TWO POEMS BY RUTH MOOSE POET OF THE MONTH OF MARCH

I'm captured by Ruth Moose's new book of poetry titled THE LIBRARIAN and Other Poems. Yes, I enjoyed "The Librarian" and found a lot of pleasure in reading those mostly humorous poems. We all need a laugh sometimes. But it turns out to be "the other poems" that keep me turning to the back of the book again and again.

The book is divided into two parts, which is not unusual. The first part provides

a character, a librarian with a fascinating life, a fictional character, a whole collection of persona poems I suspect, although 100% believable. The librarian is ever hoping that HWLWG will return. We learn on the dedication page that HWLWG is HE WHO LEFT WITHOUT GOODBYE, all caps. This is the book's dedication, whether you are reading part one or part two, and "the other poems" are located in part two, in a section titled --Sleepwalking. The two poems below are from that section --Sleepwalking.

TWO AM: INTENSIVE CARE WAITING ROOM

No easy chairs here

Only hard seats for hard nights.

In the dim lights people

Sleep shrouded shin to chin

In white blankets.

Near the ceiling

A TV comic plays. His audience

Gufffaws and applauds. Here

No one laughs. This is life

In the slow lane:

No comfort

No ease

No jokes

No cheer.

Next door

Real life is one little line.

In the great heartbeat

Of the heartbreak hotel

Gossamer souls hang

Fragile as light.

by Ruth Moose

THE SLEEPWALKER: SEVEN DREAMS

"The first year after his death, I was just sleepwalking." E.B.

Dream # 1

You are not gone yet, but I wake to

movers, big, husking mover guys in uniforms,

tugging, hauling our furniture out. They

wrestle our sofa, your desk, floor lamps, chairs,

the glass coffee table. "Stop," I leap from bed,

crying, "Stop." Then as quickly I wake

in the living room, the men are gone. No one

is there. Our furniture is safe, still in the same

place. I calm myself with warm milk, say

it was only a dream. I don't tell you.

Dream #2

One month after your death I wake to voices

in the driveway, someone softly

opening, closing, car doors. After several tries,

they start the car, roll it quietly to the street,

disappear down the road. I dash down

the back steps calling, "No, don't." I wake,

my hand on the porch rail, the car

in the driveway. No one around it. No one

is trying to steal it. I walk out to touch the car

in the moonlight, return to my empty bed.

Dream #3

Ten weeks after your death I hear someone

in my clothes closet. Two people. One stands

with her back to me, holding things the one

in the closet hands out. I hear them disucss

my black dress, the long pleated

skirt, an aqua jumper I loved. One the ICU

nurse said were the color of your yees. I leap

from bed, hold out my hand to stop them

pilfering my closet, touch only air. No one

is in the room but me. My closet doors are closed

In the night light, I see my own shadow,

silhouette, see nothing.

Dream #4

In the first light gray hour of early

morning, just before dawn, I wake

to the sound of someone sifting through

jewelry on my dresser. They lift and look

at each piece, my mother's pearls,

the diamond earring you gave me

one Christmas, a silver bracelet,

I bought out west. They weigh

your watch, your wedding ring,

as they pocket them. Small flashes,

little sparkles hit the light. Slowly,

slowly, I sit up in bed to see who

is stealing my stuff. Who is here?

No one. Nothing. Nobody

stands at my dresser in the dark

but me.

Dream #5

Six months after your death, I am

packing for a trip. A half empty suitcase

yawns on a chair in my bedroom. I hear

someone open my dresser drawers, take

out underwear, pajamas, my blue silk robe,

walk across the room and pack them

in my suitcase. Then they click shut the lock,

heft up the suitcase, start out. I yell

"No, no, no. Bring that back. That's mine."

They stop in the doorway, drop the suitcase,

leave. I dash after them, downstairs, the kitchen.

They are just ahead of me, a flash farther

than my grasp. "Stop," I grab at their coat,

hold only air. The kitchen clock ticks loud.

The light on the microwave is samll and red.

Stove, cainets, refrigerator, solid in their whiteness.

Nothing moves but my hand, reaching, reaching.

Dream # 6

During the night a storm knocks

loud, lightning green-blue, stark white

flashes in the bedroom hall, living room.

A sharp pop and my night light goes out.

All is navy blue dark. I could crawl under

the blankets, but I hear someone in the den.

They discuss whether to take this lamp

or that? Floor or table? One or both?

In the darkness, the lamps are round and bright.

Thieves move them back and forth across

the floor. I wait. I am so tired. Let them take

the lamps, one or both. Leave. Just leave.

I hear the kitchen door open, close, then silence.

The night light blinks on. The furnace hums.

I go back to sleep. In the morning all the lamps

are in the den. They have never been moved.

Dream # 7

You have been gone eight months and I

wake with a start. My purse has been stolen.

I have lost my purse. I try to remember

where I saw it last. On a chair in the den?

Your desk? Kitchen? Mentally, I retrace

my steps. By the backdoor where I always

hang it when I come in. Yes, and after that

I locked the door, did other things and came

to bed. I go back to sleep only to be awakened

later by several people in the hall outside

my bedrom. They quietly discuss where

they are going from here, other plans. Then,

one man, someone I've never seen before,

opens wide my nearly-closed door, turns

to someone behind him, says, "We have no

other business here." Then he closes the door.

I hear them leave from the living room,

across the porch, down the walk.

I sleep like I have never slept before.

by Ruth Moose

from THE LIBRARIAN and Other Poems

What Other North Carolina Poets Say About Ruth Moose's Poems

Ruth Moose's spare lyrical language dramatizes the search for significant acts, the spark of connections made.

--Robert Morgan

If this collections does nothing else, it will forever erase our stereotype of a librarian (prim spinster always with finger to lips shushing all sound from her immaculate, silent headquarters.) This librarian is fully woman, fully alive, and not only tolerating the words of others, but speaking out herself with verve and courage. Always hovering at her shoulder is the spirit of HWLWG--He Who Left Without Goodbye. You'll weep, chuckle and cheer as this gutsy woman deals with bits of her daily life--and those bits produced in Moose's exact language, shimmer with new significance.

--Sally Buckner

Read a sample of "The Librarian" poems on previous post.

Ruth Moose's poems have always been grounded in a certainty that gives every line its profound authority--that where we live and how we live matter more than anything else, that "here" is where the mystery resides, each detail of it claiming its rightful place in the scheme of the poem, in the narrative of our lives.

--Kathryn Stripling Byer

Contact the Publisher

Main Street Rag

PO Box 690100

Charlotte, NC 28227

wwwMainStreetRag.Com

Crocus stand as rumors of spring here above the frost line.

March 14, 2010 PROOF OF SPRING in the Southern Appalachian Mountains

Crocus speckled by raindrops

All day we tried to take our walk. We even went so far as to put on coats and boots. I walked until I saw the purple crocus in bloom before I gave up, my hair wet, and turned back to the house.

I can verify that nothing can stop spring now. If the sun shines for two hours, there will be one thousand golden daffodils. They are only green now, but their buds are the largest I've ever seen. If the sun refuses to shine, they might just go ahead and bloom green flowers.

On my short walk, I also saw that Sedum Autumn Joy broke through the cold, hard ground. It will be a long time before Autumn Joy blooms, but the name itself brings joy and hope .

Nothing can turn back spring now.

Ruth Moose -- Poet of the Month of March 2010

Welcome Ruth Moose as POET OF THE MONTH MARCH 2010 here Above the Frost Line. The life and writing of Ruth Moose will be featured in separate posts throughout the month. Stay posted.

If I remember correctly, I first met Ruth Moose at a Winthrop College Writing Conference, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the weekend of November 11-13, 1982. We had several classes together.

I remember Ruth was tiny and had a tiny voice. The same could have been said of me way back then. We were at the beginning of our writing careers and could hardly make a squeak. We had both come to study with the great ones already leading the way: Susan Ludvigson for one. I remember Editor Stanley W. Lindberg was on the program, talking about the Georgia Review and how to get a poem accepted. When I think of Ruth Moose and recall her beginning as a writer, I remember how quiet her voice, how timid she was. As the years went by, whenever my path crossed with Ruth Moose, always at a writing conference, I was happy to see her. I watched for her poems in magazines and bought her books. I also liked her fiction writing, and I still own both of her short story collections. During her now long career, I find Ruth Moose has become a strong spirit with a rich, deep voice and a gutsy laugh that can be heard across the room.

A few months ago, opening my Christmas cards, I found a gift from Ruth Moose, a copy of a new poetry collection --The Librarian and Other Poems. I read it cover to cover three times. I know enough about Ruth Moose to read a bit between the lines. Dedication pages are fascinating in any book, and of course when I read the dedication page, I felt I had found the key to unlock the poems. The dedication reads These Poems are dedicated to HWLWG HE WHO LEFT WITHOUT GOODBYE.

Take my word. You will want to own this book. You will like the character, the librarian, and will enjoy the this-and-that of her life: “The Librarian Comes Home Late at Night” ,“The Librarian Loves her Bath” , “The Librarian Gets Dressed” , “The

Librarian Buys a Pepper Spray,” just to name a few. of the more than fifty poems in this section. Buy this book. “The Librarian in Athens”, “The Librarian’s Panties”, “The Librarian in Istanbul,” and more.

THE LIBRARIAN

The Librarian has a cat.
Of course. What did you expect?”
A pit bull? Though her cat, Percy
Has the personality of a pit bull.
Loves to bare his teeth, always
Takes her best
And favorite chair, refuses to move.
Hisses when she approaches.
Yesterday, she beat him to it,
Sat down to a damp and wet
Hairball, dark, fuzzy and disgusting
Which she promptly flushed,
Then aired the cushion. Meanwhile,
Percy washed his paws with a spiteful
Grin sitting on the flagstone hearth
Before her unlit gas logs. What
Did you expect here? A cozy
Little fire in her cozy little house?
Not her. Not here. She pours
Herself a glass of Jim Beam,
Never sherry. Jim is her guy
At the hell end of a hell day.

--Ruth Moose

THE LIBRARIAN REMEMBERS OXFORD

Sometimes she flips her mind

Back to Oxford, the dear Bodleian

Of Course, and Radcliff Camera.

She studied briefly there. Remembers

Where she found her favorite

Shoes for walking cobblestones.

She loved Alice’s Garden, the Eagle

And Child, boats on the Thames,

The Bedsit she shared with HWLWG.

How they crawled the pubs ghost

Walk, Writing her papers on Jane Austen.

In real ink in the Exeter Library.

She thinks if HWLWG is anywhere

In this world, he’s there

In the darkened pub, his back

To the door and she’ll only

Have to put her arms around him

in an I-Found-You-Hug. But she knows

He’s only vanish, as the ghosts

Did, leaving not a footprint

On her path.

--Ruth Moose

How and where to buy a copy:

Main Street Rag

PO Box 690100

Charlotte, NC 28227

www.MainStreetRag.com

THIS LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING NEW FOR OUR MOUNTAIN AREA WRITERS

Mountain Perk in Hiawassee, Georgia, will host writers on the second Friday of each month beginning on April 9. Glenda Beall is the first reader of this series.

It is also being called Writers' Night Out

Second Friday of each month

7:00-8:30 p.m. With local writers reading, followed by an open mic.

Mountain Perk Coffee House is located on Main Street in Hiawassee,Georgia (across from the Post Office)

I was asked to announce this, and I am happy to do so. I do not know as yet who is sponsoring this new event. It sounds like NCWN West, but I do not know if it is or not. "Writers Night Out" is a NCWN event. The important thing is that something new is happening in our neighborhood. Sounds like it will be a new forum for poets to read their poems and maybe sell their books.

To be put on the schedule as a featured reader, email Karen Paul Holmes at Kpaulholmes@gmail.com.

Karen Paul Holmes

ANNOUNCEMENT: LIVING ABOVE THE CROSS LINE ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT N.C. POET RUTH MOOSE HAS BEEN NAMED POET OF THE MONTH FOR MARCH 2010. RUTH MOOSE WILL BE FEATURED HERE Throughout The Month of March. Click back soon.

The Weather in the Southern Appalachian Mountains

Snow March 2, 2010

As someone who has been in or near the Southern Appalachian Mountains since 1961, I'm as frustrated as anyone else by this particular winter. Snow in December, Snow in January, Snow in February, Snow in March. I've been snowed in so far this year more times than I can count, twice for eight days each time. I'm snowed in today from the snow that fell March 2. I have not experienced anything close to this since the winter of 1978 when people died in their cars in Buffalo, New York. That year was hard for me here in the mountains. I had to move to the valley for six weeks so that I could get to the old school house to teach. Most of the people here have jobs and have to go to work. You can't tell your boss, "Sorry, I live on the north side of the mountain, I'm iced in, I can't get to work, See you next spring."

In 1978, my sister and I left our cabins on the mountain and moved down to the valley to live with my mother for six weeks. Later, knowing we had to be better prepared, we bought our mother's house and built on to it, adding a big living room two perfectly equal bedrooms with an adjoining bath. It seemed that is what we needed to do at the time, to take care of our mother and to get ourselves to work in the wintertime.

Winters settled down. Winters came and went without even a sprinkle of snow. We were not snowed in much while living in the valley. Our house faced south and our road was one of the second roads scraped if it did snow. It might snow in December but not in January or February. It might snow in March and melt by noon. The most usual seemed to be one big snow in January, maybe. But, it hardly ever snowed. Slowly we forgot how bad a winter can be here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

The biggest challenge during those years was the Blizzard of 1993. That was an inland hurricane that killed over 200 people from Florida to Canada. I was living alone in the valley house at the time. I'll never forget that winter. I was without electricity for 7 days. The county did not scrape my road until the sixth day. There was no electricity. When the road was finally cleared and I got to the store, the shelves were empty. No bread. No milk. It was quite startling. I looked like a bum, wrapped in layers of clothes. I wanted a warm bath. I was looking for lamp oil in a small store and suddenly I saw shelves filled with Easter baskets. Easter Baskets!I started laughing and saying, "It's over." That day, I went by a restaurant and bought myself a huge take-out dinner and went home to a still dark house and ate. I knew the blizzard was over. I took great joy when they used phrases like , "Storm of the Century" and I told myself I would never see another one like it. Finally winter was over. The electricity came on after being out for ten days in some places.

I'm finding a need to put into perspective what it is like to live in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in winter. People are moving here in droves. There is no depressed market. Everything with a for sale sign sells. What is it? I don't know. The last frontier. Paradise. People are moving here. Some newcomers may be having second thoughts after this cold winter.

What I've learned in the long years of my life is that one winter is not like the last. You cannot say what winter will be. Old timers have ways of predicting that seem to hold true, but I remember one winter when the woolly worm was everywhere, crossing the roads in great number, and old timers said it would be a bad winter, but it was not bad at all. A lot depends on whether or not you have a warm house, back up gas logs or if you only have a small electric heater and the power goes out.

Most people go about their business, do their work, come home at night and snuggle in. I wish I could give you the record for this winter,but what I recall is that we have had sub freezing temperatures almost every night since 2010 began. I don't have the facts but I know of at least ten people who had their pipes freeze because they forgot to leave the water dripping

the third night. By the way, this would be a good night to let the water drip. It's 40 degrees at 12:46 pm but will be in the twenties tonight.

This winter is almost over. I'll be one happy woman to celebrate the precipitation of snow, to celebrate our refreshed water table, and I will be blissfully happy to see spring come once again to the mountains.

"Glad you could stop by.

Stay and have a bite to eat."

" Hi. Yeah. I'm glad I didn't have to drive that road."

March 4, 2010, Proof of Life. Rhododendron have set their buds. Jonquils are coming up.

The Full Moon of February ( 2010) is Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You

February's full moon will reach fullness on February 28th, but why wait until then to look?

Native Americans named the full moon of February THE FULL SNOW MOON. Some called it Full Hunger Moon, even Famine Moon, especially when winter was harsh and hunting halted.

The Cherokee named it FULL BONY MOON.

Celts called February's moon-- Moon of Ice.

The Last of the Melting Snow

Nancy Simpson Chooses Her Number One Favorite Love Poem on Valentines Day --"The Greeting" by James Haba

The Greeting by James Haba

You have been traveling.

I can see it in your eyes--

the unknown roads demanding new belief.

The light of your will in submission

to the pattern bringing us together.

I have been busy waiting.

putting fresh flowers on the table

filling the lamps with kerosene,

arranging ( as well as I could)

everything, so that you might feel

that you had arrived

at the right place

at the right time.

Hello

I am so glad that you could come.

And in honor of our being here together

Let us make a scratch on the wall of the cave.

We could talk.

We could begin with idle chatter.

I'll start

I'll say, "I love you."

Believed to be James Haba's first published poem,

from Ten Love Poems Anthologized by

Robet Bly ( 1981)

Snow in the Southern Appalachian Mountains Feb. 12, 2010

POETS INVITED: Dr. Jane Goodall Will Speak at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia on Feb. 18, 2010

JANE GOODALL, PH.D., DBE

FOUNDER, THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE &

UN MESSENGER OF PEACE

COMING TO YOUNG HARRIS COLLEGE

The Art and Assemblies Committee and Math/Science Division have exciting news!! YHC presents “An Evening Lecture with Jane Goodall” on February 18^th, at 7:00 pm in Glenn Auditorium. Jane Goodall, Ph.D., DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, began her landmark study of chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960 under the mentorship of famed anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Her work in Gombe Tanzania helped redefine the relationship between humans and animals. Dr. Goodall is the recipient of many awards and honors, among them, the UN Messenger of Peace, Medal of Tanzania, National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, Japan’s Kyoto Prize and UNESCO’s 60^th Anniversary Medal. In 2004, Dr. Goodall received England’s highest honor, Dame of the British Empire, and in 2006, she received France’s highest honor, the Legion of Honor.

Tickets will be sold to the general public at $10 each (reserved seating) and are on sale now at www.yhc.edu/tickets .

Teresa Hobbs

Office of the President

Young Harris College

706/379-5137

COFFEE WITH THE POETS at Phillips an Lloyd Bookstore on the square in Hayesville, NC

Poet Ellen Andrews will read her poems on Feb. 10, 2011.

When: Wednesday, February 10, 10:30 (second Wednesday of every month)

Where: Phillips and Lloyd Book Shop on the square

There is a featured poet each month followed by an open mike. This month, Dr. Ellen Andrews will read her poetry.

Poets within driving distance are welcome to come and read at open mike or come and listen, meet friends, and discuss writing.

Crumpets Dessertery will serve coffee, tea, and sweets for a small charge. Join us for a morning of poets reading their words in a warm and friendly environment.

At Coffee With the Poet, here is poet Janice Townley Moore, NC Writers' Network West's Monthly Poetry Critique Group Leader. Want to know more about NC Writers Network West (Netwest)? It is a ninteen year old professional writing group, serving the writers in the far western corner of the Western North Carolina mountains.

Dana Wildsmith, Rising Star in the Southern Literature Realm

Maybe you already know Dana Wildsmith, but if you do not, I want to introduce you to one of the rising stars in the southern realm of literature.

Dana Wildsmith is the author of an environmental memoir, Back to Abnormal: Surviving with an Old Farm in the New South (MotesBooks), four collections of poetry: One Good Hand Iris Press, 2005), Our Bodies Remember (The Sow’s Ear Press, 2000), Annie (Palanquin Press, 1999), Alchemy (The Sow’s Ear Press, 1995), and an audio collection, Choices ( Iris Press). One Good Hand was a SIBA Poetry Book of the Year nominee and Garrison Keiller chose the poem “Making a Living” from this collection to read on NPR’S Writer’s Almanac. She has served as Artist-in-Residence for the Grand Canyon National Park and as Writer-in-Residence for The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and has been a Poetry Fellow with the South Carolina Academy Of Authors. Her work is widely published in journals and anthologies, including most recently: Writing By ear (MotesBooks), Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (University Press of Kentucky), The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2007), and Women, Period (Spinsters Ink). Wildsmith lives in Bethlehem, Georgia. She is employed as an English Literacy Instructor through Lanier Technical College and teaches writing classes at John C. Campbell Folk School.

Excerpt from Dana Wildsmith's newly published Memoir Back to Abnormal: Surviving with an Old Farm in the New South, (Mote Books 2010)

Springtime in the Country

“In Spring, at the end of the day you should smell like dirt.” -Margaret Atwood

It’s not the crocuses by Mama’s side porch, or grape hyacinths under the big cedar or yellow jonquils flagging Georgia’s roadsides which announce the coming of spring to me- it’s the southern wood violet and how its arrival affects the way we walk around Grace Farm. Some early morning in March or even late February, one of us will glance down to watch for ankle-twisting stump holes, stop in our tracks, and moan, “Oh, no. Look!” There it is: the first teeny patch of violets. Lovely they may be in their miniscule daintiness, but we know their power. Our violets have won the queen’s heart and her protection. Mama can’t bear to lose a single tiny blossom. She would as soon stomp on kittens’ heads as crush these miniature wildflowers, and we are all shamed into compliance through her example. For six weeks or more to come, we won’t so much walk our forty acres as lurch, leap and sidestep inch-high clusters of violets.

When our yard grass grows tall enough to warrant the season’s first cutting, we mow it not in soldierly lines, but patchily, shearing only those sections where no violets bloom. Passersby must think us a family of springtime drunks. They imagine us so enraptured by March’s lushness that we take to our woods for hidden bacchanalia, culminating in a rite of clan-wide disfigurement of the turf. Here a cut, there a tuft, everywhere a really weird cut. It can’t be helped. By Mama’s decree, her side yard remains off limits so long as one violet blooms. The horse pasture? Off limits. The path up the right-of-way? Verbotten. The crape myrtle row? Don’t even go there. And we don’t. Like all good enablers, we avert our eyes from uncontrolled grass growth and try to focus on the positive.

The positive side of being thwarted in any designs we may have had on Bethlehem, Georgia’s Lawn-of-the-Month award is that my family is doing our small part to uphold the southern tradition of each community having its oddball characters. That’s a good thing, because I don’t want small-town Georgia to lose its character- either of the human sort or in our landscapes. I can’t remember any of the towns I’ve lived in not having an old man who covered his fence posts with Nehi Orange bottle caps, or a woman who wore a heavy wool coat through Savannah summers, or her daughter who never married but carried a dog tucked under her arm every waking moment, or a grove of falling-down cracker houses with three generations of sofas on the front porch. The southern right to inter a worn-out sofa onto your porch was recently challenged in nearby Athens, to great uproar and protestation against loss of personal freedom.

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal freedom since I came back to the farm to live, partly because of my ongoing battle against ATV”s. These fat-tired motorized rhinos have claimed our dirt road as their weekend race track. Or, rather, their drivers have. It gets worse every month as more and more subdivisions pop up around us. People who used to live in one of the counties immediately surrounding Atlanta proper are abandoning paved-over, congested Gwinnett County and Dekalb County in favor of Barrow County. I can only assume these new Barrow Countians consider a dirt road walled by woods as public green space. “It’s just an old dirt road. Why shouldn’t I play on it with my dirt bike or ATV?” Because it’s illegal to ride any off-road vehicle on a public road, that’s why. “Nobody’s living in these woods. Why shouldn’t I ride my ATV through them?” Because they’re not your woods, that’s why. And because the weight of your machine is killing my Queen Anne’s Lace, my Fleabane, my Pipsissewa, even my southern wood violets.

Not that I would ever present that last listing as argument to any of the cami-garbed guys I stop mid-road. You can’t ride that ATV here. “Why not, lady?” Because you’re crushing the violets. “Oh, God, sorry! I didn’t know. I’ll call my buddy to bring his pickup to get me.” Nope, what I do is stand in the middle of the road with Fred-the-big-red-dog on his leash and my cell phone in my other hand. Fred hates anything with tires. When he sees an ATV (or motorcycle or F-150 or tricycle) he lunges and slathers (always an effective combination of deterrents) while I call the sheriff with my free hand. Dogs, sheriffs and an angry landowner—the great southern trinity of law enforcement. Make that one crazy-haired lady landowner who is rapidly gaining a reputation as a weirdo, and I can usually put the skids on ATV play, at least for right then.

But do I have the right? Legally, yes. In Georgia, in Barrow County, it is illegal to drive or ride any off-road vehicle on a public road. This comes as a rude surprise to many new arrivals. They have moved to the country to get away from urban sprawl, to have a little ease from restrictions. Isn’t that sort of freedom also my desire and aim? Yes, but I prefer to gain ease from life’s restrictions by blending into the quiet of my woods, by letting nature take the upper hand. So far as I can tell, ATV-ers want access to undeveloped land in order to destroy it. They want into my woods so they can kill all the small life growing on the floor of my woods, so they can kill the stillness, so they can kill the smells of reindeer moss and pine needle beds and wet white clay. They would disavow this, of course, and with actual sincerity. After all, how can someone be held accountable for setting out to kill what they don’t know is there? You can’t see reindeer moss when you’re sitting atop several tons of fiberglass and steel. You can’t hear a forest’s various modes of silence over a gas engine’s howl. Wet clay’s cleanly sharp odor is smothered by gas emissions as thoroughly as new puppies drowned in a sack.

Who in a motorized world notices the small and the silent? I do, as Emily Dickinson did:

“A little bread- a crust- a crumb-

A little trust- a demijohn-

Can keep the soul alive-“

I need a dose of wildness to keep my soul alive. We all do. Any head-butting which goes on between me and ATV owners has its origin in our differing ideas of what “wildness’ is. ATV wildness comes at the world from the outside, in the form of a deafening gas engine carried along by eco-system-flattening tires entering undeveloped areas in order to enjoy by destroying. This is pleasure through conquest. I am of the pleasure-through-conjuncture school. Conjuncture: “a combination; as of events or circumstances”. Have you ever had a relationship in which strong love spilled over into strong desire, and vice-versa? Then you know what I mean by conjuncture- you submerse yourself in someone or something outside of yourself and find not that you lose yourself but that you emerge as more than you were before.

I find all too many people lately believing in the progression to a stronger, more assured self through accumulation of goods. It’s like that cold weather advice our TV announcers always give before the harshest day of winter: dress in layers because layers give greatest protection from the cold. Our popular culture wants to assure us that our greatest protection from anomie will be gained through the layering on of possessions. If those possessions in some way mimic sentience- if beeps and roars and whistles make them sound alive; if response to some signal on our part makes them act alive; if movement and heat and breath-like exhalations make them look alike- we are even more disposed to accept Blackberries and I-Pods and ATV’s as indicators not only of self-worth, but of character affirmation.

The truth is that our individual character becomes most evident when we are most stripped of our accoutrements, when we are what we are, and not what we possess. As a child of World War II-era parents, I wonder from time to time how I would have fared had I been a victim of the Holocaust. Perhaps never in history have humans been so robbed of everything as were those souls transported to concentration camps. How did they do it? I wonder not so much how their bodies survived—that was usually a luck of physiology and circumstance—as how their spirits kept from calling it quits. I would not have made it. I would have destroyed myself with anger at the injustice of it all. But someone like the writer Corrie Ten Boom possessed the sort of temperament which allowed her to set aside anger as irrelevant, to focus on the positive. Finding something positive about life in Auschwitz seems to me like trying to teach opera to a chorus of tone-deaf illiterates, but Ten Boom managed. Once when her sister (a person obviously with leanings more like my own) challenged Corrie to find something- anything- good to say about body lice, Ten Boom replied that their infestations of lice kept sadistic camp guards from bothering them! Corrie Ten Boom had character of the sort which needs no ornamentation or supplementing.

This morning when I stepped out into early spring’s frosty world, I wondered how even Ten Boom could bear the cold of a European winter with no way to fight against it. A detail which always strikes me first when I look at photos from concentration camps is the flimsiness of those cotton pajama-like outfits the internees wore, with almost never a coat or hat in sight. How could they come to terms with constant cold? How could anyone live that way? Georgians did, to a lesser degree, until very recently. There was little nostalgia-inducing about spending winter in an old cracker farmhouse. Those high-ceilinged boxes were cold. Cold. I can tell you first-hand how unheated bedroom air grows so heavy with cold during the dark hours that you wake to feel the temperature as a physical weight, heavier even than the seven or eight quilts mounded over you like dirt over a new grave. And I have come to believe many cases of failing bladders among folks my age and older can be traced back to early morning hours spent carefully motionless in a farmhouse bed, arguing against an obvious call of nature, so great was the bladder-owner’s unwillingness to step out of bed into that black lake of icy air.

Passing the night in a frigid bedroom under quilts piled on and tucked in by a grandmother or mother most likely never killed anyone, though, and it gave the added benefit of Building Character. I’ve written those last words with capitals because that’s how my mind’s ear hears them after a lifetime of being informed any odious situation will “build character”. Dry the dishes; it builds character. Finish your calculus homework; it builds character. Admit to your sister she was right and you were wrong; it builds character. First baby has colic for three months? It builds character. The Navy gives your husband back-to-back deployments the same year your daughter turns fourteen and begins to wear all black (clothes. lipstick, attitude)? Builds character. You receive a $500 windfall on Tuesday and on Wednesday your radiator needs replacing to the tune of $500, exactly?

Yep: Character.

What do you do with all that accumulated character? Each spring, I use it to hold my anger gauge at steady when yet another clump of abandoned puppies blossoms on the side of the road where some bubba left them to their own devices. The point here, of course, is that three-week-old pups don’t have devices. Someone takes care of them or they die. There are no other options, so my family takes up the slack. Fred and Max know the drill by now: I come home with an armful of wormy babies and dump them in the sink for a flea bath; each pup gets handed off to Mama who is sitting by with thick towels on her lap. Rubbed dry, they go into the pen with warm milk and dog food mush. Max and Fred always seem delighted by the whole process, maybe because it’s like watching a home movie of their own beginnings. In Max’s case, enjoyment of the proceedings certainly isn’t due to his great love of puppies because he considers any furry creature under five pounds to be a rat, and rats, to Max’s way of thinking, have been put on earth to have their necks snapped. We keep puppies at safe viewing distance from Max.

During the most recent puppy residency, Mama admitted to secretly loving being called on to house homeless pups in the unused dog pen behind her house. It’s the perfect way to have all the perks of puppy possession—their infant sweetness, how funny they are when they play together, their puppy smell – without having to commit to lifetime care. Mama steps out her back door and they all come tumbling to the side of the pen to assure her she is goddess incarnate. I should pause here to paint a picture of this pen, lest you have in your head the image of an eight-by-eight chain link box. No, no. This enclosure encompasses a fifteen by twenty foot swath of hilly yard with a huge gnarly apple tree as centerpiece. There are three dog houses therein, two insulated winter residences and an open-sided, roofed sun porch for our dog guests’ warm weather pleasure. We keep a store of dog blankets to pad the houses and a basket of toys and bones. They lead a well-deserved happy life while we search for homes for them.

Not every litter can be saved. Once we found a family of nine siblings in the falling-down barn which edges the far western corner of Mr. Edgar’s land. Just about the only thing holding that barn up is a thick growth of privet and sassafras and cat brier hiding his old cotton barn so nearly completely you have to know it’s there to know it’s there. We know it’s there, so we fought our way back that day through bramble and hedge to where we could hear small rustlings and whimpers. No mama, just nine brindled babies so feral, so starved, they had to be caught and “put down”, as the euphemism goes. They could never have been domesticated. We still wince over having had to order their death. At least we gave them a quick death, as opposed to slow death by starvation and disease, which had been their first lot. And at least they had had Mr. Edgar’s barn as some sort of shelter against the world while they lived. Where will such orphans go when all old barns and rock-footed farmhouses have been leveled in favor of Home Depots?

And should it matter? Do all things weak and vulnerable forfeit their right of proper care by reason of their weakness and vulnerability? If this seems reasonable, if we as a society are hurtling in the direction of respecting only what is new and foursquare, we are also moving toward misapprehending maintenance for care. The greater chunk of our discretionary time is spent maintaining those belongings we believe define us. We maintain, then we discard, then we replace. This is not care. Care involves an expenditure of thought directed solely toward the good of the receiver. The manner of care I have in mind is not precipitated by hope of eventual payoff. It is not virus protection for your laptop or oil changes for your Honda; that’s maintenance. I’m talking about a warm flea bath and soft food and soft words for a puppy who will the following Wednesday be euthanized by the county because he’s too puny and homely to be adoptable. I’m talking about Mama choosing to preserve and live in her old cracker farmhouse, with its one bathroom and gaps around the doors big enough to throw a cat through, rather than level one hundred years of character in favor of a ticky-tacky house with attached two-car garage. And I’m absolutely talking about us in the family adjusting our walking gait to drunk mode during the month or so each spring when wood violets are blooming in fat nose gays all across our yards.

Why does care of the tiny and valueless matter? Because it takes us out of ourselves. Any time we leave the accustomed confines of our outlook, we are required to incorporate new information about ourselves into our brain’s plush folds. Should we leave those puppies to die on their own, or risk briar-ripped arms and puppy bites and ticks and an afternoon’s plans gone to bust? The harder choice forces you into a series of compromises with yourself, with society, with the world at large. You come out on the other side of that process of compromise having Built Character. And the rewarding thing about character is that it is attractive. Local horse owners plan their Sunday afternoon rides to include our road because it’s pleasing to see Mama’s old house, grey and unassuming, standing just where it has stood for one hundred years, teeny patches of deep purple violets scattered at its feet.

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MOTES BOOKS Order Back to Abnormal Coming Off the Press February 2010

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