluffline, straining and reaching and stretching for the next hand or foot hold. I had no idea how she could remain up on that bluff without any rope or artificial holds - but I guess that is what rock climbers do. I have spent some time on ropes over the years, but never any official rock climbing, and am always impressed with what they can do. When she came down she was covered with sweat, and had a broad smile across her face - "That felt GREAT!!!"

She played around on another rock face, and I even go into the act and scrambled up the side of a giant slab of rock to the top (with the help of a nearby tree). It was great to be out in the woods together, enjoying the sunshine, our dogs, and the beauty of the great outdoors.

Amber arrived back home from a trip up north, along with Pam's mom Judy, who will be staying with Amber for a few days while we are on the road. We had a large pot of roast beef and veggies for dinner, then all laid around while Amber danced up a storm.

Lucy spent most of her evening hours outside, barking and running around. She was obviously upset about something out there. After a glass or two of Merlot I decided to go on out and see if I could figure out what was up.

It was dark with no moon, but the sky was clear and the millions of stars up above provided just enough light for me to be able to creep around without a flashlight. I headed out along the trail that leads up to the East meadow. I could see shapes of a few trees out there, perhaps five or ten feet away, but most of my travel was by feel. Even though the leaves were a half-foot deep underfoot, I could shuffle my feet along underneath them and sort of figure out where the trail went. I also reached out and made my way from tree to tree. It was calm out, and very pleasant.

The dogs took off like a rocket, making a great deal of noise in the process, and ran and barked and crashed for several minutes until I could no longer hear them. I got out into the middle of the large stand of maple trees near Pam's bench, and decided to stop for a while and lean up against a large hickory tree next to the trail. The night was mostly dark, other than the faint starlight, and a couple of street lights at residences over across the Buffalo valley up on the far ridgetop. Plus there was someone camped out under the big bluff over there - I could see the glow of their lantern/campfire.

Just about the time I was getting to really enjoy the peace and quiet, I began to hear the dogs crashing through the leaves. The noise got louder and louder with each passing moment. It is hard to believe how much noise a couple of dogs can make in the night until you hear them running full tilt through a thick layer of dry leaves!

And then my heart nearly stopped, I got close to fainting, and perhaps even almost peed in my pants. Just as I expected to see the shadowy figures of my two little dogs coming at me, there appeared a GIANT dark figure charging at me full speed. Because it was so dark I did not see it until it was just a few feet away. It only took a split second for my life to pass before me, and for the dark object to breeze within inches of me and continue on its way. It was a deer, and the dogs must have jumped it out there somewhere and sent it screaming on down the trail - the very same trail that I happened to be standing right along the edge of. Certainly the deer scented me at some point, but it may have been too late for it to have done anything about it - I don't believe it ever veered off course, at least until it was past me. And then along came Aspen and Lucy, flying just as fast as the deer. By then I had slid on down to the base of the tree and was resting there in the leaves, half laughing, half gasping for air. Thanks guys, for the potential heart attack!

11/15/01 It was just breaking daylight and the sky was mostly void of stars already when an orange blaze streaked across the southern sky. A shooting star, and a bit of good luck. It took a while before the sun crept up over the horizon, and when it did the scene it illuminated was one of smoke and haze. Probably a combination of woodsmoke from many cabins in the area, and a few deer hunter's campfires, plus just the normal buildup of haze when it has been a long time since the last storm rolled through. I don't mind the haze at all, and in fact it adds a bit of character to the landscape.

A hazy morning in the valley

Aspen just came inside and jumped up into my lap. He is covered with purple splotches - the result of running through ripe polk berry bushes. I have no idea how he can get those stains on his tail though!

Pam is off teaching school in Jasper today, and I will be heading into town to give a slide program in Springdale tonight. Things will be calm and quiet around the cabin for a while. Tomorrow I will begin a nice long run of actually being here all day long for a while, and I hope to be able to get out and explore some and see what the forest has been up to.

While it has been the thick of deer season all week, there really hasn't been too much activity. One of the Woods boys got a nice nine-pointer the other day - it was using the very same escape route down through the bluffline next to Magnolia Canyon that Haley Zega used when she went down last April.

One day recently as I was hiking back to the cabin I came across Pam sitting in the leaves. Most of the time when I come across an attractive wood nymph I will sit down and join her, as I was eager to do this day. She was enjoying a "leaf fall" that was going on, and the air was filled with the movement and laughter of thousands of falling leaves. We got to looking at individual leaves and trying to figure out patterns that different species of trees do. We figured out that the leaves of oak trees will often have a longer leaf stem than others, and this stem is used as a reverse rudder, and the leaf will follow this rudder as it slices through the air. A couple of leaves were bent up on either side of the stem and acted like paper airplanes, doing loops and flying around all over the place. Maple leaves generally will twirl around and around and around until they land. Hickory leaves often just come crashing down - they are much larger than the others, and don't have all that much grace to them.

Later that same day, we got to watching the blowing leaves that we could see from the back deck of the cabin. Many were actually higher than any tree around, and were being blown UP into the air even higher by the winds. We watched some of these leaves for several minutes until they blew up and away and out of sight. What a wonderful ride it must be for some of these leaves - getting to travel quite a distance on their way down to earth. Wouldn't it be great to be an ant and hitch a ride on one of them?

And speaking of rides, my goodness the hawks have been soaring all over the place here - giant redtail hawks and smaller ones that I cannot identify, plus a couple of other species in between. They don't have to do much work either, as they glide around on the wind currents. We will often see them way on over on the other side of the valley, cruising close to the trees. One big old hawk took up a position just out in front of the gazebo and hung there in the air for several minutes, using the wind to remain in place as he scoured the countryside below for mice or whatever. I swear some of these birds just do that for fun - and if you look close enough at them through a telescope, you can see a little grin on their faces!

Both of the dogs have left me know, so I guess that is a little hint that it is time for me to get up from this computer and head out into the woods. I have a ton of paperwork to do today before heading into town, but I think I might just have to take the long route to the office this morning...

By the way, speaking of hiking, Pam is leading a short dayhike especially for kids this Saturday. While it is one of our new Ozark Highlands Trail Association "Otter Club" hikes, it is open to anyone, and there is no fee. If you are interested, just meet Pam at the Lost Valley parking lot in Boxley Valley at 10am. All children need to have an adult with them, but there is no age limit (for the kids or the adults!). This hike is also open to anyone who simply wants an easy hike, no matter what your age.

11/16/01 Another crystal clear night and early morning with zillions of stars out. The temp got down into the upper 40's and there was a constant raining of dew off of the metal roof at the cabin. I parked the van up at the office when I got home from my program in town, and hiked through the darkness down to the cabin. I stopped a couple of times just to stare up into the bare trees at the black skies filled with stars. There is something so, so primitive about bare trees and black sky and stars. And being alone out there in all of it. It was also very noisy as I crunched through the thick carpet of dry leaves. But Aspen and Lucy were fast asleep and never heard me until I climbed up onto the back deck.

I'm sure that some of you don't like to hear about deer hunters and deer hunting - but just this one little bit especially for all of you. When I made my way out to the mailbox late this morning I came across the Woods Boys clan and their hunting party of about a dozen guys. They were all dressed up in their orange vests and hats, most of them on four-wheelers. They were gathered up next to the Faddis cabin, all shaking their heads. It seems that a dog had been running a nice buck through the forest, and then chased him right through the middle of the Faddis meadow. Most of the Woods Boys were there in a group watching. When that old buck tore out across the open meadow, the guns started blazing. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The shooting continued as the deer sped across the meadow through the hail of gunfire. Now let me tell you from experience that a buck can cover a great deal of country in a very short period of time - like in the blink of an eye. This buck disappeared into the woods at the far side of the meadow in a flash, and even though several of the hunters had emptied their guns at him, the buck escaped without a scratch. I have done the same thing myself - shot at a running deer until my gun was empty, hitting nothing but air. The chances of that deer not being hit by all of that gunfire was slim, yet he managed to run free and unharmed. Some of the critters of the forest are just meant to be that way.

Soon after that a television truck arrived from Missouri - it was Dennis Graves from KY3 in Springfield who had come down to do an interview about the Haley book. Dennis is not just another reporter. He was here during the entire search mission, and was in fact at the staging area when Haley was found - the only station to give a live video report from the scene when the news of Haley's rescue first broke. Dennis is an avid outdoorsman and all around good egg. I remember one time when he hiked the entire Buffalo River Trail and did LIVE broadcasts from the trail EACH day. I was with him for one broadcast that we did from the banks of the Buffalo River at Erbie. They had a satellite truck meet him at various points along the trail in order to do the broadcasts - it was quite a show. Dennis is quoted in the new Haley book, and his coverage of the entire event was the best of all that I saw. (His report from Cloudland will air tonight.)

The interview with Dennis Graves on the back deck at Cloudland

It is late afternoon now, the shadows are growing long in the woods, and those shadows are getting softer - the sky has turned from a bright blue to a pale blue, with streaks of white. Clouds are creeping in. It is very STILL outside, with not a single wisp of wind. And it is rather warm out too, way too warm for November. Did someone say that Thanksgiving was next week?

It has turned into a lazy afternoon, and while I still have a pile of work to do up at the office, I do believe that I will take the dogs out into the forest and run around a bit and see what I can find.

At 6:03pm the phone rang - someone had seen the KY3 report on the news and was already calling about the book. We did not get to see it ourselves, since no local or regional stations are on the satellite, but we heard it was a very good report and was the lead story at 6pm. There were so many folks from Missouri who participated in some way with the search mission for Haley it was good to have that coverage of the book on KY3. Seems like nearly half of all the car tags at trailheads here are from Missouri these days (I have always liked folks from Missouri, which is where my dad was from, but certainly have a tad bit more bias in that direction now since my three ladies came from there!).

11/17/01 While I was sitting in the hot tub watching a few shooting stars in the fading darkness, it became clear that it was going to be one terrific sunrise - or at least a very colorful predawn. So I got up and dried off and went looking for the digital camera. It was still 45 minutes before the actual sunrise when the first bit of color appeared in the clouds that were gathered along the Eastern horizon. That brilliant orange/red color spread quickly, and soon the sky was on fire.

Predawn through the bare trees out the loft window

It was cool and quiet outside, with only the hushed voice of the river far below to listen to, and the crashing of Lucy and Aspen through the dry leaves. This is a time of few birds - most have migrated on down south, and the winter residents have not appeared yet. I heard someone say that they saw a pair of bald eagles the other day though, so they are beginning to move in. Of course, we still have many hawks that are moving through the territory, but they seldom make any noise - they just hover and soar around and add a delightful bit of movement to the landscape.

Pam and Amber went off to lead their first "Otter's Club" hike into Lost Valley, while I stayed behind and worked in the office. Amber joined me at the office once they got back, and after a bit of paperwork, the two of us went for a short hike on our way back to the cabin. It was warm and sunny and just perfect for wandering around through the forest with no particular route in mind. Soon we found ourselves sitting in a pile of leaves and ready for a snack. I just happened to have a jar of peanut butter along, but nothing to eat it with. It was time that my city girl daughter got her first taste of real woods life, so I reached out and picked up a stick off of the ground and fashioned an eating utensil out of it and handed it to Amber. At first she looked at me and the stick with a great deal of skepticism. But before long I could not get the stick away from her because she was too busy eating peanut butter with it - mission accomplished!

11/18/01 All predictions were for cloudy skies tonight, so very one of our invited guests who were going to come out and camp up in Aspen's meadow to watch the meteor shower cancelled out on us. No matter - the alarm went off at 2:45am and Pam and Amber and I packed up our stuff and headed on up to the meadow. The sky was so clear that we could even see the Milky Way - so much for the predictions!

We have this double sleeping bag that works great for "group" sleeping - it is two full-size rectangular bags zipped together, which forms a bag nearly the size of a large bed. All three of us crawled down into it and had room to spare. I do believe that this light show was as good as advertised - there were hundreds of shooting stars all over the sky - not all at once certainly, but we were kept busy ohhhing and ahhhing for more than an hour, straining our necks to see them blazing across the sky in all directions.

Three items of note besides the sheer number of stars, which we calculated was probably more than we would ever see in our entire lifetimes. First, most of the meteors were coming from the same general direction, or at least heading in that direction - to the west. Although ones in the north headed to the northwest, and ones in the southern sky were going southwest. Only once in a while would there be a streak going in the opposite direction. The second thing was that right over there in the Big Dipper we saw one really bright meteor that streaked a short distance then sort of exploded (there were a number of them that did that), but then the star dust trail that was left behind lingered for five, ten, even FIFTEEN minutes! I had NEVER seen anything like that before!

But by far the most impressive sight of the night came very near 4am, which was supposed to be the peak of the activity. This one meteor shot across the sky - almost directly overhead - then burst into several different colors (I saw red, yellow and green while Amber saw purple and blue). That was great, but it too left a bright star dust trail that did not go away immediately like they usually do. And this one in fact began to bend in the middle - like part of it was being blown off course by high winds. As we watched it blew into a large circle, or oval shape, and actually grew in size. Ten minutes later it was still there! Were we just seeing things, or does this happen and we have simply never seen it before? It was quite impressive indeed.

This hour spent with my two lovely ladies inside the sleeping bag gazing up at the incredible light show will have to rate as one of the best moments of my life. Certainly also one of the most amazing natural wonders any of us will ever see.

I have been getting up at first light or before these past few months, but this morning I did sleep in a bit. It is easy to sleep in at Cloudland - the beds are very nice, and the cabin is so warm and inviting. But there is a standing rule of sorts out here that when the sun hits a certain bluffline up in the Whitaker Creek drainage, it is time to GET UP! These days that happens around 8am. I rolled over around that time and saw the sunshine on the sandstone bluff and jumped up out of bed and ran down and made a big splash in the hot tub (required sunglasses today). I am proud to admit that I have been weaning myself from the daily dose of caffeine that I get from my little bottle of Mocha, and am down to just a quarter bottle a day. I have never need caffeine in order to get going in the morning, but love this Mocha stuff so much that I have gotten just a little bit hooked. And when I don't have any, I get a headache by the end of the day. But this reduction system of mine is working, although now I have to find something to replace my morning drink while I am in the hot tub.

Sunlight on the bluff - must be time to get up!

Amber got up and hit the ground running - "What can I CLEAN today?" Uh oh, I did not want to be a part of all that, so I quickly put on a fanny pack and headed out the door, and down the ladder trail towards the river.

The sunshine was warm and I could tell that much of this wilderness was grateful for it (much of the landscape had not seen the direct sunshine in a while because the leaves on the trees all summer had kept the sun from getting through). The trail itself, which is tricky to negotiate at any time of the year because it is so STEEP, was really a death trap today - so many slick and movable rocks under that thick cover of leaves. I had to do a controlled fall from one tree to the next much of the way. It was actually easier to leave the trail and simply bust down through the open forest, half sliding half falling. Kind of fun actually.

I passed under many giants of the forest - red oaks most of them. Plus a few black gums. You really don't get the sense of the size of these trees when their leaves are on, but they sure did look immense today. I had to stop and take a snapshot of one along the trail (also a picture of the old stone chimney next to Whitaker Creek).

A towering red oak and hand-stacked stone chimney

Fall is the time of year when plants die away and leave behind seed pods to aid in the spread of their species. Each one is adapted to a certain type of broadcast vehicle. Acorns and hickory nuts simply let gravy do the trick and fall to the ground and plant themselves (and are then covered up with a layer of leaves to fertilize them during the winter and spring). The seeds of many other plants are carried around by animals as burs stuck to their fur, as we know all to well with Aspen's long hair! Still others are hidden in tasty fruit like persimmons, which are eaten and pooped out in far away places by coyotes and bears.

But the ones I like best are those that are cast out into and spread around by the wind. I have always called them milkweed, although probably most of them are not. The are usually made up as these delicate strands of fiber, like silk or cotton, and they spread out and catch the slightest breeze which pulls them - and their attached tiny seed - right on out of the seed pod and into the air, to ride the wind current and land and be planted at some other point in the forest. I love to sit and watch the wind play with these things, and am anxious to get all of that motion on video once I begin my new career as a film maker (sometime in this next year I hope!).

Seeds ready to be cast off in the wind

Then I ran across a batch of Adam and Eve orchids - there has always been a single pair of leaves in this one spot, but today there were many sets of leaves, so these guys are doing quite well. The leaves, with their intricate lines of green and white, remain out all winter, but die away before the flower pops out in late summer. I have never seen the flower - only the leaves. Today I found what I think are the seed pods from the flowers, although after digging down into the dirt I discovered that the stem of these pods ends as a large bulb, and is not connected to the leaves. So I display photos of both the leaves and the seed pods together here, although I am not sure if they are related!

Adam & Eve orchid leaf and seed pods

The river was beautiful, as always. Whitaker Creek had as much water in it as the Buffalo did. This area never got much lower than it was today all summer, helped along by mid-summer rains, and a good rain too this fall. Aspen and Lucy loved the water and romped and played at full speed, although Lucy eventually ran off into the woods and was not heard or seen for quite a while. I had Aspen pose next to the swimming hole - he wanted so bad to jump in and chase some of the fish in the pool, but I wanted the surface of the water calm for the picture.

Whitaker Creek just before it joins the Buffalo

The pool where they come together:
the Buffalo is coming in from the upper left, and Whitaker Creek from the upper right

Aspen at the skinny-dippin' hole

As I made my way back upstream I looked ahead to a shallow pool - it appeared that it was raining hard - there were dozens of little splashes in the water, and it was making a lot of noise. When I got closer I realized that it was a school of shiner minnows feeding on something near the surface - that water was really boiling! When Aspen arrived he took care of the school in short order.

This water is about a foot deep here, and very clear!

After spending a bit of time searching for and calling out to Lucy, I gave up and Aspen and I headed on back up the steep trail out. It had been quite a while since I climbed up this mountain, and I knew that five or six months of sitting at the computer writing a book and then driving all over the country would take its toll on my body. I would soon find out how bad out of shape I really was.

Then Lucy appeared, dragging up behind. In fact she remained very near my feet the entire hike up the hill - not normal for her - she was plum tuckered, and that was before we had hit the really steep stuff. I guess she had expended all of her energy chasing off bears of chipmunks or something in the valley.

While I did feel those months at the computer with each and every step that I took, I much preferred this steep climb out over the descent through the slippery leaves - I was much more in control going this way. And while my pace was much slower than normal, I was able to make it all the way up to the bluff without stopping. Thank goodness there were many small trees along the way though for me to grab onto - I really think these guys actually pulled me up a little too.

Back up at the cabin I found Pam and Amber still on a cleaning terror. Once I cooled down I joined them in the kitchen, and the three of us began to work on one of the presents that we would pass out at Christmas time - a special homemade liqueur. I  brewed up the mixture while the ladies removed labels and cleaned the individual glass bottles. There was music and laughter and Santa's workshop working full steam.

Right in the middle of all this a dark shadow passed over the back deck. We all ran out to see - it was a mature bald eagle, and he was circling low right over Fox meadow! He came so close to the cabin that at one point I thought he was going to fly right on in the back door. What a wonderful sight it was to see this majestic bird and national symbol right there in front of us. He made a number of circles, not paying too much attention to us, and then with one flap of his giant wings, he was gone. Needless to say that was another one of those great moments, made all the more special because Pam and Amber were there with me to see it.

Later in the afternoon Lytle James's sister and nephews stopped by for a visit (she is from Newton County right over the hill from here, the boys are from Texas and Oregon), and so did Milancy McNamara. Sunday seems to be the big day for visitors here at the cabin, and we are always happy to see them (well, almost always!).

It is getting dark now, Pam is on one of the couches reading a book, and Amber just cleaned out the fireplace - I guess that means the next move is for me to build a fire! Looks like a storm brewing outside - the temp is dropping and the wind is kicking up a lot of loose leaves. Another wonderful fall weekend is about to come to an end here at Cloudland - they are all great, and I look forward to each and every one of them.

Here is a short note from Amber about our star-watch party this morning:
"I was watching a comet shower last night. I saw a star blow up and the smoke made a circle. It was a lot of colors!"

11/19/01 Raindrops were falling on my head early this morning - a nice slow, soaking rain (but only a total of 2/10's of an inch). A few clouds hung in there low too, and I began to get a little worried about the view not being very good - I had an interview about the Haley book at 11am at the cabin with Kyle Kellams of KUAF radio (for his "Ozarks At Large" program), and I wanted for the view to be just right. Of course, as the morning went on I realized that since it was RADIO it really didn't matter what the view looked like! When Kyle arrived the view was pretty good after all, and it was the very first thing that he wanted to see once he stepped into the cabin. So there, my worries were justified!

KUAF is one of the main radio stations that we listen to out here (along with 107.9 and the "Rotund One," and KTXR in Springfield - Pam just LOVES to listen to how congested the traffic is along her old commute to work!). We probably would listen to other stations as well, but we are so far out that not too many signals reach us.

Anyway, I had done a couple of interviews for Ozarks At Large before (one when I was building the hiking trail at Lake Leatherwood in Eureka Springs, and another when I had a photo exhibit at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville), and have always listened to the show, which airs on Friday nights and on Sunday mornings (plus a third edition each week at noon on Saturday, but Friday and Sunday are the main ones). We did the interview today in front of the roaring fireplace - the temp had begun to drop outside, and the wind chill factor made it pretty chilly. The program will air this coming Friday at 6pm, and then again on Sunday at 9am (91.3 FM). For those of you in the rest of the world, you can hear the show on their web site at http://www.KUAF.com. My interview will only be a small part of the hour-long show, but the rest of it is usually quite interesting, and often gives some great insights into life in the Ozarks - hence the name.

It was really getting cold when Pam and Amber and I arrived back at the cabin well after dark (Amber had Girl Scouts in town). A crescent moon showed us the way home as it was dropping into the western horizon. There was something about the crispness of the air tonight, and that beautiful moon - I did not want to go inside the cabin, but rather felt like I had to remain out in the night air and split wood. There wasn't too much moonlight from that silver sliver in the west, but there was a nice glow from the cabin lights, and the combination provided enough light for me to work by. And the stars were simply spectacular!!! That little bit of rain and the cold front that moved in wiped the air clean - the stars seemed so close all around.

Certainly the cold air had something to do with it, but there must have been other factors working too (like the feeling of all those stars watching) because the wood split wide open with a loud crack, and did so easily each time I swung the maul. Few things in life satisfy me like splitting wood out here in the wilderness. I do find, however, that sometimes I give up easily - if I can't get the log to split with one or two wacks, I toss it aside and reach for another one. Guess I am getting just a bit lazy in my middle age. Plus I know that there is a log-splitting machine stored at Pam's dad's just waiting to come down and do some of the dirty work for me! But for those logs that did split tonight, it was pure joy.

Once I got the fire going, the cabin warmed quickly, and the walls glowed with that special light that only a fireplace can produce.

The Norman Rockwell quality of the night was interrupted by the sounds of my swearing at, and banging on, the computer. We have been having a bit of trouble with it of late - I think the hard drive is going out - and I have taken to physical actions as a way to get it to work. I am hoping that The Great Turkey will bring me a hard drive for Thanksgiving, and that it will actually solve the problem.

11/20/01 FROZEN AT LAST! The temp was right at 32 degrees when I raised the lid to the hot tub at 5am - and there was a thin layer of ice on top of a puddle on the deck. This is the first time it has reached freezing this fall - the lowest had been 38 last month. Good grief, it is almost the end of November!  I enjoy sitting in the steaming bubbles in cold weather, although when it gets too cold that steam will freeze in your hair. Fortunately, as the years get on the ice doesn't have quite as much to cling to anymore.

Amber is off to school, Pam is working on a Girl Scout Float project on the dining room table, and I have completely disassembled the computer and put it back together again (and actually got it to work!). The fireplace is roaring, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue. All is well at Cloudland today. The only problem is that my dog is sitting out on the front porch demanding that I take him hiking. I guess I will have to yield to his desires and take the long way up to the office...

11/21/01 There were no fireworks at sunrise today, but it was a beautiful show just the same. The color went from a near-black deep blue in the hills below (I know that location sounds a bit odd, but that is where the hills were this morning - down low!), to a rosy horizon all the way around as far as I could see, then different shades of bright blue reaching up into a nearly black sky high above. The temp was in the mid-30's, but the wind was blowing a bit and so it got a might bit chilly standing there on the lower deck admiring it all while dripping wet.

Even though today was really a holiday for all of us (Amber was out of school), it was a work day around the cabin. I spent much of it inside the brains of the two computers that I had taken completely apart and had spread all around the cabin. I was finally able to borrow a hard drive from another computer that had been in mothballs and found a spot for it inside the cabin computer. Somehow having a second hard drive in that computer made the main hard drive stand up and take notice, and I was able to get it running several times in a row. This has not fixed the problem, but at least I have a second hard drive now to rely on if the main one won't start up.

We also moved Pam's computer down from the office and installed it into Amber's room. Amber likes to play educational games on the computer at precisely the same time when I need to use it. So now we have three computers up and running - two at the cabin, and one at the office. I know that some people might frown on all of the electronics out here, but having everything that we need right here at our fingertips allows us to REMAIN in the wilderness instead of just visiting once in a while.

And speaking of visitors, the air has been filled of late with a giant flock of crows - I mean like 100 or more of them in one group! At first there were only about 20 crows. I watched them dive bomb a couple of different hawks the other day - or perhaps they were all just playing, but the hawks did not look too happy. Then the flock grew to about 50, and kept hanging around in the trees above the office, driving Aspen and Lucy wild. Yesterday I found them up at the Faddis meadow, and their numbers had doubled - the sky was filled with black motion! I'm not exactly sure what has attracted them to this area right now, or what they are feeding on. When I visited the Woods Boys at their hunting cabin late last week they had taken ten deer, yet had eaten all but one of them during the week - I wonder if the crows are feasting on the remains of all those deer?

Later in the afternoon Pam and Amber spent a couple of hours working out in the circle drive, which is now called "Pam's Park." This spot will indeed become a showcase in the years to come. I joined in on the fun, with a splitting maul in hand. Within an hour I had split up an entire large tree that we had cut down last month (it had died and was about to fall across the driveway). Amber came running over with her wheel barrow and loaded up the split wood, one piece at a time, and moved them up onto the front porch and stacked them neatly in their place, ready for the fireplace. It is great to see this child so eager to help out around here, especially when it comes to moving those logs - I love to cut and split them, but hate to haul them!

11/22/01 HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU ALL! The sun is not up yet, and it may not appear for a while - there are dense, black clouds all around the horizon. The wind is blowing pretty good from the East - usually a sign of something brewing. And now when the wind blows it blows harder because there are no leaves on the trees to slow it down.

Speaking of the wind, I forgot to relate our kite-flying episode from yesterday. Amber found a kite kit, put it together, then grabbed me and we ran outside and down to Fox meadow. The wind was blowing pretty good, and the sun was shining - just perfect kite-flying weather! Only problem was that this particular kite was not built to withstand the strong winds that we have here. Its maiden voyage only last a second or two, and the main wood dowel cross member snapped right in two. No matter, we made up a paper airplane and sailed it off the lower deck - you should have seen how far it flew!

The cabin is coming to life now, and Pam is headed into the kitchen to prepare our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner at grandma's house - Pam is very good at creating an apple crisp that disappears in about two seconds when I am around! It will be a quick trip for us, as we will return to the cabin this afternoon. Now that we have an actual "home" here instead of just a cabin, I enjoy spending as much time here as possible, especially during major holidays.

CAMERA FOR SALE. A number of you have asked me when I was going to sell my camera system, so I wanted to post the notice here. I will eventually be switching over to a digital system for all of my normal work, and will be adding digital video to my camera bag. For now I will retire my Contax 645 system, which is what I photographed the ARKANSAS SPRING book project with. Everything is in great condition, and you can find the details at www.cloudland.net/contax.html.

There is a narrow slit at the bottom of the black cloud that is hovering over the eastern horizon, and the sun is just now peeking through it. Even though those rays will not last but a few minutes before the sun climbs up into the darkness, they have lit up the wilderness and spread a bit of joy and thanksgiving on this great day. I have more to be thankful for than most people on the planet, especially this year with my new family and bucket loads of new friends. I hope that this day finds each and every one of you in the path of a ray or two of sunshine, and you are able to soak it up, no matter how small the light, and enjoy your friends and family and a lot of great food. As always, THANK you so very much for spending a bit of your day with me. I wish you the best turkey day ever!

11/23/01 We just listened to the Ozarks At Large radio show on KUAF - the one that Kyle Kellams recorded out here at the cabin a few days ago. It was a good, solid, long interview, and he did a great job with the editing (although Kyle's voice is broken up for some reason - he recorded the interview direct to his laptop computer). And the Cloudland Journal was even mentioned, with the web site address. Anytime that you talk with a reporter - no matter if it is radio, television, or print - you never really know what they are going to end up using. The entire conversation is never left intact - and in most cases that is a good thing! It is common that what you originally said is ripped up and pieced together in a manner that changes the meaning of what you had meant to say (or important parts left out entirely). Snippets and sound bytes are the order of the day in journalism - that is simply the nature of the business. And you either go with it or keep your mouth shut. I have been burned a time or two in the past, but in general have been treated fairly, which is why I continue to give interviews. Some of the questions that I have been getting about the Haley book have been difficult ones to answer, but I have managed to stumble through them all so far. This Ozarks At Large interview will be broadcast again on Sunday morning at 9am Eastern, and you can listen to it on the web if you cannot get the station (www.KUAF.com).

And I got to see the KY3 segment that aired on the news in Springfield last week - it was really good too (Dennis Graves always does a great job up there!). I heard that a KFSM TV5 story that aired on Thanksgiving was also good, although did not get to see it (I did a quick interview with the reporter in their studio, and then they went to the Zega's house for some filming). Newspaper reviews are trickling in about the book, but since we only get one paper out here - the Newton County Times, we won't get to see very many of them. If you happen to see a review of the book in the paper, please let me know - I may ask you to send us a copy.

There is a storm raging outside right now. Its late tonight. Pam is upstairs in the loft reading, there is a crackling fire producing nice music and shadows, and I have been here in the cabin office playing a bit of music myself on the guitar (well, it might be stretching it a bit to say that it was actually "music"). Just now the great big music maker outside began to turn up the volume a little. It has been quite a lightning show going on for an hour, and now heavy rain. Lots of loud crashes too, and some of the furniture is sliding past my window. Oops, gotta run.......

Whew, it was quite a BLOW just now!!! Some of that heavy rain found its way through the logs and began to enter the cabin - first, as a drip here and there, and then as steady streams of water. One gusher even came right out of the light fixture above my head. The cabin is normally very watertight, except when the wind blows at above 40mph from a certain direction. Its coming from that direction tonight, with sustained winds in the upper 40's and even low 50's, which is driving the rain into the cabin. Both of us have been running around trying to find enough buckets to catch it all! Our friend Glenn just called and said a tornado was spotted to the southwest of here and was heading to the northeast. And now there is HAIL coming down, and it sounds like a war going on outside. Yikes!!!

It is a little while later now, and it got bad enough outside that we took refuge in the basement. Our only source of weather info is the Weather Channel, and its "local" station for us is New York City, which isn't too much help. They did zoom in one level on Arkansas and sure enough we were sitting right under a large red blob that stretched on down the screen a ways (we still are under that blob). And while we were watching the TV, the flap on the dog door in that room was sucked right out through the wall, ripped from its hinges, and sent flying into the night. I've never seen that before! We turned on the light and could see one of our large potted plants on the lower deck - well, actually we could see the pot and the stalk of the plant - all of its leaves and branches had been stripped! There was quite possibly a tornado, or some very windy feature that just blew by the cabin! We turned off all the lights in the cabin and strained to see the forest around us during lightning flashes to see if we could spot any damage, but did not see any.

Things quieted down a little and we crawled into bed. It was sort of neat watching the flashes all around us from up in the loft. But then the storm got serious again, and the rain and hail came down heavy. In fact the wind was blowing SOOOOO hard that it began to drive pea-size hail right into and through the small slits in the power vent that we have in the top of the ceiling, and soon the floor of the loft was covered with hail - good grief, it was hailing in our bedroom!!! Needless to say that sent us back down into the basement once again to ride it out. It had gotten pretty loud outside.

By the way, Amber is up in Missouri for the weekend, so did not get to "experience" any of this. When she first moved to the cabin last summer she was terrified of the smallest bolt of lightning. But now after I showed her how interesting and exciting and beautiful storms can be, and how the cabin is a such a wonderful place to watch storms up close, she is much more relaxed when the flashes and boomers begin. She is still just a little anxious - as she should be - but now she will hang out with me and watch and enjoy and soak up whatever is going on. It is OK that she is not here tonight for this show of force - I suspect that she will get to witness her fair share out here in the years to come!

The power remained on during all of the storm, although it did flicker now and then. But we were ready with candles just in case.

11/24/01 It is trying to break daylight now, although most of the sky is nothing but black clouds. The wind howled all night, and continues now, staying in the 30-40mph range. I went outside a few minutes ago to see if there was any damage, and I had to fight to remain upright. A 40mph wind may not sound like all that much, but it really is, especially when it is sustained like it is out there right now. I did not see any damage, certainly not a path cut by a tornado. So whatever it was that blew by the cabin last night must have remained up in the air.

There is a tiny spot of yellow over on the far horizon, yes I do believe it is the sun, and that yellow spot is growing! One of the hilltops at the opposite end of the view is lighting up a bright yellow-orange as the sun hits it. What a spectacular sight to see that color against a sea of black all around! But the colorful hillside quickly faded, and all that is left there, and over in the eastern horizon too, is dark grey and black - the sun is gone, and the wind howls, and the trees are dancing.

I was all set for a day of chores when Pam came over to me and wanted to go hike around the loop trail. LET'S GO! The wind chill was in the upper teens, so we had to bundle up a bit, then struck off towards the East meadow.

The wind died down as soon as we entered the deep woods, and it was quiet and warmer and simply delightful. One thing we noticed right off was that while most of the leaves had dropped off the trees, there were still a TON of berries left on them, especially on the dogwoods. Some of those trees were nearly solid red with the berries. Looking far off into the forest there was a great deal of red. Lots of the berries had fallen onto the ground as well, and lay there next to piles of persimmons. It has been a wonderful year for berries and fruits of all sorts, especially the dogwoods and persimmons. I guess to be a true native we need to cook up a persimmon pie or two in the fall - I really like the flavor, but have never gone to the trouble to make one up.

Just about the time we reached the half-way point in our little hike, Pam suggested that we go visit Haley Falls and see if it was running. We really weren't equipped for a longer hike like that, but what the heck, so we headed on down towards the Crag, and sort of drifted on through the open forest.

One of the main things that Pam wanted to do was find a lot of trees and limbs that had been knocked down by the violent storms. Each time we cleared another bench and found nothing but healthy forest, she was just a bit disappointed. All of that racket in the night and not any damage in sight! The wind had been blowing so much that I watched the top trunk of an oak tree closely and saw it sway back and forth more than five feet - and this was a big tree! Man, what power in the wind! But the forest around here is basically very healthy, and heavy winds don't do too much damage.

As we were getting close to the waterfall, I could see way out there in the woods the telltale sign of a lightning strike - freshly skinned tree! As we approached this tall hickory we began to find strips of bark. The poor thing looked like it had been struck in three distinct spots, each carving a trench down the length of the tree. The strips of bark had been blown 30 feet away from it in all directions. It must have been one terrific explosion. And there was one spot down near the ground where part of the lightning bolt had exited - the base of the tree had been blown open, yet it had not been stripped down to that point - like the bolt went down inside the tree and simply exited near the ground.

As we got close to the waterfall we could hear water running - both in the creek below, and in the waterfall itself. The waterfall was running pretty good. We found three guys camping under the overhang of the upper falls, and they were just cooking up bacon and eggs for breakfast. They reported that it had been a harrowing night under there, and that it sounded like a war going on. They had heard, and FELT the old hickory tree being blown apart.

We continued hiking along the base of the bluffline. This is such a pretty little area, with multi-colored rocks, little shelves and nooks and crannies here and there, and lots of different types of vegetation growing on the ledges. One plant in particular has always drawn me to it in the fall when it turns a golden brown. I don't know for sure what the heck it is, but I call it "Ozark Oats" because it reminds me of the sea oats that grow along the East coast, only much smaller. In one of the rock ledges we found piles and piles of what looked like rabbit pellets to me (along with rat and mice pellets). What the heck was a rabbit doing up in this bluffline?

We eventually made our way over to another waterfall that I call Mule Trail Falls. There is an old mule trail that begins down near the Buffalo River at the mouth of Whitaker Creek and runs all the way up the valley to the waterfall, and comes up through the bluffline next to the waterfall, eventually coming out at Cave Mountain Road. I have never been able to follow the trail all the way, but plan to do so at some point in my life, perhaps even with the help of one of the old timers that grew up in the area and actually used the trail way back when. The falls were beautiful, and running nicely.

Then we headed for a third waterfall, and this one required more base-of-bluff hiking, although some of the travel was slick and hazardous. We finally made it to the base of the falls - one of the tallest waterfalls in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness. This had already been one of the longest hikes that Pam had been on since she hurt her back last spring. I knew that she must be sore and about ready to go home. I reached out and drew her close, gave her a big kiss, and told her that I intended to kiss her underneath at least a thousand more waterfalls before I was through!

We started to take a little easier route back to the cabin - go climb up a bench or two and join the regular trail, but we got a little bit sidetracked, and ended up climbing up several benches in search of some property that was for sale - I wanted to see what the land looked like, how much it had been logged, and in general what condition the land was in. Pam was a bit skeptical, but like the trooper she was kept right on up with me. An hour and a great deal of bushwhacking through some pretty thick briar thickets later, we emerged on the main dirt road (after getting a good look at the property). We took the road back to the cabin, and kept up a brisk pace. Our little jaunt in the forest turned into a hike of five or six miles, but it was a very good hike, and we got to see three waterfalls, plus some new country.

The sun never did come out today, but there was an interesting pattern up in the clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon. Long about sunset some of those clouds began to turn pink and red. I quickly set up the camera and shot a few pictures, but had to go back inside the cabin because the wind was about to freeze my hands. The color grew more intense, so I got the camera gear back out once again and snapped a few more pictures. That frigid wind cut right on through me, and I was too stubborn to go inside and put on proper clothing. I had to run back inside again, blowing on my hands for warmth. Still the color grew more intense, so I returned to the deck a third time, and finally got a picture to show to you.

Just another Cloudland sunset

It is late now, and the wind is still howling outside. There are a few stars out, but mostly dark clouds up there. We have had the heat pump on and the fireplace going all day, and the cabin is all dried out now from the leaks of last night. Oh yea, the river below was at flood stage this morning - running muddy, with lots of whitecaps. By this afternoon it had gone down a lot, and the color had turned to a dark shade of green. The gravel bar where they landed helicopters during Haley's search was just beginning to show once again about dark - it had been underwater all day. We can't hear the river though because of the wind.

11/25/01 Absolutely crystal clear blue skies at sunrise today, with a bright yellow sun. And NO wind! Both Whitaker Creek and the Buffalo River were singing loudly though - about as loud as I have ever heard them. The water levels continue to drop, but often the sound is louder with lower levels. I was surprised at how loud Whitaker Creek was though. It was definitely stereo river music today!

Pam and I spent most of the morning up at the office working on book orders and other paperwork. It is great to have a partner to share the load! Once afternoon arrived Pam took off for Missouri to retrieve Amber while I got to work on a pile of cut logs that needed to be split.

Today I had some help with the logs in the form of a gas-powered log splitter. I had always wondered about how well these things actually worked, and today I found out. Suffice it to say that this machine is one of the very few items that I have used in the past ten or twenty years that actually worked as well at it was supposed to - I was very impressed with it! It was so easy to use and did a perfect job every time - really! The only problem that I had was that some of the logs I needed to split were so large and heavy that I could not lift them up onto the platform, so I had to roll them and generally wrestle them until I got them up. Then the splitter went to work and split them up quite easily. One of the logs produced ten split logs. Ted and Ron - do you need another partner? I split up almost two ricks in no time. I will have to be careful to leave some logs whole so that I will still have some left for my morning workouts when it gets crispy cold (I really enjoy splitting logs on cold mornings before breakfast.)

11/26/01 Kind of a strange beginning to the day. It was mostly overcast, although there were a few stars out. The wind was blowing full blast, howling and tossing the trees about. Then the predawn sky in the east began to turn PURPLE! Several different shades of purple. I tried to photograph it, but those colors probably will not show up too well. Just about the time the color reached its peak, it began to rain - and a very cold rain at that.

The purple is faded now and the rain has stopped. The sun is about to show up, although it may not be here long because it is still mostly overcast. Oops - there are BLACK clouds in the west moving this direction, and I just saw a large flash...

11/27/01 It is late at night and it is sleeting outside - my daughter is absolutely giddy with the possibility of not having to go to school tomorrow! She loves school, but I think it is the thought of being stranded in the mountains and not able to get to school that she likes. The cabin is quiet, with a big fire in the fireplace sending dancing shadows across the log walls.

I have had a bad head cold for nearly a week now, and I am SOOOO glad. The reason I'm glad is that once I began to get a little better and started getting just a little sense of smell back into my head, I realized that there was a dead mouse in my office. Somewhere. I could not find it, but it began to stink to high heavens - even though my stopped-up nose. The only way that I could work at the office was to breathe through my mouth, which is what I had been doing for several days anyway. Then I remembered what happens when you smell something - good or bad. There are actually micro particles of the object that are cast off into the air and that find their way into your nose, reacting with your olfactories (or something like that) to produce smell. Did you get that - when you smell a dead mouse, you are actually INHALING part of that dead mouse! And to make matters worse, when your head is all stopped up and you are breathing in through your mouth, those same micro particles of rotting mouse are getting in right along with the air. A delightful thought.

SO, I have been avoiding the office lately. Although today I decided to let Aspen the Superdog in to see if he could locate the mouse. He has been in there before, but was not able to give me any clear indication of where the little bugger was. But today I decided to let him in and watch carefully where he headed with his first sniff. Son of a gun, he nailed it right on - that little mouse (or what was left of him) was in the very back of a filing cabinet drawer that Aspen first sniffed at. Once I removed the carcass, I had to get out into the fresh air and go for a hike.

It was a great afternoon for a hike - kind of chilly, but my brisk pace kept me warm. Overcast, so the rich colors of the browns, greys and even greens (moss) of the landscape popped right out. The air was damp, which made the leaves that covered the forest floor with a thick carpet less crunchy to walk through. There weren't too many critters out stirring - on the ground or in the air. Come to think of it, I never saw a single squirrel or even a bird, and I was out for an hour or two and hiked several miles.

I have made a couple of trips tonight up to the office, and each time that I do those leaves have crunched a little bit louder - ice building up on them. Pam made a run into town today so we are well stocked with food, and we have plenty of firewood, so if we do get stranded like I did last year, we will be just fine (and now we have 1200 gallons of WATER, gravity fed so if the power goes out we can still take a shower! Ahhhh yes, wilderness living at its finest). Of course, the biggest problem with ICE all over the place is that we can't make SNOW ice cream! Both my daughter and I share a passion for this stuff - there is plenty of vanilla here, just in case.

The sleet is making more and more noise outside now, so I guess it might be getting thick. But since the ground has not been frozen, I suspect a lot of the ice will melt away. Heck, the roads might even be just fine in the morning.

Amber and I were going through some of the pictures on a disk in her camera when we came across the following picture. We have no idea when it was taken, or by whom, but I thought it was a neat scene of the half moon in a dark sky, with our waving bear in the foreground.

One of the carved wood bears waving at the moon

One last quick check outside before I crawl into bed, and I found it raining pretty good, but with a coat of ice on the ground. The temp is 33. If this precip keeps up all night, we will have one big and beautiful mess in the morning!

11/28/01 Well, the major winter storm turned out to be a "giant dud" according to one of the radio weathermen. We got about a half inch of rain, but not much ice, and no snow. The ice was in the trees, although they only had a thin coating on them. Amber's first bus did not run today, so we ended up taking her all the way to Boxley Valley to catch her second bus. The roads were all fine, but just a degree or two lower and it might have really been a big mess. It rained lightly on and off all day, and a low layer of clouds hung around just above the cabin level. The ice in the trees gradually got a little bit thicker, but still not much on the ground or the road.

Once when I was talking with someone on the telephone I saw a flock of snow geese fly by at my eye level - they were very close, just beyond the trees. I was kind of annoyed with the lady caller in the first place, but especially because I had to speak with her and not run out and watch the geese! I must say the geese gave me plenty of opportunity to get a good look at them - they continued to fly past for at least a full minute! "Excuse me, but I need to hang up now and go watch some geese fly by!" Yea, I bet she had heard that one a million times.

I did eventually go outside and got a good look at the geese. It appeared that they were actually trapped below the cloud layer, and down in the valley - they flew all the way up the main valley, then made a wide sweeping turn and headed right on back down past the cabin once again. It was one beautiful sight (I WISH that I would have had my video camera!). They were so graceful, and a flock this large acts as one bird with a very smooth motion from one end to the other. Most of them were snow geese, and bright white, but there were a few of the grey Canadians mixed in here and there. The sound of their music melted with the hushed roar of the river and produced a very nice mid-afternoon wilderness symphony.

Just by chance I happened to check my e-mail and got one from friend Glenn saying that Jasper schools had already let out for the day, a couple of hours early - yikes! I guess that will be one problem living way out here - no way to find out about such things. We had the local Harrison country radio station on but did not hear them mention the closing (you know how music sometimes fades into the background when you are working all day). But we found out in time and hurried on down to the meeting spot for the big bus, assuming that the little shuttle bus would not run this afternoon either.

We sat there a good 15 minutes before Amber's bus appeared, and the entire time we watched that same giant flock of snow geese circling over a nearby field. They just flew around and around and around and around and around and, well, you get the picture. The whole flock looked like a white tornado churning away. Sometimes they would get up a little higher or lower, but mostly remained in the same tight circle. I have no idea what their deal was, but the leader did not want to land in that field, nor get back up into the cloudbank above.

One thing that we noticed as we came down the steep end of Cave Mountain was that while the ice had built up pretty good on the trees on top, there was a definite ice line about half way down where there all of a sudden was no ice at all - it was a very distinct line. I guess that is where the temp rose from 32 to 33.

On the way back we stopped and photographed a few of the things along the road that were ice covered. Ice always looks so great when it is out there covering something, but not on the road! Some trees were bent down over our little road, and try as I might to avoid them, I ended up hitting 34 trees on the way back with the truck (and had to get out and use the hand saw that we now carry in both vehicles to do a bit of cutting).

Sweet gum leaves (left) and rose hips (right) covered with ice

All of that ice was beautiful, but it was really nice to get back into the warm and dry cabin, with a roaring fire going. Out back the clouds were still hanging low, but were open enough for me to snap a photo of the scene, with that distinct ice level showing. 
The view from the back deck this afternoon. If you look close you can see that the darker trees in the bottom have no ice on them at all. Lots of bright-white sycamores visible if you look really close

11/29/01 At 10pm last night the power went off. There was already a big fire going in the fireplace so the cabin remained nice and toasty warm all night. We don't have a battery-operated alarm clock here to know when to get up for school, but I was able to figure out how to set the alarm on Pam's tiny wrist watch and we got up at 5:45. The only radio station that we can get out here that has school closing info about Jasper only gives school closings at ten before the hour and twenty after, so I jumped up and ran out into the frigid air and sat in the truck and listened to the radio. School was in session. The roads were fine.

Amber got up out of bed and made her way around by flashlight just like it was a normal part of everyday life out here - not  a single complaint! In fact I think she kind of liked it. Outside there was a lot more ice on the trees, but the roads were just fine. On the way out to the main road we discovered just how much ice we really had.

It was a slow ride out to the main dirt road - there were LOTS of large limbs and entire trees bent down low across the road. None of them stopped us completely, but we had to creep through these ice-covered limbs to keep from getting the truck scratched. Amber's bus did not appear, so we drove her on down to Boxley once again. There were more trees down along the main road too, but not nearly as bad as the ones leading back to the cabin.

Looking out the front window of the truck while driving through an ice-covered tree

Once it got fully light, I dug out the chain saw and headed back out onto the road. I spent the entire morning cutting out trees and large limbs - 47 of them between the cabin and the mailbox (about a mile and a half). The ice was REALLY spectacular, but it turned out to be quite dangerous as well. Several times as I was busy cutting, or even just walking up to the next downed tree, I would hear an explosion and had to run for my life as a big limb with a thousand pounds of ice was crashing down towards me.

And I am not stretching the truth any about the weight of that ice either - the ice had become so thick that even the smaller branches were so heavy I could not physically pick them up, and had to resort to dragging them or rolling them to clear the road, and that was after the limb/tree was cut up into many smaller pieces.

No problem in getting these trees to the ground - in many cases all I had to do was touch the base of the tree with the chain saw and the trunk popped and split and came down to the ground with a thunderous crash. Most of the trees were saplings and up to five or six inches in diameter - no large ones. Although some of the limbs that had already come crashing down onto the road were even larger than six inches. It was wholesale slaughter and kind of sad to see all of those trees go down.

The temp hovered around 32, and it continued to mist, which only added to the ice. It was a beautiful wasteland.

Soon after I got the road cleared out Pam and I headed into town to pick up Amber and go to the PTA meeting there. What a shame and a giant waste we have right now with the parents of Jasper students! There were only THREE people at the PTA meeting!!!!!!! Then a fourth showed up, but that was it. There were only four at the last meeting. I have a feeling though now that my wife is getting involved that things will turn around - she has a habit of doing that.

It was dark when we returned to the cabin - or should I say TRIED to return to the cabin. Just as soon as we got up into the ice on the big hill coming up from Boxley Valley on Cave Mountain Road, there were not one, but at least three giant trees that had fallen completely across the road. I had not brought the chain saw with me, and even if I had it, probably would not have been able to cut out all of these large trees. The only thing that we could do was to turn around and go another way. That other way was up through Mossville, and around to Fallsville and in from Red Star.

The entire spine of the Ozarks had been hit with heavy ice, and all of the homes were dark, or had candles burning. When we got to Fallsville we found power company trucks that had come up from Clarksville to help out - they were using shotgun blasts to try to clear some of the ice from the power lines. We drove on, dodging many full-sized trees that had fallen and blocked our lane. And it got kind of hairy at one point - the main power line ran across the road and was sagging a lot - we were not sure if we could get under it or not. We all held our breaths and drove under it, hoping it would not sag any further - and we cleared it by about two inches.

Thankfully the roads were just fine. The temp was still about 31 or 32, with a light mist falling. But none of it was freezing on the roads, only in the trees.

As we turned onto Cave Mountain Road we were hit with the reality that we may not be able to make it to the cabin - there were trees down across the road everywhere. We did have a "turbo" saw with us, which is an advanced type of pruning saw used for limbing trees. It is about 18 inches long and curved slightly, with a row of three-sided teeth, and it cuts both directions - pushing and pulling (most saws only cut in one direction). I have used this hand saw a lot in trail building, and have found it to be nearly as fast as a chain saw with some trees and limbs. That was our total arsenal to battle the icy trees.

Pam got behind the wheel and drove, and I jumped out and sawed and cleared and ran back to the truck. A dozen trees. Another dozen trees. A third dozen trees. This portion of our trip turned out to be the most exciting, and the most dangerous by far. Every time that I got out to cut a limb or tree out of the way, three or four explosions would take place around me, sometimes showering me with ice and limbs. The ladies were watching all of this from inside the truck, and I'm sure were not too happy about it.

The further along we got the greater our chances were that we would come across a tree that was too large for me to cut out with the hand saw. And then we would really have been in trouble - because the chances were that big trees were falling behind us as well, trapping us in the middle of it all. And then where would we park the truck to spend the night - EVERY PLACE on that road was HAZARDOUS!!!

We did pass one car that had been abandoned, right next to a giant fallen tree. I was able to cut out enough limbs for Pam to drive the truck around it, by going through the ditch. Another large tree had fallen and left us just enough room for the truck to squeeze underneath, but only with Pam driving off of the road.

Quite frankly, I'm not in good enough shape to have cut out all of those trees by hand that I did along this route - but somehow I kept going. I'm sure those exploding trees all around me kept the adrenaline flowing and that turbo saw working.

Of course, another danger in all of this was that a big tree could fall across the truck at any time. Something I tried not to dwell on.

We met two four-wheel-drive pickup trucks coming at us. "It is really bad up ahead and you will never make it, especially in THAT rig" they told us, pointing at our poor, scratched up Mercedes SUV. I was confident that this old truck would go anyplace that their trucks would go, so we pressed on. There were more trees and more explosions, but finally we made it to our turnoff - YIPPIE!!! We still had nearly two miles to go, but since I had already cut out 47 trees ahead in that stretch, I felt pretty good that we would make it. And even if we were blocked by a large tree, we were close enough now that we could hike on into the cabin.

There were a few more trees to cut out, but not too many, and soon we pulled up into the carport, relieved and overjoyed to have reached the cabin alive and unhurt!

After getting candles lit and the fireplace roaring and Amber off to bed, Pam and I spent nearly an hour sitting out on the back deck. We just sat there in the dark and listened to one of the most incredible things I had ever heard out here - the sounds of giant trees breaking apart and sliding down the steep hillsides out there in the wilderness. The loud cracks and splits and crashes were really impressive, but it was very sad to imagine the destruction that we were "witness" to. We could only guess what the hillsides would look like in the morning. Secretly, I wished it was daylight already so that we could actually see what was going on, and watch those giants of the forest sliding down the hillside.

There are big trees on two sides of the cabin, but they seemed to be holding up well, and there were no big crashes going on close by. Lots of little ones on the metal roof though, and they would startle us with their loud bangs.

11/30/01 Daylight brought bright blue skies and warmer temps. We were surrounded by a fairyland of gleaming ice. Our loft bedroom was surrounded with limbs we had never noticed before - now heavy with their load of thick ice, yet holding on for dear life. In fact I think the back porch roof was actually holding up some of those limbs, keeping them from breaking off. We didn't even bother to listen to the school closings - with all of the new destruction going on all night, there was no way the main road would be open to get Amber to school. Besides, I was quite weary of cutting trees out anyway. Amber would miss her first day of school.

A glorious sunrise through the ice!

Limbs on the porch roof, as seen from the loft window

The view out the back of the cabin

No damage to speak of around the cabin, other than thousands of smaller limbs scattered all over the ground. Across the way, we could see the remains of those big trees that had split open during the night - many dozens of them, although the damage was not as extensive as the sounds the night before had indicated. Thank goodness.

The day turned into a very bizarre world outside - blue skies and sunshine, WARM temps, wind, and ice raining down EVERYWHERE! I've never seen anything like it. The sun and warm temps were releasing the ice from the trees and branches, and the wind was tossing the falling ice, in fact hurling it into the air - you were taking your life into your own hands just walking around outside!

Still no power.

Later in the afternoon we had to make a run into town. I figured by then many of the limbs would have shaken off all of their ice and were no longer down across the road, and/or someone else had taken up where we left off and had cut out a way to the highway.

It was very slow going, but we finally did make it out to pavement. But not before being pelted with the flying ice for nearly an hour - it was raining ice like you would not believe! Driving in that stuff, and having to dodge the trees that were across the road, I felt like I was in a video game and trying to get to the end of something before being blown up. Amber thought it all quite exciting, and was having a big time of it all in the back seat.

The road conditions were so bad that the mailman could not get through. We met him out at the highway, and he told us that the power company told him it would be at least several more days before power was restored to even the main road areas. That meant that it might be longer before our power was back on again.

We treated ourselves to a fine dinner at Red Lobster in town, then made our way back out to the cabin. We drove up the big hill out of Boxley where we had been turned back the night before. Man, it looked like a bomb had gone off on that hillside - there were entire giant trees uprooted that had fallen across the road. Thank goodness they had all been cut out during the day. It was a very surreal scene driving around - NO one had power, and the church and homes in Boxley Valley were all dark, and all of the hillsides around were dark too - not a sign of life anyplace. Yet it was warm and all of the ice was gone - it did not look like a situation where the power needed bo be out.

So that is the way December ended - with candles burning in the cabin. We still had plenty of water from our 1200 gallon holding tank, and 32 pounds of gravity-fed pressure. And the water in the hot water tank was still at least warm, so we could even take showers. The fireplace kept the cabin toasty warm, and we had a camp stove set up in the kitchen for cooking. Amber and I played games by candle light, and Pam read with it. All in all, we felt pretty lucky, and had just about everything that we needed. The only problem with it all was that I could not access the internet - and we have had a lot of book orders coming in that way of late, plus I knew a ton of e-mails (and, of course, I could not write or update the journal). Plus the voice mail system was not working when we were away from the phone to take orders. And probably worst of all, the fax machine could not work - that is how most of our book dealers send in orders. So we probably lost a great deal of business this past week. We were all safe and healthy and happy though. Life was good at Cloudland.

It never did snow a flake.

December 2001 Journal
 

E-mail Tim
E-mail Pam or Amber