Deb opened the door of the RV and poked her head out. I was standing in the driveway, hands in pockets, quietly surveying the damp and darkening woods late yesterday afternoon. I guess I’d been gone longer than she expected.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was just imagining what it’d be like to live in a place like this.”
That’s the attitude I carry, continuing to fall short of believing that in the middle of my seventh decade, I’ve finally come Home.
Newness. Discovery. Wonder. Gratitude.
Wanderlust, a constant companion as far back as I can remember, appears to have left me. I have no wish to roam, save exploring these 20 acres and the magnificent region surrounding them.
I’ve found what I sought my whole life.
Wanna get together? You know where to find me.
It looks like Nature got most of the wet stuff out of its system yesterday. Over three inches fell on The Mountain, according to our rain gauge, in less than 24 hours. Parched earth now is soggy, the dust well and truly settled.
In advance of changing leaves — hardwoods here haven’t yet made a real effort to turn — we’re treated to splashes of color closer to the ground. A patch of rose vervain blooms among the rocks near the cabin. Also in fall flower are wild potato vine, morning glory, oxblood lily, pokeweed and bushclover.
Persimmon trees clustered along the road down below are laden with fruit. Acorns and hickory nuts are dropping, drawing more whitetails back up our way.
There’s one more critter worth mentioning, right about now reaching the end of its annual migration and mating cycle — the tarantula. Yes, we have big, hairy spiders here, the farthest east they can be found in the Americas.
In our back yard this afternoon, Deb spotted what’s known as a “tarantula hawk” (pictured), actually a type of wasp that hunts these spiders. They’re not aggressive toward humans unless provoked, but their sting has been described as more painful than any other — “like someone dropped a hair dryer in your bubble bath.”
Where there’s a tarantula hawk (this one was about the size of my pinky finger, and they get bigger than that), there’s likely to be tarantulas. And sure enough, soon thereafter we found a large female of the species skittering up and across the rock wall behind our cabin.
I took a few pictures. I won’t include them in this post, knowing that there are at least two serious arachnophobes among my readers. (I’m married to one of them.) If you really, really want to see what we saw, click here.
Snakes seem to be more active this time of year, too. On the homesite within the last week we’ve come across black snakes, garter snakes and a copperhead.
We were planted in Ozarkansas all of last October and half the month the previous year, and we watched autumn paint the landscape. We’d visit The Mountain as often as we could, but we had to be satisfied with only brief and occasional glimpses of fall in this remarkable place.
Now we live here. We see it all. It’s rewarding in so many ways we hadn’t anticipated.
Before I close, I want to come back to yesterday’s FEMA EAS “test” and the way that Deb and I handled it. See, we used it as a “test,” too — we were able to place our electronic devices beyond the reach of whatever means the State used to issue this particular alert.
We demonstrated to ourselves (again) that our Mission Darkness Faraday bags worked exactly as designed. It didn’t matter if our devices were on or off.
A number of our friends did the same sort of thing. I’m encouraged by that.
Because Deb and I were in a public place (a busy laundromat) at the time, we also were able to use the exercise to observe the behavior of others. Some folks clearly expected their phones to begin shrieking at 1:20pm. I’d estimate that half weren’t surprised, while the rest weren’t quite sure what was up. That in itself is useful data.
We don’t presume, of course, that we can completely elude unconstitutional government surveillance. It’d be foolish to believe we could. Equally absurd would be living detached from sources of valuable information — and yes, dear heart, that includes real alerts from the State. The trick, it seems to me, is to differentiate between bouillabaisse and bullshit. In other words, we need to separate facts from propaganda and act independently.
Deb and I don’t bury our heads in the sand. Just so you know.
There are times, though, when we want to slip into darkness for a while. Yesterday we confirmed that a couple of tools we’ll use to do that are up to the job.
Simple as that.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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