Welcome to Sarajevo

The train from Zagreb passes through a landscape that seems unlike anyplace else I’ve visited in Western Europe. I don’t recognize the names of towns to come: Velika Gorica, Banja Luka, Maglaj, Visoko. Shortly after leaving the station most signs are in Cyrillic only. The door to the train compartment is thrown open by a man in uniform. We’ve reached the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina. I feel strangely intimidated during an exchange which requires no speaking on my part. After a moment he hands me back my passport. “Hvala.” Thank you.

Beyond the train, old women work dry fields, sowing seed by hand. Thin, leathery men rake and hoe beside them. A goat or two meanders around a yard. A river runs alongside the tracks and the rocks and branches are hung with thousands—perhaps millions—of plastic bags, representing all the colors of the rainbow. However, I notice that most are blue or yellow. Bags way up in the brush along the bank show the high water mark. Sometimes there are signs warning of landmines and buildings pocked with the scars of artillery fire.

The attendant from passport control has been looking closely at the identification of the man on the other side of the compartment. The attendant turns and asks me something but I don’t understand. He sees this and laughs. “You are okay,” he says, pleasantly. The man across the compartment smiles and winks at me as he is handed back his ID card. “Do viđenja.” Good-bye.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is a land marked by war and Sarajevo, its capital city, reflects this history. Near the city center is the bridge where Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophia, were assassinated. Shortly afterwards Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, starting WWI. Not far away is a second bridge where two young women, Suada Dilberović and
Olga Sučić, became the first Bosnian civilian casualties in Sarajevo of a much more recent war.



It is hard to imagine that less than a decade after hosting the 1984 Winter Olympics Sarajevo had become a bloody warzone, the cities dead nearly reaching 10,000 by the start of 1996. Today the Olympic buildings remain, though some have had to be rebuilt. The Olympic Village can be seen under the snow-capped peaks of the Dinaric Alps beyond and the Olympic flame is now re-lit each year to commemorate the games. Yet across the street is a cemetery with row after row of graves, each bearing a similar date: 1992, 1993, 1994... Above the markers, now made of stone to replace the flimsy old plywood memorials, sits a lion; it, too, partially repaired in the last few years.



Yet the city of Sarajevo is vibrant, feeling to me as much like Western Europe as my first glimpse of the surrounding landscape did not. Tourists have returned to Baščaršija, the Old Town, where ancient mosques and minarets flank cafes and souvenir stores. Cobbled streets lead to dessert shops and internet clubs. The baroque Cathedral Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos, one of the largest Orthodox churches in the Balkans, stands majestically, waiting for the faithful, as it has for nearly 150 years.



On the other end of town are the headwaters of Vrelo Bosne, several gushing mountain springs that provide drinking water for all of Sarajevo. I fill my water bottle and drink the impossibly clear water all day. A ridge rises above the spring, where once ran the “Road to Salvation,” so-named because, if one could just cross the hills alive, on the other side was free Bosnia. Now a horse-drawn carriage transports us back and forth along a tree-lined avenue and vendors line the small streams that join to become the mighty river that gave Bosnia its name.

The “yellow Holiday Inn” still stands, formerly the last refuge of foreign journalists reporting on the unfolding carnage in Sarajevo. Alongside is the infamous “Sniper Alley,” an open street that made easy targets out of anyone trying to travel it, even at a dead run. But the thoroughfares now bustle with cars and people, cell phones in hands, attend to the day’s business.



High above the city sits the Vraca WWII Partisan Memorial, formerly an ideal vantage point for soldiers firing into the city, and utterly destroyed by the war’s end. No effort has yet been made to repair this place, the building stripped of anything of worth and strewn with garbage. But one can’t help feeling that this is the Sarajevo of yesterday, when the future was at best uncertain, at worst something to be feared.

On the train back to Zagreb a young Muslim boy hears me speak and enters my compartment. He says he speaks some English and tells me he would like my address and phone number so that when he visits America he can look me up. He enters the information in his mobile while telling me that wants to travel and “live a life like Indiana Jones.” There are many other things he tells me; his English is actually quite good. He loves animals, especially dolphins. His father’s best friend from the war drinks too much and lives in Texas. There is a hotel by his home where I could stay if I don’t have reservations elsewhere. (I do.) He has already visited Switzerland, Canada and South America. Much of what he says is surprising to me, though, in the way of kids, it must seem perfectly natural to him. As the train pulls into the station and we say good-bye I can only hope that his life will not be marked by the kind of war his father has known, that he will get the chance to live the life he desires. And, if by chance he arrives at my door several years hence, it will be a life that I will be very anxious to hear about it.

So Much for Travel Updates

Alright, so I'm doing an utterly terrible job of writing about my travels. It's just too hard to sit down in front of a computer and write about stuff when there's more stuff to actually *DO*. So far, I've been through Fiji, New Zealand and a chunk of Australia. Thailand, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Spain are yet to come. For now, if you want to see some photos, head over to FLICKR.

I will get back to posting here someday. Really. In the meantime, here's a groggy koala to keep you company. They get pretty sleepy eating nothing but eucalyptus leaves, which have little nutritional value. This is pretty much the state of City of Dust right now.

See the World!

I know I've done a terrible job of posting lately and I haven't even gotten around to Part III of this desert saga I've been working on, but things have been a little out of hand. How out of hand? Well, tonight I'm off to Fiji and from there...well, let's just say that if you live in New Zealand, Australia, Bangkok, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, and, perhaps, large portions of Spain and want to meet up to take photographs or eat food or have advice to offer, please get in touch! I don't know that I'll make it to ALL those places, nor do I know exactly how long I'll be gone, but I'll go until I can't go no more. I'm going to TRY to turn this into a travelblog if I can, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here's an abandoned pool and church at Fort Ord near Moneterey, California. Oh, and I'm serious, if you have a mind to, drop me a line at jmhouse at cityofdust dot com! More soon...

The Last Morning Pt. II

I turned away from the risen sun now hanging blood red before me and thought of a time--it now hardly seemed to have been my life--when I was waiting at a train station. A different desert. A different country. She arrived late that night and we nearly ran from the platform to the hotel, her bag banging against my thigh as I clutched it tight. I didn’t feel it then, but my leg stayed black and blue for a week. When we stepped out of the hotel and into a blue-grey dawn three days later it was only to get bread and another bottle of wine. Six months later we were married. I loved her so much that sometimes, watching her come toward me down a crowded city sidewalk, I felt like I’d been stabbed in the stomach. Almost unendurably painful and beautiful beyond words.



Five years later things were different. I’d say that I somehow loved her even more but something had risen up between us. Secrets will do that. Lies. Deception. Anger and tears. Finally, silence, worst of all weapons. We had been apart for three months and I was waiting for her in another city, another country. The train pulled away from the platform and she had not been on it. I tried to reach her by phone but there was no answer. Another train arrived and departed. And another. I doubted her and in all this that is the one thing for which I cannot forgive myself. I found a rundown hotel and stayed drunk in my room for three days, in honor of a time long ago. When I emerged, wrecked, into a bright summer afternoon I could hardly catch my breath. Everything was gone. I believed she had betrayed me, finally, but what I did not know was that I'd betrayed her. If only I’d been able to trust in her love for me, a love that I know now could never have been extinguished, no matter to what wretched depths I succumbed. If only I’d believed that she still loved me I would not be here in this endless desert waiting to die. I would be with her.



Photos are of the 16th St. Station, West Oakland, CA.

The Last Morning

As night gave way to the first light of dawn, Tony pointed his .45 at the horizon and emptied the cartridge. But the sun kept rising, day crawling ever closer, unstoppable.

“Fuck you,” he muttered, ejecting the clip. None of us wanted this day to arrive. Not Tony, not Ruiz, not Jimmy, and not me. About 30 feet from us lay Michael in the spot where he’d bled to death sometime in the night, the only one that wasn’t going to see this day and the only one of us that might’ve wanted to.



They say that everything happens for a reason but that seems like nothing more than a mundane truism to me. Of course everything happens for a reason. Someone drinks 13 cans of Budweiser then drives their car into oncoming traffic. Or someone gets mad and shoots somebody else’s son or daughter. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. But that’s not what they’re talking about, I suppose. They’re talking about a “higher purpose.” Some kind of grand design. Sure, whatever. I don’t know about any of that. I don’t know about anything anymore and I’ve spent most of the night doing nothing but proving that to myself again and again.

I look over at Tony now, sitting in the sand, his legs pulled up to his chest, his forehead on his knees. There are hours yet to go. I watch that sun climb ever higher into the cloudless sky and think, “Yeah, he’s right. Fuck this day. And fuck all the days to come after it.”

The Salton Sea

It’s like going to sleep not caring if you wake up. Here’s to one more endless night in a motel at the end of the world with nothing but a pile of ashes for a bed. The salt stings your eyes; the listless sun will handle the rest of you. A bloated bird, one-hundred thousand dead Tilapia, the endless stench. It’s in your sweat. There were dreams, once, at least for a little while. But you better be careful what you invest in. Keep your assets liquid so you can get out if—make that when—you have to. Don’t get too deep into anything or anyone out here.



I guess none of this matters now. You watch the day rise out of the scalding water and fall down the mountains, keeping company with the dead and the mad, pretending you’re different, not like them. Sure, you’re just a spectator, not a participant. Then why don’t you leave? Nope, this is it, the end of the line. You'd almost forgotten about Chinatown, Jake, but it caught up to you out here in the desert. It had to. So, welcome to where everything finally stops. Greetings from the Salton Sea.

The Last Night

This is the last night you’ll ever drive these dirt roads. The sun sets behind you and the mountains are cooling, darkening to a deeper blue. The blinding heat of the day fades to a whisper as clouds of dust rise up behind you, where you’ve been now lost in the distance. A shallow mountain river thick with boulders runs beside the road and you wonder how many times you have been in that water. Sometimes you swam alone, the river and the birds the only sound beyond your breath. Other times you slept on the warm rocks, your bodies touching, less alone than you ever imagined possible. But as with this last day of this last summer, you know there is nothing you can truly hold onto and the more you have tried the more quickly you have lost what you’ve had.

You loved this place, the mountains stacked one on another and rising to the east, clear streams and cold rains, sleeping under moonlit skies, the long pines blowing overhead. But you hated that through it all you still felt lost. So close to perfect and so utterly wrong.



You pull the car off the road and step onto the grass. Beside the river you see a cloud of midges hovering above a still pool. You can smell the sweat that has dried to your skin and you reach your arms into the cool river to cleanse yourself, ancient hemlocks darkening the valley. There are no words for what you feel, at least none you can recall, so you look at the sky and the water and the hills and wait for it all to pass. You know you’ll never be back, but that is not your thought. Instead you ask the forest to tell you what it is that you fear you have missed, that you are always missing, that will never come again. The trees are quiet as darkness falls.

The gravel crackles under the wheels as an owl crosses the road ahead, noiselessly, lit only by the headlights. Of so many nights, this one is the last.

From Oakland, CA.

Answering Machine II

ANSWERING MACHINE, Pt. II - I call your answering machine just to hear your voice. Sometimes I call nine or ten times a day. Most of the time I can’t force myself to hang up before the beep so I know you see the number of calls. 10, 11, 12. You’ll come home and push play and there won’t be anything. There are times when I leave you a message after I’ve hung up. I go on and on. Maybe I should feel embarrassed at myself or humiliated, but I’m so far beyond that now. Have you ever loved someone so much you…what? Cried? Stayed in bed all day? Told yourself you’d never be with anyone else again? Have you ever loved someone so much that all you longed for became nothing? Nothing might feel right, but you can’t make it happen, no matter how hard you will it.

I find that I hate myself just as much as I love you, so I call your answering machine. If you pick up I wait a moment and then hang up. You know it’s me, but you don’t ever call me and tell me to stop. You just erase the messages and it makes me love you more. I want you to do something to make me hate you. I want to hate you and I want you to do something to make me hate you. I want to hate you. I want you to hurt me the way I hurt myself each time I hear the beep and hang up. All day, every day, all of the time.

DEAD SEASONS
In the autumn, it was as if
I’d learned a new language.
One spoken not with words
Or gestures
Or a look.
But with nothing
Except desire and delusion.

In the winter, at last
I had perfected a new language.
But I found that not a person
I knew
Or met
Or me
Could understand what I said.

In the spring, alas
I tried to re-learn their language.
But found that every single word
Was wrong
Or misunderstood
Or just something that could not help anyone anymore.



What the hell? More first-person narrative drama and then a fucking prose poem? I feel like I'm getting close to some kind of saturation point here, so hopefully I'll have a nice short story or something to post soon. But I kinda wanted to do the "Answering Machine" thing to death and then I threw in a bit more about communication (or the lack thereof) to beat the horse more completely. Yeah, a theme. Anyway, thanks to everyone that has sent in nice comments lately. It means a lot, really. Really. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. I'll be back soon. And this is nice: My Heart is an Idiot.

Answering Machine

Well, I guess you can't accuse me of overdoing it with posts these days. But it's quality not quantity, right? Or something like that. Here are two odes to the days before cell phones, when people had to use these things called answering machines. They kinda sucked, didn't they? One of these bits I wrote, one I only wish I did. The photos are from Erwin, Tennessee, where they once hung an elephant for murder. Only they botched the first attempt and had to try a second time. Hey, it ain't easy to build a gallows for a pachyderm.



ANSWERING MACHINE - I hadn’t spoken to her in two years; hadn’t seen her in more than that. But I found an old answering machine tape in a box of junk and put it in the player. I knew it was a bad idea, that I should just toss it in the trash with the outdated magazines and credit card receipts, but instead I pushed “PLAY” and sat on the floor to listen. It was toward the end of things and there were dozens of calls. Her dad. My mother. Calls where the concern was palpable underneath the usual greetings. Those who didn’t know left invitations for us both to come by. The others were already splitting into her friends and mine, some addressing her, some me. Some seemed unsure who to address. Toward the very end were calls from the landlord asking about moving dates and forwarding addresses. The last call was from me. I said only her name and then the tape ran out. I got up off the floor, took the tape out of the player and weighed it in my hand for a few moments. Then I broke it in half against the corner of the dining room table. A spool rolled across the floor, a tiny streamer of tape unfurling on the carpeting. It won’t matter. Some messages can never be erased.



ANSWERING MACHINE-The Replacements

Try and breathe some life into a letter; I’m losing hope, we’ll never be together; My courage is at its peak, do you know what I mean?; How do say you're O.K. to an answering machine?; How do you say good night to an answering machine?

Big town’s got its losers, small town’s got its vices; I’ve got a handful of friends, one needs a match and one needs some ice; Call away on the phone, another time zone; How do you say I miss you to an answering machine?; How do say good night to an answering machine?

”If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need help, please dial your operator.”

I get enough of that.

Try to free a slave of ignorance; Try and teach a whore about romance.

How do you say I miss you to an answering machine?; How do you say good night to an answering machine?; How do you say I'm lonely to an answering machine?; The message is very plain; Oh, I hate your answering machine; I hate your answering machine;
I hate your answering machine.

Knox County, Summer 2007

Yeah, posts are few and far between. Not much I can do about that except stop making promises and further alienate the three people that used to pay attention. Sorry. Anyway, rather than a tale from the Cumberland Plateau here's a true story from Cumberland Avenue, the city, Knoxville, Tennessee, not too long ago.

ANOTHER NIGHT IN A BAR

I won her love in a pool game. It was the only way I was going to get it, although I wasn't really sure what I’d do with it once I had it. I was still happy to make the bet though, against $5 and a couple bottles of beer.

“I guess your love isn’t worth much,” I laughed, setting up the nine.

“That’s a terrible thing to say to a girl,” she replied, frowning as the ball rolled into the side pocket.

I kissed her and it was good, charged like it could sometimes be. The bar was cool and dark, a smoky cave away from the Tennessee heat. The jukebox played an old Johnny Thunders tune, “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” I liked this place. I liked her. I was more than in the mood for trouble, but maybe not quite like the kind we’d both just found.

I lined up the eleven for the corner pocket as she lit a cigarette and leaned against me. She bit my ear, trying to distract me, to make me miss. I felt her breath against my cheek and the ball hit the pocket dead-on.

“There’s just no way I’m going to lose this game,” I grinned. I picked up her beer and had a long drink. I don’t even like beer. I missed the fifteen.



She took her cue and knelt down beside the table, looking to bank the three into a side pocket. I never understood why she did this—kneeling to put the table at eye level, sometimes using her stick to gauge an angle—but it seemed to work a lot of the time. Only this time it didn’t and the three bounced harmlessly to the center of the table.

I walked over and held her to me. It felt right, my arm around her waist and her hand pressed against my chest. I let her go and sunk the fifteen. I had two balls left on the table; she had four.

“I don’t really want to play for my love anymore,” she said, looking over the balls that remained.

“Too bad,” I replied. “You should have thought of that earlier.”

“I did. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It usually does.” I sunk the eleven. We just looked at each other.

The twelve was easy and the eight was lined up nicely along the rail for the corner pocket. She looked genuinely concerned and I felt suddenly uneasy. For a moment I considered missing, scratching, blowing the game, but I caught her brown eyes for an instant then followed the curve of her neck to her shoulder and on down to her hips. Nope, I decided, I wanted it. Then I sunk the eight. She shook her head and grabbed her pack of cigarettes off the table. I had another pull of the beer I didn’t like.

“So, I’ve got your love,” I said, finally.

She lit her cigarette. “Not yet you don’t." She blew a cloud of smoke over her head. "And I want a chance to get it back. I’ll put up another round and dinner against it for the next game.”

But I wouldn’t put it up. We made a lot of bets after that, but somehow there was always one thing I wouldn’t wager, just in case I needed it one day. After all, you can never be sure about something like that and I’d won it fair and square. Love rarely comes so easily.

"This place is hell to me, With the Devil in my bed, And the Devil in this bottle, And the Devil in my head, I'll meet you in Heaven again, If you wear that dress again, (I'll have one more drink, my friend), Where my heart is kept on ice, And prayers burst into flames, PRAYERS ON FIRE," Nick Cave 1981

Sequatchie County, May 2007

We step out of the dusty S-10 at the end of an old logging road in Sequatchie County, Tennessee. The surrounding landscape is blasted, just piles of dirt and debris, shorn of trees or shelter from the relentless sun, but we’re used to this. A vulture wheels overhead as we check the GPS. “This is as good as we can do,” Jason says. “But we’re about 2 kilometers northeast of where we really want to be.” I take out my compass and look across the clearcut to a patch of trees, trees that quickly disappear below the horizon. A steep descent. Cliffs. Bluffs. Rocks. We’re used to this, too. Yet just because you’re used to something doesn’t mean you like it. We start off northwestward.

While walking through the coves and gulfs of the Cumberland Plateau you want to stay alert. There’s loose boulders and dead trees that can fall over in a stout gust. Copperheads and timber rattlesnakes might coil near every handhold. Stick your foot between the wrong two rocks and you’ve just snapped your ankle with no easy way back up the slope. But it can be hard to concentrate on the terrain when the hours and the heat stretch out before you and all your body does is walk while all your mind does is consider things as they should be. Or as they could be. Or mostly as they never are. Ghosts. Ghosts are dead things, of the past. Often terrible. But there are other ghosts. Worse ones. Ghosts of the present. The living dead. The shape of things to come falling apart. Then there are ghosts of the future, the worst kind. Dreams that will never come true. Just keep walking.



Jason and I get beyond the clearcut to the treeline and look across the valley. Typical. The valley is so steep and covered in laurel and bramble we can’t even see what’s below us. The opposite slope actually rises above where we’re standing. Typical. We pick a route that appears reasonable, yet might end abruptly in a bluff and a sheer drop to the rocky creek below us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d be forced to crawl back up a hill and look for an alternative way down. But eventually the bramble and laurel yields to a landscape of 50-100 pound boulders that appear to have been literally thrown across every slope. A rockslide waiting to happen. Jason and I keep a good distance apart so that we don’t inadvertently bury each other. The going is not easy, but we reach our first transects and begin walking south to nowhere in particular.



Alright, so that's a pretty melodramatic way to return, eh? Before everyone starts sending me bottles of Xanax, let me just say that I was TRYING to be melodramatic. Something about walking around out in the woods this summer didn't feel quite right and it was hard to convey the sense of burn-out. On the other hand, no one pulled a gun on us, no one almost died, not much of interest happened at all, for better or worse. With that in mind, I'll try to pick up the remaining threads of last year's harrowing mess in subsequent posts that hopefully won't take 6 months to put up.

Interestingly, I can end this post the same way I ended my last one, over 180 days ago: "By the way, anyone wanna give me a job?"

P.S. These photos are from the flat land of far-western Tennessee, not anywhere near the Plateau, geographically or spiritually.

Hamilton County, September 2006 (Part IV)

It’s hard to remain focused on blogging when one is busy making a mess out of one’s life. Or maybe I’m just letting it become a mess. Sometimes the mess is quite glorious and other times kinda scary. In any case, despite my best stated intentions, postings will be sporadic and probably weird for awhile. With that in mind, I’m going to switch to some real-time entries from the Cumberland Plateau. This first one took place at the same Hamilton County location as the previous entry, but a couple months later. It’s dated September 5, 2006, to be exact:

“The most bizarre and, in some ways, harrowing field day of the season. About 3:30 PM we were finishing surveying a vegetation plot and preparing to move onto the next when I distinctly heard a voice. At first it did not sink in as those things which are utterly improbable may not immediately pierce our perception. A second later I realized that I did hear a voice (or voices) and that such a thing could not be good. I began to consider the potential ramifications of this just as the voice became a scream. My initial reaction was that someone was being murdered. Carl and I looked at each other as these things flashed through my mind: Was there anything we could use as a weapon? (Soil corer.) Should I try my phone? (How would I describe our location/situation?) Could this person be armed? (We certainly did not have a gun.) If there was a murder in progress we both felt we would have no option except to get involved. But no sooner had we begun to discuss what to do next when the voice began to repeat a phrase. The phrase, however, did not sound like any language I’ve ever heard. Over and over the strange "words" were yelled in a tone of what could’ve been anger or fear but was so chilling as to be nothing less than genuine emotional disturbance. Not knowing whether to pack up our gear and get out or go and see what was going on we did nothing. The screaming lasted for several minutes and then began to fade. Whoever it was was leaving. The incantation died away.



We decided it would be futile/useless/dangerous to continue working, so we hid our equipment and started back slowly down the bluff. I had the soil corer in my hand and Carl had a hammer and rock. Not the best weapons for a fight if the other side has a firearm. As we started, Carl said, “If I have to kill someone with this hammer, I’m quitting.” After that we didn’t speak but crept carefully along as fog rolled in. We saw no evidence of anyone except for details that I had already noticed earlier in the day: Someone had been using the path up the second set of bluffs and there was a new path beside the waterfall. Someone had been going up regularly.

On the way in we came across an abandoned camp on the trail. There were pillows strewn in the dirt, a hat, a cooler, and a chair thrown down the hill. On the way out we looked much closer. Who had been here? These items had to have been brought in from the parking lot, but why, then, were they left behind? The fire pit had been cold for at least a couple of days.

I called our contact in the field and left a message telling him what we had heard. Perhaps he will call and tell us not to go back. There could be drugs. There could be insanity. We wouldn’t fight him to return.

Then, this evening, while watching TV, I felt something on my arm. I turned in time to see that a spider was on my shirt. I got up slowly, but removed my shirt as carefully as I could. The spider looked like a brown recluse. We’ve taken pictures and will try to verify. I don’t even know what to say about that or this day altogether. Ridiculous.”



The first photo is out the back of our check-in station home. Not a bad view, eh? The second shot is a mysterious tire garden in the middle of nowhere. No idea how they got trucks back here, although we found some rusted hulks next to what was probably an old still. The final shot is…the spider.

By the way, anyone wanna give me a job?

Hamilton County, May 2006 (Part III)

After losing one crew member to Lyme disease, the two of us are moving farther north through Hamilton County, to our third location. But we’re continually optimistic, believing that each location will be somehow easier, offering better access, less rugged terrain or fewer wild dogs. After all, how can things get worse? At some point we’ll stop bothering to ask. However, at our previous location we’d actually encountered one of the plants we were searching for, mountain skullcap, albeit mostly in an area of tattered bramble beside a clearcut adjacent to a rutted logging road, pretty far from its described habitat of undisturbed mid- to –late successional forests. Still, we did find a couple plants actually lurking in the woods.



Right of the bat we find ourselves unsure of how to even approach the new location. A small dirt pull-off to the east puts us at least a mile from our first transect and the south and west are too rugged and remote to even consider. So, we drive north, into the small neighborhoods tucked high on the edge of Walden’s Ridge, hoping that some dead end street somewhere will turn out to be a logging road. As we turn off the main road a few people working outside immediately stop what they’re doing and watch us pass. We wave to a man and his son. Neither wave back. At the end of the most promising street is a 6-foot fence, gated and locked, with a sign that says, “No Tresspassing! Turn Around Now!” So, we turn around, the logging right-of-way either long gone or not worth fighting to find. Standing in a yard are five old men, each watching us suspiciously as we get the truck headed back toward the main road. We wave and all five wave back in unison, the same suspicious frown remaining on every face. Sometimes being in a government vehicle is a liability, even one with a Dale Earnhardt sticker in the rear window.

We drive back down the steep and winding road to the pull-off we stopped at earlier. Checking the distance on our GPS machines we mutter some oaths, stare forlornly out the window, then shrug and start walking. As it happens, we soon find ourselves walking on a bonafide nature trail, well-used and even signed. We continue on as the distance on the GPS unit keeps dropping. A few mountain skullcap are even growing alongside the trail. For once, things look promising. But it’s not long before we realize that there’s a problem. While the distance to our first transect keeps dropping, the bluff to our right keeps rising. And rising. It’s a serious bluff, too, entirely unclimbable to anyone without rappelling experience.

After awhile we check our GPS map and see that, indeed, we’re standing about 70 feet below where we want to be. Thinking that maybe the bluff will start to descend at some point, we keep walking. But the bluff does the opposite of descend. We walk the entire length of our location, unable to get to a single transect, some of which are only 30 feet away from us in horizontal distance, but over 100 feet away in vertical distance. The expedition has now taken hours and we’re soaked with sweat. We turn around and start back as the afternoon slips away. We figure this is one place that’s not getting surveyed.

We’re about halfway back when I notice a waterfall. I go to have a look, mostly out of curiosity, and realize that just to the side of the waterfall, in an area hidden behind a rock outcropping, are some natural stone steps and, at the top, some trees to hold onto to help us the rest of the way up. It’s steep and falling would kill you—or at least make you wish it had—but it is a way up.

It’s too late in the day to bother, so we decide to come back the next day and give it a shot. In fact, climbing up the waterfall does work, however, at the top of the ascent, we find ourselves staring dumbly at the base of a second bluff. Our transects are actually up on the top of this second bluff. We get lucky and quickly find the only way up the second bluff, following a rocky creek bed that tumbles down from out of the trees above. We are now, at points, over 100 feet above the trail, working in an area with only one way up and the same way down. In an emergency there will simply be no way to get out quickly or get anyone in. We’ll spend many days wondering if we’d have been better off never having found the way up.

The top shot is a toad's-eye view of our attempt to find a way up the bluff. The second shot shows what frustration can do to a man. The third photo is of the above-mentioned waterfall, although it's getting a little dry. That last photograph is from the base of the second bluff, so we still had some clibming to do. Just don't look down.

Hamilton County, May 2006 (Part II)

We’d been staying in a Ramada Inn off I-24. The help was surly and they fought loudly with each other in the hallway. All we wanted was air-conditioning, thick curtains and cable TV, a reprieve from the relentless heat and sun. But now we lose even that as, after exactly one month, our travel budget can no longer cover a hotel or meal per diems. As we move from the Chattanooga area farther north, Allison, Jason and I track down the cheapest hotel in Dayton, TN while I try to find us somewhere to stay for free. Jason drinks a Bud Light he found in the mini-fridge while he and I watch Deadliest Catch for the last time and tell ourselves that it could be worse: we could be hunting for crab in the Bering Sea in the middle of winter.

Our new (and very temporary home) does not offer a continental breakfast and we’ve taken to eating at gas stations, the Huddle House and now the Donut Palace. It is not healthy. Allison is rarely very hungry and I realize that she can’t go on feeling this bad for much longer. On Thursday I set up a meeting with the manager of a wildlife refuge in the area and he shows us the deer check-in station and the garage. We go with the check-in station. But we won’t move in until the following week when we’ll have groceries and air mattresses. We put in a day’s work and go home.



The next day is Friday, my day off, but, as usual, I go into the lab. When I get in Allison is preparing to go out and complete some amphibian surveys for an academic project, but she is clearly very ill. She tells me that she has developed a rash on the back of her leg but won’t let me see it. Finally, I insist and in a moment know she has Lyme disease and has had it for nearly three weeks now. Worse, on the advice of a doctor, she has been taking steroids, which will have just served to accelerate the disease. I tell her to get in the truck because we’re going to the ER and she agrees without too much of a fight. The nurse at the desk asks if Lyme disease is serious enough to warrant a trip to the ER. We tell her that the condition has been misdiagnosed and has now gone untreated for far longer than is safe. After we mention the neurological implications of untreated Lyme disease, which include confusion, speech impairment, loss of motor control and death, she admits Allison. A couple hours later I return to find that the new doctor didn’t really know what to do either, but had at least prescribed strong antibiotics. This will be the start of quite an ordeal for Allison and the end of her summer of walking, crawling and climbing through the woods of east Tennessee. Jason and I are suddenly down to a crew of two, at least temporarily. “Temporarily” will soon turn out to be most of the summer.



The top photo is from outside our room in Dayton, TN. The middle shot is the deer check-in station that became our home for four months. The last photo was taken behind our hotel in the still o' the night.

Happy Birthday to Me

Aw, hell. I keep promising tales of blood, violence and near-death experiences--and they're all true--but I can't seem to get the time to sit down and bang 'em out. They're coming, I swear. In the meantime, here's a story from Friday night, Knoxville, TN. It's almost true. The photos are also from Knoxville. They're totally true. More soon. More soon.

THE STRIP: Another night in a bar. One of many. Not the last. Not nearly. She’s drunk, lost. Not as young as she wants to be, never as pretty as she’d hoped. How long now? Hours? Years? A whole life. Lonely. Someone thinks she’s funny, approaches her on a dare. Through the alcoholic mist she understands what’s happening but desire is on its knees. “Please,” it begs. He takes a picture of the two of them with his camera phone and smiles to his friends.

“Are you happy?” she whispers in his ear.

The smile fades, he turns to the bar. “What?”

“Do you like who you’re with?” she says, slurring slightly, hair falling in her eyes.

He almost laughs, then stops. “I’m married,” he replies.

She laughs. “That’s not what I asked.”

She puts a cigarette between her lips and lights it, blows a cloud of smoke above her head. She looks at him until he begins to turn away. She shakes her head. “Your teeth are so white.” He turns back to her. “Like bone,” she continues. “I cut myself once. It was just that color. Clean.”

For a moment they look at each other. There is no one else. She puts a hand on his as it rests on the bar. Her hand is warm and damp. Music pumps from speakers in the ceiling, dull and relentless. “God, I would love to go home with you,” she says.

His friends cannot hear the conversation, but out of the corner of his eye he can see them laughing. One of them, someone he barely knows, raises a mock toast. He ignores his friends and turns to the woman.

“What are you drinking?” he asks her.

“Jack and Coke.”

He motions to the bartender and orders a drink for the woman. He puts his money on the bar. The woman nods but does not say thank you.

“I have to go,” he says.

“I know you do, honey.”

She takes another drag on her cigarette and sways a little on her stool as she watches him walk away. In the mirror behind the bar she sees the laughter and back slaps. But he does not laugh. Not even a smile. Once she sees him look at her, just a glance, and then turn away. “It’s something,” she murmurs. For tonight, it’s enough.

RIP James Brown.

(Another) Intermission

Despite having many more tales from the Cumberland Plateau I have clearly not been posting much lately. Sometimes life can get in the way of blogging, which is good. Remember life? Back before everyone sat in front of glowing screens with buttons in their ears or talked on little plastic phones all day? No, I didn't think so. Anyway, while I like writing I don't particularly like computers and, now being one of those people that spends eight hours each day fighting with one, I'm not getting much up here. But I will! I promise! I think! I even have some things I wrote in real-time, as the disasters were occurring. However, at the moment I'm bound to be off to the UK for a few weeks to return in the New Year. The accompanying photo of the Louisville and Nashville building was taken one warm and quiet fall evening here in Knoxville. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be in Knoxville and I seem to be painting myself into (another) corner (again). But I would love to actually get around to doing a little bit on this town. So, we'll see. Otherwise, have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and I'll be back in 2007. John.

Hamilton County, May 2006 (Part I)

It is the end of May when somehow, miraculously, we finish surveying Aetna Mountain. For the last week we have had a four-person crew, but Carl is due to leave on a two-month trip to Chile in a couple days, so we will drop back to three people. Allison, who has been feeling worse and worse as the days have gone on, has finally gone to see a doctor and has been told that she’s suffering from a severe allergy to something she’s encountered in the forest. The doctor prescribes steroids and tells her she can come back to work. It doesn’t occur to me right off the bat that the doctor has no idea what he’s talking about, but it will soon enough.

Carl is still with us as we do our initial recon of our first Hamilton County site. After Aetna Mountain we figure things have to get easier. We will figure something like this after completing each county and we’ll be wrong every time. Just finding the site is a piece of work. The roads we need are either not on our Tennessee Gazetteer or named something different on the maps than the actual street signage would indicate. Our forestry maps, on the other hand, show logging roads that may no longer exist or may be so treacherous as to be impassable. Of course, there’s no way to determine if a logging road is impassable other than driving down the thing and hoping you’ll notice your impending doom before it’s too late to turn back. But at this point we’re just trying to wind our way through a labyrinthine set of neighborhood roads that turn back and forth in every direction, now seemingly leading us to our destination, now leading us away. We make wrong turns and follow roads to their abrupt ends. We use our GPS machines and compasses to try to stay on course, but these tools are most helpful when we can travel as-the-crow-flies, something we can’t even come close to doing at the moment. People stop what they’re doing and watch us pass, wondering why someone they don’t know is driving down their street. At times like this we’d be hard put to answer them in a way that didn’t sound crazy. At one point we go under a bridge that would seem to lead to our destination, but there is no obvious way up to the bridge. It sits wholly unused above us, apparently coming out of nowhere and almost certainly leading there as well.



Finally, we emerge from a series of roads that have taken us everywhere but straight ahead. We pass a ramshackle barn and a shed filled with old car parts. Ahead of us is the mysterious bridge, a bridge that, while constructed of poured concrete like any highway overpass, appears to serve no function but to drop us onto a deeply rutted dirt road. Then immediately the scene begins to look like home. To the east the landscape drops away and trees stretch out into the distance. A now-familiar queasiness wells up in the belly as the terrain that has to be walked is assessed. This area is more remote than Aetna Mountain, a lost forest tract that we might never be found in, no matter how many helicopters and search dogs were brought out. Some of the transects we need to walk are short; others are over a mile long. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the day is only beginning to hint at the heat to come later in the summer. Carl laughs and shakes his head, making no secret of the fact that he’s looking forward to getting out of this job and getting to Chile, where it’s surely much safer. We pass a strange house sitting silent at the bottom of a hill. The home looks fairly nice and is surprisingly large but there has clearly been no activity anywhere near it for some time. Along the road sits a dust-covered van and it is anyone’s guess as to why someone chose to build out here. The owner of the house may have driven his van up months ago and promptly died--stroke, heart attack, murder--and no one would ever know. We’re not about to look into it.

We’ve spent so much time trying to find our location that there isn’t much time to survey, so we choose some of the shorter transects and get a taste of what we’re in for; steep hills banked by hemlock and pine beetle kills ringed by blackberry bramble. As what he thinks will be his last act as a forest surveyor, Carl jogs a couple transects to polish off a remote corner. We don’t know yet that we’ll be down to a two-person crew in a matter of days and Carl will eventually find himself back in the woods. We finish up and head back to Knoxville, finally calling it a week, but quickly find that one of the roads we came in on has been torn up over the last couple hours and our path is now blocked by a bulldozer and several dump trucks. We wait some time for the crew to acknowledge us and then wait a little longer for the dozer to grade us a path out. It seems that for the duration of the summer no road will ever be certain.



The first photo is a shot of Kelly's Inn, our home in Dayton, TN until we depleted our travel budget and had to start sleeping on air mattresses at a wildlife refuge. The second shot is a rare appearance of your hapless host and, while taken in Hamilton County, it's not the site described above. I could've saved it for a more appropriate post, but I was kinda in the mood to post it. Note the GPS machine in my left hand--the coordinate we needed to find was above me, on top of all that rock. Fun! We'll get to that later. The last shot is of Young Rd., the torn up street I mentioned. Since I had a couple minutes right then I figured I'd snap a shot.

Marion County, May 2006 (Part VIII)

Carl and I come to the edge of a thicket of raspberry brambles. It’s been rough going for the last couple hundred meters and we are covered in small cuts from the thorns of the bushes. The sweat makes the wounds sting. Our pants have been torn. It’s seems like a mistake in navigation was made at some point but we can’t figure out exactly where. As the brambles finally give way we find ourselves standing on the edge of a large hunting camp. Ahead of us is a green school bus up on blocks, the windows spray-painted black. A huge stars ‘n’ bars hangs across the front of the bus. Sometimes you come upon places that just feel unsettling and unsafe and you want to get away as quickly as possible by the closest means at hand. “I don’t really want to go through this,” says Carl, looking from one end of the camp to the other. This coming from an avid hunter who has struck up jovial conversations with every sportsman we’ve come across. He calls it the “brotherhood of hunters” but apparently doesn’t feel too fraternal with whoever has set up this imposing camp. I look out at the array of shacks and decrepit cars. I see a well with a memorial to a dead man chiseled into the front of it. A barbeque pit. Ropes hanging from trees. Burnt logs. I don’t want to go through it either. I look behind us at three hundred meters of dry raspberry thicket and dead pine trees. “We can’t go back the way we came,” I say. We wait. A tattered plastic tarp flaps in the slight breeze. What looks to be an old flag pole stands in the middle of the clearing. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

We gingerly step out of the bushes and start across the camp. The shacks stand in lines along a dirt road that we quickly cross. Beer cans crushed on the ground. I want to stop and take a picture but something feels wrong and instead I start walking faster. As we reach the far side a jeep turns onto the dirt road and I trot the last twenty feet to the woods. Carl is behind me and a few seconds later we’re both well into the trees. As far as we know, the man in the jeep did not see us. Months will pass before in casual conversation I mention this odd camp to a colleague of mine familiar with the area. “Oh,” he replies. “You want to stay away from there. They don’t like anyone near them and aren’t afraid to prove it. They aren’t even supposed to be up there but no one can get them down.” Yet another disaster amongst a seemingly endless string has been narrowly averted this day.

Not photos of the camp, the top being a cave in the Sequatchie Valley and the second a strange marker in the Hinds Valley Baptist Church and Cemetery, 1800-1946. Apparently Tennessee died sometime over that 150-year period and was buried with a cheap headstone.

Marion County, May 2006 (Part VII)

It’s Jason’s second day on the job. We’re working lower on Aetna Mountain, skirting a neighborhood known as the “Devil’s Poket” (sic) in Whiteside, TN. The neighborhood is comprised of nothing more than one dead end street located nearly at the bottom of the mountain, merely a small notch of land cut out of the surrounding timber holdings. There are about eight houses on the street. One is a trailer that has been burnt to the ground, only its steel support beams remaining intact, rusting out of the melted debris. A second house looks habitable from the street except that “No Trespassing! Private Property!” is spray-painted across the front in big, black letters. From behind it can be seen that the roof of the house has caved in, the backyard littered with shingles and splintered 2”x 4”’s. The home nearest the outlet of the street is flying a massive stars ‘n’ bars on a pole in the front yard. Railroad tracks run just beyond and when a train stops, as will happen soon enough, there is no way in or out of the neighborhood.

For sometime we have been hearing gunshots. We’ve assumed that someone is hunting birds or getting in a little target practice. Jason and I split off from Carl and the shots become louder now as we come up just behind the neighborhood. Carl has continued on through the woods, but the coordinate were tracking seems to put us somewhere smack dab in the middle of the Devil’s Poket. Rather than stumble through backyards, we opt to cut down onto the road. For a few minutes the shooting ceases.

We enter the neighborhood and pass a woman and child. They appear to be doing some yard work but as we get closer it’s hard to tell if the property they’re tending is abandoned or not. We wave hello and the woman waves back, then quickly crosses the street with the child and enters another home. Now our GPS unit indicates that our point is actually in the backyard of the house at the end of the block. We have no intention of going into anyone’s yard, but figure we can get close enough from somewhere on the street. Of course, we look ridiculous with all our gear. Soaking with sweat and filthy, holding a GPS unit in one hand and a compass in the other, I spot two people watching us from the top of a driveway near the end of the street. For a moment I consider whether to go up to them and explain what we are doing, but something just doesn’t feel right and so we decide to keep moving through the neighborhood, picking up our pace a bit. Suddenly there’s a crack and a bullet cuts through the trees about 20 feet away. A few more shots are fired before we can take cover behind a row of twenty or so strange brick ovens that have been filled with trash. It’s possible these ovens are the remnants of a coke operation decades previous or maybe they were built when Aetna Mountain was being heavily mined for coal. Whatever the case, they are now protecting us from the residents of Devil’s Poket.

The shots keep coming and I radio Carl, still using the handles we’ve developed in reference to our cheap radio brand, Cobra. “Cobra Two, Cobra One has come under fire and has sought shelter. Please hold your position.” Carl comes back quickly: “I’m on the ground. I hit the dirt as soon as I heard that first round.” It sounds like he’s started laughing. “I’ll lie here until you’re clear.”

We follow the ovens down to the railroad tracks. They can’t hit us at this angle, but we can still hear the gunfire. We skirt the tracks, hop a dirty, trash-filled creek, and head deeper into the woods, finally lining ourselves up with the proper transect. The shots sound further away and finally stop altogether. I radio Carl and tell him we’re safe and he continues on his way. As we walk on Jason and I discuss what’s just happened. “They probably weren’t trying to hit us,” he says. “Just scare us a little. Besides,” he continues, “It sounded like a .22. At that distance it just would’ve stung a little.” I knew right then that I’d hired the right person for the job. And we’d have to come back the next day.



That top shot isn't actually from Aetna Mountain, but was taken at the head of a driveway near Cagle Mountain in Sequatchie County. The second shot is also from Sequatchie County, but the third is out the back porch of the check-in station at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, Birchwood, TN.