May 10, 2024

Grandparents

If there was one weekday I enjoyed waking up on, it was Friday. This morning, I talked to my wife via FaceTime to say hello. She would be back this evening, and we were both eager to spend the weekend together. I made some coffee and sat down on the couch alone, thinking about tomorrow morning’s coffee time. My wife would be with me, transforming the entire coffee experience.

While I missed my wife, I was happy she had a night of reprieve from the long morning commutes she had braved. As if medical school wasn’t tough enough, spending three hours on the road each day ate up precious mental energy and study time. This compounded the stress of being tired, needing to study complicated material, and having no time to do it. Next week, my wife would stay in Cary. This would relieve some of the pressure and create some space to get her work done. For us, schooling was a priority, and it was something we both signed up for, and I took my support role seriously.

This morning, I made time to take feed out to the pine grove for the deer and other animals. I grabbed the last forty-pound bag of deer corn from my SUV, threw it over my shoulder and headed into the grove. There, where the pines met the old forest, I started pouring out small piles, being careful not to inhale the dust that shot up in the air as the kernels hit the ground. I used up half of the bag and then hauled the rest back to my car. It was almost birthing season, and I was sure the pregnant deer were hungry and looking for extra food. Before leaving the grove, I checked the trail camera in the area to find out if any new fawns had emerged. There were none.

I came inside the house, took a shower, and got busy with work. This week had been unusually quiet. Several people were off on vacation, so maybe that was the cause. In my line of work, slow days were uncommon, so I embraced them while they were here. Next week, several people would return, and I was sure that work would be doubly busy.

During my lunch break, I drove into Wilson, making a repeat visit to Panera. Yesterday, I tried their Fuji Apple Chicken Salad, and liked it so much that I grabbed two of them for tonight’s dinner, one for me and the other for my wife. Although it was only lunchtime, my wife called me. She finished work early and was getting ready to make the drive home. She told me the weather in Cary looked ominous and that the trip might take a while. I looked out the dining-room windows. In Sims, the sky was clear and bright.

My wife must have brought the stormy weather with her because when she was about five miles away, the sky suddenly clouded up and went dark. The wind picked up, stirring the tall pines and blowing debris around the yard. Then the sky opened, and the water fell. In twenty minutes, the weather had transformed from sunny to stormy. I reminded myself that I was no longer in Texas, where the spring and summer weather was dry, often to the point of drought. Here in North Carolina, there was plenty of rain year round.

My wife arrived, and I met her outside. We did our usual wave and smile as she parked her car near the front door. We lived in the country, so every inch of grass was a potential parking space. Sometimes we parked our cars away from the house, but they were most often close to the front door because it was the tactical thing to do. I pulled a large green tea from Panera out of the refrigerator and handed it to my wife. She loved those things, so I saved mine for her when I learned she was on her way home. I was already working at the dining room table with my work computer, and my wife joined me, sitting down with her computer to study.

When I had one hour of work left, my wife closed her computer, grabbed a cold beer, and sat outside. I was happy for her, even if I was a little jealous. Thanks, Alan Jackson. After I finished work, we ate our salads outside together. The dinner was tasty and convenient for a Friday evening, when neither of us wanted to leave the house or be up late. We sat outside together talking and taking in the scenery.

It was one of those evenings where the weather helped break up the monotony of the season. It was cool enough outside to feel a little cold. The wind was stirring, making the hundred foot trees sway back and forth like saplings. Clumps of dead pine needles that had been stuck in the trees loosened and blew all over the yard. Some floated to the ground, almost arriving at the deck, but most of the needles fell fast, as if there were much heavier than they actually were. The wind and blowing debris had us standing at the railing to watch the show. I tried to catch pine needles, but they never quite reached the deck, some coming as close as a foot away.

Even though the weather was acting up, there was no rain. The high winds seemed to move the clouds along, and after an hour, they were mostly gone. The sun came back out, and the weather calmed, as if some entity had possessed it, and then suddenly vanished. As the sun neared the horizon, its light shone on the tips of the eastern pines. I loved seeing these last streaks of light. They were always a soft golden color and made great lighting for pictures. But most of all, to me, these bright slivers were the sun’s last stand against the night, a sign, and perhaps a symbol, of day’s end. Last light was the end of our day, and we would wake up early tomorrow, waiting for the first light to hit the western pines.

My wife made a lucky discovery this evening. A week or two ago, we noticed two wrens return to a nest they used last year to raise two broods of chicks, producing seven baby wrens. We welcomed their recent return, but a few days later, we discovered that two eggs had been pushed out of the nest and were lying on the deck, broken. Our hopes for them were a little broken, too. However, for a few days now, the male wren had been taking food to the nest for the mother to eat, who was likely sitting on her eggs. Tonight, my wife noticed two bald chicks poking out their beaks, taking food from the father. A new brood had been born, and we were grandparents again.

Friday evening had ended, and nature had also closed her curtains, preparing for her evening show. The stars poked holes in the night, making pinpoints in the fabric of space. Fireflies were lighting as they sat on the ground, signaling each other. Frogs sang loudly, and I wondered where they were in the forest. It was time for us to go to bed, but I knew the rest of the forest was just coming alive. The foxes, opossums, deer, coyotes, and raccoons were getting ready for their nocturnal activities. Millions of spiders were crawling about while the bats and owls patrolled the air. It was time to let nature devolve into darkness, to become wild, unsettled, to resume its life without us, until the sun’s light could rise once again.

May 9, 2024

Reflection

I woke up feeling rested. After sitting down to have a cup of coffee with me, my wife fed the dogs and got ready for work. This evening, she would stay in Cary and come home on Friday. That meant just one evening apart, and I was looking forward to the weekend, which was approaching quickly.

I sat down to write, waiting for the sun to get closer to the horizon. This morning, I planned to go to the Buckhorn Reservoir to fish for a couple of hours before work began. It was drizzling outside, but the weather report showed the rain stopping and skies clearing during the next hour. Anyway, I never minded fishing in a light rain. That’s what raincoats were for.

Driving to the reservoir was always exciting. The thought of getting out of the house and being on the water always put a smile on my face. What better way to start the day than wreaking havoc on the local fish population?

After parking my car, I hit the button to open the back of my SUV, and when I did, it seemed to activate a torrential downpour. By the time I got to the back of the vehicle to get out my fishing rods, the rain was coming down so hard that I couldn’t see five feet in front of me. I waited in the car for about fifteen minutes to see if the rain would slow. It didn’t. I texted my wife about my predicament, ending the message by telling her that Jesus never let me have any fun.

Even though fishing did not happen, it was nice to be out during the early morning hours. A ten acre property that backed up to the reservoir’s parking lot was for sale. They wanted over a million dollars for it, even though every room had wallpaper hideous enough to disorient a fighter pilot. The farm fields near the lake were all freshly planted in long, neat rows. I admired the sight of the tiny plants growing in the tilled red dirt that occupied every field I drove past.

When I arrived home, I took a shower and got to work. It was a quiet morning, perfect for finishing a report while sipping on a cup of fresh coffee. During my lunch break, I drove into Wilson to pick up food at Panera. I purchased a sandwich for lunch and a salad to eat later for dinner.

Once I finished work, I grabbed my photography equipment and headed into the woods. The clouded sky seemed dark, even though the lighting was brighter than yesterday evening. I toted two wide aperture lenses that shot better in low light conditions. As I made my way through the forest, long gusts of wind approached from afar, getting louder as they neared, until they blew over me strong enough to make me tuck my head down and hold on to my hat. I hoped no dead branches or climbing snakes would fall on me.

The air this evening felt pleasant. Perhaps the heavy morning rain wrung out the sky’s humidity, but it felt cooler, and there were fewer insects like gnats, mosquitoes, and biting flies. This made the time outdoors more relaxing. I stood up on a large boulder that overlooked the northwest corner of the property, where I saw deer regularly. After twenty minutes, I moved down the hill and set up a small folding stool near the creek’s edge, just inside a tree line that concealed me.

The water smelled briny, but the creek was full from the morning’s rain shower. Although no wildlife was in sight, I felt content to sit there waiting, taking in the ambiance. I sat still with my cameras strapped to me, resting in my lap. Birds were singing all around. To my left, I could hear a downy woodpecker thumping on a dead tree. And to my right, I could hear a pileated woodpecker doing the same. The two birds took turns sounding like nature’s own version of the dueling banjos.

I thought about how much nature had taught me. After two years in the woods, I could see so much more than when I arrived at this place. The signs were always there. I just had to stop and learn how to read them. When we relaxed our minds, then we could see everything around us. First, however, seeing required us to get out of the conversation in our head, to silence the inner chatter, and reflect on what was outside of us. Ironically, by turning away from myself, I could see nature, which showed me a precise reflection of myself.

We liked to think that our internal view of ourselves was what was true, but I felt that the looking inward was more of hiding than examining. It was a way we could escape what our environment was telling us about ourselves, an opportunity to control the narrative. When we let go of that lie, the self-deception, then looking outward into nature was not something to be worried about, it was a source of inner peace I was seeking.

As I packed up my things before heading home, I knew I could sit out in nature, taking pictures of her for the rest of my life. This, I realized, made me happy. When I arrived near the house, I sat down just inside the tree line of the pine grove, facing west. The wind blew across the pines, moving north, sounding just like a wave rolling past me in slow motion. Tonight, this wave was backlit by the soft orange light of the setting sun. 

May 8, 2024

Condensation

As always, the morning started with coffee and chores. When it was time for my wife to leave, I grabbed some paper towels and wiped off all the condensation from her SUV’s side mirrors. The humidity was high, so water covered her vehicle. After she drove off, I grabbed my laptop and sat down at the dining room table to write.

After a writing session, I grabbed my hat and boots and went into the woods for a morning walk. The humidity, still lingering from the night, hung thick in the air, intensifying all the forest’s smells. The sun was up and relatively bright, but all the fresh spring growth blocked the light, keeping the woods cool and dark. It was not the best lighting for photography, but I was always prepared to shoot anything interesting I discovered.

Just before I left the house for my walk, I read an article in the Wilson Times about a black bear that was spotted in Wilson. The local newspaper’s online article had footage of the bear caught by a business security camera. I knew my area was an even more hospitable location for the large animal.

I decided that from now on, I would always carry a firearm while spending time in the woods. This morning, I grabbed a pistol, toting it along with my binoculars and camera equipment. In the pine grove, I found several deer tracks in the soft dirt near my blind. I quickly rummaged through videos on a nearby trail camera and saw several deer feeding in the area. There were no bears.

Along the trail, I saw two eastern gray squirrels playing. I raised my camera to fire off a couple of shots, but something didn’t look right. The electronic viewfinder on my camera looked different; dull. It took a few seconds to sort out, but then I realized it was the time of year when my lenses would momentarily fog up. Because the large pieces of glass had been sitting inside my cool home, when I stepped outside, the high humidity would gather condensation on the lens. To combat this issue, the lenses needed time to adjust to the outside temperature. This meant taking my camera equipment outside fifteen or twenty minutes before I planned to shoot any photos.

A little further down the trail, I spotted an elegant dragonfly. Its wings were jet black while its torso and long tail were a deep iridescent blue color. I stopped to shoot a couple of photos, attempting to capture the flying insect with its wings open while it perched. I pulled a couple of good shots, but I was still waiting for my lens to defog.

On the trail that led to the western side of the creek, I saw several white markings. At first I thought it was poop from a waterfowl, like a heron or seagull, but upon closer inspection, I saw it was actually a tiny white mold. The growth was so fine that it looked like powder and it was everywhere along the trail. I didn’t remember seeing the white fungus during previous years.

Scattered near the creek were bright yellow and orange petals from the tulip trees. I remembered seeing these last year. When I looked them up on the internet, they had pictures of tulip trees people had planted in residential neighborhoods. They stood about twenty or thirty feet tall, but the tulip trees near the creek were easily one hundred feet taller. The beavers impressed me when they left their teeth marks on these towering giants.

When I passed by the deer feeder in the central part of the property, I saw a mole had dug a trail about eight to ten feet long, just underneath the pathway. These small trails were also in the pasture; moles were not uncommon here. As I rounded the last corner of the trail back to the house, I noted the various birds singing and twisted trees growing in the area, their bark scarred by vines that once spiraled around their trunks.

When I came home, I opened a box I received yesterday from B&H, my go-to camera supplier. I unboxed a new tool I had saved up for, a new camera body that was compatible with my lenses. Having two camera bodies would make photography shoots more efficient and the new body boasted a better autofocus system, a faster shooting rate, and better low light capabilities. These three things were key components of my style of photography. I was pleased with the new camera and was eager to try it out. That would have to wait. It was time to shower and get ready for work.

During my lunch break, I walked outside and entered the hidden trailhead on the west side of the property, intending to check the trail camera posted there. When I entered the woods, however, a beautiful box turtle was relaxing in the middle of the trail, just inside the tree line. Its dark green shell with yellowish markings contrasted well with its black head, that sported a bright orange pattern that extended down to its legs. I photographed the turtle before heading back inside. For lunch, I tossed a ribeye on the grill because survival.

After work, I took a walk into the old part of the forest for last light. This morning, I saw a white powdery looking fungus growing on the western trails, but on the east side a similar fungus on the trails glowed in bright purple. When I arrived at the creek, I heard a deer bark and saw a small herd run north into the tree line. It was almost time for the does to birth their fawns, and I had noticed a change in their patterns. A few weeks ago, there were several large herds moving through the property, but the deer seemed to have broken up into smaller groups. Some does even walked around solo.

When I arrived at the trailhead where I spotted the turtle, two whitetails spotted me, barked, and ran south. The turtle was gone. I went back inside the house, waiting for my wife to arrive home. After she pulled up, we unloaded her things and then walked down the dirt road to the mailboxes, a half mile trip. When we returned, we went to see if the turtle was back. It was not, but while we were standing at the trailhead, my wife spotted two deer in the woods, watching us from a safe distance.

The sunset, this evening, looked spectacular. The heavily clouded sky diffused the sun’s light, making the entire west side of the sky glow in bright yellows and oranges. Although the sun was on the horizon, it cast one sliver of bright light that cut across our property, shining a thin beam through the pine grove. It was the perfect ending to a good day.

May 7, 2024

Traffic Jam

The night was full of interrupted sleep, and I found myself wide awake at 3:00 AM. I finally fell asleep around 4:00 and my wife’s alarm woke us both up at 5:00. We both felt tired and eagerly sipped our coffees on the couch while Kilo stared impatiently. Kilo knew it was doggy breakfast time after we finished our drinks, so she was always hurrying us. The dogs gulped down their breakfast as if they hadn’t eaten in a week. Except for Koda, who liked to take his time, and mostly ate when his mama and papa sat down next to him. After my wife left for work, I sat down to write.

I spent most of the morning in the woods, reconnecting with the ever changing environment that looked like a different forest each week. This morning, the songbirds were active, as were the downy and pileated woodpeckers that were thumping on hollow trees. The skies were dim, and the trail was still muddy from all the rain that fell this week. The overall temperature was comfortable and cool, and the forest felt peaceful; quiet.

I walked north on the east side of the property, hoping to sneak up on wildlife near the creek. As I turned west toward the water, I slowed my pace, watching carefully to avoid stepping on twigs lying on the forest floor. It only took one snapping branch to alert the wary animals in the area. I heard a loud noise, a type of bird that had a vibrant honking sound, similar to a goose. Freezing in my tracks, I squatted low to the ground to conceal myself.

Through the trees about sixty yards in front of me, I saw a large blue heron fly from the ground to the top of a tall tree where it kept on with its loud, unusual call. I stayed low, attempting to locate the tree where the heron perched, but before I had moved five feet, the large waterfowl flew past me, soaring high above the forest’s canopy. One day I hoped to photograph this bird. Even if it was a poor photo, it would be one I cherished, as I’ve been trying to approach this heron for over a year.

The water in the creek was moving fast today, rushing from the recent rainfall. The trees still held water droplets on their leaves, and when the wind blew, the water rained down on me. I turned back toward the house so I could take a shower and start work. It was an enjoyable morning in the woods.

Work was busy, but productive. I cleared most of the items I wanted to finish by the end of the week, and today was only Tuesday. For lunch, I grilled chicken wings on the Traeger, seasoned with salt and pepper. It was a tasty meal, and I saved a couple of wings for the dogs.

At six o’clock, I was ready to shut down my work computer. I had been tracking my wife and knew her drive had been bad, as it took her almost double the time to get home. When she pulled down the main road, I noticed her car had stopped for a while. Garbage, her favorite local cat, must have been out hunting today. Any time my wife saw this cat, she would pull over and say hello, usually pulling out an impromptu meal for her furry friend. The dogs, who could smell the cat and cat food on my wife’s hands, were never impressed.

It was good to see my wife, and when she got out of the car, I could see she had a long day. School and work were a constant pressure in her life, and a two-hour drive through traffic did not help. We both felt a little out of sorts, but we were happy to be back together. I had spent the day worrying about a family issue I was struggling to solve, which required resources I was trying to balance. The matter weighed on my mind throughout the workday, and by the time my wife came home, I felt exhausted, too.

We drove into Wilson, planning to fill her car up with gas and pickup some food at Panera. Somehow, we ended up sitting on the patio at La Rancherita, sipping an iced tea and water. My wife asked several questions about the problem I was trying to solve, and before our food was served, she had remedied a problem I had been working on all day. I didn’t know what I was going to do with this woman. While “awesome” was a word that was overused, my wife truly was awesome. I always told her that if she wasn’t already married, then I’d ask her to marry me. That was our little joke since she was the one who proposed. I said yes. A story for a different time, perhaps.

After dinner, we crossed the road to Target, where I bought a new pillow to see if it would help me sleep without my head being too high or too flat. I needed something that held my neck in the Goldilocks zone. Aging was so fun.

When we arrived home, I fed the dogs and my wife bathed. After the dogs ate, I went outside and stood on the deck, peering into the forest’s edge. The air was thick with humidity and the sun’s light was all but gone. There were a few birds chirping in the distance, but it was mostly quiet. Then, to my surprise, I heard something that made me smile.

Off in the distance, I listened to the repeated calls of an owl. The sound was faint but undeniable. My wife came outside, but the owl had already quieted for the night. She did not miss out, however, because three fireflies made an unexpected appearance. After a long day, the evening ended just as it did every night around here, with nature showing us that life, no matter how mundane, was always full of magic.

May 6, 2024

Escaped

The morning started, as it always did, with a cup of hot coffee. My wife and I were in good spirits, but we were also a little sad at the same time. After she got ready for work, I helped her load the car. She kissed me goodbye and then rode off into the sunrise.

After my wife left, I made a second cup of coffee and then sat down to write. By the time work began, I felt drained. The excitement of having my partner home was such a high crescendo that having her leave felt like a deep valley. I felt exhausted right after she got home and right after she left. Such was life.

During my lunch break, I left to buy some groceries at the Piggly Wiggly in Bailey. When I arrived home, my wife texted me she had a prescription ready at the pharmacy in Bailey. I answered I would pick it up on the following day. Ten minutes later, she texted back asking if I could pick it up today. I got in my car, drove back to Bailey and took care of the errand. I didn’t hear from my wife, but I didn’t need to. There was only one reason she would ask me to run this errand today. She was coming home.

About a half hour later, my wife told me there was a problem with her bed-and-breakfast. The toilet had backed up, and the owner contacted my wife, letting her know the room would not be available. My wife could have found a hotel or another room, but she opted to come home and that was fine by me. While I didn’t want her to waste time and energy on a long commute, I was happy to have her home, especially in a month we thought we would spend apart.

When she pulled up in her SUV, we were both smiling and I was scratching my head. I wasn’t sure how I got so lucky in life. I helped my wife unload her things, and she told me she was going to commute the whole week. She planned to be home every evening and stay at the bed-and-breakfast next week when they had resolved their plumbing issues.

After work, I needed to get away from the computer, so I took a walk into the woods while my wife took a bath. The sun was already near the horizon, but I could still see small pockets of blue sky intermittently while looking up in the forest. There was a gentle wind and the pine tops were swaying, seemingly in slow motion. Inside the forest, it was dim. The ground was damp, and the air smelled musty, an aftereffect from all the rain we received.

As I was walking down the trail, I almost walked face first into an intricate web built by a small spider. I stopped, bent over to pick up a small branch, and was about to remove the web. Just then, however, a tiny insect flew into the web and the spider was working fast to prepare its dinner. I opted to let the small arachnid finish its meal. I tossed the stick aside and backtracked to a trail that carried me around the area.

I had been walking up to the creek as quietly as possible. Lately, there had been various wildlife in that area of the woods. Over the past few weeks, I had encountered a blue heron, two large turtles, a small flock of ducks, and several herds of deer. When I got within a hundred yards of the creek, I heard the loud flapping wings of the ducks as they flew off. They spooked so easily. I stood still at the water’s edge for about fifteen minutes, taking in the sounds of the stream trickling, and the sight of the soft light cast against the clouds by the setting sun.

After I left the creek area, I stopped because I thought I heard a noise. In the distance, probably a couple of hundred yards from me, but hidden from my view, I heard the faint gobbles of wild turkeys. While walking home, the frogs at the creek started up, taking charge of the airwaves. The loud volume of these small amphibians was astonishing.

It felt good to be back in the forest. I remembered walking through the woods during winter and how sparse everything looked. Now, the trees and other vegetation were lush and so green they seemed to glow. While I could see a hundred yards through the winter forest, now I could only see about fifteen or twenty feet at a time. The place seemed rugged in the cold, and now, in spring, it was energetic and full of life.

When I arrived back at the house, my wife was done with her bath. I left the dining room to go take a shower while she sat studying. The night was quickly coming to a close. As I showered and prepared for bed, it made me giddy to know my wife was in the next room. When I was ready for bed, she was still awake, waiting for me. We climbed into bed together, chatting and laughing for a bit, before we said goodnight and closed our eyes. Life had its plans, but we had escaped them. 

May 5, 2024

Cinco De Mayo

We woke up in style, munching on orange glazed cinnamon rolls and sipping hot Nespresso coffees. Really, could a Sunday morning start off any better? After breakfast, we fed the dogs and sat down at the dining room table with our laptops, my wife studying, and me writing. As we worked, I monitored the weather. First, it was cloudy, then the sun popped out, only to be followed by more clouds. The weather report called for a chance of rain.

Needing a break, we grabbed our boots and headed out the front door to the western trailhead hidden in the tree line. This week, the Chinese Privets that surrounded the entrance were in full bloom, and their fragrant scent lingered around the front and back yards. When we ducked under the tiny white flowers to enter the trail, we saw that small white and purple flowers, fallen from the chinaberry trees, covered the entire forest floor. The place looked magical; romantic.

In the area sat a watermelon rind, completely hollowed out, as thin as an avocado skin. There were also empty corn husks, and the apples we had placed there were nowhere to be found. I pulled the SD card from the trail camera and we took it inside the house to watch the videos on my tablet. 

The video showed several rabbits, all very wary, who took small bites out of the apples. One rabbit picked up an apple in its mouth and hopped away. During the day, there were squirrels who took the corn, pulling off the husks and silks with their miniature hands before munching on the juicy kernels. A pregnant deer visited during the day and night. While the doe was leery of any danger the food presented, once she sunk her teeth into the watermelon, she ate the entire thing, scraping it clean.

We studied the doe’s belly to see if we could see a fawn kick, but we only saw the deer’s deep respirations. On the last video, a black long-haired cat passed by the camera. We had seen this cat on the north side of the main road, so I was surprised to see it so far from its home. After we finished watching the videos, we got back to studying and writing.

Inevitably, after a long study session; we felt famished. For lunch, we drove into Wilson and picked up food from the drive through at Panera, a salad for my wife and a sandwich for me. We ate the food while our car was being washed, finishing up the meal while parked in one of the many empty spaces near the vacuums. It was raining lightly while were out, but about thirty minutes after we arrived home, the sky poured. The morning had been one big tease, offering hope for a sunny day spoiled by dark clouds and intermittent showers. Now, the rain was coming down, and I found it comforting.

After a couple of hours, the rain softened to a light drizzle, so I changed clothes, grabbed some earthworms, and drove to Buckhorn Reservoir to fish. The sky was still overcast, mostly filled with dark gray clouds, with an occasional patch of blue sky poking through. The weather was warm, and the wind was tolerable. Compared to winter, the fish were biting, but it still took five or ten minutes before a fish hit the hook. In late spring and all of summer, the fish would bite almost as soon as the bait hit the water.

Today was Cinco de Mayo, and as if by an act of fate or divine intervention, I heard music behind me on the lake’s edge. It was live music. At first I thought it was a marching band because of the snare and bass drums sounding, but when I turned around, I saw a large traditional Mexican band complete with drums, horns, guitars, and, of course, an accordion. The group had arrived on a large touring bus and they were there filming a music video near the water. It was all a little surreal. During a part of the filming, the band really amped up the energy, whistling and yelling out their gritos.

I had the sensation of falling through a portal and being transported back to my life spent in Cancun and Puerto Juarez. Hearing the festive music, seeing the men dressed in their white shirts and pants with red neckerchiefs, bandanas, and huarache shoes, along with the motions and sounds of the water; it all took me back to a quarter century ago.

I remembered sitting on a dock off the lagoon, listening to a similar band while heading off on a boat to fish for dorado and huachinango. After fishing, we’d pull our boats onto the dock and hand the fresh-caught fish to the chef and in twenty minutes, we’d have the best fish dishes I had ever eaten. There was ceviche, fish tacos, and salted fish dishes that I really loved. And the people of Mexico were tough and full of wickedly funny humor. What a rugged land and people. Recently, my wife asked me if I missed Mexico, and it was one of those things in life that I was happy that I did when I was young, and had little interest in as an adult. Working as a bodyguard was a risky business. The people there, how should I say it? They didn’t fuck around.

Amid all that was going on around me, a large family’s yelling pulled me away from my vivid past. There was a mother and father with four young children who were all fishing. Every time a kid was reeling in a fish, the whole family would yell, cheering on the fun. It sounded like they were rooting for their favorite Super Bowl team. It was loud and jovial. For as much as I went to fish at the reservoir in search of silence, I welcomed all the celebration, noise, and banter. Recently, an experience at Lake Wilson had reminded me that negative emotions were contagious, and today was a reminder that positive feelings also spread quickly. Catching two bass today was the least fun part of this afternoon’s fishing.

When I arrived home, my wife and I left to fill her SUV with gas, and when we got home, we went for a walk in the woods with Axel. My wife put me in charge of tearing down the spider webs along the trail after she walked face first into her third web. It was a very nice evening. Even though my wife was leaving for the week, something that made us both gloomy, we really took advantage of the time we had together this weekend. We sat outside talking about life after school, and I recounted stories of practicing martial arts in Japan, telling my wife about the time I trained in Noma Dojo, which was Tokyo’s oldest school.

Tomorrow, we would separate for a week, and although we had done this many times over the past twenty months, it was still difficult. In fact, I think it was getting harder. The closer we grew, the more averse we were to being away from each other. The weekend had officially ended.

May 4, 2024

Bitter And Bold

I said it before, and I would say it again. There was nothing quite like the feeling of waking up on a Saturday morning with my wife by my side. We both awoke at the same time and spent another half hour snuggling each other without saying a word. For me, this was the feeling of happiness and love.

Of course, there were other things to do. This morning, we had plans to go into Wilson to get breakfast, something that excited us. We fed the dogs, washed up, and changed clothes. After, we promptly exited the house and headed into Wilson to the Cracker Barrel, where I had not eaten since the last time I was there with my wife.

While heading north on Old Davis Road, we spotted a large wild turkey feeding in the middle of an empty crop field. These birds were enormous, with an impressive fan of feathers. I wouldn’t mind harvesting one with my bow this turkey season. Last year, my trail cameras caught a rafter of wild turkeys moving in single file along the creek and again moving past a deer feeder that sat under a tree blind. I knew most people hunted the birds from the ground with a shotgun, but using my bow sounded more pleasing.

Breakfast was amazing, as always. One of the many things my wife and I connected over was time spent conversing while eating a delicious meal. The girl liked to eat, and well, I did too. Over breakfast, the conversation turned to our favorite beverage: coffee. My wife, who just spent a week at a bed-and-breakfast, told me about the Nespresso machine the place had and raved about the taste of the coffee. About thirty minutes after we left Cracker Barrel, we were walking out of a store with a brand new Nespresso machine and milk frother. 

When we arrived home, we set up the machine and put it to work. In a few minutes, I was drinking one of the best coffees I had tasted in my life. I instantly fell in love with the setup. In our home, coffee was an important daily ritual, something I would say was akin to a monk drinking tea in the monastery. While we found the beverage delicious, morning coffee time had become a place of communication and connection, a way to start the day off strong through the daily cultivation of our relationship. Coffee time was introspective when done alone, and interactive when done together. Coffee, for me, had a strong bitter taste that reminded me of the human experience. Life was delicious, bold, and occasionally bitter. This was a philosophy I embraced.

After drinking a cup and eating a Tous Les Jours pastry, my wife got busy studying while I sat down to write. Several hours later, we both needed a break, so we went around the house, gathering trash bags from the pantry, both bathrooms, and a bag full of cans for recycling. I picked up a bag by the fence that contained two discarded liquid fly traps. This time of year, there were biting flies, and we purchased the traps to help control them. After a couple of weeks, however, the traps, which were attached to the outside of the deck railing, stank. Their odor hit me a few times when the wind shifted while I was outside relaxing on the deck. To me, they smelled like straight up sewer. We threw all the garbage in the truck and headed to the trash service center.

While at the service center, the sky clouded and light dimmed, looking like it wanted to rain. As we were unloading the garbage bags, the wind picked up, suddenly cooling the air. From there we drove to the Piggly Wiggly in Bailey for some groceries. The drive to the Pig was beautiful, with large crop fields lining the road on both sides. Along the way, it started raining. At the store, we picked up some meat and vegetables for dinner, enjoying a rain shower on the way home. It had been over a week since it last rained and the water would do all the new spring growth well.

By the time we unloaded the groceries, the rain had subsided, so I took out a small towel and wiped down two chairs on the deck. My wife and I went outside, sat down, and drank a cold beer together. After some silly chatting and laughter, we started up the Traeger as some white Kagayaki rice cooked inside. Once the grill was ready, we threw on large slices of yellow squash and a few heaps of seasoned mushrooms. After five minutes, I placed two salted ribeyes on the sizzling grill. Dinner was amazing.

After our stomachs had settled, we went for a walk in the woods, even though most of the light was gone. It was drizzling, and the forest looked extra dark from the clouded sky. We made our way to the northwest corner of the creek where I had seen deer for the past several days. During the winter, this area looked messy with tall dead grasses so the neatness of the recent growth surprised us. It was just about dark when we headed back toward the house. My wife saw I had my Petzl headlamp fastened to my hat, and she was happy I brought it with me. The bright lamp illuminated the path home, so even though it was dark, moving through the woods was easy. The light shone on the forest floor and green sparkles reflected brightly from all the spiders’ eyes. They were everywhere. 

I asked my wife if she wanted the lamp so she could see the spiders and she affirmed she did. I passed her the lamp and watched in delight as she moved lightly through the forest, stopping periodically to squat down and touch the spiders, greeting them with a friendly voice. When we exited the forest, there was just a glint of light lingering in the sky. We paused, taking it all it for a moment, before heading back into the house and going to bed.

May 3, 2024

Every Day

The morning arrived quickly, and I could have not been more pleased. My wife and I spoke via FaceTime and we were excited Friday was finally here. I had a busy day ahead, but the thought of hanging out with my best friend kept me energized throughout the day. After I got out of bed, I washed a load of clothes, fed the dogs, cleaned the kitchen, and then sat down to write for an hour. I had a good morning workout, jumped in the shower, and started a day full of meetings.

Yesterday, I had placed a package of chicken wings in a large ziplock bag with teriyaki marinade, so when lunchtime came, I heated the Traeger grill and threw the wings on the barbie. They came out superb and I devoured most of them, being sure to leave a few for the dogs’ dinner.

This afternoon, I had an appointment outside of the house, which took me into town for a couple of hours. This broke up the workday, and before I knew it, I was heading back home with only thirty minutes left. When I was six miles away from my house, I checked my wife’s location and she was five miles from our home. I hit the gas, rushing back, and when I pulled down our dirt road, she was still sitting in her car, waiting for me to get home. What a sight!

We exited our vehicles, smiling so big that it made our faces hurt. I gave her the biggest hug, and we just laughed, happy that the moment found us exactly where we wanted to be. Next week, she would be gone again, but this was our first time to see each other for the weekend. It was the moment in which we had the most time ahead of us before she would return to work in Cary.

I helped my wife unload her things from the car. The place she stayed at had an H-Mart close by. Those who were familiar with this huge Korean market knew a well loved aspect of the store was a bakery inside named Tous Les Jours, which boasted tasty breads and sweets. My wife had brought us several items to snack on with coffee. After unloading her vehicle, my wife went to the back deck and walked into the garden, while I got back to work for the last half hour of my shift.

As soon as work was over, we called in an order to Pino’s Pizza and drove to Wilson to pick it up. The drive there was peaceful, mostly curved roads cutting through the countryside where farm fields made up the landscape. The crop fields were all in different stages. Some fields required tilling, while others had already been tilled in long rows, ready for planting. Others were full of plants still too small to identify.

In the past, I had left stores with ten or twenty plants for the garden, but these enormous fields had thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of plants. The sheer magnitude made me curious about the investment required to farm, the risk they took on, and the amount of money they made in profits. It was an intriguing business, and it dominated the area. We grabbed our food and sped home, setting up dinner on the deck.

My wife brought new beers from Cary, a city which had a larger selection than our small town. There was a seasonal release from Carolina Brewery called Paddle Daze Hazy IPA out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Hazy Hearted IPA from Bells Brewery out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Also in the lineup were Backspin Hazy IPA from R&D Brewery in Raleigh and The Big Blood Orange IPA from Sugar Creek Brewing Company in Charlotte, both North Carolinian beers. My wife toted the beer in a cooler filled with ice, ready to go, as promised. 

During dinner, we talked, catching up on the week and sharing stories about her schooling and my work. We spoke about the property and how happy we felt to be back together. It was a lovely evening. A little after dinner, when it was time to feed the dogs, I took our four mutts inside the house while my wife stretched out in the hammock where she promptly fell asleep for over an hour.

I knew she was tired and how a strategically placed hammock worked wonders, so I stayed in the house where I fed the dogs, cleaned the kitchen, and folded my wife’s laundry. When I took the dogs outside, she woke up thinking she had only dozed off for a few minutes. Exhaustion, we had learned, was an integral part of intense experiences like medical school and other forms of torture.

My wife went to shower before bed and I sat in my office writing for an hour before taking a shower myself. It was such a perfect evening, and it felt good knowing we had the entire weekend ahead. On Monday morning, my wife would have to leave again, but we just had three more weeks of this to go. This was the last rotation she would have to be gone, and her last two months of school would have her living at home. The end of her schooling was nearing, and we started talks about next steps, which included a possible yearlong fellowship in Charlotte. We knew there was still much work to be done, but these last three months of school would also pass by quickly. 

The sky was black, and the moon was out of sight. The thick clouds covered any signs of stars in the evening sky. I thought about how dark it looked, smiling that it contrasted nicely against the brightness of our future.

May 2, 2024

Mosquitos

I never slept well when my wife was gone, but this morning, I woke up feeling rested and ready for the day. Tomorrow, my wife would be back home. This morning, I chatted with her on FaceTime, before making a hot latte. I had trouble making the foam, so I followed my wife’s advice to make it before the milk got hot from the steam wand on our espresso machine. It worked like a charm.

I took my coffee outside and stood by the railing, looking out into the yard. The grass was getting long and needed to be mowed. I would try to do that this evening before my wife came home tomorrow. The weather was definitely warming up, but this morning felt cool. A thick layer of fog had settled over the pasture and in the forest. It made the woods look even more mysterious.

After drinking my coffee and feeding the dogs, I sat down for an hour to write. Before work began, I did a workout and then took a shower. As I got ready for work, I thought about how warped time felt over the past few years. Medical school disrupted our lives, but was also something we both committed to. One moment, time seemed to move so slowly, and the next, it rushed right by. I smiled, knowing that the weekend was just around the corner, logged into my computer, and got busy with work.

Last night, I wasn’t hungry and didn’t really eat dinner. So this afternoon, I made myself a good hearty meal. During my lunch break, I went outside to heat the Traeger grill. While it was getting hot, I cut up some yellow squash and seasoned it. I also put some short-grained rice to cook and then tenderized a ribeye I had waiting for me in the refrigerator. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting down for an enormous meal. Incidentally, the large lunch meant that dinner would probably be light.

The work day was busy but productive. My wife called me during her lunch break and I was happy that she was in good spirits. Tomorrow was Friday, and we were both excited to meet and hang out together for the weekend. The week apart was finally coming to a close.

After finishing work, I cleaned the backyard, picking up any dog poop and stray toys left in the yard. There were also several pieces of firewood that Axel had carried off to use as chew toys. I returned the logs to their rightful place near the fire pit. The light was still good for photographs, so I grabbed my camera and headed into the forest to see if the deer would be near the creek, a location I had spotted a herd for several evenings in a row.

Instead of heading to the creek bed, I opted to cut across to a large rock that overlooked the small ravine. This rock was much smaller than Beaver Tooth Rock, but it was large enough to stand on, although sitting on a folding stool required a properly, and precariously, balanced chair. Falling off the rock’s surface, which stood six feet above the ground, would not be a fun affair.

The wind was in my favor, and I could hear the hum of farm equipment in the distance. Both the wind and noise helped to mask my presence on the rock. After thirty seconds, I spotted a deer feeding in the tall grasses. Its hindquarters were pointing toward me, and with the telephoto lens on my camera, I could see the deer’s ribs poking through its coat. The deer eventually turned around to face my direction, and I fired off a couple of shots.

As I pulled back the field of view on my zoom lens, I spotted a second deer standing closer than the first. This deer had already detected me and was staring strongly in my direction. She was kind of enough to remain motionless, however, and I pulled some great shots of her. While shooting the photos, I was trying to remain as motionless as possible so as not to startle the deer. Mosquitos were buzzing all around me and I felt them biting my face as I peered through the viewfinder to capture the deer’s image. Those were the times you had to be patient. I wanted to shew the mosquitos away, but if I did, the deer would spook and be gone. After a couple of minutes passed, she barked at me and the two deer ran north. It was an intense and gratifying moment.

As the deer jumped through the tall grasses, I could finally wave off about twenty mosquitoes who had swarmed around my face. I climbed down the rock and made my way toward to creek. When I got to the water’s edge, the doe was still barking, hidden behind the thick brush. Even though the deer had moved north, they remained close, albeit hidden in the dense thickets. Perhaps the doe had a fawn bedded nearby. I bowed my head in a display of gratitude, and then I turned east, making my way up the trails until I arrived back home.

When I got back to the house, I thumbed through my photos, studying them through the viewfinder of my camera. The shots were clean. I put away all my gear, grabbed my work gloves, and the key to the lawnmower, and then pulled the riding mower out of the barn and drove it to the house where I mowed the backyard. A freshly cut yard was good for the dogs and was a pleasure to see when I was sitting on the back deck looking out into the forest. 

The spring winds made the tall pines sway, and helped dry the sweat on my brow, while I cooled off with a cold IPA. Tomorrow evening, my wife and I would rendezvous, as promised, on the back deck with hot pizza and cold beers.

May 1, 2024

Tomorrow

My cell phone started buzzing, waking me up early. It was my wife calling to say good morning. I turned on the lights, which were way too bright, so she could see my groggy face on the FaceTime call. After we chatted, I got out of bed, took the dogs out, and fed them. That left the rest of the morning open for coffee and writing.

Work started off busy with several meetings. The heavy meeting schedule, along with a two-hour appointment in the afternoon, put the squeeze on the time I had to complete selected tasks. At least the appointment pulled me away from the house and even gave me time to pick up lunch.

While at my appointment, my watch buzzed, letting me know someone was at the front door of my house. I checked the camera and saw a FedEx truck driving off. It was official. My new Vortex Viper HD 12x50 binoculars were here. After work was over, I eagerly opened the package and pulled out my new device for spotting wildlife. I tested them, looking out of my office window at a male cardinal perched on a fence post, a female cardinal feeding in the brush, and an old crow walking around the pasture.

The clarity was unbelievable and gave me an opportunity to see the avians in more detail. I even saw small butterflies flying through flowers at the far end of the pasture. These things were going to be great. The binoculars would help me spot wildlife and study them in greater detail from a further distance.

Today, I cleared a longstanding financial goal that I had been working on for several years. I called my wife and let her know we had finally achieved it and we celebrated over a FaceTime call. It was a special moment that I would probably always look upon.

I closed my computer at 6:03 PM, and five minutes later, I was walking into the woods. About a week and a half ago, the chinaberry trees blossomed, spraying a sweet scent across the entire property. Those flowers were now dying out, but new trees, Chinese Privets, were chock full of white fragrant flowers, keeping the olfactory party going. They lined the tree line on the west side of the property, and I had to duck under them to enter onto a secret trailhead. When I stepped into the forest, the sweet smell overtook me.

Spring was in full effect and the evening weather was warming. Even though there was plenty of light outside of my house, the forest looked dusky and filled with more shadows than light. I enjoyed walking around the trails and noted that I would need to bring the rake into the forest this weekend. Although we had cleared the trails, the wind had blown dead leaves onto the path and broken twigs were strewn about. The clean up would be much easier after all the work we did, but it was clear that maintenance would be required.

After walking a loop around the east side of the property, I arrived back to the pine grove and stepped inside my ground blind, hoping a herd of deer would show up to feed in the empty crop field. The blind was in a suitable position, and I noted the inside was lined with several spider webs. I set up a small folding stool, adjusted the windows, and waited quietly. After a half hour passed without seeing anything, I gathered my things, exited the blind, and made my way home. 

When I arrived at the house, I fed the dogs and spent some time playing with them. Just before darkness fell, I went back into the woods with a bag of deer corn and set up the feed in the grove near a trail camera. I followed my normal feeding protocol of pouring small piles of corn that were well separated. Last year, a trail camera caught a possessive deer shooing other deer from feeding on a single pile of corn. It was comical because the deer stood up on its hind legs and walked around, posturing against the other deer. It looked oddly humanlike. Now, I always spread the feed around to prevent hoarding.

After I returned to the house, I took some time to water the garden, as well as the flowers and ferns on the deck. Last, I gave water to two mimosa trees that were growing on each end of the deck. The largest one was just over a year old and was already fifteen feet high. We hoped it was large enough to flower this year. Apart from looking delicate and pretty, the unique flowers gave off a sweet aromatic scent that my wife loved. Mimosa trees were a part of her childhood in California, and she liked to pick the flowers and rub the delicate petals on my cheek, something she probably used to do as a child. There were several mimosa trees around the cleared area of the property, although there were none in the forest.

After tending to the trees and dogs, I downloaded photographs from my camera and worked on editing them. I felt sleepy, so I took a quick shower and got ready for bed. Wednesday night was here, and I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I could tell myself that my wife would be back “tomorrow”.

April 30, 2024

Silence

I woke up at 12:15 AM feeling sick to my stomach. I must have eaten something bad because I was ill for the next two hours. A little after 2:30 AM, I finally fell back asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t one hundred percent, but I certainly felt better. My wife called me a few times to check up on me and I was happy to hear she slept well. If she had been home, she would have been up worrying about me.

The morning was quiet, and the air was cool. I filled up a watering can and gave the flowers and ferns a drink before the day warmed. I also watered the new plants in the garden. This morning, I understood why my wife gardened. Apart from reaping fresh fruits and vegetables, the garden’s daily needs fulfilled many of mine. I was outside in the quiet, walking around nature, interacting with her. This experience allowed me to cultivate not just the plants, but myself, the environment, and my relationship with it.

Today, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to engage in a practice of silence. Apart from meetings, phone calls, and the sound of my mechanical keyboard clacking, there was no social media, no internet, not even any music. Just me and the task at hand, working to a soundless beat and silent rhythm.

The experience was fulfilling, and it helped me realize the enormous tax that superfluous experiences, like watching videos on Instagram or YouTube, come with a price. And depending on the goals I was trying to accomplish, this unnecessary expense could be a hefty one. I originally viewed these kinds of activities as a break from work, a way to re-energize and reset before I had to do things that were less fun. Today, however, it became apparent that while moments engaged on the internet were indeed time away from work, they also expended valuable mental energy I needed for other important tasks.

The silence, at first, felt awkward, and I found my brain craving stimulation. What was I supposed to do, just sit there? That’s when it occurred to me that dabbling on the internet, no matter how short, was a type of disengaging from reality. For me and my personal life philosophy, that was a big no no. By the end of the day, I understood my mind had more energy to complete personal tasks, and silence became something I wanted to devote myself to as a practice.

Work was productive, even though I was not at my physical best. My stomach was still getting back to normal, and I hadn’t slept well. During my lunch break, I took some time to sit in quiet meditation in my office. After, I dropped off the trash at the service center, made a quick run to the Piggly Wiggly for some groceries, and came home ready to resume work. 

After work was over, I was eager to get into the woods. My wife and I spotted some large turtles last week, and I had been visiting the creek each day to photograph them. I made my way toward Beaver Tooth Rock, stopping to take a brief rest while checking the trail camera. There were several videos of a raccoon and opossum passing by and gathering snacks. I grabbed my gear and walked as quietly as I could toward the area where the turtles had been.

When I arrived near the creek, I didn’t see the turtles, so I kept approaching, stopping to search for them with my telephoto lens, and then inching closer. At the creek’s edge, the roiling water with small air bubbles indicated they were likely submerged. I attempted to see through the murky water, but no shapes were discernible. A deer barked to my left, and I heard the familiar sound of branches cracking as the herd ran across the creek to the north. I resumed studying the water, looking for the reptiles.

After a couple of minutes, I looked up to my left, and to my surprise, there was a young doe about thirty yards away, frozen, staring right at me. I had enough time to aim my camera and fire off four shots, and then she was gone. The deer had been watching me the entire time. Maybe she was looking for turtles too. It was one of those evenings where I walked into the woods, just as I always did. I had my camera in hand, the proper settings dialed in, and was prepared to see something special. On most days, those moments never came.

This evening, one of those opportunities occurred, and I was ready. I was ecstatic the whole walk home, knowing that I captured a good image of the deer. These moments were rare, but kept wildlife photographers going into the woods daily. I suppose this reward was akin to a gambler winning a jackpot, but where the gambler lost money to make money, the photographer always exited the woods enriched, even if there were no jackpot winnings.

After I arrived back at the house, I put away my gear and walked out into the pasture and lied down in the hammock for an hour. I didn’t sleep, but it was relaxing to end a day of silence in the only type of noise that I didn’t find noisy. The wind rushing through the treetops, a cardinal singing; a woodpecker thumping on a tree. The silent life had treated me well today, and I decided I would further isolate myself, within reason, from any noise that was not a real-time experience. 

Later, I built a fire and threw a ribeye on the Traeger that I shared with the dogs. The evening was quiet and slow, and I was ready to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before.

April 29, 2024

Apples And Snakes

I woke up without an alarm at 4 AM and stayed in bed until my wife woke up about twenty minutes later. We reluctantly got out of bed, knowing the school and work week started up today. My wife whipped up a hot latte for me and a cappuccino for her. The dogs knew mama was leaving today and Koda seemed a little anxious, not wanting to eat his breakfast. Though they were just animals, they watched our every move and knew when my wife was leaving for an extended period. In a flash, she was gone.

I spent the morning writing at my desk and preparing for my workday. Then, about an hour before work started, I cut my hair, took a shower, and got dressed. I took a short walk into the woods, where we cleared a secret trailhead and checked the trail camera posted there. The apples all had bites taken out of them. Were the deer here? I pulled up the footage on the camera and watched two rabbits hop around and then stop to munch on the fresh fruit. 

I reset the camera and then walked into the pine grove to check a second feeding area. The place was bare and all the food we set out was gone. The videos showed several deer had been through the area and eaten the food. We had some pregnant does on the property and they needed all the nutrition they could find. I arrived back at the house, booted up my work computer, and started going through several hundred emails I received while I was out last week.

During my lunch break, I took a walk into the pasture. On the ground, a beautiful red cardinal was feeding, remaining relatively stationary. I snapped several photographs, testing how close he would allow me to approach. After, I entered the woods and walked down to the creek area, hoping to find the large turtles I recently discovered. Once I got close to the water, I went into silent stalking mode. These turtles were alert and shy. While a turtle won’t ever run faster than a hare, it could move off the bank and into the water at lightning speed.

The turtles were not out today. In the grove, I shot a couple of photos of an eastern gray squirrel perched on the side of a tree watching me. The little mammal, with its long bushy tail, seemed playful, but had no interest in posing for photographs. Before work started back up, my wife called me and we talked, catching up on our mornings. She missed home, and I missed her. Whenever she was gone, time seemed so warped. We had coffee this morning, together on the couch. But somehow, it already felt like she had been gone for days.

Following a series of late meetings, I finished work, and the evening belonged to me. I planned to walk through the woods, make a fire, and grill some salmon. I went outside and cleaned up the backyard. After, I entered the forest and ran into our first snake of spring. I saw a cottonmouth a few days ago at Lake Wilson, but this was the first snake of the season on our property. The snake was small and had various shades of brown with distinct markings. The round, gentle eyes gave it away. This was a rat snake.

Last year, we saw several rat snakes close to the house. Those were all large black snakes, and we ran into them several times a week. They loved living near a woodpile that sat under an awning, but my wife quickly got rid of it so the snakes would leave. A large rat snake almost fell on my head while I was in the forest. That’s when I learned these snakes were avid climbers. Oh, and one large rat snake was sunning in the pasture while we were walking by. I moved it along with a long stick and it climbed up a round feeding pen that stood on its side and up into a tree.

My wife and I were walking along the main road last year and came upon an enormous pile of dead snakes. One local had killed them, leaving their corpses piled on the side of the road for the vultures. This was the birth of a new country saying we made up. When something was absurd, we liked to say that it was crazier than a pile of dead snakes. We were weird like that. This evening, I shot a few photos of the small brown snake and let it go on its way. Rat snakes were non-venomous and helped eat mice and other pests, so we welcomed them at our home, just not in our home. Last year, there was a sneaky snake wrapped around a flower pot on our front porch, just inches away from our front door. That one got evicted.

In the evening, I chopped some wood, lit a fire, and watched the dim sky go black as the stars came out. There was a foul odor in the air that hit my nose. At first, I thought something was dead under the deck, but then I remembered the smell from last year. There was some type of fertilizer or treatment farmers used on their fields that made the air stink for a day or two. I missed my wife, but I was happy she didn’t have to suffer through it. Soon, May would arrive, but this evening, the June bugs were out in full force, arriving earlier than their name suggested. If there was one thing my wife hated this time of year, it was the almighty June bug that always ran into her, grasping her skin with their pokey feet. My wife would probably jump off a building in order to avoid one.

For dinner, I smoked a large piece of salmon covered in chile and lime. When it was done, I ate half of it with a bowl of rice and split the rest with the dogs. After showering, I climbed into bed, but tonight’s sleep would be restless.

April 28, 2024

Spring Break’s End

Sunday morning was here, and it was the last day of our spring break time off. Tomorrow, my wife would leave town for her next rotation, and I would go back to work. While sipping hot coffee outside, we noted how cool it felt and that the humidity was gathering in the air, forming condensation on all the patio furniture.

We got dressed and headed to Wilson for breakfast. The restaurant was busy and I couldn’t decide whether I liked all the background noise from the surrounding people. Years ago, I craved this environment while writing at coffee shops. Although I always wore headphones, I liked to be in a sea of people as I wrote. These days, I preferred to write alone while at my house. I hardly ever visited coffee shops anymore, and wouldn’t visit one to write.

Our breakfast conversation was upbeat, but my wife and I definitely felt the pull of going back to school and work. That wasn’t cause for sadness as much as it made us a little more serious, less in the mindset of relaxing, and more focused on what we had to do. After breakfast, we stopped at a new gas station in Wilson called Royal Farms. The gas pumps were fast, although they didn’t stop pushing fuel once our tank was full, spilling gas onto the car and over the edge of the rear quarter panel. The inside of the gas station was nice, and they had wonderfully organized all the drinks and snacks. They served fried chicken and other foods, but basically carried the same products as any other gas station.

When we arrived at Lake Wilson, the weather was sunny and warm, although it did not feel hot. Strong breezes came and went, cooling us off during the two-mile walk. Just south of the bridge, we spotted a blue heron and two other waterfowl. From a distance, it was hard to gauge their size, but they looked similar to the blue heron, only they were a dark brownish color. I noted the blue heron was gazing at them both. When we arrived on the bridge, we caught a better look. The two darker birds were baby herons, probably the blue heron’s chicks. It appeared they were learning how to wade and hunt in the low water.

The rest of the walk produced additional treats. There was another blue heron hiding in tall grasses on the bank. A little further down, the mallard family we spotted earlier in the week was sitting on the bank next to the water. The mother extended her wings, displaying the brown, white, and blue feathers for us to see. Next to her, a pile of tiny ducklings napped in the sun. Later, we saw a group of four male mallards hanging out together on this lazy Sunday morning. The highlight of the walk was when we spotted tiny turtles sunny on a submerged tree branch that poked out of the water’s surface. The smallest of the turtles were no bigger than the leaves on the branch. It was incredible to see. They looked like miniature figurines and their instincts to sun at such a young age impressed me.

After our walk, we ran my wife’s SUV through the car wash and then headed home. I made some notes on my computer and then we threw some burgers on the grill and ate outside on the deck. After lunch, I fell asleep for a half hour on the couch, and when I woke up, I made a cup of coffee and sat down to write while my wife practiced on the piano.

Later in the afternoon, we carried food into the forest. There were apples, ears of corn, and other healthy snacks. My wife helped me as I stopped at each trail camera to replace its batteries and SD card. We moved one camera to a new trail area we recently cleared and set up some food near an old broken shovel left abandoned on the forest floor near a cluster of large cedars. I hoped the cameras would catch videos of new fawns or baby foxes.

We cooled off on the hammock in the pasture, sharing it, our heads on opposite ends. My wife eagerly anticipated her next month of school, a rotation in OB-GYN. We knew she loved working in this field and although we would be apart during the weekdays; we were looking forward to getting through this last testable rotation. She had two more rotations she selected as electives, but after this month, she had a few months to focus on final exams and the national certification test. We were in an excellent position and we knew it.

While my wife was talking, I picked up my phone, googling Pino’s Pizza to see if they were open. I told my wife I was going to make an order, and she told me she was about to ask if I wanted to pick up some Pino’s. We loved these little quirks that came with long-term relationships. After many years of being together, our minds were melding while retaining a healthy sense of independence.

We made the quick drive into Wilson, picked up the pizza, and came home and ate in on the deck. It was a beautiful evening as our time off work came to a close. We needed the time off and appreciated that we could spend time together. But we were ready to get back to business. We agreed to meet back on the deck on Friday evening. I held her extra close throughout the night.

April 27, 2024

Contagious Emotions

I woke up with sore muscles from working out on the trails. The morning sky was cloudy, and all the patio furniture was wet with dew. We still took our coffees outside, standing at the deck’s railing, looking out into the forest. Deep in the woodland, I heard the faint chatter of several songbirds. By the time I finished my coffee, the birds in the backyard had also awakened.

After morning chores and a writing session, my wife and I packed up to go to Lake Wilson. On the way, we stopped by Armando’s pizzeria and picked up a medium pepperoni pizza, cheese bread, and two drinks, hauling them with us to the lake. The owner of the restaurant seemed frenzied, almost panicked after receiving a large order over the phone. He kept running around in circles, starting, but not finishing tasks. His frazzled demeanor made us feel awkward. Once our pizza was ready, we were more than ready to get out of the place.

When we arrived at Lake Wilson, it was relatively quiet. A few people were fishing from the main pier, so we carried our food to a nearby picnic table and ate. The pizza was excellent, so good in fact, that we decided the owner was doing alright. The pizza seemed to redeem the stressful environment he created. We had no idea that negative emotions would overshadow the day, and the pizzeria would be a piece of cake compared to what was about to happen.

After we finished eating, we threw away our trash and grabbed our rods and reels out of my SUV. Then we walked to an area on the west side of the lake to do a little fishing. A large patch of grass had grown underwater on this side of the lake, so every time we reeled in our line, we had to remove grasses from the hook and crimped weights. This got old pretty quickly. My wife saw the main dock next to the boat ramp had cleared, so we grabbed our things and headed that way.

We found a nice place on the wooden dock and resumed fishing. Another man was there, and we later found out he was from Sherman, Texas, and had lived in Wichita Falls and El Paso, too. It was always nice to run into a fellow Texan. When we were about ten minutes into fishing, a truck pulled up, backing an old boat down the ramp about ten feet away. I thought nothing of it, but then I heard a man yelling at someone. He said, “Why do you have to be such a goddamned bitch? You always make everything so difficult.” I felt bad the man was yelling this at his wife, who was backing the truck up, but my wife later told me the man was not talking to his wife. He was talking to his daughter, who was about seven or eight years old. She also told me the father, who was about six and a half feet tall and weighed at least three hundred pounds, had shoved his little boy, who was barely older than his sister.

The family had a rambunctious chocolate Labrador retriever who was dragging around the mother. They spilled the dog into the boat and then the man was off and gone. The wife told us he was testing out the boat because it had stalled on him during a recent trip to a different lake. She tried to make everything seem like it was normal, but the family’s behavior was so awkward that everyone hoped the man’s boat would stall, preferably at the bottom of the lake. The man returned, and they loaded up the boat and were gone, but they left everyone on the dock feeling angry. I remembered in that moment how much I hated shitty people.

We began talking to the man on the pier and kept fishing. I caught eight or nine bluegills while my wife sat with her fishing pole, not really trying to catch anything. She spotted a snake in the water and went to inspect it. I followed, wanting to grab a photograph. It was a venomous cottonmouth with its head poking out of the water. The top half of the snake’s body was visible, but the rest of it disappeared into the murk. We stared at each other for a bit and then it shot under the water and grasses about a foot off the bank. I made a note not to dangle my feet over the dock. When my wife spotted the snake, it was about to make its way from the water up one of the dock’s pillars. This was the first snake we saw for the new spring season.

The temperature had warmed, and we were getting hot, so we packed up our gear, headed to the truck, and then drove to Culver’s, cooling off with some ice cream. Before heading home, we made a quick stop at Harris Teeter to pick up some new beers. There was Juicy Rapids Hazy IPA by Deep River Brewing Company in Clayton, North Carolina. And from Southern Pines Brewing Company in Southern Pines, North Carolina, we bought their Man Of Law American IPA and Duck Hook Blonde Ale. We arrived home tired from the eventful morning.

My wife suggested I take a quick nap, so I headed out into the pasture where we had a hammock set up under some pines. I got into the hammock and dozed off for about an hour, sleeping better than I had in several years. There was something about being out in the open, hearing the wind blow through the trees and the birds sing, feeling the cool breeze and warmth of the sun. And the feeling of swaying while being suspended put me in a mental state that allowed me to drop away. When I woke up, I understood why my wife came to this place to nap.

I walked through the pasture back to the house and made a cup of coffee to wake up. After, I took a shower and put on a tee shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and met my wife on the deck for an amazing salad for dinner. We made a fire, and sat outside talking about how great our time off had been, and about the upcoming week. Even though we still had one more day off, we understood Sunday would be a day of preparation for my wife’s trip away from home and my return to work. I stayed out a little longer by the fire while my wife took a hot bath. After, she went to bed while I took a quick shower to rinse off the smell of smoke.

Before falling asleep, I thought about our experience of witnessing an abusive father manhandle his family. In a perfect world, most people would envision helping the wife, saving the kids, and punishing the father, all while keeping out of harm’s way. The reality of the situation was different, however. There were no guarantees of safety, so the first choice we had to make was whether to risk our own security in order to fix other people’s problems. My wife’s safety took priority over any of those people, so I stayed disengaged from the situation. This kept my family and me safe, which achieved our goal. But seeing how the family functioned left me with a feeling of injustice. My wife and I talked about the situation while sitting by the fire, and we recognized how negative emotions were contagious and how life was not always fair. Some times, being human with other humans was hard.

April 26, 2024

All The Hungry Ladies

When we woke up on Friday morning, it was still dark outside. I came into the kitchen after washing up, and my wife had a pot of hot coffee ready to go. We took our cups outside and sat down to watch the sky light up. It was 42 degrees, but all the patio furniture was dry, signaling the humidity had dropped. I was happy the spring morning temperatures were still so cool.

We had a game we played with Kilo, where my wife and I acted like we were talking to each other, throwing words into our conversation that Kilo understood. There were words like “are you”, “hungry”, and “breakfast” that threw our smart girl into a state of excitement. Intending to tease our hungriest dog, I began talking to my wife in front of Kilo. I said, “Wow, I’m really HUNGRY this morning and I sure would like to EAT some BREAKFAST”. My wife didn’t catch the game and thought I was about to invite her to go eat breakfast. We laughed once we figured out my little game had fooled all the hungry ladies in our home.

My wife whipped up some waffles with peaches for breakfast. After, she sat down to study while I made some notes in my office. During this time, the exterminator arrived at the house, so we played musical dogs, trying to get them all put away before the dreaded knock on the door that would throw them into a barking frenzy. We were sure the gentleman was going to pull out dozens of dead mice from the traps below the house, but after twenty minutes, he came back to the front door with a single small, sad looking mouse. He asked if he could throw it into the woods and we concurred. Then he was off to his next pest emergency.

My wife studied for an hour, and I was still at my desk writing, when she called me to the deck with some sad news. Recently, our wren parents had rebuilt their nest under the pergola and were preparing for a brood of chicks. This morning, however, my wife discovered two eggs broken on the deck underneath the nest. The small white eggs with rust-colored speckles had cracked open and there was egg yolk, white, and red goo that appeared to be blood. We were heartbroken to see our wren parents lose their brood. We became attached to these two birds after witnessing them parent eight chicks last spring.

In the early afternoon, my wife put vegetables on the smoker for smoked salsa. She sent me to the store for a few items, so I drove to the Piggly Wiggly in Bailey to pick up pellets for the smoker, some spices, a suet block for the birds, and four packs of firewood they had on sale.

While checking out, the cashier asked me about the suet, which was advertised to attract woodpeckers. She asked, “Now why on God’s green earth would you want to attract woodpeckers? I’m trying to get them off my house”. I laughed, explaining that I took photographs of birds, and she told me about an article she read on how to scare away woodpeckers. The article prompted her to buy a fake owl and small Halloween bats to hang outside her house. I laughed at our different views of the situation.

She followed me out to my car and I assured her I didn’t mind loading the wood myself. But she whispered that the manager, who was standing outside arranging a sign, would “holler” if she didn’t. I told her to let me know if he hollered at her because I would holler back and give him what for. God, I loved living in the country.

After delivering the groceries to my wife, I changed shirts, grabbed my lucky fishing hat, which, by my definition, was any hat I had on while fishing. Ready to head out to the reservoir, I kissed my wife goodbye, only to be sent to her bathroom to apply sunscreen. I was a good boy and complied with her orders. I jumped in the car and drove off, but I turned around because I had forgotten my wedding ring, which I took off while putting on the sunscreen. After, I rushed out the door and headed to the lake, making a quick stop at the trash service center.

The reservoir was less busy than on a weekend. It was sunny and bright, with blue skies and intermittent clouds that were puffy and white. The wind was manageable and the weather warm. It was going to be a great fishing day. I made my way to the end of one pier and set up shop. On my first cast, I got a couple of bites, and within ten minutes, I had reeled in my first smallmouth bass.

About an hour in, I felt the sun burning the back of my neck, so I flipped my cap around so the visor would protect me. It was a peaceful time near the water. The reservoir was quiet except for the sound of small waves lapping against the pier. A pair of ducks flew right over me, their wings making a whizzing sound, cutting the air in their high-speed flight. It was impressive. I left Buckhorn after catching two smallmouth bass, two yellow sunfish, and one crappie. Spring fishing was back, and I was excited about this year’s season. 

I was happy to see my wife when I returned home. The dogs were also excited to see me and they loved smelling my hands, dirty from handling earthworms and fish. My wife showed me a base she found for the outdoor umbrella. It was so small and sleek and perfect, kind of like her. She was finishing up the smoked salsa and preparing food. Once she came to a stopping point, we walked into the forest together.

The sky clouded, and the woods felt cool, almost cold. I had just been battling the sun without a hint of shade, and now, thirty minutes later, the weather was completely different. We made our way down the trails, over to Beaver Tooth Rock. As we approached the large boulder, we heard something crashing down from a tree. It was a squirrel that had fallen, catching a low, flexible limb at the last moment.

My wife told me the wrens were back in the nest and we wondered if they were laying more eggs. I speculated the birds knew the eggs weren’t viable and had pushed them out. There were also birds who laid eggs in occupied nests, hoping the hosts would hatch their young. Maybe the broken eggs didn’t belong to the wren. The description matched wren eggs, but nature had a way of being sly. Invading birds often had eggs that looked similar to the host’s, another effort to fool them.

Back at the house, we sat on the deck and drank one beer together. An eastern bluebird flew up into a tree in front of us. Soon after, a red cardinal landed next to the bird. Then another bluebird arrived. I giggled, telling my wife the Bloods and Crips were about to throw down. We ate fish tacos outside and talked about the upcoming week. My wife would be gone during the weekdays for the next month, but back home on weekends.

Although we disliked being apart, there was no alternative, and this was the last rotation this would happen. I felt optimistic. Exhausted from all the yard work, walking, and outdoor activities, we showered and went to bed, my wife arriving in our bedroom about an hour before me. When I slipped into bed, I pulled her close, knowing that in a few days, she’d be gone. 

April 25, 2024

Trail Blazers

The morning started with a cup of coffee. After, we got dressed and headed to the car. We were going to Lake Wilson for a morning walk, something we loved to do anytime we had the opportunity. I slept well and felt rested, and I was in good spirits as we pulled off the property onto the main road. In the middle of the street, a deer was trying to get off the road, but its hooves had no traction on the slick concrete. I slowed down and gave it time to find its footing and it crossed into the woods.

At the lake, the weather was clear, and the sky was blue with small, puffy cumulus clouds that looked like cotton balls. There was no wind, and the lake was like a large piece of smooth glass with wispy smoke rising from the water. Every morning at Lake Wilson was beautiful, but conditions like today made the place look sublime.

We saw two beavers dive, leaving a long wake on the surface of the water as they swam beneath. In front of us, Bella and Houdini walked their humans around trails. We caught up with them and stopped to say hello. All dogs and humans were in a good mood. There were two herons out this morning, one standing against the bank, almost out of sight, and the other just south of the bridge. This heron was larger and wading in the water, looking for breakfast. The still waters reflected the long wooden bridge, and all the greenery of the trees and shrubs, which were now lush and full.

About halfway around the loop, we ran into Callie, a large golden retriever, and her human. We talked for a minute or two about the pleasant conditions, highlighting the mirrored water and fog. He told us about last summer when the water had plummeted to record low levels. He said everything looked strange, like the surface of the moon with deer walking around the terrain where the water once stood. From the bridge, we saw a lone cormorant swim and then dive underwater. There were also two turtles perched on a log, waiting for the sun. By the time we finished the two-mile loop, we were both hungry.

Breakfast at the Cracker Barrel was delicious, as always. Since we were already in Wilson, we drove to Lidl, where we did some grocery shopping for the next few days. When we went to pay, I realized my wallet was in the car, inside my small sling back that carried my point and shoot Ricoh GRIIIx camera. My wife used her card to pay for the groceries and the female cashier quipped, “Ya’’ll men need to stop leaving your wallets at home!”. We all laughed, but I had just dodged a $165 grocery bill. Who’s laughing now? I mean, all the money still came from the same place, but I counted it as a win.

When we arrived home, I was sleepy from breakfast so I took a quick half hour nap. My wife went outside and mowed a section of the yard, which completed the entire front yard and pasture. The property looked well maintained. While having a snack together, we moved to study and write under the pergola, sitting together on the outdoor sofa. I broke off to make a few phone calls. One for a follow-up dental appointment and another to request the extermination service come and remove something dead from underneath the house. Three weeks ago, they placed poison in the crawlspace and this week; a foul smell was coming into the house near the washer and dryer.

My wife and I changed clothes, put on our work boots and gloves, grabbed a rake and sheers, and headed out the door to work on the trails. Today, we wanted to work on the west side of the property. We started with that area first, as it had an old trail that nobody had cleaned in years. We spent over an hour raking and snipping. When we had extended the trail halfway to the house, we walked back to our front yard and started clearing a new trail that would connect to the old trail we had just finished. This part of the property had no paths and required us to cut trees, vines, and briars while we navigated through the forest, choosing the path of least resistance.

The area near the house was beautiful and looked unique. It was full of large cedar trees and rocks and logs covered in bright green mosses. The entrance to the new trailhead was a secret path into the woods from the west side of the front yard. The trailhead was not visible unless you walked through a small hole hidden in the tree line. While blazing a new trail, we found an old telescope. We found it in the middle of the woods, with its tube dented and all the parts scattered around the area. I wondered how long it had been there. After another few hours of working, we stopped at three o’clock. I was exhausted.

We took a break on the back porch, drinking cold water and re-energizing with fresh strawberries and a fresh bag of Cheetos. The salty flavor was just what I needed. After catching my breath, cooling off, hydrating, and getting a little salt in my body, I came back to life. Clearing trails was hard work! We were so dirty, we both showered, even though we planned to be out by the fire later. I put on shorts, a tee shirt, and flip-flops. Then I sat down to sip an icy beer while my wife relaxed in the hammock.

She tried to get Kilo to jump into the hammock, and when she did, they both lost their balance. Kilo jumped off, leaving my wife to spill out on the floor. We laughed hard. She tried the same thing with Axel, who instinctively lied down and stayed still. We thought it was a success, but keeping Axel still for longer than a few seconds was an obstacle in itself. After ten seconds, he jumped out of the hammock and grabbed a piece of firewood to chew on. Koda jumped into the hammock with my wife like a pro. He had plenty of hammock experience with my wife back in Texas.

We made burgers on the Traeger and ate outdoors. After, we took a quick walk through the woods. From the edge of the pine grove, we spotted a deer feeding on the north side of the crop field. The wind was blowing in our favor, so it never detected us. Soon, we were all run out of the area by a large farm vehicle driving up and down the crop field at high speeds. I wasn’t sure what they were doing. We walked to Beaver Tooth Rock and then alongside the creek where my wife cast spells over the little fish, you know, the exact thing I did yesterday when she pronounced my weirdness.

When we arrived at the new trail, my wife turned to me and asked, “Shall we?” We walked up the new trail, finally connecting to the path that lead to the secret entrance outside our house. The forest in this area looked mysterious, and we were proud of our work. When we arrived home, I cut wood like a caveman and started a fire while my wife cleaned the kitchen. After, we sat outside talking, waiting for the stars to come out. She asked me to read this journal to her, and I read three entries from March, ending with the catching of her first fish. She went inside to clean up and I broke down the fire. After a shower, I slipped into bed, ready to recuperate from the day’s hard work.

April 24, 2024

Catfished

In this day and age of technology, nobody was safe, not even if you lived in the woods. Google defined catfishing as “luring someone into a relationship with a fictional persona”. Today, I found out I got catfished, but more on that later. 

I loved waking up on a weekday morning that I had off work. My wife and I drank hot lattes while I fidgeted with a dry morning cough. After we ingested the caffeinated goodness, we changed clothes and headed out the front door, walking to the main road. My wife packed some cat food in case we ran into Garbage, our favorite neighborhood cat. To our dismay, he was not out prowling in his usual hunting grounds, two enormous fields near the north end of the road.

When we arrived home from our walk, my wife made two fruit smoothies while I did the dishes and helped clean the kitchen. After guzzling down my breakfast, I went to the backyard to pick up dog poop. The morning was sunny with a cool breeze, perfect weather for being outdoors. Once I cleaned the yard, my wife sat down to study and I went to my office to write.

Today, we had plans to drive into Raleigh for a dental appointment. While in the city, we wanted to check out a small bookstore a few miles from the dentist’s office. The temperature still felt a little cold, but the weather had warmed. My wife and I grabbed our boots, put on some bug spray and headed out the front door for a morning walk through the woods.

We walked on the trails heading north toward the creek, hoping to find two impressive turtles we spotted yesterday. Walking stealthily, we neared the creek, and when we were about thirty yards from the bank, a large blue heron took flight. The enormous waterfowl was a muted blue and gray color and its long wings beat slowly as the bird flapped in large strokes. The heron flew west, circling back toward us and then flew north out of our view. We found no turtles.

When we arrived back at the house, I went back to finish my writing session. My wife later called me, telling me that lunch was ready, so I washed my hands and met her on the deck. We ate a delicious salad with homemade ranch dressing and fried chicken tenders. While we were eating, we solved a longstanding mystery we had investigated for years. Sven, the elusive Norwegian sounding bird, finally showed his face, and the revelation was both surprising, dumbfounding, and perhaps a little hurtful.

There was a bird we named Sven that had a very peculiar song that sounded like a Norwegian accent that went “ferde-ferde-ferde-ferde”. We heard this call last spring and summer, but never spotted the elusive bird. I did a lot of research on the internet, identifying local songbirds, but I never encountered an example of Sven’s song. Then, in late fall, the song disappeared, and the bird seemed to be gone with it. A few weeks ago, I heard the song for the first time this year, and we knew Sven was back.

We had been working hard to find Sven. We heard his song often and looked up in trees, but the bird never came near and we never saw what kind of bird it was. There were cardinals, wrens, finches, chickadees, and tufted titmice all around, but Sven continued to evade us. Then, a few days ago, my wife developed a crazy theory. She postulated Sven was actually a cardinal. Nonsense, I screamed, swiping all the papers off the desk in a rage. Okay, that didn’t actually happen, but this was no cardinal. I had watched cardinals on videos and studied them in person and I was very familiar with their song. But it was undeniable that the pitch and tone of Sven and the cardinal sounded alike.

Then it happened. Sven’s song sounded out today while we were on the deck eating lunch. The song was loud; close by. Sitting halfway down the bough of a large pine tree, we found Sven. We watched him intently, making sure the sound was coming from this bird, and it was clear the bird opened its orange beak and pushed air out of its lungs to the exact beat of the “ferde-ferde-ferde-ferde” song. I had so many questions. Sven was a male cardinal.

We saw the cardinals all year long. These birds were not migratory. Why did this specific song of the cardinal only appear in spring and summer? And why did they stop singing it in the colder months? Inquiring minds wanted to know. It was all a little shocking. Sven had been right under our noses the whole time. Last month, I even shot several photographs and videos of the same bird for which I had searched for so long. It was in that moment that I realized I had been catfished; by a bird.

The drive into Raleigh was interesting. While I had lived in several large cities, the sheer number of people and cars seemed alien. A part of me remembered the city environment and behavior. After all, I was a part of this lifestyle for most of my life. Yet, the memories of these experiences felt distant, very distant. They felt more like memories of a previous lifetime than something I used to take part in. These days, being back on the grid in a large city felt overly loud, busy, and abrasive.

We arrived at the dentist’s office, close to downtown Raleigh, about thirty minutes early. The office was closed to the public until our appointment time, so we waited in the car as my wife read a journal entry from a few months ago. It was fun to remember the details of a specific day. How quickly we forget all the brief moments life comprised. The dentist and her staff were very nice, and they showed their expertise. I was happy we found the Raleigh Comprehensive and Cosmetic Dentistry and I would recommend them to anyone in the area.

After getting the old chompers inspected and cleaned up, we visited a small bookstore in Raleigh named So And So Books. Just walking into the place, with its scent of fresh paper and book covers, gave me goosebumps. I read a lot, but I hadn’t stepped into a bookstore since before Covid. Although the place was small, I left with two field guides specific to North Carolina, one identifying trees, and the other, birds. I loved learning about the flora and fauna on the property, and I was excited to get detailed information about my area.

We drove back toward the house, stopping in Knightdale for some scotch guard for the outdoor cushions and ate lunch at Saltgrass. After being gone for several hours, we were ready to be back in the country. When we arrived home, the dogs were happy to see us, and I must say the feeling was mutual. After we gave the dogs some outdoor time, we needed to decompress by getting back out into the woods.

My boots kept snapping small twigs along the trail, causing my wife to turn back, giving me one of two looks. One face looked like I had given away our location to the enemy force while trying to escape from their prison camp. The other look was more of a mother looking at a small child asking, “Really?” We arrived at Beaver Tooth Rock and sat down. A large pileated woodpecker flew up into a tall dead tree in front of us, perfectly backlit by the setting sun. The bird thumped rapidly on the tree as if displaying its impressive skills and then flew off. 

Near the creek, I spotted a turtle by a tree, just under the surface of the water. It dove out of sight once it detected our movement. I raised my hands repeatedly toward the water, and small fish would scatter, making the water roil. My wife laughed at me, muttering under her breath that I was so weird. I looked at her and we both laughed because we knew the truth. It took a weirdo to recognize a weirdo, and my wife was the king of weird. Oddly enough, she was also the king of cute. Spending time with my wife this evening took away the sting of being catfished by Sven, or whatever his real name was.

April 23, 2024

Turtles and Pink Slippers

The morning was reminiscent of our first year here in Sims, North Carolina. After drinking our cups of coffee while chatting on the couch, we put on some warm clothes and walked to the main road. Our house was in the middle of a two-mile road, which had stop signs on both ends. There was little traffic, and the street was flat in some areas with a large hill in the middle. The creek, which ran through our property sat at the bottom of the hill. During our first year here, we walked this road daily.

The morning walk was beautiful. While we weren’t out on Lake Wilson, the small rural town was still scenic, with its few homes and large tracts of land. Songbirds sang and flew about. The crisp air made the grasses, covered in morning dew, steam as it interacted with the warm earth. The creek had a thin layer of fog floating just above its surface.

When we returned to the house, I sat down to write while sipping on a second cup of coffee. Then I took a shower and got ready for work. While today was Tuesday, it was my Friday since I would take off the rest of the week while my wife was off school for spring break. I got busy, trying to do as much work as possible, to ease my upcoming Monday morning workload, when I returned to work after being off. Daily, I probably wrote forty emails, received a hundred, and read through at least one hundred pages of reports. Sometimes, returning to work after a break felt like a punishment. But, hey, I never minded standing in the rain, as the old country song went.

During a short morning break, my wife and I ate a small piece of pie together. I went back to work while she disappeared into the woods. A few hours later, I took a quick break and walked into the woods while my coffee brewed. I found my wife sitting down on a trail, covered in sweat and bug spray. She had cleared the trail that lead from the back of our house to one of my tree stands. This connected to the trails we cleared last week. She even cleared a minor detour which lead to the stand’s ladder.

While starting a new trail, my wife found a hidden spot in the woods covered with wild orchids in full bloom. I looked them up, and they were called Pink Lady’s Slippers. They were exquisite and the small area seemed secretive, hiding a small patch of soft pink in a sea of drab colors. We talked for a few minutes and then I headed to an online meeting.

I closed my computer during my lunch break and went outside to sit down. My wife told me lunch was ready and that we would eat outside on the deck. I set the table, and she brought out two large salads with freshly grilled skirt steak. The Traeger was still smoking. Lunch was amazing, especially when sitting outdoors and hanging out with my best friend. It was the type of lunch break that made the work day easier.

After eating, I still had time to burn, so my wife took me down the trails to show me all the work she had done. Then we continued north until we came to the creek area. To our surprise, we saw a turtle sunning on a log. When it noticed us, it splashed down into the water and disappeared. Last year, we saw a small turtle on a trail, but this was the first turtle we saw at the creek.

The turtle on the trail had streaks of bright yellow in its shell, but today’s turtle was mostly a brownish-green. Its shell was slightly oval, but mostly round. We inspected the water, but saw nothing through the murk except for a trail of small air bubbles. Excited by our new find, my wife looked over the rest of the creek and spotted a huge turtle exiting the water and crawling through the mud.

This enormous turtle, slightly greener than the first, had a shell that almost looked rectangular, although the corners were certainly rounded. It stepped through the mud like a prehistoric dinosaur, almost robotic in its movement. In one moment, it hunkered down low against the brown mud, and in the next, it had vanished. While seeing the first turtle was exciting, this second turtle was so large that we talked about it for the rest of the day. This place never ceased to amaze us.

After the turtle dove under water, we turned to continue down the trail and a large hawk plummeted from the sky down to the area where we stood. It let out a loud cry that startled us. We laughed and kept moving, working our way around a large loop that eventually led us back home. My wife walked to the pasture and rested in the hammock, shaded by twelve pines. After a few hours, I went out to check on her, hoping she was napping. Unsurprisingly, she was sitting in the hammock, wide awake, studying. I really loved her discipline.

I closed my computer at 6:15 PM. The workday and week, was over. My wife was happy I was off and she promptly put me to work cutting wood for a fire. She had the Traeger fired up; dinner smelled great. I split wood, which allowed me to release physical tension by hitting something at full force without going to jail. All joking aside, cutting wood reminded me of kendo practice, taking me back to my time in Tokyo, roaming from dojo to dojo, learning lessons I still carried today.

I started a fire and my wife served up grilled fish and vegetables, which included grilled zucchini, Brussel sprouts, and broccoli. To my surprise, the broccoli was the tastiest of the greens, as its small florets seemed to soak up the marinade used to season them. The fish and vegetables paired nicely with a side of steamed white rice.

After dinner, we sat and relaxed by the fire, talking about the next few days we had off together. Then my wife went inside to bathe while I threw more wood on the fire and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. It was nice to have a quiet evening. The thought of not working until Monday sounded good, even though my boss and team texted me throughout the evening about an issue they were trying to resolve. After my wife finished bathing, I went inside, did the dishes, took a shower, and went to bed. A small vacation would start tomorrow morning, and I was ready to embrace it.

April 22, 2024

Bella And The Great Houdini

The temperature was in the low forties when I awoke. After a cup of coffee, my wife and I bundled up and headed out to the truck. In the pasture's corner, near the tree line, stood a lone doe watching us. She stared as we got into the vehicle, remaining still as we drove off. As we headed down the dirt road, a cardinal shot out in front of us. A pair of rabbits stood lost in conversation and then sprinted off toward an enormous field when we got too close.

It was twilight, and the drive to Lake Wilson was beautiful. The sky was lit in a soft orange color, with a bright yellow halo forming where the sun would soon rise. The weather reports called for a cloudy start to the day, but the skies told us it would be clear and bright. When we arrived at the lake, we jumped out of the truck, hit our stop watches and headed south around the trail on the east side of the lake.

The water looked black and ominous as it flowed over the dam into the creek. The flowers were in bloom, and the wildlife was active. Several squirrels were awake, gathering their morning meal. We saw our first blue heron within minutes, seeing four of the large birds by the time our walk ended. At the southeast tip of the trail, a large hawk landed on a fencepost, perching as we neared it. It was a large red-tailed hawk with sharp eyes and talons. Raptors had an air about them. They always looked elegant, but fierce.

In the water by the bridge, three geese honked loudly, their cacophony sounding like a large flock. They were boisterous and kept flying at each other, skimming their webbed feet across the water like tiny water skis. On the lake’s west side, near an inlet that connected to a creek, a family of mallards neared the bank. The mother and father tended to five small ducklings, as they waddled into the water single file, swimming close to their mother. They patiently stayed about three feet away in the water until we passed by. I wasn’t sure if there were any birds cuter than a tiny duckling.

Near the end of the trail, we ran into three men and two dogs that we met when taking daily walks at the lake during the holiday season. Of course, we didn’t know the people’s names, but little Bella and large Houdini were dogs we loved to see. Bella, a small white poodle, was always excited, jumping on us with her featherweight body hidden by her curly hair, leaving small, sandy paw prints on my pants. Houdini was a large bulldog and waddled like his owner. His tail beat furiously in response to my wife’s high-pitched excitement. This morning, he sported a fancy orange harness that shaved a few years off his looks. It did not shave off any pounds.

By the time we arrived at the car, we were both hungry. My wife thought we didn’t have time to eat before I started work. I looked at my watch and completed the calculations, and then we drove to Cracker Barrel, where I enjoyed a small breakfast. The food came out super fast and although we took our time; I arrived home a half hour before I needed to jump in the shower. Today’s walk reminded me that Lake Wilson was a great way to start the day.

My wife left for Lowes to look for plants and washed and vacuumed my SUV. She also purchased a new air freshener that made the vehicle smell good. She returned with an assortment of small plants and flowers, all exquisite in their own right. Later, she arranged them in an old metal bucket that had been on the property for years. The arrangement looked so fancy and well designed. My wife always told me she was not creative, but that was not true. The flower arrangement now sat on our rear deck where we could see it while spending time outdoors.

As I worked in my office, my wife lied down in a hammock she set up in the pasture near the pines. There she rested, falling asleep. I brought her a blanket, and she napped for over an hour, which was really rare for her. I was happy she found a place where she could comfortably rest. Naps made the world go around. 

While walking back to the house, I looked in two holes in the ground, left by posts we removed last year. Each hole housed a black widow spider, one with a large white egg sack. The black spiders looked glossy, with their thin legs moving independently, giving the spiders a creepy appearance. My mind flashed back to my childhood, when I used to catch black widows and keep them in a jar. When my mother discovered I had kept the venomous monsters as pets, she was horrified. I told my wife about the spiders and asked her not to get rid of them until I photographed them.

During lunch break, we had a slice of chocolate chess pie and I made a cappuccino for my wife. She showed me our garden, where she planted the new plants we purchased yesterday. The garden sported a fire pit where I could attach a grill and hot plate to cook over a wood fire. I was excited we would spend time in this area. After working in the garden, my wife told me we were making burgers and having a fire tonight. Then she disappeared into her bathroom to take a shower. Suddenly, Monday felt like a weekend.

After work, I shut down my computer and headed into the kitchen where my wife was prepping dinner. I was excited because she made the best burgers, smashing small bits of garlic, spices, and cheese directly into the hamburger patties. She also prepared homemade sweet potato fries in the air fryer. I grabbed my work gloves, went outside, and started chopping wood for the fire. When I finished, I came into the house to get some water, admitting to my wife the stress relief and sheer satisfaction of cutting wood at full force. It felt spectacular.

I started a fire in the pit while my wife fired up the Traeger. We threw the patties onto the grill and sat outside, doing what we did best: relaxing and talking about our day, life, and solutions to all the world’s problems. When the burgers were done, we ate outside by the fire, staying warm as the outdoor air cooled. The burgers were mouthwatering, and we both contorted our faces, expressing our sheer delight with each delicious bite. 

When dinner was over, we threw more firewood in the pit and turned off the music. Listening to nature, we tried to identify different bird songs and the location of a woodpecker tapping on a tree. After soaking in the silence for half an hour, I grabbed the fire poker and broke down the remaining coals. It was time to go back inside the house. After feeding the dogs, my wife and I sat down at the dining room table to study and write. The normalcy of having her home, of being in the routines we carefully chose, of enjoying spring both individually and as a couple, was perfect.

April 21, 2024

A Quiet Day

When my watch woke me up at 6:30 AM on Sunday morning, my wife was already out of bed. I made my way to the living room where she sat with Koda and Axel, wishing them a good morning. It was cloudy outside, and the forecast called for rain all day. My wife whipped up two cappuccinos, and we sat outside sipping them until the rain drove us back indoors. The view, with the dark sky and glowing green forest wet from the rain, was beautiful. It had all the makings of a lazy day.

When the rain slowed, we took Koda into the woods for a walk. Although the forest appeared dark, it was not gloomy. The wet leaves on the trees, which had grown thick, glowed brightly, making the place look magical. The air was comfortable and cool, a reminder from nature that days like today were good for slowing our pace and catching our breath.

We entered the grove on the trails, which were soft with a thin layer of mud. The bright white eggs still sat on the dark soil and the apples, wet from the rain, looked deep crimson. Something had taken bites of different sizes out of the remaining apples. Ears of corn were scattered about but left untouched. The French bread, the entire loaf, was gone.

Koda ran around in his florescent orange vest, excited to be out in the woods. In one area on the trail lied hundreds of tiny white flowers, small enough to fit four of them on my thumbnail. The tiny flowers covered a nearby spider web, taking on the web’s geometric shape. When we arrived at Beaver Tooth Rock, Koda climbed down the side of the boulder and explored the creek bed while my wife and I looked on. It was a beautiful day, and we felt appreciative of having access to this beautiful land. We romped through the forest, arriving back at the house, ready to continue on with our day.

For breakfast, my wife ate a bowl of oatmeal she made in the pressure cooker. I had a bowl of spicy ramen served with the remaining pork spare ribs I had smoked on the Traeger. After breakfast and morning chores, my wife put on her apron and got busy with one of her favorite hobbies: baking. She made homemade pie crust and then baked two chocolate chess pies from scratch. I stood near the counter watching her. She looked adorable and scrumptious in her baking attire. While she continued baking, I went to my office to write.

There were many things I loved about having my wife at home. While not the main reason, one added benefit was the amazing food she cooked. My wife threw together a large salad with strips of skirt steak we grilled yesterday while cooking salmon. The salad greens, steak, and a healthy serving of homemade ranch dressing made the meal pop.

During a break from writing, we left for a quick trip to the Piggly Wiggly to get some heavy whipping cream to make topping for the chess pies. One pie would stay with us, while the other would go to a neighbor who installed a new back door on our house last year. He lived down the road in a house next door to his daughter, who raised goats and chickens. While at the Pig, we grabbed ten plants to put in our garden, consisting of bell pepper, cucumber, habanero, cayenne, and several species of tomato plants.

When we arrived home, my wife made some whipped cream, and we each ate a slice of pie. It was delicious. While we ate, I began looking at my wife’s next bed-and-breakfast, where she would stay next week. After, we went for another walk, this time with Axel.

Axel, a sweet and very smart dog, enjoyed playing hide and seek in the woods. My wife and I took turns hiding, and Axel knew exactly what to do. While most untrained search dogs searched by sight, Axel was good at using his nose, catching our scent cones, and then zeroing in on our location. He looked so serious, staring with his piercing eyes as he rushed up. It was a good time and helped burn off some of Axel’s Malinois energy.

It was one of those rare days when my wife and I both felt tired. She had just finished a rotation after being away from home and today’s weather was gloomy, all contributing to our tiredness. For dinner, we drove into Wilson to pick up a pepperoni pizza from Armando’s. Although we both felt drained, we were in good spirits and looking forward to the week since my wife was off and I had a two-day work week.

My wife jumped into the tub earlier than usual and I went into the forest for last light. It was still drizzling, and the air felt damp and cold. I made my way to Beaver Tooth Rock, where I sat in the rain, watching the forest, preparing my mind for my return to work. It was quiet, with only one bird chirping in the distance. The pitter patter of raindrops falling on the overgrown vegetation was the only other sound I heard.

An occasional gust of wind blew through, shaking all the leaves, causing them to drop the water they collected. During these moments, the light rainfall transformed into a momentary downpour, softening again after the wind passed. A large pileated woodpecker flew by me and landed in a tree, but it, too, remained silent. Satisfied that all was quiet, both inside and out, I made my way back to the house to shower and sleep.