Into Each Life...

To my readers: I try to keep this blog a happy place, a place you can go to get away from everyday life. As Chekhov said, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

But into each life some crisis must fall. I'll tell you now, it all works out OK in the end. But it wasn't any fun, no fun at all when it was happening. It's taken me awhile to arrive at the right spiritual place to post it, so these photos will look lush to you, now that the trees have given up all their leaves. Here it is.

I guess I should write about this now, since it woke me up at 2 AM and keeps replaying in my head.

Yesterday, my friend Dave called and suggested we take the dogs for a hike. He’s got a cattle dog named Cooper and a huge blue Weimeraner named Phoenix.

Though they’re nice, calm dogs, Chet has always acted like a jerk to them. Even the perfect dog has flaws, and Chet's Achilles' heel is his Napoleon complex. I hoped that if they were on neutral ground, things would go better. I want Chet to be able to interact with other dogs without being such a little putz, always posturing, hackles raised, trying to dominate a dog four times his weight and volume. Thing is, the little cuss gets away with it. His bluster usually works. Which would be fine, if he would ever stop blustering. No. He has to prove his superiority over and over. I find myself wishing sweet, timid Phoenix would open up a can of whup-ass once, so Chet will stop all the foolishness. I hate being on tenterhooks, always keeping an eye on my uppity little dog, hoping he doesn’t get himself in trouble with the others.

These thoughts and others in my head, we drove about 22 miles into the Ohio backcountry, and the autumn leaves were blazing, so beautiful, whirling up in a fairy sparkle wake behind Dave’s car as we followed.

One of my favorite barns, for its deep maroon patina.

The church at Dalzell.

The gaily-painted general store and canoe livery along Route 26.

Phoebe, an erstwhile Twilight fan, making a quizzical face as I force her to pose next to an evocative headstone. This one's for Zoey and Trixie.

Delicious country curves.

The hiking spot has a big sandstone cave, a sinkhole, really, and a natural bridge, and it sounded like something we all ought to experience. Note the back of Liam's pants. It was very steep, and there's little my kids love more than going down steep slopes on their butts. Ehh, that's why they call them playclothes.

As we passed the first covered bridge on our route, there was a Canada goose, just hit, lying in the road. It was such an odd, odd place for a Canada goose. Its neck was bent in a C, and it was gasping hard, and there were feathers everywhere, and I found myself thinking, “Oh, God, I hope it’s dying, because I don’t want to pick it up and deal with it; I don’t want to have to wring its neck, because that’s a really big bird and it would be hard to do.” These are the things that run through your head when you are compelled to help; when you can't look the other way. Hard to do, both physically and emotionally, to wring a neck like that. We turned in to have a look at the bridge and by the time we got out the goose’s neck was slumped and it was still. I thanked the gods of nature and death that I didn't have to intervene. I just wanted to go for a hike with my kids and my dog today. We drove on.

We parked at the trailhead and the dogs leapt out of the car and, as I’d barely dared hoped, became instant friends on this neutral ground. Chet tried a couple of times to muscle Phoenix and Cooper but there were too many interesting smells and too many miles to race, so he gave up presenting his not-that-impressive profile and brought up the rear as the bigger dogs galumphed up and down the trail.

His wide Boston terrier grin told me he was having fun.

Tomorrow: Chet's fall.

Horse, Turtle, Spider, Beaver

We came upon these friendly horses, and luckily Chet Baker was weary enough at that point to have little desire to round them up for us. Lovely animals. From the decrepitude of their non-electric fencing, we realized that they are free to roam the entire road, and that the piles of horse bockie we'd been seeing were probably from them and not from some local equestrians using the road as an obstacle course.

How nice, free-roaming horses. The best pasture was right here, and they weren't going anywhere.
I find most of my box turtles by hearing them, oddly enough. A steady soft crunching resolves into a turtle, determined to find a few more earthworms before frost.

Its eyes were bright red, traditionally a sign of a male, but its overall impression was of a lady turtle. I debated long and hard over whether to disturb it by picking it up. But the Science Chimp's curiosity won out over respect for its dignity.I noticed that it had had some damage to the rear scutes on its shell, some years ago. They looked either like forest fire--a light burn on the rear part of the shell, which might have been exposed when the flames went over--or perhaps the chewings of a mouse while it was hibernating. Whatever it was had long healed over, leaving only some irregularity and discoloration.

I warned it, spoke gently to it, apologized, and lifted it into the air. Aha! the plastron, only barely scooped out. A female, as I'd suspected.


I can't really explain why this red-eyed turtle looked like a female, even before I saw its plastron. It just did. Darker, smaller, more delicate head; small size, even at this very advanced age (discernable by the completely smooth shell). I was so glad she'd live out her years along this impassable road. All turtles should be so lucky. I left her right where she was, and wished her a good hibernation.

The common mullein was ready for hibernation
with its warm woolens on

and so was the wolf spider, with next year's babies in a ball of eggs behind her


The old familiar beaver pond hove into view

and we found where the beavers had been using a black cherry tree for medicinal purposes. Shila says cherry bark is good for coughs. That sap has got to have powerful properties!

Jewellike hornets tussled on New York asters

a miniature moss landscape rose

and a tiny red maple kept its party dress on well past midnight

Chet Baker was ready to go home at last

but I had to stop to photograph a computer keyboard in the stream, made into a relic by silt and the distortion of wavelets...Fred Flintstone's Mac...

One of my favorite images from the trip. As is this one, crooked horizon and all:


I can't wait until the next hike.

Chet Baker, Curry Fan

You have to bring lots of water and food when you're taking a five or six mile walk. I enjoy bringing something unconventional, such as this yummy chicken and vegetable curry I had made the night before. I like sitting on the ground in the middle of nowhere, eating something deliciously unlikely. Being on a hike is no excuse for deprivation. Ask my sister Barbara, who once fed me beef stroganoff by candlelight at a campsite in Saskatchewan. I still remember that.

And somebody agreed.

Mether, please share your lunch. I am your partner on this hike, and I would like some food, too.


Now, those of you who are grossed out by my letting Chet Baker use the same (disposable, biodegradable cornstarch) fork as I do might just want to go douse themselves in Purel. I actually believe in bacteria.

I was done, OK? And it was a photo-op, OK? And I would have done it even if it weren't a photo-op, 'cuz that's the way I roll.

(All photos by Shila Wilson).

Mmmm. Thank you, Mether. That is delicious.

I get very hengry when we walk so far. I appreciate your sharing. Curry is good.

And so are Shila's adzuki bean and rice chippies. I am controlling her with my brain. She will give me the chippy. It will levitate toward my mouth. (At this point, Baker is practically oinking. Boston terriers oink when they see something they want, be it chippy or chiptymunk.)


Chet Baker, best puppeh in the universe, you can share my fork any time. When I'm done with it.


All photos of JZ and Th' Bacon by Shila Wilson, my hiking buddy, mental health consultant, photography mentor, aura chiropractor, and friend. The Bacon is always ecstatic to see her because he knows we're going for a w-a-l-k.

Now That's a Bad Road

We are not yet finished hiking Dean's Fork. We're about two miles up the six-mile trace. Finally, we reached the scene of my automotive humiliation. Shila points to where my driver's side wheel dropped. It was not good. There is about a four-foot sheer drop below it, enough to roll the new 'baru. The tire track you see is from the right front wheel. It was only by dint of mighty control that I did not leave a big pile of Zick scat at this place.



And the road got a little worse,

and a little worse...

and then it got baaaad

and baaader

and after that, as forgotten traces will, it got kind of ridiculous

but all along Shila was saying, "Oh, I could get my RAV-4 through this. I'd put one wheel here and one wheel here..." and I was laughing at her and with each water hazard we'd assess the best path through, as if we'd EVER bring a car up here again...

not bloody likely...but it's fun to imagine how you'd do it. We began to understand, perhaps a tiny glimmer, the people who go fourwheelin' on weekends for fun...there's always that possibility that your vehicle will go in up to its steering wheel and never be seen again, and isn't that a thrill?
until we reached the point where we were both just helpless with laughter imagining ourselfs trying to get through the next hazard

and Shila even said she could do this one, but then we found THIS ONE

and it was a foot deep, and whoops! there was a tail light from some poor schnook who thought he could make it, for we know it had to be a man...

When we reached the first house on the other side of all this, the only inhabited house on the whole road, in fact, we talked with Harvey, and he said,

"You know, every weekend I see these people in these little Ford Fiestas go by my place, headed on down the road, and I never see them coming back."

To which I said,

"Oh, that explains all the skeletons."

So the township's response to having to drag all those people and their Ford Fiestas out of there is putting a sign at the better-traveled end of Dean's Fork, announcing some sort of official "closure" of the road, which of course is closed only by virtue of the fact that you will drown before you get out to the other side.

Shila and I just returned from another expotition, and we found mainly poop, but it was interesting poop. That will have to wait until we're finished with Dean's Fork. Because we're not done yet.

Barn Wabi-Sabi

Maybe on our next walk we'll ford the creek and poke around this gorgeous barn. We had miles to go, so we forged on.

The next barn was close to the road, and we dove into the detail on its old sides.


I'm not sure what this material originally was--rubberized cloth? but it had aged into a fascinating, fungal texture.

Oh, I loved this sign. You can't make a sign like this. Time has to make it. Time, and some yahoos to shoot it for you.


There were some Herefords just across the fork. Chet was all a-tremble, but at almost five years old, he knows better than to go after them.

No leash necessary, just a warning word. Good boy, Chet. Keep moving.

Mether, someday I may go round those cattle up when you are not looking. But now you are looking. And you are right. I am not a cattle dog. I am a chiptymunk dog. Until someday when you are not looking.

A field daisy defies the frost. I can't remember seeing a fall with so many blooming daisies.

Are you coming, Mether? Or are you going to crouch down by the flollers all day?


Yes, Chet Baker, but I have a few more flollers to crouch by. These milkweed pods will do nicely.



It is tricky keeping the horizon straight when you're crouching. Or maybe I'm drunk on rural beauty. Or maybe it's that these barns are all off true by more than a few degrees. Everybody's staggering here.

Not least me and Shila, at the end of the five or six miles. But there's more to come. We're only a quarter of the way up the road.

For those who are still wondering, wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept of beauty through age, weathering, imperfection, impermanence. It is a scarred and twisted bonsai, a wise and knowing face, a beat-up ballerina's foot, an old Ohio barn.