Jewels In the Night

If you're lucky enough to be in the bitter cold ice-bound midwest tonight, it will do you well to shed your cabin feverish state and go outside for a bit. The trees are covered with ice and the available ambient light illuminates them. To me, it's as if the goddess Gaia has chosen a unique moment in time to freeze the glory of evolutionary continuity and allow mere ascendents like me to grasp the crystalline reality of our beauty and fortunate majesty.

Go outside. There's not much of a moon - a mere sliver of a slice of light - but the stars are out tonight and the cold has dropped the moisture in the air as tiny fragments of snow. Clear. Cold. Quiet. Crystalline. Sacred. Yours. A delight of light. In the dark. Reach for it. Savor it. It's for you and you alone.

I love being here on this glorious planet. I can't very well thank the Great Clock Maker but I will thank you all for being here with me. It's just lovely.

Winter Ozark Float Trip

Gosh, I need to get out on a river! This time of year, the algae and sediment drop out of the Ozark streams, leaving it amazingly clear and blue. Every rock, every fish, every living thing in the stream is exposed to view. Mind you, it can be a bit chilly, especially if you go overboard. I always bring a fluffy sleeping bag packed in two layers of waterproof bags in case I dump and need to warm up. Just find a nice gravel bar, build a big driftwood fire, and crawl into that warm bag.

Big Piney, Little Piney, Gasconade, Courtois, Huzzah, Meramec, Current, Jacks Fork... take your pick. You won't be crowded out by hordes of drunken party-goers - for all their hubris and volume they just can't hang with the field hippies.

Gunsight Politics

Well, Sarah Palin's clearly shown what thoughtless and violent insinuation will precipitate. Gunsight politics. What did we expect, after all.

Ms. Palin, I'll see your gunsight analogy bet, and raise you. As a big game hunter there are a couple of approaches; hunting for trophies or hunting for meat.

As far as hunting Ms. Palin is concerned, I'd mount it - but I wouldn't eat it. She's just too bitter for my palate.

Missouri Atlatl Deer Hunting

Atlatl. Funny name. It's pronounced "atlatl."

For the first time this year Missouri allows the use of atlatl to take deer, but only during the regular firearms season. The conservation commission must think these 10,000 year old spear flingers are in the same category of accuracy and deadliness as a firearm. They may be right. Missouri Department of Conservation's definition of the device: "atlatl, which is defined as a rod or narrow board-like device used to launch, through a throwing motion of the arm, a dart 5 to 8 feet in length."

Missouri requires the use of centerfire expanding-type bullets, shotgun slugs or 40-caliber ball-type black powder ammunition when hunting deer. Or atlatl. Whatever works best. But Wooly Mammoth is a different game entirely. None of the firearms methods allowed for deer today would be effective in harvesting a mammoth. Except the atlatl. Atlatl points have been found deeply embedded in the bones of killed Mammoths. Elephant meat tonite, sisters and brothers.

I wonder what advantages an atlatl has in an urban guerrilla warfare setting?

Bourbeuse River Mill Rock Access

This low-water crossing of the Bourbeuse River in Franklin County Missouri is a special spot. Mill Rock juts upstream toward the concrete crossing, standing like a sentinel. Cool shade, fishing holes to wade and other delights await. Bivouac the top of the rock on a clear night and the stars will transform you.

North America 2010: Bad for Veggies, Great for Fruit

This has been a hot and brutal summer in the Midwest for veggie gardens. Tomatoes were virtually wiped out, leafy greens wilted before they started, sweet corn parched and miserable. But the fruit trees have been bountiful. I had a huge crop of blueberries, pears, and apples - and they were delightful.

Which brings me to my point: Paw paws are going to be wonderful this year, and the persimmon trees are literally breaking down from the weight of fruit. Get yee to the woods, young 'uns, and rustle up some wild fruit... before the deer and raccoons eat 'em all up!

Gone Contractin'

The UNIX infrastructure is whining again. Lucky for me, somebody's putting pretty good money at the problem. The UNIX hippie rides again!

It's about the same old systems problems but with more domains abstracted behind a conceptual user view construct that trivializes the user interface and pretends to simplify the experience.

But the 'vi' editor comes to the heroic rescue, assisted by Larry Wall's Frankeinstein Shellscript and a host of pipeline shell and troff-based eccentricities. As always.

Kick ass, take logins!

Blackberry Bonanza

It's blackberry time! My arms are scratched and bleeding. The sweat pours down from my brow. Chaff from the weeds sticks to my thorn-ragged, sweaty arms and itches like a thousand paper cuts.

But there's easily a gallon of big, ripe blackberries in the bucket hanging around my neck. And more to come. They're just turning ripe now and will continue to ripen over the next two weeks.

I have a secret place where fallow fields have been burned off to improve wildlife habitat. Blackberries like that kind of periodic burn-off and come in thicker each year. Couple that with the mild and wet early spring and you have the perfect storm for blackberry blooms.

Gosh, wouldn't it be a good idea to make some homemade ice cream to go with that cobbler I'll be baking?

Secret Wilderness Lake

I've got a secret: There's a lake nestled deep in an Ozark hollow few people know of, spring-fed and spitting distance from a pristine Ozark stream. I spent two days in glorious vernal reflection there this week. Not a human sound around, save an occasional airplane.

Declaration of Evolution

I had the honor of narrating "The Declaration of Evolution" by Timothy Leary a few years ago. It was performed with the C3 Psychoto-electro Arkestra and mixed down with additional digital synthesizers.

When I first read "The Politics of Ecstasy" in 1968 I thought the idea of all species having rights was a little radical. And the notion that we needed to retreat to tribal societies to keep from fucking the Earth up was even more radical. Some of the hippies were adopting this philosophy and although I admired their courage I wasn't ready to give up my creature comforts.

Boy, does it seem different now! After watching "Avatar" and hearing the conservative paranoid fallout about the storyline it makes perfect sense.

Here is a link to the audio file of the reading. I hope I can do some scant justice to Uncle Tim's brilliant and eternal work.

Cecil Nixxon MySpace page

Cabin Fever

It's been snowing for a while. You're cooped-up and getting irritated at the family and the pets. There's nothing on TV but soap operas and 37 different varieties of court TV shows. Maury is about to test some deadbeat for paternity. Jerry's boys are taking their shirts off for a fight. Your first thought: "I'm gonna kill somebody!!!!!"

You have cabin fever, the only known antidote is putting on the boots and getting the hell outdoors.

The Chain of Rocks Bridge is a good place this time of year if you're layered up. The bald eagles are out fishing and the ice floes are awesome.

Xmas Lites

I headed up to town a few nights ago to get some bacon and a couple of beers. I took the long way home to watch the sunset turn to twilight. There was a farmhouse decorated with the new LED lights. They had really outdone themselves. I was fascinated with how intense the lights were; the colors are so razor-sharp and linear. Very trippy and cool for smart humans!

Suddenly I was struck with another light display over the ridge. I couldn't believe what I saw. Whatever they were using, it was radiating from deep blue to a brilliant bright white and washing the whole ridge in this crazy light show.

About that time the full moon broke the ridge and started to rise in the sky. Better than LEDs. Much better.

Global Warming Isn't Real

I've deer hunted in a mid-Missouri location nearly every year since 1980 - almost thirty years. The season always falls within the second and third week of November. My hunting stand is on the same plot of land year after year. So I've built up a lot of climate observation at a specific locale and time of year. Here's what I've seen on opening day of the season over the years:

-from 1980 thru 1986, mornings were cold. There was always hard frost on the winter wheat and on the treebark. Precipitation was rare. I had to dress in thermals, sweats, and an insulated hunting suit. My feet froze even with large boots in an insulated bag. I wore two stocking caps and a hood.

-from the mid 80's thru 1991 it was almost as cold, but occasionally rainy.

-in 1991 the weather moderated. That year I swapped the hunting suit for fatigues and thermals, and laid in the warm 65f sun one day.

-throughout the 90's the mornings were consistently above 30f with a moderate frost on the winter wheat, and none on treebark.

-from 2000 or so to the present, mornings have been consistently above 45f with little to no frost, lots of erratic rainstorms and sunny days in the 70f-80f range. So far this year, opening morning at 6AM was 56f and clear, with a major thunderstorm front following the next day for four days.

I'll be talking with my relatives to get anecdotes from the 30's thru the 70's in that region. But from what I've heard from my departed grandparents, 20" snowfalls late in the fall were not unheard of.

...it's definitely getting warmer around here.

Volunteers of America

I've been watching things change lately... saw a nicely dressed gentleman dumping his household garbage at a service station yesterday. Went on a weekday hike to get away and was plagued with hordes of bored and unemployed once-middle-class folks. I saw a couple trying to figure out how to open a dumpster behind a grocery store (secured, of course, to keep vermin out and lazy countrymen from getting something for free, even if it's garbage).

Almost a year ago, these images were sparse. People were secretive about dumping or scrounging, and a little embarassed. But they've started to get brazen and vocal. I propose they (we) need a voice for now. That voice has been playing inside my head for days - Paul Kantner's "We Can Be Together." You remember the song, right? Can you imagine Middle America singing these lyrics? Many of us imagined it, exactly forty years ago.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America.
In order to survive, we steal,
Cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide and deal.
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent… and [middle class].

So, what happens when the well-educated and highly disillusioned American middle-class wakes up from the sleep that begets monsters and realizes the true gravity of the situation? Lots of whining. Loss of self-worth. Bouts of self-pity. And then some anger. It's my sense that we're somewhere between the self-pity and anger stage, with anger starting to take hold. And it's about fucking time. Like the song says,

We should be together.
We should be together, my friends.
We can be together,
We will be.

Do it with anger. And do it with love. Choose your sides, target your enemies. Band together and "family-up."

Up against the wall, motherfucker! Scream it now! Feels damned good again, doesn't it?

http://www.archives.gov/research/american-revolution/pictures/index.html

Blowdown in Dark Hollow

Blowdown!
Throughout the Lower Rock Creek area there are 3' caliper and larger trees blown down by what locals considered a tornado. The damage appears to have taken place in the spring. But there is also evidence of another blowdown maybe a year before.

The place is a mess, and every ten feet down the trail actually takes 30 or more feet circling around, crawling through and climbing over an ocean of downed trees. The going uphill is even more challenging.

The trail into Lower Rock Creek canyon area is tolerable but inconvenient. The trail to Trekler Mountain is sheer madness. I counted over a hundred full-sized oak and pine trees fallen neatly across the old roadbed, spread out over two miles.

Google map

fall surprises

Lotsa great mushrooms this fall... boletes, bearded tooth, chicken of the woods. Earth Mother Carla made a big pot of multi-shroom soup with brie and smoked gouda. Yow!

Tim and Carla at the Big Chicken Log:



And just today I thawed out what I thought was bean soup. Lo and Behold! It was the morel/portabella brie soup I made this spring. Hoo Wah!

The Big Chicken:

The Fantastic Glow-In-The-Dark Jack-O'-Lantern Mushroom

Don't try eating these lovelies - you'll get deathly sick. After all, what food that glows in the dark could be good for humans?

This specimen was photographed in late September at the Robertsville State Park in Missouri. Here are a few more shots:

Fall Mushrooms

They're everywhere! That is, if you're willing to get out there deep into the fens and hollows, ridges and glades.

Here's a Clavulina Cristata found September 10 near Pacific, Missouri:

Another Fine Mess

...of morels, that is. Just look at these pictures!

Intelligent Morels

This year it has become apparent to me that morels are an intelligent form of life. The way they adapt their coloration in one generation or less, their habit of sending up early "volunteer" fruiting bodies to sense the environment and signal the colony that it's optimal time to fruit, the odd telepathy-like thoughts I have just before finding a large group of morels - tell me these creatures think. That, and the fact that they evolved less than 80,000 years ago from a single celled yeast to their present form - a phenomenon observed in no other creature. Are they intelligently evolving themselves?

Several days ago I stood on a morel mycelium mat I gauged to be approximately 200 square foot in size. My mind drew a parallel between the electrochemical process that goes on in an animal nervous system and the hugely interconnected chemical communication process going on in one of these mycelium mats. It seemed intuitively obvious that these mushroom "colonies" are conducting the business of communicating with their environment including me. Was this just the ol' hippie new age bias clouding my thinking, or was intelligence in play?

Enter Paul Stamets, the godfather of medicinal mushrooms. In his article, "Fungal Intelligence and Bioremediation" Stamets states it more eloquently and scientifically than I could when he says, "I have come to believe that mycelial mats, found nearly everywhere underfoot in our planet's soil, form a network that is sentient, intelligent and responsive." A large mycelium mat contains more than enough chemical paths and receptors to effect a "brain." And if they are truly telepathic as I believe, they're potentially linked up globally and massively increasing that chemical brain-power.

Old 'shroom hunters seem to be a weird bunch and they often have a far-away look reminiscent of Electric Kool-Aid cybernauts. Or are we simply communing with a higher life form?