The Golden Month

October is the golden month. Not just in terms of the leaves’ colors; It is the season of abundance. Farm stands bulge with pumpkins, apples, and squash. Harvesting machines clatter across fields of bronze or tan. Squirrels race around industriously stashing their winter supplies, as do human beings. The wild animals I see are fat from enjoying the bounteous season. Some use this bounty for energetic pursuits such as migrating to warmer climes. Summer birds are gone, and raptors and waterfowl are leaving. The former make solitary flights, finding energy-saving updrafts to glide their way south. The latter travel in noisy V’s, pointing the way to the equator, which the sun’s path crossed just a short time ago.

For many, the energy reserves of the season of abundance are used for mating. Deer lose their native caution as their hormones rise, boldly and blindly stepping onto roadways… or into range of a bow-hunter. Trout, flaunting autumn’s leaf colors, compete for spawning opportunities. Even the largest and wariest will attack a gaudy fly that invades his territory.

Orange-yellow school busses signify another sort of competition and growth. Other colors blossom as school sports teams vie with a passion adults rarely match. Yet which of us can forget shouting and waving pennons or pom-poms, our cheeks rosy with cold, watching our high school Homecoming Game?

But, under it all, October is the last great work of a dying year. The changing leaves remind me of the changes I see when I look in the mirror. Soon my hair will whiten, like the ground when snow falls. It’s somehow fitting that October ends with Halloween, a holiday of celebration and defiance of endings; of Death itself. What better way to face our fear of mortality than to laugh, to tape up paper skeletons and display cardboard coffins as a symbol of both facing that fear and transcending it? Children come in disguise, begging the bounty that we have stashed against the hungry, cold season; and we freely give it, knowing even beneath the often-scary masks these beggars are our progeny, our future.

“Winter is coming.” But it’s not here yet. Sink your teeth into a fresh Cortland apple, perfectly complimented with cheddar cheese and ginger snaps. Giggle your way through a corn maze, or a “haunted house.” Watch an aggressive brook trout smack your dry fly, then admire it’s muscular, colorful beauty before releasing it. Or just drive some country roads and be awed by each new autumn vista. It’s October, my favorite month of the year!

Thoughts on Marcellus Development

August in Potter County is fair and festival month.  I often grumble about this, as multiple events are scheduled for the same weekends, then I must choose between them and miss one;  Yet there are so many weekends in May, June, September, and July that could have events scheduled to draw in the tourists.  The thinking is,  “If tourists are around to go to the County Fair (for instance), our event will have more people available in the area already to attend it.”  As sensible as this sounds on the surface, I can’t help but question the soundness of the logic.

Of all the weekend festivals I’ve been to this year, only Galeton’s famous Independence Day fireworks drew a good crowd.  Three music festivals of exceptional quality drew no more people for the dynamite closing acts than one would see in a popular night club Downstate.  Coudersport’s Maple Festival and the Herb Festival were lightly attended, and Galeton’s Fall Fest and Kettle Creek Valley Outdoor Show have gotten smaller each year, to the break-even point.  All these are (or were) popular events offering exceptional value for little or no entrance fee, but, despite all efforts to publicize them widely and in a more modern format, are just not drawing the attention they deserve.

This is just the most visible sign of our deteriorating tourist industry.  Small businesses all over the region have closed their doors, “For Sale” signs sprouting like weeds.  Individual entrepreneurs (such as myself, as a fly fishing guide) have been forced out of business, sometimes even forced to seek a full-time job to make ends meet, usually putting an end to our ability to do our tourist-related trade.  Overhead for fishing guides is high (licensing requirements alone add up to over $1200 annually) and presumably the same is true for others.  If we don’t get a certain amount of business, even doing it for the love of it becomes impossible.

A lot of this can be chalked up to Marcellus Shale exploitation, which has done a lot to ruin the esthetics, community budgets, and environment of the region and created little in the way of jobs and/or income.  Environmentalists faced with this five years ago went into the dialogue with the energy companies and legislators prepared to compromise, but met with no similar attitude.  No extraction tax was proposed to supplement communities suddenly forced to provide more services, nor to fund the environmental watchdog agencies to assure the gas extraction was done where and in such a way as to damage critical environment as little as possible, and absolutely no funding for cleaning up the inevitable mess the drillers will (and are already) leaving was provided for.  The sustainable existing tourist industry was sacrificed for the profit of the few and (already) wealthy, at the expense of local residents dependant on it.  Negative publicity aimed at generating concern about the reckless exploitation served to keep tourists away, and those that did visit the area could not avoid seeing unsightly drill sites, staging areas, and pipeline construction, not to mention ‘sharing’ the roads with convoys of construction trucks and tankers driven by people with no concept of safety on narrow mountain roads, especially in winter.  Many long-time camp owners are selling out, too.

The history of the region shows this resource rape has occurred repeatedly:  Oil, lumber and coal were exploited, each time leaving the ecology of the area a bit more damaged, each time leaving a mess that taxpayers and volunteers have had to work on and pay for, decades of repair that is not over even now and will never get things back to their pristine state.  No one seems to learn this lesson.  At least, no one in a position to do anything to prevent its recurrence.  Sacrificing esthetic values on the altar of profit is the American Way.

It’s sad.  Blogging is about how one feels about things, and this has saddened, infuriated, discouraged, and frustrated me.  Seeing a disaster coming, writing and speaking and working to prevent it, then having the whole juggernaut roll over me, has flattened my soul.  This place I love, being ruined.  Other people that love it, forced to ‘sell out’ to the energy companies or starve.  This knowledge was hammered home by attending these wonderful tourist events and seeing how few people were there to appreciate them.  Come to the Pennsylvania Wilds soon, to enjoy the State’s last (marginally) unspoiled outdoor wonderland, while they still exist!

Close Encounters of the Rodent Kind

 Maggi went to New Jersey last week for her high school class reunion, and I received a cryptic e-mail hours after her latest projected arrival date: "Here safe. Tell you about the car later." Uh-oh. This was like the old joke about the Jewish mother's telegram home: "Start worrying. Second telegram follows." The explanation, in a second e-mail sent a day of fretting later, said she'd had to stop at an auto parts store and replace the air filter. The whole story came out nearly a week later.

The car had been gasping, sometimes stalling.  It turns out this was due to a clogged air filter, and that came about because of rodent occupation of the filter compartment. Among other things, the predictable dessicated nuts and nesting materials, there was an unexpected treasure in that air filter: the critter had discovered Maggi's stash of Hershey's kisses in the car, unwrapped them, and transferred them to its hiding place. Steal her chocolate? "This means war!" At least that explains why the air filter needed to be replaced, not just cleaned:  the chocolate had melted in the heat of the engine compartment, coating the filter. Car engines are not designed to run with chocolate-dipped air filters. This is why the engine was gasping: It was running on too rich an air mixture.

She was not the only one with rodent encounters. Three mornings ago I staggered out of the bedroom, and when I got to the part of my morning routine where I opened the pantry to get tea, a mouse which had been perched atop the pantry door was flung off, hitting me in the head, scrabbling for purchase on my face, then dropping to the floor and scampering under the breakfront. THAT woke me up, to be sure. And anyone else within a quarter-mile, who might have heard the scream. I am not the sort of female who shrieks at the sight of mice, but when one lays an aerial ambush before I am barely awake, I think I can be excused my quite audible reaction.

I have been lecturing the cats on their household responsibilities ever since.

Cache On Demand

I’m not as bad as I used to be obsessing about each new hobby to the exclusion of all else, then dropping it in favor of a new one, and seldom returning to it. Part of this improvement is financial; But I like to think a lot of it is accumulated wisdom. I’m more discerning about what activities I try, and do indeed just try them at first, not diving into them head-first and accumulating every possible bit of related equipment. Of course, most of my new hobby ventures involve the outdoors.

It took me awhile to get into geocaching. It’s not expensive to start doing it, but GPS technology was brand-new to me. The bottom-of-the-line Garmin I bought with a gift card proved I have no intuition at all about this particular branch of geek-ness. Eight months after getting it, I attended a learn-to-geocache event at the local State Park, had some of the odder features of the devices demonstrated, found all eleven waypoints on the Park geo-trail, and was hooked.

Within the month I had printed out (very ineptly, as the pages ended up in random order and orientation) the User Manual for my device from Garmin’s website, had successfully gotten it to locate satellites, waymarked my house, and found my way back there from my own mailbox a quarter-mile away. I was ready to find my very first cache! The first caching website I tried (through the Garmin site) proved pretty much moribund. I scrounged through my business card file for the card I’d gotten from the cachers at a local outdoor show, which guided me to geocaching.com (duh!).  I created my own free account and found a half-dozen caches were hidden within ten miles of my house! The site proved user-friendly even to this user, I downloaded the lot into my GPS, and was off!

I didn’t know enough to read, let alone print or save, the cache descriptions. My method was simple: Drive to a parking spot within 500 feet or so of a cache, walk to it following the arrow, then use my eyes. Wonder of wonders, the first one I tried, I found. I went 2 for 4 that day, learning rapidly. I found I still need maps; From a distance of 5 miles the roads that seem to go in the right direction don’t necessarily do so. I discovered that the cache may not be where my GPS says “0 feet.” I learned to bring my own writing utensil. I logged my first finds on my Geocaching.com account. I looked up my two failures and discovered how useful the cache descriptions are.

That was a little over six months ago, and I have now logged 170 finds in 9 states. I’ve attended three local events, including CITO, launched my first trackables, and earned my first geocoins. I’m now contemplating the adventure of hiding my first cache.

What is the allure of this activity? For one thing, it combines technology with the outdoors, satisfying my “nerd gene” while allowing me to hike, learn, and observe nature. The fact that I dry-fly fish for trout proves that I love solving puzzles, and this also allows me to do that. I’ve incidentally found a lot more fishing spots by finding caches, as well as many places that are just neat in their own right. The inner child’s fascination with treasure-hunting and a love of knowing secrets and keeping them is really in play (in all senses of the word) here. It tickles me to know that thousands of people drive past these spots daily, unaware of their existence, but I do… along with the select members of my “secret society.” My lifelong love of Sherlock Holmes comes out in my keenness on the hunt. I park the car, and am out like a hound on the scent, eyes glued to the GPS arrow, totally focused on the find. (And almost always forgetting the cardinal rule: Waypoint the car so you don’t get lost coming back.) Once at “ground zero,” I cast about, looking high and low, using every sense, trying to think like the cache hider did, persistent as that hound intoxicated with the strong scent of a covey of quail. The “aha” moment is great, but it’s the process leading up to it I savor. I have recently begun seeking out caches that are more challenging, not just mentally, but physically as well, requiring more hiking over rougher terrain. I truly love puzzle caches, that must be solved by logic and instinct.

Most of all, and I hate to admit this, I am endlessly fascinated by how easy it is to find unknown objects hidden by complete strangers in unfamiliar territory, when I am unable to find my iPod that I put down just a few minutes earlier somewhere in my house. Every day I wander from room to room several times daily searching for whatever item I put down, or, worse yet, in a “safe place,” meaning the nearest black hole. Often I forget what I was searching for in the process and wander further trying to stimulate the memory of why I am wandering. The fact that I can and do find geocaches comforts me when I’m frustrated at my daily absent-mindedness. Perhaps someday I’ll figure out how to overcome my memory deficiency using GPS technology. Meantime, I’ll just keep reassuring myself that I can find other peoples’ stuff, ineptly but surely.

Eleven Months That Changed My Life

I was really motivated to lose weight when my doctor wanted to put me back on Metformin in addition to 56 units of insulin a day. Firstly, I knew that would not work, and secondly, Metformin and I don't get along. A big problem with oral medication for diabetes is that the user can't self-adjust the dosage of it in response to the morning glucose tests like one can with insulin. Another is that a person HAS to eat a certain amount within 20 minutes of taking the medication to reduce the side-effects. So I figured the problem was the carbohydrate-counting diet they had me on. I abandoned carbohydrate-counting totally and substituted Weight Watchers.

Since I hate meetings, hype, wasting gas, and weighing myself in front of other people, I opted to do WW online. I'm self-disciplined enough that it has worked. As a diabetic, I was already used to weighing, measuring, and estimating portion sizes when I wasn't home to weigh and measure. I tested my glucose every morning without fail and adjusted my insulin appropriately if I had 3 successive readings out of range. At first, I was very careful to make my before-bed snack some fruit with carbs. Later, as I came to know and trust the program, I stopped thinking about carbs at all.

Here are the results: The FIRST WEEK my morning glucose readings went into or below the normal range. I have had NO high readings in the eleven months since. My November blood work had my HemoA1C at 6.06 (Normal range is 5 to 7) and my most recent lab work had ALL blood factors in the normal range. My doctor said my Body Mass Index is now 27.1 and the AMA recently revised the BMI target for older women to be 26 to 28, so I am a normal weight for the first time in almost 40 years! I've gradually reduced my insulin to 12 units daily. 48 pounds lost. 7 inches lost off my butt and down from a dress size somewhere in Women's 20's to size 14 plus-or-minus depending on the cut. Best of all, the reduced stress on my knees and feet means I can be active (which helps with diabetes and weight loss), fishing longer, hiking again, and with more stamina doing yard work. I spent a full day in April geocaching with a bunch of youngsters in rough terrain and kept up with them except for two short breaks. A half-mile uphill hike to a scenic overlook last week was a piece of cake. Of course, I am no longer 24 years old as I was last time I weighed less than 150 pounds, so there are still some limitations, but not many! I sleep better and my flexibility has also improved.

Yes, Weight Watchers costs almost $20 a month. I save that just in portion sizes. I'd reduced them to half when I retired from my very-physical job, but WW cut that in half again. And I have to eat veggies, which I dislike unless well-disguised with butter or sauces. Worst of all, I am a fat addict. There are hundreds of products for folks with sweet tooths, but nothing replaces the rich taste of real butter, real cream in coffee, gourmet cheese, or full-monte bacon. I've compromised with low- or no-fat alternatives where I can, but some things I refuse to budge on and just enjoy them very sparingly. The whole purpose was for me to learn a new eating discipline that I could live with, essentially, the rest of my life. I have not gone from 'meals' to 'grazing' as many on WW do, nor have I wasted time in pointless exercise when I can get my activity in by fishing, hiking, snow-shoeing, hunting, and working outside or in my wood shop. I've fit the program into my life, not vice-versa.

I feel so much better about my self-image that I have gotten my hair cut stylishly perky, and enjoy buying new clothes to replace the wardrobe which is now outrageously baggy and often downright shabby. This is the real hidden expense of WW. Now that I am within sneezing distance of my goal weight I can buy quality clothing and expect it to fit for some time to come.

I could not have started and continued this program when I was working, because of stress and the unreasonable demands my former employer put on my time. Because of my job, I spent 12 years as an out-of-control diabetic dependent on expensive medication and with ever-increasing peripheral damage to my body and psyche. It literally almost killed me. I was displaying all the symptoms of a diabetic on the last six months of the downhill slope when my doctor gave me the advice that kept me alive and led to my current state of health. I still live with some of those diabetes-related conditions today, the worst being impaired memory and cognitive functions. Fighting these impediments plus my chronic depression has made sticking to WW a big job, but persistence has paid off. I am less than 2 pounds from my goal weight.

Lots of people in Weight Watchers report a phenomenon when nearing their goal weight of leveling out, or see-sawing up and down in weight, for weeks at a time. My goal is 8 to 10 pounds above the highest weight listed on the “If you are X feet tall and Y years of age, you should weigh between these two weights” chart. I did this specifically to avoid the leveling problem, and because I feel an older woman looks worse too thin than a little plump, not to mention being more vulnerable with fewer reserves. (Recent studies have vindicated my belief.) Yet I ‘plateaued’ for three weeks, after see-sawing for four weeks. I now look upon weight loss as something like fly casting. Yes, I know, everything in my life gets compared to something in fly-fishing eventually, But, see if you can’t see the truth in this.

A common mistake beginner casters make, and even more experienced ones sometimes, is altering the stroke on the ‘business’ cast. They get a good rhythm going making perfect false casts, but that final one, meant to place the fly perfectly on the water, they feel deserves or requires some extra oomph. Things fall apart, although any one of those prior false casts would have been perfect if laid on the water. The discipline to just do exactly the same perfect movement when the chips are down is what separates the good caster from the novice. As I near my goal weight, I find myself impatient to get there quickly. I anticipate the supposed pleasures of the Maintenance Diet, even though I’m aware that I started this to learn new eating habits meant to last a lifetime. Sometimes I eat as if I’m already on Maintenance, taking an extra slice of bread, a little more meat, or reaching for the ‘good’ salad dressing instead of the despicable vinaigrette. Sometimes I revert to being a WW Nazi and count out my finger carrots or go out and work up a gratuitous sweat. No wonder I see-saw up and down in weight. If I just kept doing the things that worked so well for the last 11 months, the results would be as consistently good as they have been up until now. That behavior was the false-casting; now, with the goal so close I can smell it, the pressure is on and it’s time for the business cast. Which should be no different from the previous ones… See my point?

I joined Weight Watchers to stabilize my blood glucose and learn a new eating discipline. The actual weight loss has been a bonus. I must remember this, take the pressure off myself, and let these last two pounds flow off just like the previous 48. The rewards, in increased ability to enjoy the things I love and decreased pain, are worth it.

Writing Diary #2: Repetition

Most of my published writings are about fly-fishing.  I edit a fly-fishing quarterly and have a regular column.  The problem is, there are a limited number of things a person can say about fishing.  “I used this fly.  I went here.  I caught X number of this species of fish.”  Essentially that boils down most of the articles in most of the fly-fishing magazines.  I seldom read any of the mass-market fly fishing magazines anymore, and that’s one of the reasons.

Fly-fishing has a rich literature going back seven centuries.  Obviously the where-to-go, what-to-use writings are of little or no relevance anymore, but there are classics that endure.  At their root, they invariably deal with emotions:  Why do we fly fish?  How does doing so make us feel?  What do we learn from it that enriches our lives?  For fly-fishing is not an efficient way to fish, it’s a way to nourish the soul.  Process-oriented, not goal-oriented, to use current vernacular.  This is what I usually address when I write about fly-fishing:  The artistry of the experience.

Even so, there is a certain amount of repetition.  Trout are beautiful.  The insects they eat live very brief lives, which inevitably makes me reflect on the cycles of life, death, and beyond.  The pace of time while fishing is different than the normal human bustle.  The act of predation forges a different type of connection with the natural world than mere observation, yet fly-fishing allows the fish to be returned to its life unharmed.  These are themes I’ve explored many times, because they are the essence of how and why I fish, and how I think and feel while doing so.  I sometimes feel I have little more to say about fly-fishing, and I suppose that’s true.

Yet every experiential piece I write expresses these feelings a little differently, and I find new words to describe them.  A reader who is unmoved by one piece may find poetry in another that resonates with their own fly-fishing experiences, expresses their inner feelings in a way they’ve been unable to articulate.  Every once in a great while a reader e-mails me with a hesitant, usually awkwardly-written,  “Yeah.  That’s it.”  Or greets me at some fishing function with a hug and a reference to one article or another.  This is why I keep writing, for these moments when true communication occurs.

When teaching, it pays to present the same information from several different approaches, since students often grasp one and not the others.  It’s the same with writing.  I may not have much to say, but by saying it differently several times, I increase my chances of reaching every reader.  Those who love words for their own sake, the sheer loveliness of the English language and the way words combine to exquisite ends, will not mind the repetition.  They’ll see the brush strokes, not the subject matter, and appreciate it (or not) on its merits.  And there will be more instances of  “Yeah.  That’s it.”

Empty Nest Syndrome

It seems just yesterday we saw the first fuzzy head peek above the edge of the phoebe nest in the porch eaves.  That first day the poor parents were frantic, making trip after trip with toothsome morsels for the hatchlings.  There were two wobbling heads raised on spindly necks that we could see.  The normal brood in this nest over the years has been four.  Had the untimely late snowy cold killed the rest of the eggs?  I swore I could hear three distinct voices in the rhythmic feeble cheeps that heralded the arrival of each snack.  Several anxious days later, we sighed with relief when the third head, beak straining upward in entreaty, became visible alongside the others.  We had three grand-chicks!

Mr. and Mrs. Phoebe looked weary and frazzled.  How they found so many food items in such short forays I can’t imagine.  Grubs, insects, and the favorite caterpillars were dropped into straining, strident hatchling maws.  Larger morsels were deftly severed in two.  Or was the phoebe parent just clever enough to silence two of the three shrill begging voices in one trip?  Almost daily, the voices became louder and deeper as the chicks grew and strengthened.

We were so proud.  Wasn’t it clever of Mr. Phoebe to choose a nest site eight vertical feet from the ground, sheltered by a roof, upheld by a sturdy rafter, immune to wind, predator, and rain?  Wasn’t Mrs. Phoebe smart to realize that our cats, who watched the nest with unswerving gaze, were no threat to her brood?  The cats themselves seemed as solicitous as they were fascinated, rattling their warning when squirrels came near the nest, which the phoebes took as a signal to scold or dive upon the intruding rodents.

Sometime during the week past I saw the phoebe couple engaging in aerial acrobatics, something they certainly had no energy for during their previous single-minded, continuous food deliveries from dawn until dusk.  Maggi reported that yesterday she’d seen them dancing in flight, Mr. Phoebe singing his squeaky-toy song.  And I noticed today, it is now hard to distinguish the chicks from their parents by size.  The young ones are still somewhat fuzzy, but the nest is obviously crowded to capacity.  When neither parent is around to see, the chicks are fanning their wings, trying out muscles that will soon be used in flight:  The sudden, unpredictable explosion of birds from the nest, only the parents (raising their second brood) to return.  Of course, when a parent is sighted returning to the nest with food, the chicks hunker down, voices raised in supplication, eyes round with innocence and mouths open for food.  But their feed-the-helpless-chick act will not fool anyone much longer.

Where does the time go?  Even the parent birds, who surely wished that dusk would come sooner during those first busy feeding days, must sense their young will soon leave them, and feel some regret at that notion.  For us, the felines and humans that have watched with the fond non-responsibility of godparents, the empty nest syndrome will be acute.  When the sweet peeping of begging chicks is replaced by silence;  when no fuzzy, ugly-cute heads crane above the nest edge to look at us;  we will feel the loss.  How fleeting is childhood!  How quickly our young grow up and leave!

This forces us to think of the swiftness of time, and reflect on how we should appreciate each irreplaceable day.  There will never be another one just like it.