October Gold

 It's that time of year for another Burlington memory harvest. The sights, sounds, tastes, aromas, and feelings are as fresh as this year's apple hrvest.

When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze

and touches with her hand the summer trees,

perhaps you'll understand what memories I own.

There's a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,

a winding country lane all russet brown,

a frosty window pane shows me a town grown lonely.

In October 2008 I wrote the first of many revised editions of the story of the annual October closing of my family's "summer place" in West Virginia. It was nestled in the Patterson Creek Valley about twenty miles south of Cumberland, Maryland, and just under a three hour drive from my home in the Washington suburbs. Those who follow this blog likely know more about the Burlington campground than most current residents of that village. Still, it's an important story in my formative years and it's worth repeating, especially with revisions. The most recent change has been the loss of the magnificent two-story cedar pavilion that stood for nearly a century as the focal point of the property. For over 90 years it served as a Burlington landmark and with its loss a place that created so many memories has itself become one. And speaking of memories:

Repairing flood damage at the pavilion - classic outfit

In late October my mind floods with wonderful memories. From birth through my 27th year, the date marked an important event in my life. The story descends from my dad's membership in the Uniform Rank of the Knights of Pythias. The URKP was a military-style company within a fraternal organization born out of the search for national reconciliation following the Civil War. Every good military organization needed a campground with lodging, mess hall, recreation pavilion, and parade. The URKP built theirs in the small village of Burlington, West Virginia. It also served as a regional park, complete with playground, ball fields, and swimming in the creek. It was often rented for the day for family reunions, company picnics, church functions, and other large gatherings.

It was legal...and tasty, about 1966

"Camp" at Burlington was paradise for a young boy. A creek bordering the camp offered hours of fun. You could explore the woods and fields forever. The frequent social events made the playground a great place to meet new friends. But "camping" at Burlington was by no means a wilderness experience. We were lucky to have a cottage that offered every comfort of home. There was a drive-in theater next door where I enjoyed the snack bar as much as the movies. Across the road was a small airfield with a few Aeroncas, Taylorcrafts and Piper Cubs, and a hangar that gave birth to many "homebuilts" over the years. I can say with confidence that Burlington was never boring. The drive-in and airport were owned and operated by Dave and Georgia Baker, an entertaining and endearing couple I came to love and respect as family.

Today, the sycamores along the river may be a bit taller, but they still explode in yellow this time of year along with my favorite walnut tree. And the young maple I climbed as a boy has matured into a massive Fall fire tree. In 1950, I watched when the men brought in their bulldozers to shape a new channel and level the bank of Patterson Creek. The stone beach they built was much safer for the generation of bathers who enjoyed it, but creeks have a way of remembering affronts. By the mid '70's, the creek's waters restored the original course and bank to a scene my grandfather enjoyed in the 1930s. Although time changed the place I called "Camp" it will never erase the memories of this childhood paradise.

1959

Hulling walnuts, 1967

Through the summer of 1974, I spent many annual family vacations at "camp" and in later years, several weekends of "cold camping" in the off-seasons where I wrote many college essays including a graduate thesis. Opening the cottage and grounds for the summer though exciting was not especially memorable. Freezing temperatures lingered into May, so the campground usually opened on Memorial Day weekend.

When it's 48 degrees at noon in a pouring August rain

On the other hand, winterizing the place was like saying "Goodbye" to an old friend. Thoughts of family, friends, the big - or small - fish, fireworks, that scary movie, the old biplane, all those memories accumulated over the past six months filled your mind. Amid the blazing gold sycamores, brilliant fire oaks and maples, the smell of wood smoke, and a harvest of black walnuts, we went through the years-old closing procedure until the last item - pouring anti-freeze into sink traps - was checked. At that point, it was time to load the car, proceed with all those repetitive tasks one does "just to be sure," then close and lock the big red door until Spring.

Radical days with Marti, 1970

As American society changed, the URKP fell out of fashion. Lodge members grew old and passed away. In 1974, the lodge itself and all its assets dissolved. I haven't locked that big red door for 48 years now, but I still have the key and a remarkably detailed mental picture of the cottage and landscape that I loved.

Closing weekend, 1972

In many ways, Burlington is with me every day for my experiences there helped shape my values, and define my career, hobbies, and general interests. The impact has been so profound that I have asked my children to do their best to provide the same opportunity for their own families.

1949

In weaving all of the memories about this weekend, I ask you, my readers, to do the same: Find a nearby paradise and escape to it often while your children are young. And when they are older and have children of their own, they can join you and make even more vivid memories. There will be no sorrow there.






Sources

Illustrations and Photos:
all photos from the family archive

Text:
song title, "When October Goes", and opening quote, "Early Autumn", lyrics, by Johnny Mercer, Johnny Mercer, The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, edited by Kimball, Day, Kreuger, and Davis; Knopf 2009

A Time When Dogs Seek Shade

 

Orion the Hunter

Back in the '70's and '80's I had the good fortune to live on the beach of a small barrier island at the mouth of the Savannah River. My house was a raised Caribbean-style cottage built in the 1920s. The porch overlooking the Atlantic faced southeast and was ideal for capturing the summer trade winds. At this time of year when I looked toward the horizon I saw a beautiful event unfold many times in the hour before dawn. Those hours and the imaginary music of the spheres evoke memories so vivid they seem to have occurred only yesterday.

First, Bellatrix, a blue giant star rose out of the Atlantic haze to be followed soon by the red giant, Betelgeuse. Soon the blue giants, Mintaka, and Rigel followed. At this point viewers saw a signature belt of three stars and a faint sword. Experienced sky watchers knew that Orion the Hunter was ascending. In minutes the belt stars pointed to shimmering Sirius, a binary star also known as the Dog Star. It was by far the brightest star in the sky but soon it and all the others would dissolve in the blinding light and heat of another summer sunrise.

Sirius the Dog Star

In the Nile and other valleys of the ancient Middle East, all eyes turned to the summer dawn anticipating the appearance of Orion and Sirius. They signaled the coming of the floods, of water for life and eventually for civilization. To the ancient Greeks the rising of these stars with the sun signaled the peak of summer heat when even dogs chose not to leave shade. They came to call this time of year hemerai kynades, a phrase that translates directly to "dog days." We have come a long way in time since scribes first recorded Sirius rising from the damp mud along the banks of the Nile. But we still experience the Hunter and the Dog, now both lost in daylight, one awaiting his turn to rule the autumn sky, the other to remind us that his days, the sultry dog days, are still with us.

While some people dread them I look forward to the coming of the "dog days." The heat makes me thrive and my arthritis becomes a memory. Atlanta's climate data tells us that on average the warmest days of 2023 will be behind us in a few weeks. The sun is already casting ever longer shadows as it arcs lower across the southern sky. Leaves hang limp on trees catching more and more of that light giving the woods a golden hue even at midday. The aging summer has also brought this year's acorn crop closer to maturity. I can tell because the squirrel community in our woods is starting to work overtime on an early and ripening harvest.

Calm days and high temperatures also lead to popcorn thundershowers that meander across the region waiting to die out as fast as they arise. So far they've brought powerful lightning, the positive strikes that start fires, several inches of rainfall, high winds, and pea sized hail. With that said it's time to envision sitting comfortably on the screened porch where a big ceiling fan quietly generates a steady breeze and your sweating sweet iced tea feels good even to the touch. The forest surrounding me is a still landscape interrupted by an occasional bird or squirrel. If you stay there long you witness the yellowing light of day giving way to the twilights, the lightning bugs, the cicadas, then the katydids and a chorus of north Georgia tree frogs.

I love all of those twilight sounds but I love the katydids most. They remind me of long summer vacations and drifting to sleep in my bed next to a cottage window that opened wide to both their chatter and a comforting breeze moving down the West Virginia mountainsides of my childhood. It was there I first developed a passion for forests, for flowing water, for a clear sky I felt I could almost touch. Over sixty year later that passion leads me to waken before the sun to witness a pattern of stars rise out of an unseen ocean and bring me summer. Bring it on!

The Battle Of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863: Of Endings and Beginnings

Today marks the conclusion of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought July 1-3, 1863, and the beginning of the end for the Confederate States of America. A year later, in August 1864, the Union unconditionally controlled the Mississippi River and relentlessly pressed Confederate forces in Virginia. In the Deep South, General Sherman's army devastated Atlanta. Six months later, he would be in Savannah and poised to destroy the remains of the Confederacy as he moved north through the Carolinas.

The American Civil War is a perennial topic in our history. Indeed, it did preserve the Union as President Abraham Lincoln intended and left us with any number of consequences in our national experience, both good and bad. Regarding those consequences, we should not expect otherwise as that is the way events unfold in the great wheel of history. And so it is with our great wheels of personal experience. Now in  my seventh decade immersed in all of this I'm a bit surprised and certainly privileged to experience Gettysburg at 100 and 150 years after the pivotal battle. The place is a personal holy ground because three people cared.

The Old Ranger and his dad at Gettysburg in 1954

First of all. my parents always loved being in nature and its historical overlay. Living in the Potomac River watershed afforded our family many opportunities to enjoy any number of places of national significance. As is often the case, first impressions become lasting ones. I was seven years old when we spent a long weekend exploring almost every foot of Gettysburg National Military Park. It was a fascinating experience and I still have the souvenirs to prove it. About six years later I met George Landis, the third person in this story. Landis taught middle school history and social studies on the eve of the Civil War Centennial. A Pennsylvanian with a love of history and basketball, he devoted an entire school year to the study of the Civil War. He was a superb teacher, highly animated and far ahead of his time. He focused on learning that took his students beyond lectures into the world of role-playing, performance, critical thinking and more. I recall fondly seeing every chalkboard in his classroom filled with detailed maps of battles, each carefully drawn and labelled with colored chalk. A little more than a decade after my year with Landis, I began a long and rewarding career immersed in experiential learning in the sacred places and histories in our national parks.

The Old Ranger and his mom at Gettysburg in 1954

There will be tens of thousands of people visiting Gettysburg this holiday week as well as many thousands of volunteers recreating and commemorating the events that took place there. Lasting impressions will be made this week about the sacrifice, the consequences, and the wheels of history both national and personal. And somewhere in that crowd will be a seven year-old with a new enthusiasm for a defining moment in our national experience. The commemorative landscape at Gettysburg will wait with pride and serenity like an old veteran to welcome him on his return visit in 2063.

Lena Horne: An American Legend

In the years around the turn of the century I was a member of the planning and design team for the newly established Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Alabama. Fundraising was a big part of our mission and we asked a large core group of airmen who they would like to see as a national spokesman for the effort. To a man, the response was, "Lena Horne!" who made a number of visits to their two Tuskegee airfields during World War II. They adored her. She was beautiful, had a sultry voice, the perfect figure for a World War II pinup, and a highly successful musical career on stage and screen. She was also strong-willed and, at times, defiant, both characteristics that served her well in the American civil rights movement following the war. No wonder she appealed to them.

Horne publicity photo from 1964, NBC Bell Telephone Hour

Who was this international star and favorite pinup? Lena Horne was born on this day in Brooklyn in 1917. Those familiar with the singer will always remember her remarkable talent as a legendary performer with a sparkling personality and a beautiful smile, In her almost seventy years in entertainment she worked the big band and cabaret circuits, movies, Broadway, and television. She became politically active in the fight for civil rights following World War II, a decision that placed her on the federal entertainment blacklist for over a decade. Readers can learn more details about Horne's life and career in a New York Times obituary published following her death in May 2010.

Horne at Tuskegee Institute banquet, Tuskegee, Alabama, during World War II

Due to her age and disabilities, Horne was unable to take on the role the Tuskegee Airmen so enthusiastically desired but fundraising commenced in a different direction and eventually contributed to construction and interpretation at the park. Her image and the stories of her visits are embedded in those exhibits.

I remember Horne well from her frequent television performances and recordings beginning in the 1950's. She's always been a personal favorite among pop and jazz singers and the stories of her association with the Tuskegee Airmen tells me she was one very special lady.

Here she is performing her signature song, Stormy Weather, from the 1943 film of the same name.

And here is a fine synopsis of the life and times of Horne prepared for a segment of the PBS News Hour in 2010.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
public domain photograph, NBC Television, Wikipedia.org
banquet photo, Noel Parrish Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington

Katherine Anne Porter: I Want To Live In A World Capital Or A Howling Wilderness

 

Katherine Anne Porter, an American writer, journalist and activist, was born on this day in 1890 in the west-central Texas town of Indian Creek. She led an often troubled yet exciting and eccentric life. By the age of forty she was an acclaimed and widely read author but it took another thirty years and the publication of her novel, Ship of Fools (1962), before she found financial security in her craft.

She moved to Washington, D.C., in 1959 to finish the novel and while there developed an association with the University of Maryland in nearby College Park. In 1966 her great success with the novel as well as her receipt of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her Collected Stories published in 1965 moved the university to award Porter an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. At the same time she announced her desire to donate a lifetime of treasured personal possessions and papers to the school to be housed in the Katherine Anne Porter Room, at that time located in McKeldin Library. Porter eventually moved the few miles from her Washington home to College Park where she could be even closer to her collection and the university's resources.

Readers interested in Porter as a writer will enjoy this 1963 Paris Review interview conducted as part of their Art of Fiction series. 

On a personal note: Back in 1968 I spent about two weeks doing research in special collections on the top floor of McKeldin Library at Maryland. At the elevator and in the hallways I kept meeting this small, friendly, elderly, white-haired woman with a jovial smile that invited conversation. She seemed far too helpful to be a typical university librarian. Years later I read how much Porter loved the academic setting and interacting with students, learning about them, their studies, and their plans for the future. She was, in fact, a near constant visitor to her room on the library's fifth floor. It wasn't long before the realization hit that my "little old librarian" was none other than Katherine Anne Porter. With the knowledge gained over the last fifty years I'd love to have those two weeks back to explore the few degrees of separation she brought me among Mexican Leftists of the 1920's, film making, fractal theory, systems of creative design, and the study of pandemics. This time I'd ask the questions.

Alas, that will never happen but perhaps I could explore this wide-ranging story in a future blog post. Better yet, it is a story best told over pitchers of craft beer enjoyed with some quiet and distant jazz, overstuffed club chairs, and the golden hour blazing from the horizon. Could pure chance give rise to the opportunity for such an exploration among old friends? Porter would be pleased.






Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
grannyweatherall.wordpress.com

Text:
Title, "Katherine Anne Porter, The Art of Fiction," No. 29, Paris Review
Katherine Anne Porter, wikipedia.org

Happy Mother's Day 2025

 

Gettysburg National Military Park, 1954

She was taken from our family far too early after a long and difficult illness. And almost fifty years later there's no question that I miss her. I'm especially sorry she did not live to enjoy her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Still, I feel her goodness has been with Nancy and me helping to shape our family long after the kids have gone on to establish their own lives. Wouldn't have it any other way. She was a great mother, full of love, compassion, a wonderful sense of humor, and dedication to family and friends.

about 1946

May Day 2025: On The Coming Of Summer

To be fair we could be talking about workers of the world, the joys of collectivist thought, and even the "fruits" of Communism on this day. I would rather speak of a more ancient and far happier theme, the arrival of the season of warmth and growth.

May 1, 2023, in Glastonbury, United Kingdom

The Gaelic festival day, Beltane ("be-EL-ten-a" in Irish, "BEL-tayn" in English)) occurs on May 1 and is a cross-quarter day marking the beginning of summer in their ancient calendar. It is one of two "turning" days of the year and exactly six months apart from the other, Samhain (saa-wn), marking the beginning of the dead season of winter. In the United Kingdom and other places with Gaelic heritage Beltane celebrations began last night with the lighting of bonfires, dancing and feasting long into the night.

 

The fun continues with the welcoming of the sun, the selection of the May Queen or earth goddess representing fertility, and the May King or Green Man - the latter first appeared in the 12th century -  representing vegetation and growth. The partying includes a Maypole dance - once an ancient fertility rite - and the decoration of houses, farms, and livestock; and more feasting.

Here in the United States there isn't much associated with the day unless there's an opportunity to sell something under the May Day Sale label. Even schools show little interest in May Day but it was a day-long festival at my elementary school in the 1950's. Actually the day was a big event for the whole community. It was so important that I recall the teachers having us outside days in advance to practice the May Pole dance until the lattice pattern on the pole was perfect. I wonder how enthusiastic they would have been had they known we were practicing a fertility rite. Aside from a few New Agers all religious associations with the activities have been left to an ancient past. These days it's simply good fun. Or at least a happy memory.

Maypole Dance, Bascom Hill, Wisconsin, May 1, around 1917

May you have a most festive celebration of the arrival of a time of warmth and new life





Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Photograph: University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

Happy 78th Birthday, Emmylou Harris

 

In fifty years singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris has won fourteen Grammy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Along the way she's gained many honors including membership in the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her career first gained traction in small clubs and coffee houses in Washington and its suburbs. I was only a few miles from most of the venues but sadly never saw her perform. Still, it was impossible not to see and hear the advertising in and around Georgetown in DC and the Maryland suburbs of Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Silver Spring. By the early '70's she moved to Los Angeles to work with Gram Parsons and his band, The Grievous Angels. When Parsons died in 1973 the devastating event led her to focus on Parsons's search for the fusion sound he called "cosmic American music." The sound Harris and Parsons produced in their short time together, in addition to her life-long dance with experimental sounds in folk, blues and country music, would have a significant impact on decades of American music.

Harris continues to produce innovative and award-winning sound. In 2016 a selection of duets with Rodney Crowell - The Traveling Kind - won a Grammy for Best Americana Album. Here is a track from the album:

Today, Emmylou Harris turned 78. Fame has been kind to her given such a long and successful touring and recording career. She's brought quality entertainment to millions of people since the beginning in those early days with Graham Parsons. We'll never know where the two of them would have gone together in the world of music but it's safe to say it would have been far. Here is a song she and Bill Danoff wrote as a tribute to Parsons:

Boulder to Birmingham

I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky

And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it's the ocean
coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.



Thank you, Emmylou, and a happy birthday (April 2), too. It's been quite a journey from those gigs at the Red Fox Inn.




Sources:
Photo, emmylouharris.com
Lyrics: play.google.com

The Interior Department: Managing Natural, Cultural And Human Resources For 176 Years

 

Flag of the United States Department of the Interior

When Congress established the Department of the Interior on this date in 1849, the nation had celebrated a mere sixty years of operation under the Constitution. By mid-century settlement expanded well beyond the Mississippi River across the Great Plains and the Rockies to the Pacific. Virtually all Indians had been resettled in the west. The discovery of gold in California heightened interest in mineral wealth and the expansion of mining. Manifest destiny, the idea that all of North America should be part of the United States, was active in the Pacific Northwest and by 1848 had already redefined Mexico from California to Texas. Indeed the interior had become a busy and diversified aspect of the American experience and one that demanded some form of federal oversight. Is it any wonder that the organization was referred to as "the department of everything else" in its early years?

We've come a long way from "everything else" to a rather awesome department for someone who enjoys applied history, science, and geography across the American landscape. The department's current interests are expressed quite well in its organization chart:

I feel very fortunate to have worked almost 37 years for Interior in that little box on the lower left that bears the label, "National Park Service." The Service has a noble mission carrying out what has been described as "the best idea America ever had." It was a wonder-filled experience - actually based on my college studies - that took me to the far corners of the country in terms of both geography and history. Not sure I could do it today due to the agency's deterioration over the last 25 years but my experience that began in 1969 was a fulfilling adventure. It's one I'd do over without hesitation. So here's a big thank you to Interior for giving me such an opportunity, and a happy 176th birthday wish for enhanced support and continued careful stewardship of everything else.

St. David's Day 2025

 

Why is a Welsh national flag usually flying at our front door today on this day? (Didn't happen this year due to trrential rain and high winds).

In the Christian world in the West March 1 is celebrated as St. David's Day. He was born in Wales in the 6th century, attained sainthood in the 12th century, and today is recognized as the patron saint of Wales. The traditional day of his death is March 1 with the years 589 or 601 recognized as the most likely years. Dewi San (St. David) was buried in the cathedral bearing his name in Pembrokeshire. In his lifetime he was recognized as an extraordinary force for Christian evangelism as well as Welsh nationalism. I doubt there could ever be a better day to celebrated the National Day of Wales than March 1.

Although the red dragon on a green and white field has been associated with Wales since the 15th century the design was not adopted officially as the national flag until 1959.

German traditions may remain strong in my family, but I'm equally proud to say that I have Welsh ancestors thanks to the bloodline introduced by my grandmother's parents. They immigrated to the United States from Cardiff, Wales, in the early 1870's. Although I don't remember my grandmother - she died before my second birthday - my father always reminded me of her Celtic pride and Welsh ancestry expressed especially in a love for song and singing.

Wales is a small, ancient country located southwest of England between the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea south of the Isle of Man. The nation has a rich cultural heritage beginning with Celtic peoples in the early Iron Age. Its isolation has left them with strong genetic identifiers as the "last of the 'true' Britons." There are only 3 million people living in Wales today. Historically, the population was never large but there was a limited diaspora beginning two centuries ago particularly with the Industrial Revolution and its need for coal. Only half of one percent of Americans claim Welsh ancestry. I'm pleased to be among them.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
Welsh flag, public domain image, Open Clipart Library

Text:
wales.com
wikipedia.com

Grand Canyon National Park Celebrates 106 Years

Today marks the 106th birthday of Grand Canyon National Park. I first saw it in 1970 on a cross country trip that introduced me to several National Park Service sites. That was long before any indication that the agency would become my career and its mission a life long pursuit. The Canyon is far removed from my early park experiences in the reaches of the Potomac River Valley from Shenandoah to Gettysburg and east to the Mall in Washington. In addition, all of my career assignments were well east of the Mississippi River. It may seem odd but, outside of them, I spent more time - almost one yrar - on temporary duty and vacation at the Canyon than any other place during my career. That makes the sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound of Grand Canyon very special.

Hermit Rapids on the Colorado River, Grand Canyon National Park, 1974

Although the scenic drives, visitor centers, museums, and accommodations are outstanding, the park is really an outdoor, immersive experience. And it's unfortunate that far too few visitors choose the immersion. Thankfully I spent most of my time there when such an orientation was commonplace. Like most people my age, I was ready because Mom sent me out the door after a summer lunch and didn't expect to see me until the street lights came on. Lots of time for adventure then and now. At the Canyon I ran untold miles on trails through the Ponderosa Pine forests along the South Rim. On many occasions I went over the rim into the Inner Canyon on trails named Grandview, Kaibab, Bright Angel, Hermit, Dripping Springs, and Tonto. Each was its own experience as was the day I climbed 5200 feet out of an 80 degree summer into a blizzard and two feet of snow at the South Rim.

 Grand Canyon National Park Poster, 1938

The Grand Canyon wasn't well known to most Americans until around 1900 and the completion of an Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad link to the South Rim. There had been interest in making it a national park as early as 1882 but the first protection afforded the canyon came in 1906 with its proclamation by President Theodore Roosevelt as a game preserve and later in 1908 as a national monument. With the conservation movement in full swing across the nation, Congress finally passed the Grand Canyon National Park Act. It was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.

El Tovar, the AT&SF hotel, Grand Canyon, early 1900s

In the century following its national park designation, Grand Canyon has witnessed millions of visitors. The park wears its World Heritage Site designation proudly with its multi-faceted display of nature and culture. It does so even when less than one percent of visitors - around 45,000 in 2020 - actually leave its rims to explore the Inner Canyon. Today, the computer and its games, the focus on the automobile as transportation, an aging population, and other demographic and cultural variables may take a bigger toll on an already dismal number. For most of my life I've enjoyed the adventure, walking the beaches and trails end to end on Georgia's Cumberland Island National Seashore and almost every mile of the C&O Canal National Historical Park's 184 mile long towpath across Maryland and the District of Columbia. That's not to mention the hundreds of miles "in the traces" in parks from the Mississippi River southeast to the U.S. Virgin Islands. All in a day's work then. Today? No question there is less walking in my retirement but I can still recall the wonder-filled experiences on the traces in one of the grandest places in the world. It's even more enjoyable to do so on a very special day that very likely made all those experiences possible.

Post-hike at Hermit Rest trailhead. Old Tybee Ranger kneeling, right.

If the Grand Canyon is on your bucket list, be sure to visit. If you've been there many times, go again. Either way, go over the rim. Go into the Canyon. Be the beauty and mystery of this sacred place.




Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
National Park Service
Library of Congress
Personal photo



Text:
wikipedia.org. National Park Service
National Park Service

Remembering George Washington On His 293rd Birthday

 

George Washington,  Gilbert Stuart, American, 1796

We had a federal holiday a few days ago commemorating Washington's birthday but it was simply another one of those government manipulations to provide us with three-day weekends. Washington was actually born on February 22, 1732. Perhaps a few days don't matter much in a nation that has lost its appreciation for history and reality over the past decades. Still there are some personalities and events worthy of authentic remembrance. George Washington, fondly recalled as the Father of His Country, is one of them. Here is what Scott Johnson (Powerline) has to say about the subject:

Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington's greatness was the rarest and most needed. At this remove in time it is also the hardest to comprehend.

Today as we contend with the contemporary equivalent of "the Babylonish empire," let us send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days for this indispensable man.

Johnson originally posted these words in 2006 and it's worth reading the rest of his brief and notable remarks. Very uplifting.

Learn more about the young adventurer who became the father of his country at the following sources:

George Washington Birthplace National Monument

 Washington's birthplace - the original site is in the foreground

Fort Necessity National Battlefield

Valley Forge National Historical Park

Independence National Historical Park

George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate, Museum, and Gardens

Washington Monument

George Washington Masonic Memorial

In 1747, when Washington was 15 years old, he accompanied his friend, George William Fairfax, on a surveying expedition to the Virginia - now West Virginia - frontier and the headwaters of Patterson Creek, a tributary of the South Branch of the Potomac River. I got to know well over a thousand feet of Patterson Creek intimately over the span of a quarter century. The creek was a great source of recreation, leisure, study and contemplation. It was a powerful force in shaping my future. I learned of Washington's trip there long after I'd left the place but I still think about what it would have been like sitting on the creek bank in 1960 and suddenly seeing a teenage boy and his companions in colonial dress come slogging around the bend about 50 yeards downriver. That small stretch of Patterson Creek is a sacred place and although I havent sat on its bank or skipped stones across its quiet pools for fifty years this landscape I remember still speaks to me about our imaginary conversation. I'm quite sure that young Washington would have no expectation of becoming in the words of his eulogy delivered by Henry Lee, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his contrymen." 

In my experience every sacred place opens dimensions and portals as time exposes layers of its past. Listen carefully next time you stand alone immersed in the experience of your sacred place. There you recall your personal stories. Add  imagination and who knows what you may encounter on the banks and bends of your river through time.








Sources


Illustrations:
Stuart portrait, a copy known as the Lansdowne Portrait, hangs in the White House. The original is located in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Postcards are from the author's archive.

Frederick Delius: Saturation In Sound

 

Delius in 1907

The English composer, Frederick Delius, was born on this day in Yorkshire in 1862. At 24, he lived the classic story of breaking away from the family business - wool, no less - to pursue a love for the arts, in this case, music. The break was interesting for it took him first to Solano Grove and an orange plantation on the banks of the St. Johns River south of Jacksonville, Florida. Later, he would teach music in Danville, Virginia, before returning to Europe for formal education in Germany. He took the sounds of American culture with him. In 1888, he settled in Paris, later married the painter, Jelka Rosen - she painted the portrait below - and devoted his life to composition. In his last sixteen years he was tortured by the pain of a slow death from syphilis contracted during his early years in Paris. In the four years before his death in 1934, he was blind and essentially paralyzed from the neck down. He composed and completed some of his most significant work during this period, all of it reaching paper through the notations of his loyal amanuensis, Eric Fenby.

Delius patterned much of his music after that of his friend and fellow composer, Edvard Grieg, but tempered it with English impressionism, a love of naturalism, and his American experience, particularly his immersion in African American cultural themes while working on his father's grapefruit plantation. The result was a unique and demanding music for performer and listener alike and one that almost demands an acquired appreciation. From his death until the 1970's many in the classical music industry thought his compositions were "too sweet" and trapped in immature cliches. Today, his popularity continues to grow but I believe he remains an underappreciated figure in 20th century music.

Portrait of Delius by his wife, Jelka Rosen, Grez-sur-Loing, France, 1912

I first encountered Delius's music in a BBC program in 1968. The unique lyric quality of his compositions was like a magnet and there was no escape from the compelling soundscapes with such rich, complex imagery and depth. It was easy to fall under the Delius spell as a student of physical and historical geography. The appreciation increased when I began a life-long career focused on the nation's most significant and often most beautiful places.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to sit alone on a dock watching the evening move over the St. Johns River landscape not far from Solano Grove. Delius's music was in my head and all the beauty of "Old Florida" was in my heart. A century earlier he had likely walked the river's edge at that very place, watched the same sun glistening on the water, heard the worker's songs blending with those of insects and the wind rustling the reeds and nearby palmettos.

Over his lifetime he would be identified with the English school of music, but would put much of that Florida experience into his work. In fact, he has a significant place in American music history having been the first classical composer to use musical themes of black Americans in the South. Those themes appear in several of his composition more than forty years before George Gershwin and Porgy and Bess. 

This post opened with Song of Summer, written in 1930 when Delius was blind and paralyzed. To conclude, here are two earlier compositions. The first is from the Florida Suite, written in 1888 when he was twenty years old. Music historians agree that this piece represents the first use of black American folk idioms in classical form by a European composer. He also composed the first black opera, Koanga. (George Gershwin is most often erroneously credited with this accomplishment, but his opera, Porgy and Bess, premiered fifty years later.

 

The second work,  In A Summer Garden, was composed in 1908. This and many other Delius works would go on to influence a number of popular music composers well into the 20th century. Perhaps the most significant of them was the iconic composer, pianist, and bandleader, Duke Ellington, whose composed - most likely with his arranger, Billy Strayhorn - In a Blue Summer Garden as a tribute. 

Over forty years have passed since I watched that sunset near Solano Grove. That's a long time to explore and mature in one man's music. It remains a most satisfactory experience filled with complex brushstrokes of sound so different, immersive, and timeless.

Music is a cry of the soul. It is addressed and should appeal instantly to the soul of the listener. It is a revelation, a thing to be reverenced.

                                                                          Frederick Delius

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Delius photograph, Monographein Moderner Musiker, Leipzig, Germany: C.F. Kahnt Nachfolger, 1907. Public domain in the United States
Portrait of Frederick Delius by his wife, Jelka Rosen.

Text:
title, from comments by Delius biographer, Christopher Palmer, 1976

The Delius Society
Before the Champions: Frederick Delius' Florida Suite for Orchestra, Mary E. Greene., M.A. Thesis, University of Miami, 2011
Radio Swiss Classic, Frederick Delius
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Frederick Delius