Crossroads

Crossroads

Home
Tag Archives: Department

California Dreamin’

But you can check out anytime you like

By Kaye Gibbons

Thirty-five or so years ago my husband, Michael, and I started thinking about moving to California. Or rather, he started thinking, and I started worrying. I didn’t know if I’d be able to write out there. I wondered and worried pretty much nonstop until I was able to ask Eudora Welty what she thought about it.

Whenever I was in Jackson, Mississippi, the owner of the Lemuria bookstore would drive me to her house along with a bottle of bourbon and a large bag of M&Ms. I knew whatever she told me would be remarkable and right, and it was. I was sitting on the living room sofa. She was in her chair in the corner. We chatted for a minute, and then I told her that Michael and I were thinking about moving. If I left North Carolina and lived somewhere else, like California, I asked her, would I still be a Southern writer?

She leaned forward and said, “If your cat has her kittens in the oven, would you call them muffins?”

I always tried to sound intelligent around her, but I said, “Huh?”

She said it again, slowly, “If your cat has her kittens in the oven, would you call them muffins? Think about it.”

And I did, a great deal, after I got over the stroke it caused.

What she meant, I decided, was that I carry the will and the desire and the need to write inside of me, within. Whatever circumstances or external factors happened to be outside and around me, things without, didn’t matter as much. It sounded to me pretty much like I could move to New Jersey or Alaska or Antarctica and still be a Southern writer. So after some planning and preparation, we packed up and left. I remember when the move was because I was writing Charms for the Easy Life and had to ship boxes of notes and things like Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters records and tapes of old radio shows that I was scared would get lost or damaged in transit.

We’d bought a house without seeing it in person, and so I had no idea what the neighborhood was like until we got there. It was in Marin County, north of San Francisco, in the San Geronimo Valley. The neighborhood, turns out, was just us. You got to the house by driving through a mile of massive redwoods, like the ones in The Petrified Forest, the Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis movie. I remember standing in the front yard of this house that was also made of redwood — dark, with heavy doors with black iron trim — and telling the Realtor that this was all a little scary. Maybe we’d made a mistake. Thinking, I suppose, that it’d impress us, she told us that the actor Klaus Kinski, of Nosferatu the Vampyre, lived a couple of miles away.

There were no flat green lawns with white painted houses or sandy hills like those you drive through on the way from Raleigh to Pinehurst. There was no flat white sandy beach or gentle waters and tidepools for our girls to play in. The nearest shoreline was all rugged cliffs and crashing waves. There wasn’t a Harris Teeter, no Crabtree or Kmart. In Raleigh, when Michael used to get home from work, I’d often run up to Crabtree and walk around Sears to change gears and relax. I’d stop at the candy counters on the way out. Then I’d go home and cook supper. After everything was done, and the girls were in bed, I’d sit on the couch with Michael and read what I’d written that day. Out there, we grocery-shopped at places I felt like I had to change clothes to go to. I remember not knowing how to clean the house with the redwood floor-to-ceiling everywhere without Clorox Clean-Up and Windex. I couldn’t tell if the floor was clean by looking at it.

Maybe I was lazy and didn’t try hard enough to thrive outside the South, but I just didn’t like it there. I was like a plant that’s set in the wrong window and keeps bending toward the sun. I didn’t adjust to my new surroundings or to anything without. Within was unchanged and wanted to go home. I don’t remember exactly how long I was there, but it was probably no more than five, maybe six months. It certainly wasn’t long enough to be able to test Miss Welty’s cat-in-the-oven theory. I didn’t write a word in the redwoods.

The South Miss Welty was referencing when she spoke to me that day lives, for the most part, in my memory, and thank God for it. The Raleigh I live and write in today has moved on past the days when you wouldn’t have been shocked to hear a story about so-and-so’s backwoods country cousin whose cat had her kittens in the oven. Writing about my childhood, growing up in Nash County, I’ve had the privilege to be able to bring back to life a family who lived down the road from me. They lived in a lopsided shotgun house on the Tar River, perilously close to the water. They had a lot of ringwormy-looking children. They’d boarded up the house and were mainly living in the yard. A girl on the bus told me that they’d broken all the plates and were eating off records. A boy, she said, had been seen eating cornbread off a 45.

They also had heating and storage issues, of course, and often left the oven door open. I didn’t hear that a cat had had her kittens in it, but I did hear that some squirrels or opossums or something like that were living in it. I love that there was a possibility of kittens being born in an oven, and that the oven was Southern, like the interior place where my memories are kept, safe with my need and desire to write.  PS

Kaye Gibbons is a novelist and a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. She’s currently working on a memoir.

Dissecting a Cocktail

Dissecting a Cocktail

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Caramel Apple Sour

Story and Photograph by Tony Cross

American apple brandy dates back to the 1600s, when Colonists planted orchards to harvest “spitter” apples for hard cider.

Later, they would leave the barrels of alcohol outside overnight to freeze — a method, known as “jacking” that allowed them to separate the alcohol from the ice remaining in the barrels, producing a strong spirit they called “applejack.” Today’s applejack is a blend of apple brandy and neutral grain spirits, while apple brandy is distilled entirely from fermented apples.

The caramel apple sour comes from the holiday cocktail book of a Chicago bar, The Aviary. According to the authors, the book’s drinks are good “for every party, event, dinner, or game day that you host between Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl. These cocktails are custom created to be accessible, delicious and a bit ambitious.”

The Aviary is known for having cocktails that require a Ph.D. in all things culinary as a prerequisite, but don’t let the instructions for this drink scare you — this is a very easy cocktail to create.  PS

Tony Cross is an on-again, off-again bartender who founded and runs Reverie Cocktails, a kegged cocktail distribution company that has been represented everywhere from dive bars to baseball stadiums. 

Specifications

2 ounces apple brandy

1 1/4 ounce pomegranate caramel*

3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

3/4 ounce egg white

1 lemon peel

Execution

Place two cubes of hibiscus ice** into a medium rocks glass. Combine all ingredients (except lemon peel) in a cocktail shaker. Dry shake until frothy. Add ice and shake again vigorously until chilled and diluted, then strain into the rocks glass over ice. Express the lemon peel over the glass. Discard the peel.

*(Pomegranate Caramel)

250 grams dark brown sugar

7 grams cinnamon sticks

5 whole cloves

2 whole star anise pods

1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped

1 gram salt

360 grams POM pomegranate juice

200 grams sweetened condensed milk

In a medium saucepan, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, vanilla seeds and pod, salt and 60 grams of the pomegranate juice. Bring this mixture to a boil over medium high heat, and boil for 6 minutes, stirring constantly to keep any of the ingredients from scorching. Remove the pot from the heat, and slowly add the remaining pomegranate juice, stirring to combine. Add the condensed milk and mix thoroughly. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, discarding solids. Transfer to an airtight container and reserve in the refrigerator.

**(Hibiscus Ice)

285 grams water

83 grams sugar

10 grams dried hibiscus flowers or hibiscus tea

1 small pinch salt

86 grams POM pomegranate juice

45 grams ruby port wine

35 grams lemon juice

1 gram rosewater

Combine the water, sugar, hibiscus and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat, cover and allow to steep for 1 hour. Strain the mixture using a mesh strainer, discarding solids. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring to combine. Fill a 1 1/4-inch square ice mold with the mixture. Freeze into cubes until completely solid.  PS

Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue

Home
Tag Archives: Department

There’s Always Chocolate

Nothing else even comes close

By Deborah Salomon

November: Gateway to “the holidays,” a warm, happy time of family togetherness, good will to all. Except the world faces a mess. Santa is overdrawn at the bank, and the flotilla of Christmas toys hasn’t arrived from China. So, beyond the religious significance, let’s think of something cheery. It may not be tinsel and colored lights, the must-have electronic gadget or the trendiest cowboy boots. How about a whole-family gift like an SUV or a trip to DisneyWorld?

Forget it. Hiring Santa’s sleigh would be cheaper.

My unlikely suggestion is chocolate. Everybody loves chocolate despite its unpopular color. Solid brown as opposed to brown print/plaid found on sofas, rugs, sweaters, dresses, ties doesn’t pop. Black may be elegant, but brown’s a drag. Even high-fashion TV news anchors wouldn’t chance a chocolate-brown suit. Yet the joy of chocolate overwhelms any negative. Picture little Halloween ghosts picking through the candy basket for Hershey Kisses and Miniatures. Easter means brown eggs and bunnies.

Chemistry may play a part. Chocolate triggers the release of endorphins, the “happy hormones.” Americans, however, seem to prefer heavily sweetened/diluted “milk” chocolate. Law regulates percentage of cacao present in some products. Watch out for “chocolatey” on cookie labels . . . not a good sign.

Depending on the source, cacao beans have been identified in Spain and South America from 3-to-5,000 B.C., mainly as a beverage. Weather and disease decimated a recent cocoa harvest in Ghana, the major African producer of the cocoa plant, precipitating a worldwide shortage, hence price increases.

I adore chocolate. This adoration evolved from deprivation. My mother disallowed “candy’’ because I was a problem eater. I love dairy products but wouldn’t drink milk. She wouldn’t count chocolate pudding as milk. So, at about age 7, I approached her with a treaty: one square Hershey’s for one glass of milk. My absolute favorite, however, was the Good Humor (white truck, jingling bells) bittersweet chocolate sundae cup, scooped up with a little wooden “spoon.’’

As an adult I discovered dark, “bittersweet” chocolate bars, preferably imported. Now, in old age, every evening I put one square under my tongue and let it melt . . . slowly.

Never two, just one.

I once purchased a Toblerone bar the size of a baseball bat at the Zurich airport.

Many decades ago I added a “blackout” sour cream chocolate layer cake to my baking repertoire . . . indescribable. I’m working on chocolate cheesecake. A European friend taught me to put a square of top-quality imported chocolate in a warmed cup and pour steaming black coffee over it. Stir until the chocolate begins to melt. Sip slowly; scrape up remnants with a spoon.

So grown-up. So addictive, but that’s another story.

I am not advocating an unhealthy diet. How could anything so pleasurable be unhealthy, in moderation, during challenging times? I remember World War II, when “care” packages sent to troops contained Hershey bars, not broccoli. Even now, after a distressing day I know chocolate is waiting should I need it.

So why not add chocolate to Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Kwanzaa? At Hanukkah children are traditionally showered with gold foil-covered chocolate coins.

I’m not suggesting chocolate will ever replace pumpkin pie or peppermint, turkey stuffing or cranberry sauce. But remember — when discouragement happens, there’s always chocolate.  PS

Deborah Salomon is a contributing writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

Hometown

Hometown

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Pointers from a Pro

A treatise on the art of writing

By Bill Fields

During college in the late 1970s, not long after I’d begun spending afternoons typing at The Daily Tar Heel offices instead of studying at the library, a fellow student journalist recommended a book: On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser.

After saving a few dollars by forgoing a meat-and-three supper at the Porthole, I purchased a copy of the slender volume, 150 pages including the index, at the UNC campus bookstore. That paperback — its yellow cover smoke-stained from a fire that sent me fleeing from an Aberdeen cottage in 1984, and its thin spine splitting — has survived the decades and multiple moves along the Eastern Seaboard.

I still pull On Writing Well off my bookshelf every so often and am reminded what a good primer it is each time I reread Zinsser’s advice, including passages I highlighted as a young man:

“Clear thinking becomes clear writing.”

“Notice the decisions that other writers make in their choice of words and be finicky about the ones that you select from the vast supply. The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original.”

“If your nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.”

“The good writer of prose must be part poet, always listening to what he writes.”

Using examples of writing, good and bad, Zinsser stresses simplicity. “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.” On Writing Well was first published in 1976, and these days, every time I hear a football analyst say a receiver is “out in space” or a political reporter refer to something happening “in real time,” it’s clear the book is needed now more than ever.

Bill Zinsser wrote his book — of which there have been many editions selling more than 1.5 million copies — to complement The Elements of Style. His how-to took what he later called the “pointers and admonitions” of Strunk and White and showed how to apply them to various forms of nonfiction. On Writing Well grew out of a nonfiction writing course Zinsser taught at Yale University after a long career as a newspaper and magazine writer.

“At the end of class, Bill would return our papers from the previous week, each illuminated with his editing suggestions and provocative marginalia,” Mark Singer, a former student, recalled in The New Yorker. “I still wince at his dead-on appraisal of my travel piece: ‘You’ll notice that I stopped marking this halfway through. What you’ve written is interesting only to you.’”

As an aspiring sportswriter I pored over Zinsser’s chapter about the genre, delighted that he cited Red Smith, whose brilliance I was just discovering, as a writer who “avoided the exhausted synonyms” and strived for “freshness elsewhere in the construction of a sentence.” Zinsser quoted Smith writing that a quarterback was “scraped off the turf like apple butter” and “a luncheonette on 53rd Street that has long since vanished in a cloud of bicarbonate.”

Zinsser had plenty of game too, and like his fellow New Yorker, the more widely known writer Roger Angell, wrote well for a long time. When he was in his late 80s, his vision dimmed by glaucoma, Zinsser won a National Magazine Award for a series of online essays for The American Scholar.

“Today no magazine cover would be wide enough for Rockwell,” Zinsser wrote in one column, “Thanksgiving Day Repainted.”

“He would need a Chinese scroll to accommodate the disparate crowd assembled to eat turkey or some dietetically certified substitute: single moms, single dads, partners, companions, half-brothers, half-sisters, stepchildren, ex-spouses, live-ins, live-outs, in-laws, outlaws, and dogs of rarefied lineage. Only an artist from a post-Rockwell school of painting could hope to catch the overlapping fluidities of the modern American tribe.”  PS

Bill Fields’ memoir A Quick Nine Before Dark is available at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines and other places books are sold.

State of Mind

State of Mind

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Hurricane Watch

The storms that bring us together

By Tommy Tomlinson

There’s always a moment late in the fall when I wake up groggy and wonder if my hurricane bag is packed.

I don’t have a hurricane bag anymore. But I did have one for years. Part of my job when I was at the Charlotte Observer was to head out to the coast when a hurricane was coming in.

It is such a strange feeling to be the only car heading down one side of the highway when thousands are fleeing in the opposite direction.

The contents of the hurricane bag: toilet paper, of course; a portable radio; extra batteries; bottled water; food with a shelf life (peanut butter, soda crackers, canned peaches, Chef Boyardee); maps; Swiss Army knife; raincoat; bug spray; first aid kit.

We had a guide that we printed out and took with us. Get to a safe place and stay there until the hurricane moves through. Don’t drive into a puddle if you don’t know how deep it is. (A colleague of ours once drowned a rental car.) Look out for critters. Hurricanes cause floods, and floods flush all sorts of animals out into the open. I discovered that was true when I covered Hurricane Floyd back in 1999. I was somewhere outside of New Bern, driving through a neighborhood. I saw a family cleaning up their flooded house and pulled over to talk to them. Their yard was knee-deep in water. I started wading across and noticed a clump of debris floating by. As it got closer, I could see it wasn’t debris. It was a flotilla of fire ants.

I backpedaled pretty fast, considering how deep the water was.

The water is often the biggest problem when a hurricane comes through, more than the wind. One time — I think it was Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 — I checked into a hotel in Havelock as the storm rolled in from the coast. It was a mom-and-pop place, two stories tall. They gave me a second-floor room and I grumbled about it as I hauled my luggage and gear up the steps. The storm came through during the night. The next morning I went downstairs to find that every room on the first floor had flooded.

Another time — Hurricane Fran in 1996, maybe — I stayed in a room with a sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony. When the hurricane hit, that door warped and wobbled like a rubber sheet. I crouched on the far side of the bed for hours, expecting the glass to shatter. It never did. I always wondered if the folks who made those doors prepared them for something like that.

Every time a hurricane strikes, it leaves shattered lives behind. Floyd alone led to the deaths of 52 people in North Carolina and caused more than $3 billion in damage. My job as a reporter covering those storms was to tell the stories of the people who lived through them the best I could. I always tried to remember that I was one of the lucky ones. In a few days I’d be going back to my warm, dry home. The folks I was talking to may have just lost theirs.

What struck me the most about covering hurricanes is how people look out for one another. “Look for the helpers,” Mister Rogers said, and that’s never truer than after a storm. When roads are flooded, folks with canoes and johnboats get stranded people out and supplies in. When power lines are down, people empty their freezers and fire up their grills to feed the neighborhood. A storm tends to flatten the fences that separate us. When we’re wet and hungry, we’re all the same.

I have been far away and covered even bigger storms. I spent a week south of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and most days I would prefer not to think about that. And of course, the storms keep coming. Hurricane Helene was two years ago, but Asheville and the surrounding mountain towns are still recovering.

Not three months after I came to work for the Observer in 1989, Hurricane Hugo came right up I-77 and slammed into Charlotte in the middle of the night. I was living just south of the border in Lancaster, South Carolina. Nobody expected the hurricane to make it that far inland. I fell asleep not sure if it was coming. I woke up to the sound of my front door being blown open. I lived in an old duplex, and the door was not quite square in the frame. I’d slam it shut and the wind would blast it open again. At some point I realized I needed something heavy to brace against it. I grabbed the old Royal typewriter my mom and dad gave me when I was 12. I jammed it against the bottom of the door and it held. I was grateful for my mom and dad, and grateful for being a writer.

For the next several hours I watched the pecan tree outside my bedroom window being bent to its limits. The wind was like a claw hammer trying to pry loose a stubborn nail.

Finally, it let go. I stepped into my front yard and saw my neighbors stumbling out of their houses. None of us said anything for a while. That’s the thing, the quiet just on the other side of a hurricane. Assessing the damage, helping the needy: That comes later. But first you’re just stunned by nature’s power, your world forever changed. PS

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of two books, The Elephant in the Room and Dogland. He was a longtime columnist for the Charlotte Observer and has written for Esquire, The Atlantic, ESPN the Magazine and many other publications. His online newsletter is called The Writing Shed. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Alix Felsing.

Birdwatch​

Birdwatch

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Quoth the Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary . . .

By Susan Campbell

The raven is one of the most widely recognized and intriguing birds in the Northern Hemisphere, being a species that has associated with mankind for thousands of years. It is certainly not one that is common in the Piedmont of North Carolina — however, it is a bird seen more frequently each year, even in more urbanized areas such as the Triad and even in the Triangle area. The common raven is a rarity in the Sandhills, but that is likely to change before long.

In our state, common ravens breed at elevation in the Appalachians and can be found roaming the mountains year-round. For several decades now the species has been frequently found farther east, across the foothills, no doubt a range expansion facilitated by human activity. Ravens, as well as their crow cousins, are opportunistic feeders. Roadkill is a major and easy source of food — as are landfills, parks and campgrounds. Even pet food bowls and bird feeders have been known to attract their attention. Some birds have even learned that gunshots during hunting season may mean a meal in the not-too-distant future. Ravens are also capable of taking eggs, chicks and even newborn small animals such as lambs.

Common ravens are massive, jet-black birds, half again as large as a crow. They have heavy, serrated bills and long wedge-shaped tails. Their wings are designed for soaring, since they typically have large territories across forested, as well as open, expanses. Individuals or pairs can be seen soaring effortlessly high in the sky. Their vocalizations often give them away, especially in remote areas. The common raven’s call is a harsh or gurgling croak that, not surprisingly, carries a long way. They may learn to mimic a variety of sounds, including human vocalizations if they are kept in captivity.

These birds are exceptionally intelligent and are likely the smartest of all birds found in North America. Not only do they readily figure out where to find their next meal, they will work in pairs to acquire certain types of food. One individual will divert the attention of a nesting adult bird while its mate steals an egg or nestling. Common ravens can be destructive in their search for food, tearing into campers’ tents and other manmade structures and, in numbers, can foul sensitive equipment. They can certainly become a nuisance if they linger too often or too long around human habitation. This can be very problematic given how long-lived the birds are and that they are also non-migratory.

It is a real shock each time I spot one of these impressive birds. There seem to be individuals that regularly patrol Interstates I-40 and I-540 west of Raleigh year-round. I have also noticed them above U.S. 1 just north of Sanford. I would not be surprised if a pair is breeding in the area along the Deep River. Riverside bluffs at lower elevations mimic the cliff habitat where common ravens usually nest. They also make the ledges on tall buildings their home as well.

Ravens are clearly adaptable and perfectly happy to live alongside us — more and more, all of the time.  OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

Sandhills Photo Club

Sandhills Photo Club

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Churches & Graveyards

Tier 3 Winners

Tier 1, 1st Place: Arlington by Donna Ford

Tier 3, 3rd Place: Perpetual Peace by Susan Bailey

Tier 3, 2nd Place: Resting Among the Flowers by Dee Williams

Tier 2 Winners

Tier 2, 1st Place: Graveyard Gaze by Joshua Simpson

Tier 2, 2nd Place: Lighting the Way by Jacques Wood

Tier 2, 3rd Place: Majestic Orthodox Church in Santorini by Cathy Locklear

Tier 1 Winners

Tier 1, 1st Place: St. Patrick Owns the Night by Phil Lewis

Tier 1, 2nd Place: Here Lies the Thagards by Jameson Everett

Tier 1, 3rd Place: Norwegian Triple Crosses by Sarah Mason

Tier 1, Honorable Mention: Duke Night Sky by Kate Annett-Hitchcock

Tier 1, Honorable Mention: Rock Castle View from Hore Abbey Window by Deb Castle

Tea Leaf Astrologer​

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Libra

(September 23 – October 22)

Zora Stellanova

Someone’s feeling extra flirty this month. Mirror face aside, get ready for a cosmic reset on Oct. 10 sure to set your gaze in a bold new direction. Of course, this does mean you’ll need to make a choice. And with your ruling planet Venus in retrograde now through mid-November, one choice you ought to make is self-restraint, particularly when it comes to extraneous spending. Hint: Shop your own closet, sweetheart. You’re already extra.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Let yourself be surprised.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Listen for the crows.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Host a soup swap.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Check the air filters.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Change the batteries.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

There’s a first for everything.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Add more nutmeg.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Do the words bobtail cat mean anything to you?

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Explore moon meditations.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

It’s time for a color refresh.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) 

Embrace the wild rumpus.  OH

Zora Stellanova lives in the N.C. mountains with her wolfdogs, Venus and Lilith. Although she prefers divining with loose-leaf pu-erh, she recommends a mugwort and passionflower blend for those seeking wisdom and clarity from the dream realm. 

Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Color Me October

A delicious chill in the air

By Deborah Salomon

The seasons — and their respective colors — have long influenced my life.

Unlike most Americans, spring is not my favorite. I love daffodils, tulips, iris, budding trees. The birds I fed all winter have a spring in their chirp, now that plump bugs replace their diet of sunflower seeds and peanut butter sandwiches. But spring spreads an ominous prescience: summer. Muggy heat, damaging storms, huge electric bills, mosquitoes, hay fever.

Summer belongs at the ocean, with a cool breeze and water lapping my feet. Summer thrives at the farmstand, where the farmer’s daughter sells prize tomatoes and hours-old corn, blueberries begging pie crust, fragrant melons.

Anywhere else summer, in my book, is to be endured, nothing more.

Color summer fiery orange from sun-up to sunset.

September is a pass-through. Color it undecided.

Then comes October, which I adore. It is the yellow month, when trees positively glow. Early October offers a delicious chill tamed by fleece or corduroy.

Coffee smells and tastes better on an October morn, ditto eggs and bacon, shunned during summer. True, the sun is noticeably lower, the days shorter. But October offers renewed energy, football, cider doughnuts, long walks, a comfy month despite looming November.

Well, nothing good lasts forever.

Paint November a dreary khaki. The sky is gray, the air damp. Once-fiery leaves turn crinkled and brownish, like cornflakes. They fall and must be raked. Coats appear, although Southerners resist winter wardrobes, preferring to scurry from car to office or store in shirtsleeves. For me, November’s redeeming icon is cornbread turkey stuffing, perfumed with sage from the patio herb pot.

December has to be red and green and sparkly silver, representing holidays meant to cheer, affirm, inspire, this year challenged by worldwide messes and climate change. Will there be frost . . . or dandelions? A roast of beef or ribs on the grill?

January, definitely blue and white — the cold colors. After living most of my life far north I’ll never get used to a warmish January. I still crave soup and stew, strong tea spiked with a drop of brandy, a real fire in the fireplace. I want twinkling stars against a velvet sky, icicles on the lilac bush, enough snow to mask the dirt, and never mind if rosy-cheeked kids track it inside on their boots.

February is pink and strewn with holidays, most boasting a celebratory food, from decadent Valentine chocolate to heart-month healthy kale. The days stretch longer. Winter grows tired, soggy. Around here you can almost feel the trees shoring up strength to bud, then blossom.

March could be anything, a blizzard or a heat wave to confuse wildlife. April is spring fashion month — the good, the bad, the laughable. Will jeans continue to widen or remain stovepipe? Will the middle-part hairstyle (think Mona Lisa with a much-needed shampoo) have survived winter? Will the fellas on TV still wear running shoes with business suits?

I’ll give April purple, a color with limited applications. I don’t see many purple sofas or jackets. Maybe a blouse or two. Or a tie, if the gentleman dares.

Summer commences in May, stretches on and on. To which I will raise a drippy cone of black raspberry or peach and be thankful that, eventually, October will return.  PS

Deborah Salomon is a contributing writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

The Naturalist

The Naturalist

Home
Tag Archives: Department

Ticked Off

Something wicked this way comes

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

Vampires are real, though they look nothing like the Hollywood stereotypes who wear dark capes and speak in strange European accents. True vampires possess eight legs as adults (six in larval form) and are not much bigger than a peppercorn kernel. An estimated 900 species can be found crawling the globe, primarily in warm, humid forests across every continent except Antarctica. Some specialize in sucking the blood of rabbits. Others prefer the blood of bats. One species only laps up blood from the inner ears of cows. A surprising number are cold-blooded connoisseurs, preferring the taste of turtles and the occasional snake. And yes — a very small percentage of species bite humans and suck their blood from time to time.

I am speaking, of course, of ticks, the bane of hikers, dog walkers, campers, hunters, gardeners and outdoor enthusiasts everywhere. Despite ticks’ notoriety for sucking blood, most of the general public know very little about them.

Here’s a little factoid to tuck into your memory rolodex — it may be of use the next trivia night down at the local pub. Ticks are not insects. They are arachnids, most closely related to spiders and scorpions, and have been sucking blood for over 120 million years. While T. Rex was chowing down on a Triceratops, chances are good that ticks were chowing down on it.

That’s all well and good. Everything has a right to make a living.

However, it’s what ticks carry in their saliva that make them public enemy number one. Tick spit can harbor a smorgasbord of pathogens — everything from bacteria and protozoa to viruses. The list of diseases that ticks can transmit to humans is fuel for nightmares and fodder for medical journals. Typhus. Rickettsialpox. Q fever. Colorado tick fever. Babesiosis. Hemorrhagic fever. Tick-borne meningoenchephalitis. Bourbon virus (definitely not a disease that causes one to crave Jack Daniels). Tick paralysis. Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Ehrlichiosis. Tularemia. Lyme disease. Heartland virus. Anaplasmosis. The list goes on and on.

One in particular, a strange disease known as Alpha-gal syndrome, has been dominating news headlines of late, due to its rapid spread across the eastern half of the United States. The syndrome, transmitted through the bite of a lone star tick, causes an allergic reaction to a sugar molecule that is found in the red meat of mammals, like cows and pigs. For those unlucky enough to acquire it, the simple act of eating a cheeseburger or a sausage biscuit can trigger an outbreak of itchy skin, bad heartburn, vomiting and shortness of breath. A severe reaction can even result in death. The disease seems to affect people differently. Some have mild reactions to meat. Others are so allergic that even drinking a glass of milk can cause life-threatening anaphylaxis. Some carry the allergy for the remainder of their lives. Others may completely lose the allergy after a few months.

“I woke up in the middle of the night covered in hives,” former Dismal Swamp State Park ranger Tony DeSantis recently told me by phone. His experience was back in 2008, well before Alpha-gal syndrome was mentioned in the news media and on the radar of most clinical physicians.

“It was bizarre,” continued DeSantis. “I could not figure out if I had bug bites or if it was some other rash. It happened a couple of times, and I could not piece it together.” Eventually, he realized that the rash would develop only after eating beef.

“Every time that I ate beef, several hours later, I would break out from head to toe in intense hives,” he said. “It was bizarre. I never had any issues with eating beef before.” Why the sudden change?

The breakthrough came a few months later, when a fellow park ranger pointed DeSantis to a scientific paper linking the bites of lone star ticks to an allergy of the sugar molecule, alpha-galactose, found in the meat of mammals. “That’s when it clicked for me,” DeSantis said. “I knew my rash was the result of a tick bite.” Working at the state park for six years, pulling ticks off clothing and skin while walking the trails, had become a daily routine — just part of the job. DeSantis recalled one researcher, who had visited the swamp years before, remarking that “it was the tickiest place that they had ever seen.” Lying along the border of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, the state park is nestled within the Great Dismal Swamp, an enormous wilderness area of nearly 150,000 acres. It is the largest remaining swamp in the Eastern United States.

Finally linking tick bites to his beef allergy gave DeSantis some peace of mind, but it required making a committed lifestyle change. “Since 2008, I have just avoided beef and have never had a problem,” DeSantis said.

This past summer, I ventured onto a friend’s property bordering the Great Dismal Swamp with Maurice Cullen, a retired Virginia Beach science teacher and amateur lepidopterist. Our goal that evening was to find and photograph caterpillars and moths. Over six hours, we documented dozens of species. Returning home late that night, I jumped into the shower before bed and immediately discovered three lone star ticks, easily recognized by the large white dot on their abdomen, embedded deep in my skin. One was attached to my shoulder, another to the back of my neck at the edge of my hairline, and the third  . . . well, let’s just say it was somewhere less pleasant.

I texted Maurice warning him about the ticks. He replied that he had not found a single one on his clothes or skin. Lucky me. I guess I am a tick magnet.

With tweezers, I carefully removed each one and flushed them down the toilet. I have been bitten by dozens of ticks in my lifetime, and thus far, I have yet to experience any serious reactions to their bites. Knock on wood. Still, over the following weeks, I paid close attention to what my body was telling me, constantly checking for weird rashes and noting any feverish symptoms. As someone who relishes a good cheeseburger, I am not sure I have enough willpower to change my diet like DeSantis.

While tick diseases are certainly scary, there is no need to fear the outdoors. It is important to understand that not every tick carries a disease. If you do find a tick crawling on you, remember that it needs to bite you in order to transmit disease. Even then, research suggests that a tick needs to be attached for at least 24 to 48 hours to transmit most diseases. Checking your body thoroughly soon after each outing is the most effective defense against the little vampires.

So go on that hike. Take the dog for a walk. Take your kid camping. The wonders of the outdoors far outweigh the risks.  PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser grew up in Eagle Springs. He works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.