Momento mori

"Momento mori" -- Remember, you (too) will die.




When I was in high school, I got from somewhere a poster reproduction of Albrecht Durer's engraving, St. Jerome in His Study. Even now, I'm not sure why I liked it so well, but nevertheless I kept it directly above my desk. (You can see the whole thing, in Wikipedia's Commons .) The engraving contains numerous conventional symbols, a few of which I recognized even then. But, I didn't recognize the 'momento mori' -- a skull sitting on the shelf under the window.

And at 18, who does?

Like most 18 year olds, I assumed that nothing would happen to me. At 18, there's time for everything, and it's still possible to assume you'll get it all done. I'd read St. Mathew's record of Christ's warning, that we should not "be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body". But, I was 18, and all that seemed remote.

In retrospect, I realize it was never as remote as it seemed. I was near death far more times in my late teens and early twenties than I've been in all the years since. There were at least half a dozen occasions, when I was a hair's breadth away from a fatal accident, but I didn't slip; the surface of the water was close enough, barely; the idiotic leap succeeded. And, that's not including general recklessness, like driving too fast.

I yet live, in spite of all those things.

I think many young people -- at least those with some sort of intact family -- tend to unconsciously assume the presence of a family 'home', some place they could go back to, if it came to that. It's not necessarily anything very substantial, but it's there, even though you may notice it most when you are losing it.

But, it's that sense that gives us a "here" when we say we live "here" or are from "here". It is these things that root us in 'this' life, "here", and give the young a place 'be' in their presumed immortality.

For me, that place was most particularly 16 Castle Avenue, my mother's parent's home. Soon after I moved out of 16 Castle, in order to marry Susan, the decision was soon that it wasn't practical for Grandmother to continue to live there alone. So, Aunt Austin took her in, and 16 Castle Avenue was sold.

That was something I found hard. Ever since then, at least for me, just being near 16 Castle is enough to trigger a sense of loss. 16 Castle was the nexus of the Averett clan, almost as much as Grandmother herself. And without it, there was no longer a 'home' for the Averetts, at least not in the way there had been.

In a general sort of way, age tends to expose those illusions. However, I think that it is funerals that expose those illusions in the most pointed and individual way possible. When my grandfather died in 1979, my world was emptied of heroes. When my mother died last year, fractures in my own immediate family became permanent. And, with the death of Susan's father a year ago this spring, the 'umbrella' of parents and grandparents behind us vanished.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham "lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." We are all called to do the same.

But, I think it can be kind of hard to do so, when you are young, and your life is still fully rooted in places and parents and grandparents. I wonder what sort of momento mori I ought to place on my son's desks?

God's Nature in Nature

When I started this blog some years ago, Susan and I just wanted to use it to chronicle our experiences in nature. We like walking and hiking and camping, and we think some of what we see and do is interesting. But the purpose was not sufficient to the effort. So, there have been just four posts in three years.

I have a clearer focus and purpose now so I need to restart. Hopefully, just what that focus is will become clearer over time.


I'd like to begin with an observation: it appears that the Bible indicates that perhaps the primary method God uses to convince of us, or remind us, of His reality and power are reflections of, and on, His work in nature. Granted, miracles sometimes accomplish the same thing, more immediately and dramatically. But that's the 'exception, not the rule': most people don't encounter miracles.

Paul tells us (Rom. 1:20) that "since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse".

Those are pretty strong claims, and pretty stunning, at least for someone like me, used to all sorts of philosophical and logical arguments about God and His nature.

If I can paraphrase, Paul says that, for as long as men have been around, they've been able to clearly understand, not only that God really is, but also what He is really like, from all the stuff  He's made and done in nature, and that it's been made so clear to them, that any argument that they didn't know is just an empty excuse. (Paul goes on to explain that, given that they could have known, and should have known, the only reason that they didn't know is that they didn't want to know, and engaged into some pretty severe lying to themselves.)

Now, I have to say that, even as much as I like the outdoors and 'nature', and as much time and study I've given to natural history, it's not entirely clear to me just what can be known of God from nature. Paul's phrase,  "invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature", covers a lot of ground, but not a lot of specific details.

Still, I think it's clear that without knowing nature itself, it's not possible to see what can be "clearly seen" from nature.


When Paul wrote that it was still true, even in cities, that people lived 'in nature' in a way Americans do not. When Paul wrote, any child who'd stepped outside on a clear night had seen the Milky Way. But I myself did not share that experience till I was an adult. Because of our technology (and lights!), it's now necessary to drive miles away from the nearest city, in order to see the same thing.

I have to wonder -- is it possible for Christians and their children today to see what can be "clearly seen"?
Most Christians I know of primarily experience nature as something to be sprayed, or stepped on, or avoided.

One of my son's friends is phobic about snakes. Maybe that's not so bad. There is that strange story from Genesis of the Tempter as a serpent, and there are some studies that suggest a phobia about snakes may have a genetic component.

But, another friend is terrified of butterflies. Butterflies?? At first, I thought I'd heard wrong, but I hadn't.

For some today, there are reasons to be afraid of a talk about the "birds and the bees" that have nothing to do with their parents going all 'TMI' on them: they are afraid of birds and bees themselves.

Such people are cut off from the beauty and wonder of a jumping spider who distinguishes faces from feet using a brain the size of a pinhead; from the wood ducks who manage to see you long before you see them, no matter how stealthy you are, and who flee whistling their alarm call; from the wood ants who each summer build highways, complete with bridges and underpasses, hundreds of yards long; from trapdoor spiders, who were building security vault type doors long before bank managers thought of using them; and from the complexity of elaborate lichens, who are neither plant nor animal, but diverse colonies of both plants and fungi. All these things, and many more, are both common in the area where I live, and unknown to most people.

Can people who've never seen the Milky Way, who don't recognize the rising of the sun . . . and the moon (at the rate of 15 degrees per hour!), who've never heard the screams of hawks in the spring, and looked up to marvel at them circling in pairs each spring, who don't look for cowslips and spring beauties in the spring, because they don't know what they are, much less that they mark the coming of summer . . . can such people see what can be "clearly seen" from nature?

I'm not sure, but my guess is that they have been blinded, and cannot see. But surely such a thing would not be God's work, would it?

When we teach our children that nature is something to avoid and flee from, are we not teaching them to blind themselves to one of the ways that God speaks to men? And, when we accept teaching from their schools that "nature" is something in "The Brazilian Rain Forest", or the zoo, or on BBC-TV, rather than something mere feet away from them, are we not blinding them to what God would have them see?

I'm not sure, but my guess is that this blinding of our children is a work against God, and not from His Hand at all.

This is Uh-Oh. The name comes from one of the 'close' calls pileated woodpeckers make, when they are around 'family'.

Madison and Cameron found him, a flightless nestling in pin feathers, after the dead pine his parents had nested in was toppled by a spring storm two years ago. His nest mate was killed by the fall, and he was starving when they found him. His parents were still around, but not feeding him, so Madison took him. Doing so was illegal, but we figured he was sure to die shortly if he did not, and indeed, his nest mate was eaten by a raccoon (or skunk or possum) sometime during the following 24 hours.

We've raised birds before and successfully hacked and released them, but we weren't sure about a wood pecker, especially one as large as Uh-oh. (Pileated woodpeckers -- Dryocopus pileatus -- grow to crow-size!) As it turned out, they are difficult to rear and hack. They don't like cages very much, and as they get older, they destroy wooden ones with some regularity. With steel cages, the injury is to the bird, not the cage, but it's still a problem for the rehabilitator. As a result, we couldn't find any licensed rehab center to take him.

So, we tried to raise him, hoping not to get caught, and fully expecting him to die. Instead, he decided to thrive.

He lived in with Madison and Cameron in their bedroom for almost three months. The first month, he spent mostly in a cage. But as he grew, he began flying . . . and pecking. And what had been difficult before, became very difficult. Adult pileated woodpeckers topple wooden telephone poles by pecking holes in them. Uh-oh didn't go that far, but he did demolish several large oak limbs we kept in their bedroom for him to roost on. If we completely covered his cage with towels, blacking it out, we could keep him in a cage at night, or for a few hours at time during the day. Otherwise, he had to be allowed to roam free, which he did.

It was a mess. We still occasionally find some of his 'leavings' behind things when we move them.

But, it was also amazing.

Woodpeckers live among trees with dense branches and leaves. We'd never thought about it, but they need pretty amazing maneuvering skills to function in that environment. Other birds we've raised struggle to manage flight in the tight confines of our small house. Uh-Oh did not. Even though he was larger -- eventually, much larger -- he could fly at high speed over your shoulder, reverse direction in just a couple of feet, land on your back, and then peek out at whoever else might be about from round your arm or neck.

The engineering training I had at UTC taught me in many things. But of all the things I learned, one that I value most is the ability it gave me to see just how amazing God's engineering is. From an engineer's perspective, Uh-oh was simply incredible. From the stunningly effective shock absorber system that protected his brain from blows that would have concussed or killed most other birds and mammals (try using YOUR head as a hammer!); to his prehensile foot long tongue, complete with a sharpened and barbed tip; to the Velcro like climbing feathers in his tail that were an integral part of his tree climbing 'kit' . . . he was a marvel for those with eyes to see and the training to understand.

Raising him affected us all.

But it may have affected Cameron most. I'm not sure it's even possible any more for him to believe in a random universe, in which Uh-oh was just an odd and improbable accident. Knowing Uh-oh and understanding something of how he was made rendered that idea absurd.

Is that something God intended? I suspect that it is. I suspect that God intends for creation to teach us -- even as it groans under the curse -- about His power, His ideas of beauty and splendor, and His skill in creating good things.

But, if this is so, what duties do we who are parents have to our children? If they learn from us to recoil, rather than marvel, who are we serving?

I think that I know the answer to that question. And I think that much of what our children learn from us about nature is not a lesson from God.

Lula Lake

I've not been keeping up, but we've still kept busy peregrinating! Since the last post, Susan and I have explored some private property along Bear Creek, which forms the north arm of Sitton's Gulch or Cloudland Canyon. We've camped on Spring Creek, near the Hiwassee, and then hiked up 3 miles of the John Muir trail, north of the Hiwassee Powerhouse. After seeing the pictures, the boys wanted to go too, so I went back with them the following weekend. I'll try to post entries on those trips soon.

But, yesterday, we went to Lula Lake.

view north from main bridge

LLLT ("Lula Lake Land Trust") has 2 open weekends each month, and yesterday was one of them. We've been working with a group of about 6 Boy Scouts to get their hiking merit badges, for which they need five 10-mile hikes plus a 20-miler. Originally, we'd planned to take 2 or 3 Scouts with us, besides Cameron. But -- fortunately, as it turned out -- they all had last minute conflicts, so it was just Cameron, Susan and me.

Yesterday - Saturday - was supposed to be pretty, but because the day started off cloudy and foggy, we delayed going up, and didn't arrive till 10:15 or so. The property administrator was there, so naturally Susan and Cameron had to endure 20 minutes of my questions and his answers, before we could start. One of our goals was to explore the property for future visits, since Lula Lake is always available to Scouts, unless there is a conflict with a scheduled event.

We set off from the parking area, crossing a foot bridge over Rock Creek.


Scout built bridge


looking south along Rock Creek

Interestingly, this bridge was built as a Scout Eagle project, reusing some old foundations. The result was MUCH more impressive and useful than the typical walking-trail-behind-the-church that has become so common.

As soon as we crossed the bridge, we immediately encountered a fundamental feature of the trails at Lula Lake: they mostly go UP or DOWN. Along the old rail track, the trails go ALONG, but mostly, they're going UP or DOWN. Our legs weren't warmed up yet, but that changed quite quickly!



Before we finished the 10 miles Cameron needed, we'd climbed over 1700' in altitude! To accomplish this, we'd go up 200' then go back down, and then go up 300' and then back down and then up 150' and then back down . . . and so on. Our trusty GPS kept us posted on how far we'd gone, both horizontally and vertically. We've been hiking with an excess of gear -- packs weighing 13 - 17 pounds -- in order to get ourselves ready for 'hike-in' and backpacking trips coming later. By the end of the day, our tails were dragging a bit. Fortunately, we had no blisters, just tired feet, legs and rumps. This morning, Cameron's a little sore, but otherwise fine. Susan and I have feet that feel a bit 'used', and legs that feel 'worked out', but for a couple of oldsters in their 50's we're not complaining!


steep trail down (and back UP) to falls


Cameron getting damp

However, we're grateful that it worked out that none of the other Scouts were able to come. At present, there're are only 1 or 2 Scouts in the troop, besides Cameron, that could have made the hike without having problems . . . and they weren't the boys scheduled to go. We're going to have to do some 5-milers there, before we take them on 10 mile hike there!

I asked Cameron which parts of the hike he liked best, and he replied, "The parts before I got tired!" The hike from the falls, up to the bluff was pretty steep, gaining about 250' in altitude in about 1000' of distance! We've got a ways to go, before we're ready for backpacking in the Smokies.

Still it's a great place for hiking and exploring, and we expect we'll be spending quite a bit of time there, over the next couple of years.

Ben



toward falls, along old railway cut - there're caves in them rocks!

About Rocktown . . .

Over the years, Rocktown has been one of our favorite spots to visit.



We first found it over 15 years ago, after seeing it mentioned in a book about North Georgia's natural history. At that time, the roads in and on Pigeon Mountain were terrible, jeep roads really . . . and we weren't in a jeep. As we struggled to find it, Susan became concerned that we would become stuck in a very remote location. (This has been a recurring theme on some of our natural explorations, but so far, it's never happened. She has, however, heard stories my sister tells of a somewhat legendary trip up impassible roads in the Tellico Mountains, in search of Stratton Bald.)



We did finally arrive and found a small sign with the single word, "Rocktown", and nothing else. When we first begin making our way to Rocktown, we almost never saw anyone else there. More recently, climbers have 'discovered' the location, and often fill the parking lot on weekends. Even so, because of Rocktown's hundreds of crooks and crannies, it's still possible to spend the day and hardly see anyone else.

Over the years, we've found that some people seem to expect "Nature" to come with handrails: Rocktown most definitely does not. We've always avoided taking guests with young children, unless they had good control of their children's behavior. Children love Rocktown, if for no other reason than because it's the largest 'playground climbing equipment' they'll ever see.



But, there are numerous locations at Rocktown where you can be walking along on what appears to be level ground, and suddenly find yourself looking down a 20' or even 40' drop. Obviously, children -- or teenagers -- that are running around in an uncontrolled manner are putting themselves at a huge risk.


You also have to watch out for snakes. This is mostly a problem in spring or fall. The rocks are mostly too hot in summer, and too cold in winter for snakes. But, in spring and fall, sunny rocks are a good place for snakes to warm up. We've seen non-venomous snakes, mostly black or rat snakes, several times, but have never seen venomous snakes ourselves. However, copperheads are common in the area. So, you need to look before you grab or step. But that's true almost anywhere in the North Georgia woods. Susan nearly stepped on a copperhead in the Chickamauga Battlefield a couple of years ago.


I then proceeded to make her even more nervous, by taking pictures! But this was in the Chickamauga Battlefield, NOT at Rocktown. Being cautiously alert* is appropriate pretty much every where in the woods. After all, no matter what some people expect, Nature does NOT come with handrails!

*Between the two of us, we've got this down: Susan's cautious, and I'm alert! ;-)

Stuff we've seen recently . . .

Some folks, including some Scouts, have expressed interested in things we've seen recently in the Battlefield.

Yesterday, I saw these turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo), just north of Wilder's Tower:

Thinking about crossing the road . . .


Ok, I'm going!


And, the rest of the family follows, oh so gracefully.


Now you see them; now you don't!


Two days before, we saw a pair of fawns (Odocoileus virginianus) in a field near Thedford Ford. A nearby thunderstorm was causing a strong wind from the south, and we were approaching from the north, so the fawns couldn't smell us, and probably couldn't hear us over the wind noise. One ducked back into the tall grass on the left of the photo, but the other continued crossing, finally freezing when we were about 10 feet away. After a few moments of trying to decide whether we were a threat, and how to respond if we were, it dashed off to the right.



There are more things to see in the woods, than anyone can possibly see. But we continue to be amazed, amused, and even mystified by all that we see. And we are delighted, again and again, by the opening of our eyes to see more and more of what's happening around us. Here are two mysteries, one avian and one of a six-legged kind, for you to puzzle out.

Here's the avian mystery, seen along the trail south of the Hunt graveyard:



And, here's the other, a photo of 3 day old horse poop, along with a family clue:

The clue is Scarabaeinae.

Sometimes, things in the woods come home with us, at least for a while. Here's Uh-oh, our pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) and refugee from the windstorm around the first of May:

He was about 3 weeks old when we discovered him; his nest mate was already dead and he was starving. We tried releasing him a week ago, in an area about 200 yards from his nest site. He was initially very enthusiastic about his new home. Unfortunately, his local relatives -- probably including his parents -- were not so enthusiastic about him. He quickly decided that he wanted to be near us again, preferably on a tree within 10 feet or else on our shoulder, so we had to bring him back with us.

Currently, he's living in woods near us, but coming in for nightly feedings of banana and ground beef, after grazing daily on whatever ants he finds.

More later . . .

Bird feathers & Spiders

For 4 years now, my wife and I have been on the avoiding-back-pain exercise plan. If we walk, my back's fine. If we don't, it begins to hurt after about 3 days of inactivity.

Now, this plan works for me, because the pain makes it easy to stay motivated. Lots of things that motivate other people don't motivate me. But I find it only takes a little pain, before I'm scrambling around to avoid any more!

Unfortunately, I also find walking around a track to be a pain, too.

I think I always suspected this, but after about 6 months of walking the 2 mile track around East Ridge's very nice Camp Jordan park, I was experiencing pain. Not the physical kind of course, but the monotony of going around the    s-a-m-e    t-r-a-c-k    a-g-a-i-n    a-n-d    a-g-a-i-n    wears me out, and not in a good way.

So, we began walking and talking and thinking in the Battlefield. After four years of walking and talking and thinking, we've seen some things we find interesting and significant. We've learned what a "buck snort" is -- or for that matter, a 'doe snort'-- and why they do it.* We have two prized wonderfully stiff Flicker tail feathers . . . and we know (now!) why they are so stiff.

We've seen things that are slightly horrible, but still amazing, like spiky butt spiders:

More info on Micrathena gracilis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spined_Micrathena

And, we've decided to start keep notes, showing pictures, and telling tales both old and new.

Ben

* And now, we've solved the mystery of why anyone would have named that town west of Nashville, "Bucksnort".
(Map of Bucksnort)