I have not been cold...

...for the past three winters (2004-05 through 2006-07). There is generally an early cold snap in October in the southwest corner of North Carolina where we keep the camper. I have fortuitously been in the mountains in mid-October during each of the past three years when that cold snap hit. It is not an Arctic blast, but is usually 30 degrees or colder, which is very cold in the open wind on top of a mountain.

The furnace in my camper has suffered an odd inconsistency. A mouse chewed through a wire on on the camper's heater in 2004-05. I waited nearly a year to have it repaired. The camper heater worked and I had a battery in 2005-06. The marine batteries I use were dead for October cold snap in 2006-07. I was essentially without heat for two of the three years.

The sky is clear and the stars are infinite when winter pre-announces his arrival in early autumn. The black-violet mountain sky carpeted with diamonds is beautiful beyond what the jewelers in the city could imagine. I stood on the deck outside the camper to watch the sky sparkle and let the cold whip me for as long as I could stand it, for each of those three years. I was not cold for the rest of the year during those years when I did so. I have traded my heavy coat for a lighter jacket.

I cannot be certain that facing winter in this way is the solitary cause for me not being cold all year long; I have a much thicker layer of fat than when I was younger. I believe this Old Man Winter Therapy is the primary reason.

I wrote this poem by candle light in my camper - trying to warm up by lighting candles and running the gas stove and oven.

meeting winter

How can you know Winter
if you have not stood on
your porch and met him?
Face him briskly by,
his scratches raking your face,
down your back,
rigid wicked shivers wrack your spine.
The night is clear.
The sky is wide open.
The greatness is greater,
the beauty more beautiful,
than the pain of the cold.
Winter tries with his screeching calls
to wrench this pleasure from me.
All rocks slide down the hill,
eventually.
For now, I greet the old man,
coming over the hill with his creaking bones
and his cane,
flailing at the leaves with his
unpredictable breath
this way, or not, in the wind.
He nods at me a prescient nod,
long knotted hair and silvery beard waving,
and continues on his crooked way
driving his icy winds
across this mountain top.
Later I retire
to contemplate
this poem.

I am in California this year, so I missed the Old Man when he went bolting over the North Carolina mountains.

        I hope
              I
                        have
                somewhere warm
        to go
                after
        I see him
again.

Bear Hunting is...

...primarily a social activity.

The Bear Hunters in North Carolina use a range of tools and technology that would seem to minimize the bear's chances. The social component is the most interesting. I will leave the social aspects of the hunt for another article. Here I want to review the tools of the bear hunt.

The main components of the bear hunt are:

The dogs

The truck

The dog cage

The electronic tracking collar

The marine band radio

The training season

The baiting process

The rehearsal

The hunt.

The dogs. Bear hunters have dogs. The dogs are kept in circular dirt pits with a box in the middle. The circumference of the circular dirt pit is pi * twice the length of the chain attached to the dog tethered within it. Most hunters have multiple circular dirt pits with a dog in each. The bear dog wealth of any hunter is equivalent to the total number of circular dirt pits on his property.

The truck. Every bear hunter has a pickup truck. Not all of these trucks are Fords: Only 99.7% of them are Fords. All of them have four wheel drive. The quality of these trucks ranges from the 2012 model F350 diesel quadcab with monster tires and an elevator to the cab at the high end, to the 1962 Ranger rust bucket with manual spindles to engage the 4WD at the other. The pickup truck is not so much a source of pride as a source of identity. No one in Star Trek brags on their version of the transporter. It is just something that exists to transport.

The dog cage. Every pickup truck has a dog cage in the bed. Every dog cage has a platform on top, and a holding area below. The platform on top has a ring, hook or other aperture for tethering a dog on a very short lead. The dog balances on the platform connected to a lead during the slow ride down the road searching for bear. The dog on top is, coincidentally, the lead dog.

The electronic tracking collar. Each dog wears an electronic tracking collar. Each dog collar has an attachment that broadcasts a specific signature. Running dogs are tracked from various strategic locations in the mountains. An experienced hunter, using a device that resembles an old fashion television antennae fastened with alligator clips to an even older set of head phones, will know the exact location of dogs miles and miles away based on the strength and direction of the signal received at one of the strategic locations. [Ed: I am honored to own a knob that is a central and strategic point for signal reception.]

Hunters exchange very complex series of numbers with other hunters on the radio to uniquely identify dogs. Nothing is written. The hunter with the antennae listens to the signals transmitted from the dog collars. He mentally translates a series of longs and shorts to match the collar identification numbers previously provided to him over the radio. The ciphering and communication processes are pure magic to observe. The antennae man will alert other hunters as to the owner and location of the dogs. The hunt will converge in the newly discovered location.

The marine band radio. Bear hunters in the southwest corner of North Carolina, and the southeast corner of Tennessee use marine band radios to communicate. They have abandoned Citizen Band (CB) radios because, they say, the mountainous terrain dramatically reduces the CB's effectiveness. Different social groups stick to specific channels, but the scan feature is widely used to monitor the high traffic channels. Ever the voyeur, I can scan and monitor a wide range of territory and broadcasts from my camper on Bird Knob.

The training season. The states of North Carolina and Tennessee allow "hunting" but not killing during the two phases of the training season. The first part of training season must occur (or at least originate) on private property. The second part of training season eliminates this restriction. Training season primarily allows bear hunters to test and train the bear dogs. Some dogs "just won't hunt." Other dogs run away never to be seen again. A few dogs demonstrate themselves to be capable lead dogs.

The baiting process. A primary feature of the training season, but not the regular season, is baiting. Some bear hunters put out various sweet or fat based concoctions to attract bears. Bears, according to some hunters, prefer acorns to all other naturally occurring foods, and "follow the acorns". Even so, no bear's keen sense of smell can resist a pail of sugar water or M&Ms, a platform of stale doughnuts, or a five gallon bucket of lard. You cannot safely feed hummingbirds in bear country. The lard leaves a convenient and easy trail for the dogs to follow.

The rehearsal. The baiting process during training season is a type of rehearsal with two actors. Usually the food is put in a place that does not make it easy to attain. Sometimes one of the electric collars is used to trigger a timer so the bear hunters will know what time the bear is feeding. A bear will check back once he finds a meal, often at the same time each day. Thus is trained the bear. During training season, the hunters encourage the dogs to chase and tree the bear. They must not shoot the bear. Often, once the bear has been treed, the hunters leash the dogs, walk 100 yards away, and wait for the bear to descend from the tree. They then let the dogs free to chase and tree the bear again. Thus is trained the dog. One must wonder if the bear is not thereby also trained to understand the cost of a bucket of lard is simply the annoyance of being chased up a tree by dogs. The bear cannot know that the price increases dramatically after the last day of the training season.

The hunt. The very essence and origin of the hunt features a hunter driving his pickup very slowly down untraveled roads, looking for signs of bear crossings into and out of the woods and ditch lines, with the support of the dogs, who provide their own olfactory barometer of the existence of bear and other wild life. The best hunter sees the bear's trail through the ditch even before his dogs smell it. The radio chatter is constant. The scanner locks on to channels where there is action. Hunters converge on an active scene with speed and intent.

          Bear hunting
              is
              primarily
                       a
              social
                        activity.

The Real Estate Market...

is everywhere a bust. I spent last week in rural North Carolina. I have some real estate there. No one is buying.

I have been unable to sell my mountain cabin. It is completely renovated, and is beautiful. There are no buyers.

The people seeking refuge from Florida have been coming into north Georgia for a few years now. The spillover caused growth in North Carolina, Tennessee and even in Kentucky. Land prices sidled upward for several years.

The growth has stopped.

I advertised on Google and Yahoo for a while. I did very well with Google. I foolishly traded them for a realtor.

One would think I might have learned. Apparently, I had not.

My realtor is threatening to leave the business and move to some other part of North Carolina.

I wish they all would. Realtors are not a trustworthy lot.

If anyone wants to buy a great cabin in the mountains in rural North Carolina, let me know.

          I know
                    a guy
                              who
                    has
          a nice one
to sell.

Although I like Folsom, California...

it reminds me of George Harrison's song, Crackerbox Palace. My use of the phrase is different from that in the song.

Many neighborhoods in Evansville, Indiana were originally composed of row upon row of shotgun homes. They were privately owned, but essentially "company house" construction. The homes were built with limited lot lines, including a small back yard and usually a small front yard.

These shotguns homes might cover eight or nine hundred square feet of internal floor space. There is very little variation in the floor plans.

Shotgun homes are made socially front-facing. The front porch welcomes visitors. It is where people greet and socialize.

Such neighborhoods are very pretty when they are clean and white washed. They have a certain cultural character that makes them attractive.

These neighborhoods resemble rows of neatly stacked saltine cracker boxes, which are proportionally constructed rectangles. "I welcome you to Crackbox Palace..."


The houses in Folsom, California are virtually indistinguishable on most variables.

The lot lines for Folsom homes are proportionally even smaller than the company house or typical row house construction. There is a ten foot strip of lawn in the front and back, and sometimes a 3 foot strip of rock on either side.

It appears to be the city of seven floor plans. They all feel the same inside, though there is some variation. These are certainly "company houses" though there is a slight variation in the meaning of "company house" here. They were intended to be sold by the companies. The Folsom builders did not have any more imagination than the row house designers.

They are larger than the row houses. Size is correlated closely with price in a non-creative way. Price also varies by school district and elevation. This is perhaps the most sociologically predictable city since Muncie.

While there are, I am told, regulations to govern the similarity of neighboring facades, the actual differences are merely formulaic. The variation is indicative of the range of solutions anyone with only 4 types of Lego would reach.

Folsom houses, while they have a certain architectural attractiveness, have no social character at all. Patio furniture may not be visible from the street. The front porch does not greet with warmth. You never see any actual people in front of the houses. There is no one outside to wave.

These neighborhoods are very pretty when they are clean and white washed. This city and these neighborhoods are very heavily regulated; ergo, they are ALL clean and white washed ALL of the time. Similarly, they have a certain cultural character that makes them attractive. They also have a certain sterility that is as clean and comforting as a very high quality hospital.

From the outside, these neighborhoods resemble rows of neatly stacked saltine cracker boxes, which are proportionally constructed rectangles. "I welcome you to Crackbox Palace..."

    We've
       been
          expecting
             you...

Proving others are smarter than I...

is a passion of mine. I have often said, "If I am not the dumbest guy in the room, somebody has got to go."

I once frightened a new employee with that statement. He realized within a week or two that he, too, was smarter than I.

Why would I consider hiring someone with less talent and intelligence than I have.

I may be dumb, but I am not stupid.

Today Ray proved again that he is smarter than I by actually doing what I could only describe in a cartoon diagram. He did not need to prove he is smarter. It is unanimously accepted. I contributed in my small way with a challenge to cross the hill. He found a gold mine on the other side.

I benefit from being near such people. Sometimes a small nugget falls from their heavily loaded wagon.

I donate it to charity when I find one.

I have lashed my pony's halter to the rail on his buck-board. I wish him all of our common great success.

He deserves all of the credit.

It is
        the least
                I
        can give,
                when
        it
                is
        not
                the most
        I can give.

I envy the gall...

of a thief. I am enamored of anyone with so little anxiety - the prototypical sociopath.

Someone cut all of the wires off of my camper in the past week or so to get the copper. He (or they) cut the wires from three other campers on our mountain. He has also harvested copper wiring from some, perhaps many, houses in the area. Most boldly, I'm told, he felled trees to knock down power lines, and cultivated wire from that source. (I'm not certain power lines are copper, but our thief probably is not an electrical engineer.)

My Grandfather said, "A lock stops an honest thief." There are at least two types of thieves: those who steal because they can, and those who steal because they must. Some steal to get food; others steal because no one is looking. (This categorization omits the professional adventurer.)

I have hired a number of people from the area. I have sought help for various projects for several years. It is difficult to find people who want to work. I don't think most people steal - even most lazy people. But thieves who refuse available work earn no mercy.

The Cherokee County North Carolina police received a lot of press, and great accolades, a few years ago after their fortuitous, if accidental, capture of Eric Rudolph - the Olympic Bomber. He is alleged to have spent the better part of a decade "hiding" there. The current epidemic of destruction and theft of property has become clearly and well known to them.

Perhaps there would be limited incentive for the police to allocate appropriate and sufficient resources to solve such a case if it were only the personal property of a few snow-birds and rural folk located 25 miles from town. I have never seen the Cherokee County police within miles of my place -- except once when I called them. But this situation is a pretty substantial and wide-spread problem. I hope the attack on the other subdivisions and communities, and on the power company, will be sufficient to cause the police to engage.

I am pretty angry about the damage to my property. I would hate to think how I would react if I ever caught someone in the act.

It would be good
        not
      to have
   a gun
if I did.



Post-Script: Only a few hours after I posted this article, I have learned via telephone that a cabin in our mountain subdivision has burned down. The police and fire department were still on the scene around 11:00 PM EST, according to friends in the area. There is nothing left of the cabin.

I know of no reason to suspect any linkage with the copper thief.

The Road along the Ocoee River...

is a lesson in the tension between engineering and architecture. Maybe there are positive lessons and negative lessons as well.

The road basically tracks the river. Since the river wasn't built in a straight line, niether was the road.

I would complain about the road if I were in a car and I were in a hurry. It forces a moderated tempo. It's very dangerous. This road was not engineered for speed.

Safety wasn't even an engineering after thought.

One might also complain about it if he were in a kayak. Having to look at those cars and buses all day -- and to smell the exhaust -- could be a drag.

I never really noticed the traffic. The river holds my attention.

The road along the Ocoee is, in fact, a marvel in architecture and a beautiful drive.

It's really the best it can be.

I wish
             I
                        had thought
          to build it.