David Hoefer, co-editor of The Last Resort, looks skyward for inspiration. If you would like to submit a blog post for Clearing the Fog, contact us here. My favorite science fiction movie is The Thing from Another World, produced (and possibly directed) by Howard Hawks in 1951. Based on a classic John W. Campbell pulp-magazine story, The Thing tells the tale of a group of American scientists and military personnel stationed in the remote Arctic North who fight off a superhuman alien invader with a crash-landed UFO that is likely in the vanguard of worse things to come. The movie ends with the victorious survivors gathered around journalist Ned Scott filing his news report over the radio. Scott admonishes his listeners to be prepared for further trouble; indeed they must remain alert and, he says, “Keep watching the skies!” [photo credit] That phrase has always stuck with me, though without the sense of impending danger that is integral to the movie. No, the reason to keep watching the skies, especially after dark, is the beauty it reveals and the pleasure it brings. Though mostly unmentioned in The Last Resort, I have to imagine that Pud and his pals indulged in some nighttime sky-watching of their own. (There is, for instance, a reference to a beautiful moonlit evening in the entry for May 29, 1942.) As soon-to-be scientist and soldier John Goodlett would have known, nature is not limited to Earth. This same realization came to me during a recent late-night foray in celestial observation. I was outside in pleasantly cool weather, head tilted up and eyes straining, to see the Lyrid meteorite shower, which reached peak viewing in Louisville during the evening of April 22. An hour of intermittent scrutiny netted three sightings, with a possible fourth. Of course, stargazing was made for ancient agriculturalists and mountaintop astronomers rather than dwellers of the inner suburbs. I’ve never forgotten the spectacular night skies over Ghost Ranch from my digging days, when I was looking up in the dark rather than down in the dirt. The fewer the humans, the better the viewing, and north-central New Mexico is a place of relatively few humans. That said, I had some limited success on the 22nd with the aid of high-tech tools: a Web site, Timeanddate.com, which first clued me in that there was a reason to go outdoors, and an iPhone compass, which helped me locate the Lyrid radiant in degrees azimuth. (I had to guess the altitude, using the much-less substantial protractor I carry around in my head.) That wasn’t the only technology that popped up on this occasion. I was surprised by the number of off-planet contraptions—some jets but also quite a few satellites—that were partaking of arcs through the sky. The spangling but austere nights of a world before the Wright Brothers are being replaced by busier tableaux, like a gentle picnic suddenly swarming with fire ants. Meteorites are aptly described as shooting stars. Those I saw appeared in brief flashes, streaking parallel to the horizon rather than moving to intercept it. My iPhone compass may have been useful but not so the camera; the seemingly random appearance of the Lyrids made obtaining a still photograph impossible. I’d have been better off with a time-lapse device, the visual equivalent of a Geiger counter. What images I do have are salted away in memory, but I’ve included these graphic elements from the Internet, as inexhaustible in its way as the infinite skies that surround us.
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Joe Ford of Louisville, Ky., is a longtime friend of David Hoefer and Sallie Goodlett Showalter, co-editors of The Last Resort. If you would like to submit a blog post for Clearing the Fog, contact us here. Recently, David Hoefer and another mutual friend, David Summerfield, invited me to join them on a fishing trip to the Cumberland River in South Central Kentucky. This has become an annual pilgrimage for the two Davids, a chance to haul in very large trout in the turbulent waters just below Wolf Creek Dam. Reminded that the window of opportunity would soon open for the Pud Goodlett Memorial Fishing Tourney we proposed last summer, I took to scanning The Last Resort for all things fishing: species, methods, tackle, places. I am constantly amazed at the detail Sallie and David brought to the book and to this blog, from fishing tackle to taxonomy to the political history of Salt River, not to mention Sallie’s amazing grasp of the connections between her own far-flung relatives and the other boys of The Last Resort. As I browsed the Bibliography included in The Last Resort for fishing-related information, I ran across this entry: Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist’s Perspective, by Paul Colinvaugh. It turns out that this is a fairly well-regarded collection of essays, as much for its accessibility for non-specialists as for its scholarly worthiness. In essence, it is about ecological niches. But, for me, the content is not the attraction. It's the title: Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare. I instantly added it to my mental collection of great titles, names, and places. In case you’re wondering, this collection also includes things like the most boring book ever, spied in the window of Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, England: A History of Foreign Language Dictionaries. Then again, you probably weren’t really wondering. The attraction of Colinvaugh’s title is actually imagining its opposite: What if big fierce animals were not rare? Isn’t that fun? You have to admit that crows, turtles, and squirrels were not exactly safe around the boys’ camp. So let’s start with fierce (cue Randall’s honey badger vid). What if those crows had been of the sub-species corvus beakus horriblus, like the crows in Hitchcock’s The Birds? Envision the boys huddled in the cabin as the birds swarmed and cawed and screeched and pierced the wood with their large beaks. Don’t laugh. If it could happen in Bodega Bay, it could happen in Lawrenceburg. Or the turtles, terrapin humongosoid. Imagine an entry in the journal about how JCG and Jody had to rescue Bobby Cole after a humongous turtle had latched on and was trying to pull him under. You want big and fierce? What about the squirrels, squirrelsaurus rex? Big as a kangaroo, they might subsist on deer, stray dogs, and, well, go for it, Joe: terrapin humongosoids. Massive enough to shake the ground when they walked, these predators would chase the boys back to the cabin—JCG, Bobby, and Jody dropping fish offerings as they ran and then hiding inside the cabin's sturdy walls until the danger had passed. Finally, let’s not forget the fish and predatarus toothus. I’m not suggesting that piranhas are actually in Salt River, though it is a fresh water species native to our hemisphere. I feel I would be remiss, however, not to point out that pythons have taken over the Everglades. I’m sure Salt River has plenty of smallmouth and blue gill for the Davids, and I’m happy to compete in the tourney for bragging rights. But I will say this: You go in first. April 14, 2019 Joe Ford responds to Barbara Fallis' comment (see below). Barbara, you are very perceptive to grasp our fishing prowess so quickly. As a matter of fact, we did catch fish so big they would not fit in a photo. But obviously that meant we could not publish a photo of it. Here is a pic of a slightly smaller fish but still so big that only his eye fit in the picture! Next time we’ll take a bigger camera. I was going to mention this in the blog article, but I thought people would just think I was being absurd.
Parts of the country are buried in snow. We’re demoralized by rain. Heavy, relentless rain. Cold rain. This past week we had two days of rain—occasionally with thunder--while the temperature stubbornly sat at 34 degrees. It has warmed now, but we’re back to steady, obstinate, pitiless rain. Roads are closed. Dams are holding back record levels of water. Topsoil and grass have washed away. Leaves leftover from late fall are matted to the ground in dense carpets, never having been dry enough to rake. The deer in our neighborhood apparently have little to forage. They stare in my front windows, lean over the porch railing, pleading for corn. Young calves are dying in the fields, stuck in the mud, frozen in cruel temperatures that never quite dip low enough to offer firm footing but are certainly low enough to bring on hypothermia. Once picturesque horse farms are vast mud pits, reminding tourists that these postcard-perfect stretches of land are still farms, wrestled into their summer beauty through the brute force and determination of committed men and women laboring behind the scenes. In 2018, we had 72 inches of rain, 160% of our average (45.21 inches). By December 1, it was already the wettest year on record. Then we had five more inches of rain before the year ended. In the first eight weeks of 2019, we have had 10 inches, almost double the average and on target for a year similar to last year. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in climate change. Don’t tell me that, all across the country, we haven’t seen extreme weather that has altered our lives, damaged our economies, and endangered our future. You may not agree with the specifics, or the vague generalities, summarized in the Green New Deal proposed by Democrats in the House and the Senate, but after years of inaction and denials, I give them credit for taking a bold first step. For at least trying to rivet our attention away from mopping basements, resodding lawns, digging cars out of snowbanks, fleeing wildfires and mudslides, standing in line for FEMA assistance, watching helplessly as the latest storm, the latest flood, the latest once-in-a-hundred-year event wipes out our homes, our businesses, our towns. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is planning to establish a 12-member Presidential Committee on Climate Security to refute recent reports that climate change poses clear risk to our safety and our economy. Science and data be damned. Back in Kentucky, I woke up on Thursday morning and the rain had stopped. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. I had no idea where I was. We are so disoriented by these rapid changes in weather and climate—just as we are disoriented by new norms for civility and verbal expression and respect for our fellow man—that we have become numb to it all. Numb to the dangers. Numb to the costs. Numb to who we’re becoming. And that perhaps poses the greatest threat of all. David Hoefer, co-editor of The Last Resort, shares a story of taxonomic serendipity. If you would like to submit a blog post for Clearing the Fog, contact us here. In a previous blog post, I discussed John Goodlett’s taxonomic activities at Camp Last Resort, where he identified and sketched living organisms (especially plants) as part of his undergraduate education at the University of Kentucky. Similar activities, recorded more scientifically in the Harvard Forest journal, indicate Pud’s gradual emergence as an upper-echelon botanist and plant geographer. As such, it’s been a pleasure to read Corey Ford’s Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, a biography of the German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, with its demonstration of the vital and even heroic role taxonomy can play in helping us understand our planetary home. Steller accompanied Vitus Bering on his second and last expedition into the then-uncharted northern waters between Asia and North America in 1741-42. It was this expedition that finally confirmed that the landmass east of Siberia was in fact that same North America then being colonized by other European powers on the Atlantic Coast and by the Spanish in Central America and what is today the Southwestern U.S. and California. And what was the final piece of the puzzle that completed this realization? From Cape St. Elias on Kayak Island, Alaska: “Perhaps no other naturalist in history ever accomplished so monumental a task under such difficulties and in so little time. It was four in the afternoon when Steller spread his specimens around him in the sand, and began to enter in his notebook the results of the previous six hours. When the yawl returned at five ‘o’ clock, he had completed his exhaustive report, the first scientific paper ever written on Alaskan natural history… “Some plants in his collection were already familiar to him from his earlier investigations in Kamchatka. He identified the upland cranberry, the red and black whortleberry, and a shrub he called the scurvy berry, probably the black crowberry. He was more enthusiastic over ‘a new elsewhere unknown species of raspberry,’ the salmonberry of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Although the berries were not yet fully ripe, Steller was impressed by their ‘great size, shape, and delicious taste’… “The yawl brought what Steller ironically described as ‘the patriotic and courteous reply’ to his message to Bering, a brusque order to ‘betake myself on board quickly or they would leave me ashore without waiting for me.’ There were only three more hours left until sunset, barely time to ‘scrape together as much as possible before fleeing the country.’ He sent [his Cossack assistant] Lepekhin to shoot some strange and unknown birds he had noticed, easily distinguished from the European and Siberian species by their particularly bright coloring, and he started down the beach in the opposite direction, returning at sundown with his botanical collection. “Lepekhin had equally good luck. He ‘placed in my hands a single specimen, of which I remember to have seen a likeness painted in lively colors and described in the newest account of the birds of the Carolinas.’ Steller’s fantastic memory had recalled a hand-colored plate of the eastern American Blue Jay in Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, etc., which he had seen years before in the library of the St. Petersburg Academy; and he identified Lepekhin’s find as its west coast cousin, known today as Cyanocitta stelleri, or Steller’s Jay. Now his last doubts about the land they had discovered were resolved. ‘This bird proved to me that we were really in America’” (Ford 1992/1966:80-2). The price paid by the expeditionary force for this discovery was considerable. Beset with difficulties, many crew members perished on the way home, including Bering himself. Steller lived only a few short years after returning to Russia, but left behind his scientific writings, which eventually found their way into print. His current renown hung more than once by the slenderest of hairs. My husband and I spent Thanksgiving Day raking. An acre of property, 40 mature deciduous trees. We barely made a dent. Nonetheless, it was a rare sunny, cool day and a pleasant way to avoid any potential holiday stress. The irony of our labor didn’t strike me until a friend called me out. “So, you’ve been out raking the forest floor, huh?” he chided. “Doing your part to prevent local forest fires?” Most of us have enjoyed the sardonic memes posted by the Finns after President Trump’s public statements about how the good citizens of Paradise, Calif. (not “Pleasure,” dear President) could have avoided near annihilation if they had properly raked and cleaned the floors of the nearby forests, like the Finns. (Never mind that the Finnish President has denied ever mentioning “raking” when talking with President Trump. Or the fact that the Finns have complex structural and systemic ways of preventing forest fires in their country.) Twitter exploded with photos of Finns smiling with their rakes and references to #RakeAmericaGreatAgain and #Rakenews. In the Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump kept a straight face as he calculated how many man hours it would take to sweep and cart away all of the debris on America’s forest floors. And how much of our budget would be required for the purchase of equipment for that purpose. (No mention was made of the devastation that would rain upon forest critters large and small who depend on that debris for cover or sustenance.) All humor aside, the rampaging wildfires are real. The loss of life is real. Those who survived have found their lives totally upended, with no home, no supplies, no job to return to, no idea of what their future holds. The president is right that we must find a way to prevent this sort of devastation. We must work together to protect land and property and lives. But we cannot do that successfully until we admit that climate change is worsening the natural disasters afflicting us around the world. As the Camp Fire in northern California raged, Cal Fire spokesman Bryce Bennett told the Sacramento Bee, "Right now, Mother Nature is in charge." That will never change. But there are things we can do to mitigate the conditions that fuel droughts and wildfires in the western part of our country, floods in the east, and hurricanes along the coasts. Unfortunately, we as a nation have no appetite for addressing what is at the crux of the problem: greed and a craving for comfort. We seem unwilling to make sacrifices to protect our forests, our shorelines, our food sources, our water supply, the purity of our air, or the diversity of our ecosystems—despite the avalanche of data about what our future holds. For some reason, other countries see the writing on the wall and have joined together to protect their citizens’ interests, while here in the U.S. we strip environmental regulations, over-develop threatened areas, and decry a “War on Coal.” A persistent chorus of experts, thankfully, continue to sound the alarm. Another month, another comprehensive report about imminent catastrophes from climate change. Last month scientists representing the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of the dire consequences we can expect by 2040 if we don’t take steps now to slow the warming of the planet. This month—the day after Thanksgiving, alas—13 federal agencies in President Trump’s executive branch predicted economic devastation by the end of the century if we don’t heed the warning signs. According to the New York Times, “All told…climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.” The projected price tag for our inertia? “$141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century.” International trade will be disrupted. Agriculture will suffer. Diseases will spread. The numbers of people dying in heat waves and storms will dramatically increase. You would think that would get President Trump’s attention. He likes to think of the value of things in dollars and cents. Perhaps someone will finally convince him to listen to his administration’s experts at NASA, NOAA, the EPA, and other agencies. But don’t hold your breath. We’re not talking about the future any more. We’re talking about now. We’re talking about the devastation that is occurring in our own country right now. And we’re still sticking our heads in the sand. Here in central Kentucky, we’ve had 20 more inches of rain than we typically have by this time of year. We’re mired in mud and mildew. The grass is still growing. I have a lot of raking yet to do. Our lives may have been inconvenienced. But we still have our home. Our health. We’re comfortable, you know. But for how long? What will it take for us to act? Each October Rick and I look forward to our first walk down an old farm road near our house that in recent years has been taken over by a deciduous forest. The footpath is inaccessible in the summer, when the dense ground vegetation makes it nearly impassable. But as fall arrives, and the undergrowth begins to die away, we clear a path for daily walks. Our dog, Lucy, loves it as much as we do. It gives her new territory to sniff and new space to roam. It lets us feel like we have stepped out of our built world and into the heart of a woods. Each year we also find that nature has somehow altered our path. A large tree has come down, forcing a detour. Oversized thorny bushes convince us to try a new route. Rains carve out a gully we have to step around. We take all of this in stride. It’s fun to forge a new path, to see the woods from a slightly different perspective. But across large swaths of the southern United States, two powerful hurricanes have altered the lives of thousands of Americans. Nature has once again roared ashore, destroying buildings, obliterating livelihoods. U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico and other parts of Florida and Texas are still recovering from last year’s storms. Humans rarely win a battle with nature—especially when we continue to deny her power and resent any implication that our indulgences are contributing to her erratic behavior. A report issued Oct. 8 by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that these catastrophes will only get worse unless we hunker down and take the necessary steps to reduce global warming. If we don’t, it could cost us trillions of dollars. A New York Times article describes the threats we are facing as “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040” as well as “intensifying droughts and poverty” and “increased coastal flooding.” Forestalling this cataclysm will take international cooperation and a complete transformation of our economy, according to the report. We all know how likely that is to happen. But when change is in our control, when we can alter our behavior to avoid such devastation, wouldn’t that be the obvious choice? Wouldn’t we at least want to take incremental steps to prevent worldwide suffering and economic loss? Why do we keep waiting? Back along our woodland path, we see that the adjoining property has been cleared for a new home. Construction is ongoing. The owner is a friendly man, who loves my dog. But I can’t help thinking how human action has once again destroyed a small area of natural land. This morning I saw two deer wandering down the middle of the main road through our neighborhood. They looked perplexed. They had just emerged from a small copse of woods on one side of the road. Normally, they bound immediately across the road, into the protective woods on the other side. But today the woods are gone. Acres of trees that have stood for decades have been bulldozed to make room for 50 more houses. Heavy equipment roars and beeps day and night. A whole hillside has been moonscaped. I know the place where my house sits was once woodland, too. The remnants of the deciduous forest remain along the shoreline of the lake. I realize this area was also cleared for development. But in our part of the neighborhood, the houses were tucked into the existing trees. The sharp hillsides were allowed to remain. The natural contours of the land are still evident. Being the caretakers of this land is a privilege. I understand that we have to accommodate the needs of the people who depend on it for sustenance. But isn’t it also possible to be thoughtful guardians, protectors of both the wild inhabitants and the future generations who will need to inhabit it? After all, we’re all dependent on each other for life. We cannot breathe if not for the woods. Our breath gives them sustenance. Every creature large and small plays a role in our complex ecosystem. We may think we hold sway over all that is on this planet. That we have the power to manage it all for our own purposes. That is, until the next mammoth storm or wildfire or flood. And then we are reminded that nature always wins. That we have to be the ones to step out of the way of the fallen tree and think hard about how our actions contributed to its demise. The first time I recall encountering a snake in the wild was at Girl Scout camp. I was 7 years old. My father had died about three months before and, at my uncle’s urging, my mother had moved what was left of our family from Baltimore to central Kentucky, closer to relatives. While staying at the rambling farm house of my aunt and uncle awaiting our move into a new home, my father’s mother—my only grandparent—died. My mother’s aunt and closest confidante suffered a stroke. There seemed to be no end to the calamity. I loved staying with my cousins at their farm. But I was unmoored from all that I knew. My father’s absence seemed to confuse me less than the prospect of starting life over in a new town. I hated leaving my friends. On the other hand, my dad—a professor during the academic year and a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey during the summers—hadn’t been around much anyway. Did I miss him? I wasn’t sure yet. As summer arrived, my cousins were preparing to go to camp. My mother and aunt (Charleen, the boys’ ready rescuer at The Last Resort) evidently thought it would be a good idea to send my sister and me, too, perhaps so we could be around children our age in a more normal environment, or perhaps to allow my mother a little privacy to grieve. I was technically too young to attend the two-week camp, but the administrators had given me special permission. Everyone kept a watchful eye on me. I was not only the youngest camper; I was most certainly the tiniest. But no one needed to worry. I loved every minute of it. I loved being deep in the woods of Morgan County. I loved sleeping outdoors in a tent modeled after a Conestoga wagon. I loved swimming in the brownish green water of the lake. And I particularly loved the hikes along the mountain trails. So when one of our counselors first pointed out “Blackie,” the camp’s “pet” black racer, I was mesmerized. He was enormous—at least five or six feet long in my memory. It was a lighthearted moment. The 8- and 9-year-old veteran campers around me ooohed and ahhhhhed and called to him affectionately. Blackie took all the commotion in stride. I was smitten. I became that child who always volunteered to handle snakes that were brought into the classroom. At home, I gently shooed the garter snakes out of the way of the lawn mower or the hedge clippers. I can’t remember if we saw any other snakes that particular summer, although I encountered several over the succeeding years. (The image of the heavy rat snake coiled around the top of the latrine just above the seat is burned in my memory.) And I was fully aware that during every hike at least two counselors carried “snake sticks” and hatchets in case we came across a less companionable snake that needed to be disposed of for everyone’s safety. All of these memories came to my mind recently after having yet another conversation about snakes with two friends who share a sincere fear of the reptiles. A large corner of their consciousness seems to be devoted to their phobia. During our conversation, I wondered aloud way I reacted so differently. After brief reflection, I’m sure it’s because snakes were first introduced to me as friends, family even. Important wildlife that we should not disturb. That we should respect. During a recent paddle around our small lake, I experienced yet another flashback to Camp Judy Layne. I tucked my lightweight canoe into a cove deep in the woods, and the heavy vegetation and woodland smells transported me to my favorite childhood camp. After a dreadfully long stretch of dark and dreary days here in the Bluegrass, brilliant sunlight illumined the black oak leaves and the purple ironweed. As I paddled out of the cove, I could see bluegill swimming just beneath the surface as if they, too, had been longing for the warmth of the sun. Several Great Blue Heron swooped and cackled at me, warning me away from their supper. Dinner-plate sized turtles didn’t bother to leave their posts on downed logs, daring me to disturb their sunbathing. Perhaps, at some unconscious level, I learned at a tender age that the woods welcome us when our spirit has been wounded. That escaping into the woods can soothe the soul. The abundance of life there somehow gives back just what we need. Our personal afflictions can’t alter nature’s rhythms and cycles. Even the snakes have a role and a certain majesty. And somehow that comforts me rather than frightening me. Last week I had the privilege of hearing Kentucky resident and nationally-acclaimed poet Ada Limón read from her newest collection, The Carrying. Rich Copley, writing for the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader, said, “The book is colored by the deep green of Kentucky….Limón’s work is marked by exquisite, minute details that pass by many people.” It is indeed a lovely book, with heart-rending personal reflections and keen observations of the world that surrounds her. After the reading—during which Limón exhibited her usual warmth and quiet exuberance—an audience member asked why she wrote so frequently about nature. I wish I had been prepared to capture her full response, but my general recollection is that she writes about nature because she has to. It defines her place in this world. The first poem in the collection, “A Name,” reminded me of my father. When Eve walked among the animals and named them-- nightingale, red-shouldered hawk, fiddler crab, fallow deer-- I wonder if she ever wanted them to speak back, looked into their wide wonderful eyes and whispered, Name me, name me. At its most elemental, the journal my father kept at The Last Resort was a means for recording the natural world around him: the birds, the trees, the wildflowers, the river level, the snakes, the peepers calling in the spring. He documented the names of each, both the common names and the scientific names, as he prepared, wittingly or unwittingly, for a future career. He understood that in order to acknowledge the intricate parts of the natural environment, it was important to be able to identify each by its name. The name itself would then call up a fulsome list of traits and characteristics—some unique, some common with other similar species—that defined that particular plant or creature. If the critters could talk, I suspect there were moments when they indeed had a name for my dad: threat, intruder, murderer. He describes a memorable moment after he has shot a young squirrel: “I can still see that tiny baby sitting hunched on that limb, chattering gleefully to himself and gnawing on a pignut. To think that I would snuff out such a happy existence. It will never happen again.” Sadly, it took being hunted by his fellow man during World War II for Pud to finally end his hunting of animals for sport. Is there perhaps a more sinister consequence of naming others who share this world with us? When Eve named the things in the garden, did she innocently guarantee their ultimate destruction? Once they became separate from the two who claimed dominion over them, once they were identified as different, were they expendable? Insignificant? Unprotected? On the other hand, it’s hard to truly see what we can’t name. During our daily rush to and fro, we pass trees and wildflowers and songbirds. If we can’t name them, we don’t see or hear them. We don’t recognize them or respect their importance. If we don’t recognize their value, we don’t feel remorse when they are destroyed. We stand by and allow their annihilation without understanding what we have lost. Part of this journey for me, as I write about my father and the words he left behind, has been learning what it means to belong to the genus Goodlett. As my cousins and I gather more regularly to honor our long-gone parents, we ponder the mysteries of our Goodlett ancestors, and we try to figure out who we are. If our name is Goodlett, what does that mean? What are our traits and characteristics? Would a dichotomous key distinguish us from the Smiths and the Joneses? Does the name carry pre-packaged notions? How do others respond to it? How do I live up to it? Or carry its burdens? How has my name defined who I am, or my ultimate fate? In Limón’s poem, Eve’s plea to be named also feels like a voicing of her desire to be part of the community she is ordering. Perhaps a name would define her place, her role, her responsibilities among the others that share her space. Perhaps once we identify ourselves, we can see more clearly how we must defend and protect all the species that inhabit this earth. For more on the importance of naming things in The Last Resort, refer to David Hoefer's blog The Power to Name.
In July 1942, Pud was attending summer school at the University of Kentucky. If he made any trips out to Camp Last Resort that month, he didn’t document them. In July 1943, he was already training at Camp Wolters, Texas, a member of the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the Army. Of that ordeal, he writes the following to his sister, Gin; her husband, Len; and their son, Slug (short for “Sluggo,” Pud’s nickname for young Dave Fallis): "Well, here I am at the end of my fifth week of the training cycle, and I still don’t know whether we’ll take the full thirteen weeks or not. I suppose you know by now that I took my final OCS physical exam last Friday—or rather Friday before last—and passed O.K. "The weather is fine today—the sky is completely overcast and it’s only about 90°—perfect for relaxing. It’s been rather hot—several days last week hit 120°. This part of Texas is really not so bad. The country is flat except for low flat-topped hills, and although the trees are almost all stunted, there are plenty of them—mostly post oaks. The soil is all sandy, in fact it’s not soil—it’s sand. Horned toads, jack rabbits, and chiggers abound, as do the sand burrs, which are the sharpest stickers you ever saw. They grow on very low plants everywhere, and simply cannot be seen, but every time I sit down, I find them. "You’d die if you could see my face—my nose, chin, and both cheeks peel constantly, but my upper lip actually feels like cardboard. And don’t believe that I’m getting fat—the OCS physical only weighted me in at 133—so there!" As I enjoy a stretch of languorous summer days beside my little manmade lake, I occasionally think how my father would have appreciated this setting. My backyard is filled with healthy trees planted randomly or allowed to grow where they please: sycamores, tulip poplars, redbuds, several types of oaks and hickories, a beloved black gum, a red maple, a couple of birches and bald cypress trees we planted near the water to replace the willows and cherries we lost, and Norway spruces and a few cedars we’re encouraging to grow into a natural barrier to shield us from others who recreate on the lake. About 30 feet from my backdoor I can step onto a small dock that juts into our little cove. Moored to the dock in its custom-shaped slip is an old metal johnboat, sturdy and indestructible, awaiting anyone wanting to head out onto the lake to fish for the plentiful largemouth bass. The boat has stood sentry over the west side of the property through three homeowners. It’s largely retired now, which is a shame, usually left behind when the fleeter kayaks and stand-up boards get a turn on the lake’s placid water. I think my father would have loved that I have settled on a small body of water in central Kentucky. It may not be a natural river with fishing holes and snags and treefalls. It may not change much with the seasons or with the level of rainfall. But it provides ready access for swimming nearly six months out of the year and easy fishing any time we’re willing to give it a try. We seem to have fewer snakes than Pud and Bobby encountered on the cliffs along Salt River, but we have an enormous variety of birds and lots of turtles—which appear safe from bored young men while sunning on their logs. Manicured lawns have largely displaced the wildflowers, but there are still areas of the neighborhood where mowing is erratic and the butterfly weed and bee balm and chicory occasionally peek above the grasses. And what would Pud and Bobby have thought about the deer—does, bucks, and fawns—that regularly graze on our lawn or bed down among our garden plants for the night? During our first years here my husband and his buddies enjoyed a good bit of fishing on the lake. My dad’s old tackle box and fly rods stood ready in the storage room that opens to the back patio. I would occasionally find Rick sorting through the antique lures and fishing paraphernalia, either looking for something new to try or just reveling in the oddity of it all. A Styrofoam container of earthworms was usually in the basement refrigerator, along with the beer. Yeah, I think Pud would have enjoyed this spot. I can almost see him stretched out in an old camp chair in the backyard, a Budweiser or a glass of bourbon in one hand, a cigarette in the other, watching the Green Herons or the Kingfishers as they swoop down the lake. As we approached what remained of the Bond & Lillard bourbon distillery just south of Lawrenceburg, the first thing I noticed was the sprawling elm tree that towered over the lone wall that had withstood the battle. It was immediately clear that Mother Nature had once again asserted her dominance over the feeble constructions of man. In a 1906 “Souvenir Supplement” to the Anderson News, Lawrenceburg’s longtime newspaper, the unidentified author waxes poetic about the still thriving distillery perched in a lush natural environment: “As the traveler winds his way around [the lake stocked with fish and minnows] that leads to this plant, he is greeted by nature’s own sweet breath, spiked with mint, and the pungent and invigorating aroma of Bond & Lillard grown ripe and mellow.” At the time of this writing, in 1906, the distillery was owned by Stoll & Company of Lexington, who had purchased it from Mr. William F. Bond in 1899, after the 1896 death of Mr. C. C. Lillard, his brother-in-law. John Bond had erected the distillery on this site in 1836, drawn there by the nearby creek and a natural spring. Upon his death, his son David Bond managed the operation before being succeeded by his brother, William F. Bond, in 1849. William F. Bond forged the partnership with C. C. Lillard in 1869. The Bond history is what drew us to this site on a sunny, warm May morning. Bobby Cole, whose family owned the farm where he and Pud established Camp Last Resort, was a descendant of the Bonds. His two children, Bob and Julie, had wanted to visit this site redolent with their own history. Pud’s family had some tangential connections to the site, too. Thanks to a document preserved in a Bond family scrapbook, we had discovered that Pud’s great-grandfather, Hamilton Moore, had done some business with William F. Bond and his brother John W. Bond in 1856. It appears ol’ Hamilton, who had a reputation as a bit of a swashbuckler after his exploits at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War, was serving as a broker for a sizable whiskey transaction: $799.50 to transfer 1,818 gallons of “good merchantable whiskey” from William Bond’s warehouse to Mr. James Butts. To add yet one more hue to Hamilton Moore’s colorful saga, family legend has it that, not long before he died at the tender age of 34, he was run off the family farm, about three miles south of the distillery, by his mother-in-law, Sally Morton Searcy. Evidently, Hamilton’s business dealings—or perhaps his reputation in general—were not well received among the others in his family’s long line of ministers. Ironically, Hamilton’s son, born just a year before he died, achieved more notoriety as a minister perhaps than any of his Moore or Hedger ancestors. Rev. William Dudley Moore, Pud’s grandfather, pastored numerous rural churches in the area and was both respected and beloved by many. He had also served as the local school superintendent. Perhaps he inherited just a bit of his father’s blood, however, for he made a trip to Mexico, to visit the site of his father’s battle, and he famously traveled to the Holy Land in 1911, when a trip of that type by a rural minister was nearly unheard of. While Hamilton died estranged from his family in 1857, four thousand reportedly attended the funeral of his son, Rev. W. D. Moore, when he died due to injuries received in a car wreck in 1935. Eight hundred automobiles joined the procession to the cemetery. I have to confess that the Goodletts I have known may have derived more genetic material from Hamilton Moore than from his son. Bourbon generally has a central role in family gatherings. Perhaps that is just a nod to our Anderson County roots, a show of support for an industry that allowed Lawrenceburg to prosper in the decades before Prohibition. More likely it’s a reflection of our search for shared conviviality or perhaps comfort amid life’s trials. As we’ve seen from Pud’s writing, nature presents another source of solace. In some ways, it was comforting to see the site of a once thriving family business overtaken by lush late-spring vegetation. It seemed the natural order of things. I think I found myself rooting for nature to teach us all a lesson about our own impermanence. Our lustiest human enterprises will all eventually yield to time. Perhaps the editor of the Anderson News had a similar thought in 1906. At the bottom of the article were a few words needed simply to fill the column. At first they seemed almost comically out of place following a story about man reaping the rewards of mastering his environment. But on further reflection, perhaps they’re intended to remind us of the perfect antidote to human hubris: “When in need of rest or recreation, seek out some quiet hamlet in Anderson, and there, under the shade of the magnificent forest trees, enjoy nature and be rejuvenated.” |
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