Amy C Collins

a visit with a radical american ghost

In a late Spring office cleaning and reorganization task I found the following article from November 2008. It was an assignment for an online travel writing class. The piece was complimented, though not what the instructor was looking for. It's too personal. Not enough travel-savvy enthusiasm, bling, what have you. But I like the piece. I like, not surprisingly, the insular angle. 

I've been back to Colbert Ferry several times since this adventure. I've walked the shoreline in winter and collected fossils and mussel shells and made snapshots of the pristine landscape. The quiet pleasure of those walks is one I look forward to when Summer passes, when the weather is again decent. It's a little off-season for today, but I thought it might inspire an anticipatory joy in the midst of this gorgeous and oppressive June heat.

 

A Drive Down Alabama's Natchez Trace:

and a visit with a radical american ghost

I am alone with the open road, my focus on the curves. In my peripheral, orange-hued woods fall away to open green pastures, then glide back, hugging the two-lane road in a calming undulation. Just outside the Florence city limits in North West Alabama the historic Natchez Trace Parkway winds its way north toward Nashville, Tennessee and west into Mississippi and south to Natchez. A serene, scenic drive provides an opportunity to unwind and escape. The road glides past nature trails, fishing banks and picnic stops, overlooks and historical markers. The rich history of the southeastern United States, its American Indian ancestry, is marked at various points along the trace in proud signs.

 A few miles west of the Shoals, a collective name encompassing four abutting cities: Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals and Tuscumbia, lies an entrance to the Trace in the middle of the short run through Alabama. The Trace covers 444 miles from end to end,  but this corner of Alabama will take only an hour to travel from the Tennessee line to the Mississippi border.  A perfect afternoon getaway.  The smooth, easy drive prohibits commercial traffic and strictly enforces speed limits. I am forced to take time.

The Natchez Trace is thought to have been established by migrating bison and giant sleuths eight thousand years ago. In the last 2,000 years American Indian tribes populated the Trace. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Cherokee hunted bison and wild pig and fished the Tennessee River and its tributaries for bass, crappie, sunfish and mussels. At the turn of the 19th century the U.S. Government gained access to the trail for use in military mobilization and postal service.

Today, the landscape along the Trace remains protected from civilization, a presumed likeness of how the road may have looked to its early travelers. The occasional deer, opossum, fox or turtle crosses the road.

 Sixteen miles from downtown Florence, south on the Trace, the journey crosses the Natchez Trace Bridge, passes over the Tennessee River from Lauderdale Country into Colbert County and drops down by a landmark bank known as Colbert Ferry. Directly below the bridge a  mottling of picnic tables covers a grassy shoreline, a boat launch back to the right rests in an algae covered inlet where Great Blue Heron hang about and the still, glassy surface reflects impressionistic images of the surrounding woodland.  There are few people here on a weekday afternoon and the burnt colors speckling the trees, the damp smell of winter coming, the crisp air makes me shiver and button up my jacket, slip my hands into pockets.

The spot is named for Chief George Colbert, a Chickasaw half-breed with a Scottish father. George had three Chickasaw wives and a strict ethos: no alcohol, no education and no white religion. Chief George and his brother, Levi, were wealthy herdsman. They raised cattle and hogs and even owned slaves. They were dubious men with shady business practices.

The spot is named for Chief George Colbert, a Chickasaw half-breed with a Scottish father. George had three Chickasaw wives and a strict ethos: no alcohol, no education and no white religion. Chief George and his brother, Levi, were wealthy herdsman. They raised cattle and hogs and even owned slaves. They were dubious men with shady business practices.

In 1801 General Benjamin Wilkinson signed the Wilkinson Treaty with Chief George Colbert, who dictated a provision that required the U.S. Government to move the Trace from where it ran inland through the Chickasaw territory to further upstream, closer to what today is Muscle Shoals, where the river is too wide, too deep to easily cross. There, he established a ferry and his brother opened a "stand," a tavern, really, with rooms for rent, hot food and strong whiskey - sold only to the white man. Under the terms of the treaty, George and Levi were the only men permitted to own and operate businesses within the vast Chickasaw territory.

A path off the side road from this landing is marked with an invitation to stroll into the woods to the original spot of Levi's stand, along the Old Trace, to the bluff overlook. The sign highlights the brothers' shrewd business practices. Colbert welcomed Andrew Jackson's army on its way to New Orleans, offered them shelter, copious whiskey and passage across the river. Jackson thanked Colbert for his generous aid. Chief Colbert later sent a $75,000 bill to the War Department, which included the triple-priced whiskey Levi had provided and fifty cents a trip per ferry passenger.

Almost 200 years after the Colbert brothers fattened their wallets, I pace the land and wonder if this place still holds a creative energy, an entrepreneurial spirit, however erroneous it may be. I imagine Jackson's men joking and telling stories, drunk and tired but thankful for the respite, George and Levi looking on, smiling at the fortune they'd  amassed. They might have made good CEOs, solid corporate leaders, or better politicians. I imagine the landing crowded and bustling with weary soldiers, horses and provision wagons.

The quiet around me brings me back to the present. It's just a knoll, a boat ramp, a contemporary recess. There's no business conducted here today but the business of local wildlife and the solitary pursuits of wandering gadabouts.

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pride at the rodeo

I've never given rodeos much thought. It has not been on my list of things to explore, but when I saw the 2nd Annual Shoals Rodeo advertised a couple weeks ago I knew I had to go. 

The rain came, thankfully, abating drought conditions, early Friday morning and fell until two in the afternoon, cleared up, cooled the air and created a perfect evening outdoors. The arena sat a few hundred yards passed the indoor venues for the North Alabama Fair Grounds in Muscle Shoals, across a lush field serving as a parking lot and giving the impression of being in the middle of nowhere. Bleachers hugged both sides of the arena, set from a series of industrial concrete blocks pushed end to end with steel railing inside, wired together, and forming the sport-spectator barrier. The center looked like a well-tilled, rich soil plot ready to plant. Children sat atop the barriers in their cowboy and cowgirl hats and boots waving multi-colored light sabers bought from one of the few venders behind the livestock corrals.  

The first event began just as the sun set and football stadium lights went up. Cowboys burst from the gated blocks on riled horses, bareback and jerking up and down, left to right on the bronc, as these horses are known, physics and gravity dictating the men's sway. I was alarmed. That first cowboy's body lay straight back, as if wind-blown by a peak season hurricane. Reminiscent of breaking mustangs, this event is all about staying on, and when that wild horse threw his cowboy off he ran angry circles around the arena, stomped right up to where I was perched with my camera, just the other side of the fence. Instinctively, I leaned back, but looked him right in the eye, unafraid. Upon further research post-rodeo, I learned the bareback riding event is the most dangerous, with the most injuries, short and long term, than any other rodeo event. "It looks so unnatural," I'd said to Tim. The juxtaposition of man on horse looked awkward and uncomfortable, like a bad idea.

The tie-down roping event made a little more sense to me. Most of these events were born from the old west cowboys on the ranch and I can see a ranch hand going after a sick calf needing veterinary aid and making a game of it, a light competition. In this event the cowboy has to rope the loose calf from his horse. Once he ropes the calf around the neck he jumps down and ties three of the calf's legs together, remounts the horse, which is trained to first stop as soon as the calf has been roped and second to step back just enough to pull the slack from the rope once the calf is hooked. Back on his horse, the cowboy contestant has to wait six seconds to see the calf doesn't kick free from its tie. The cooperation, the team work between man and beast is impressive.

Team roping involves two cowboys and a steer. The lead cowboy, the header, rides in and ropes the steer around the horns or neck and the second cowboy, the heeler, has to rope the steer's back legs together. Only one heeler managed it! On the website prorodeo.com the few rules of each event are highlighted along with some insight into the condition of the animals and riders. Everyone on a horse was lean and fit and smartly dressed in tight jeans, snug button downs, everything tucked, and western boots. The animals, American Quarter horses, were svelte, beautiful creatures, muscled and glistening. The confidence demanded of a rider is immense, and no doubt, second nature to them. But to control a 1,100 pound animal, to strike a balance of trust and authority, cooperation and, I can only imagine, mutual respect, is a feat in itself. Never mind the timing required in rodeo sports. 

Next up were the cowgirls in the breakaway event, where a cowgirl has to rope a running calf. Barrel racing is also a cowgirl event. Maneuvering the horse around three zig-zaged barrels, the cowgirls raced for the fastest time. It seemed the winner of that event was the smallest girl on the largest horse. Watching them race back to the finish was simply a beautiful sight. 

At intermission the joke cracking clown, who entertained the crowd between events, called all children under 10 to chase a calf. I missed what they called this game, but watching fifty little kids run around a near muddy field after a young cow was hilarious. Poor little cow. I wonder if it was afraid? 

Finally it was time for the bull riding competition. This is one of the worst ideas man has ever devised for fun. Imagine a bunch of ranch hands out on the plains, a quiet day, no calves to harness, and someone's got something to prove. "Betcha cain't ride that there bull," he says with a spit of tobacka. Though I have to say, those boys sort of looked like they knew what they were doing. Of course, no one knows what a 2,000 pound (plus) bull will do on any given night. To be sure and agitate the brute, they tie a rope around it's hind quarters, pull it snug against the groin, then let the beast go. Every buck causes the rider, permitted only a single hand to hold on with, to jab the beast with spurs. To quote the aforementioned official rodeo website, 

"Every bull is unique in its bucking habits. A bull may dart to the left, then to the right, then rear back. Some spin or continuously circle in one spot in the arena. Others add jumps or kicks to their spins, while others might jump and kick in a straight line or move side to side while bucking." 

You gotta be f---ing kidding me. Why would anyone want to try that? What would they have to prove?

And I think that's the thing. Aside from the timed, direct-from-the-ranch skilled events, contestants have to be young, with the naive courage native to youth, and a whole lot to prove, to climb on the back of a bucking bull. 

Earlier in the evening I was taking shots of the livestock milling around their small pens and I caught a glimpse and a piece of conversation of one of the bull riding contestants - a girl. I say girl, a woman maybe nineteen or twenty, with an attitude that swept fifteen feet ahead of her and a swagger to push it along. I heard a woman about forty tell her, "You. Are. Crazy." I saw the mean look in that woman's eye, too, and I didn't take it for a last minute attempt to talk sense into someone she cared about. It felt defeatist to me. They say strong mental attitude is key in bull riding, something akin to no fear, I'd guess. 

And then we watched that girl, first one out of the bullpen, lose her grip before the savage bovine could fully step out into the arena. She curled up. Where the following bull riders - all men - got to their feet and stepped out of the way quicker than a blink, she seemed to cringe on the ground, pretend it wasn't happening. The bull kicked her, stepped very nearly on her, though it was so quick it's hard to be sure. With help, she got up and over the fence, laid down on the ground just outside the arena. There'd been two ambulances ready to go all night, but they didn't take her away. I'm guessing nothing broken but her mammoth pride. She'll have a bruise for days. 

The image of that girl's beating stands out in the rodeo memories. I know what it's like to have something to prove. I know how it feels to want to be praised for successful feats. I'm familiar with the yearn to be in the boys club. At 35 I've assuaged that gnawing desire down to something manageable and sane. I hope that girl finds what she needs before she kills herself. 

And if you finds yourself with an opportunity to go to the rodeo, take it. It's a sight!

 

 

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i'm holding the gun now

        I've been shooting at squirrels. With my Crossman Pumpmaster 760 I take aim from the deck, pop copper BBs into the backyard, hoping to dissuade the bushy tailed rodents from devouring my precious birdseed. But no longer can I sneak up and surprise them. The sound of the door creaking open sends them in ten directions. They aren’t so easy to hit, you know, even when they cooperate, go stiff, upright, and bare their white chests, as if I would believe they were statues.

        Dead squirrels, the promise of, do not bother me. Rats with bushy tails and cheeks packed with nuts not garbage, they steal from me. The gold finches and tufted tit mice and warblers and sap suckers, wrens and chickadees have disappeared, the beauty flushed out by squirrelly thieves. Even the hot peppered songbird mix does not deter them. My expensive birdseed is lost to rustlers. They dig up flowers, unearth roots. They chew the house, lick the window screens while hanging from their toes, gnaw the siding, slip into the attic and wake me in the middle of the night. They outnumber me by hundreds. I wouldn’t mind a dead one or two.

        It’s almost Summer and birds are not looking to feeders anyway. They’ve plenty to rummage elsewhere. It may be time to put the whole drama to rest. But I want a trophy. I want someone’s head for this! I want to hunt from my second story office window, slide the pane up when my prey shows his nibbling face, rest the Crossman’s barrel on the ledge, and POP. I want to watch the body dangle then drop. I’m the renegade hero. That rodent, the soulless outlaw.

         My father used to sit in the kitchen window and shoot squirrels out of his Florida pecan trees. The dogs, when they were around, had to be wrestled away from the fresh kill. Dad had a vengeance for squirrels, though he was well aware of how little the dent he made in a swarming population. Mother once caught him taking aim from the front door at a nut-eater perched on the telephone wire across the street. You can’t do that, Harry, she said. This is a residential neighborhood! Dad didn’t care. He was a good shot. He had checked first to see that no one was around.

        Harry was quite the hunter. Duck, geese, turkey, deer, quail, Argentine dove, African game all fell in his area of interest. We children were practically weaned on venison, and it took me years to understand how my friends could be astounded, even offended, by the water buffalo heads on our walls and the stuffed lion behind the sofa. It was perfectly normal to us. As was the gunroom, a former bedroom turned armory, and always locked, though the key hung from its hole most all the time. Trophies and guns were part of life. They were always present.

        Dad taught me how to aim and shoot, both air rifle and bow (he was into bow hunting for a while). But I never went hunting with him. Maybe the age difference was too great. Maybe he favored the company of my grown brothers. Maybe he was disinterested in toting me along. Maybe I was disinterested in going. But a curiosity remains and I wonder if I've missed out on some basic human experience, some connection to nature, some active link in the food chain.

        He’s too old to take me hunting now. And I’m not a very good shot. Nor do I know the first thing about guns. So I went to a gun show in Muscle Shoals the other weekend, to see what I could learn.

        I was, naively, surprised to see so many women, so many young couples with infants and small children. I was surprised at their regular Joe appearance. I was surprised at how warm and open the venders were. Walking along down the aisles, perusing the goods laid out to touch and admire, I was struck by the camaraderie of gun enthusiasts. Then I made a friend. 

        Mr. Glenn Beck (yes, that is really his name and yes, he claims as many and more opinions!) took the time to explain a few basics to me. As he took me through the essential elements of caliber and ammunition cost, mechanics and favor of various hand pieces, I began to see the appeal of collecting; I could appreciate the artistry of a firearm. Self-defense was his prevailing concern, a retired law enforcement officer after all, and so we discussed handguns more than rifles. He demonstrated loading the barrel on a revolver, showed me a quick six-shot loader, like John Wayne used, and passed the piece over to me. I thought, I'm holding the gun now, and while it felt a bit awkward, I was not exactly uncomfortable with a Taurus .38 revolver in my hand. I like the idea of target practice. I don’t know why, it just sounds like something I’d like to try; to feel the power of a 21-ounce, 6 ½ inch machine. 

        I fear the power, too. I am uneasy with the inherent paranoia underlying a psyche that needs to be protected at all times. I suppose once you’ve seen the danger, you might come to expect the threat. How easily the predator feels the prey, human kind infringing upon the natural environment, then one another. But I am not a fan of violence. I do not want to be a witness. I do not want to be a deliverer.

        Still, I am fascinated with our country’s love affair with firearms, our history of rebels and renegades who relied on arms within easy reach. And I wonder how few gun related deaths we might have if the laws were drastically changed. On the other hand, I am deeply interested in the hunting culture, a source of muscle protein more pure, more safe, than any found in the supermarket. But I feel, above all, I suppose, a pathway to some, however shallow, connection with my father. He always had both the paranoia and a love for nature; a handgun under the driver seat and wild game on the table. 

 

 My father in Africa.

 

natural selection/selecting naturally

            The garden is at perfection. Blooms abound, summer vegetables are beginning to come in, 

 spring cultivars are still hanging on, everything managed and healthy. It's beautiful and I'm proud. Of course there is always something more to do – always weeding, a little more mulch here, a wish for plants to hurry up and fill in there…which begs the question, how large is my role in nature? To wish a plant to grow unnaturally only to suit some idea of beauty doesn’t make sense, even on a playful level. It feels something like fast food and overnight shipping, like overindulgence of instant gratification.

            Now this is a garden we’re talking about, cultivated and designed for beauty and joy, both visual and edible, and so my responsibility to this place is to take care of it, protect it, encourage it to grow. Intervention is inevitable and necessary. It means warding off pests – organically of course. It’s easy to pick off aphid-infested leaves and discard them or squash the errant aphid between my fingers. Big deal. But what about the larger issues? What of ethics outside saving my family's sustenance?

            One evening last week I discovered three or four Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars on one of my parsley plants. I’m happy to let them have it. Those beautiful creatures will become beautiful butterflies that flitter about my garden, adding magic to majesty. And I know from last year the parsley, though they will eat it to the ground, will come back. And if it doesn’t, I have another on the other side of the garden. Parsley aside, not all the caterpillars will live to become butterflies.

            The next morning I discovered a small insect, the size of a ladybug, sucking on one of the swallowtail caterpillars. It had injected a proboscis into the caterpillar and was slowly sucking it to death. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, chapter one, Annie Dillard talks about happening upon a giant water bug sucking the life from a frog by injecting a poison, which dissolves bones, tissue and organs into a liquid, a soup, then taken through the proboscis. She was breathless after, and the reader feels this. So when I found something similar in my own garden, I was elated. Caterpillars are boneless, but the gross act carries the same weight, does it not?

            I monitored the incident over the course of four or five hours, finally returning after lunch to find black ants taking their turn at the puncture wound, and the venomous insect, doubled and round on caterpillar juice, marching up and down the de-leaved parsley stalk. The deflated caterpillar hung limply from a crook in the plant, a brown goo forming at it’s head. I can’t have this in my garden, I thought. I had resisted interfering up to that point. I was upset to see such beauty die before me, that green and yellow and black striped gentle creature – they hardly ever move, to see one actually munch a bite of parsley is excitement enough to call it a day! The offending insect wasn’t ugly either, but red and striped and shiny and quite the show-off. Still, I felt dead bodies in the garden, insect, caterpillar, plant, or otherwise, is not how I want to run my charge. So I clipped the bare stalk, caterpillar skin, proud, fat insect, black ants and all, and threw them into the woods. 

            The next morning Mom discovered a Yellow-bellied turtle in the driveway, the shell slimy and green. I offered it a piece of lettuce I’d just harvested. Was that wrong? Am I sending the wrong message to nature and myself by inviting the turtle to breakfast? She'd lived long enough to reach nearly a foot in length, isn’t she capable of taking care of herself? If she isn’t, is it up to me to take over, or better I remain a watchful species from another world?

            What’s my role?

            I shared the saga of the caterpillar and sucking insect with Tim. He’s for leaving nature alone. He recounted a story I’d heard before. Living in Augusta, Georgia, years ago, just before supper, an American Kestrel hawk had wrestled down a Red-bellied woodpecker. Ten feet away the woodpecker gave Tim a grave glance, get this bastard off me, he seemed to plead. But the hawk’s talons were already in the bird’s breast, too late for salvation. Tim could have scared the hawk off, but to what end? A natural one, as it turns out.

            Then he told me another story, one I hadn’t heard before. When he was fourteen he was out on the river with his father when they spotted a possum, bottom half in the water. They went ashore to investigate. Tim’s father, Ned, who was “fearless in nature”, picked up the possum. These are vicious creatures with long nails and sharp teeth. They’ll tear the belly out of a dog.  But the possum didn’t fight. She was giving birth in the water, drowning her newborns.

            "It was impressive and awesome and puzzling,” Tim said. "What was that all about?" He wondered for years, the image burned into his memory. "She knew conditions weren't right to raise kids." (What a thing for a boy to see!) His father put the possum back, said, she’s going to do what she’s going to do.

            I have a hard time leaving well enough alone. It’s one thing to keep the garden clean – and I’m still arguing for that. It’s another to collect specimens against their will. Last summer I captured an imperial moth, a gorgeous creature I had never seen up close. I wanted to study her, so I put her in a large plastic jar and waited for her to die. It appeared she was already on her way. But I was mistaken. She was preparing to lay eggs and did so inside her prison. Two, maybe three dozen translucent orange eggs were abandoned on the plastic bottom while their mother beat herself to death against the transparent sides. I feel guilt, still. My selfish curiosity manipulated an unnatural end to an entire generation of imperial moths. I should be tried for mothocide. 

            I’m like a kid, fascinated and curious, only I have the conscience of an adult. Did I not get my fill of capturing creatures when I was young? Did all those memories hit the third rail somewhere under Manhattan, explode and disintegrate while I was busy being an adult? I want to get closer. I want to watch it all happen. But there remains the question. What is my role?

            It’s a fine line between keeping a garden kempt and healthy and sitting back, an observer. I have in my possession a recently deceased Luna moth, in tact, with most of her coloring. She was dying (or preparing to lay eggs) on the front porch when I came home the other evening. I tethered Maggie, the Scottish Terrier, close – that crazy dog will eat anything, except mushrooms. I only lifted the moth into a nearby plant pot so she would be out of Maggie’s sight and reach. The moth expired there and now she’s in my collection of creatures and natural finds. I want to put my will into live and let live. That’s my argument for keeping the controversial garden after all. Perhaps it’s time I practice what I preach. And as it turns out, that caterpillar sucking insect was a Spined Soldier Bug nymph, (which explains the marching). It’s a beneficial insect. It feeds on plant-eating garden pests. A rule of thumb, insect-eating insects do not grow up the be vegetarians. They grow up to eat insects. They help keep balance.

              But I'd done it again; I'd put the cart before the horse. I should have researched before acting. And still I can't leave it alone. Just this morning I fed someone’s larvae to a pair of nesting Eastern Bluebirds!

               I discovered the worms munching on a bed of lettuce and there was nothing I could do but pick as much lettuce as possible, too late in the season to spray. In a week that lettuce will bolt and bitter anyway. I dropped a fat worm on the little porch of the occupied birdhouse that overlooks my garden and turned my back for a few minutes. When I looked again someone peered out from the house. "Hello," I said, startling her. She flew out in a rush, my wormy offering hanging from her beak.

               I searched out two more worms and deposited them on the birdhouse porch. The birds came back before I had reached the front door of the house, and as I turned to look, the female had swooped in, grabbed the worm, and disappeared inside the birdhouse. Papa bird sat on the roof, guarding his mate’s welfare. I tried directing them to the source, invited them to help themselves, but it seems our communication is limited.

              I'm living dangerously. I risk losing the bluebirds. I may be jeopardizing the nest. No, I'll stand back. I won't peer in at the eggs. And I will wait for the gift of expired specimens to come to me. I will not meddle for curiosity's sake.

              But nature is not black and white, and with what I know of garden pests, with what I’ve seen, I refuse to surrender my labor's fruits to the Japanese beetles and tomato hornworms when they eventually descend. I am predator, and that’s war at first sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we have a winner!

 

 

Congratulations to Emily Godwin of Iuka, Mississippi!!!

 

Emily is a friend and fellow artist whose beautiful images and thoughtful prose can be found on her blog, Amelie Photographie.

 

Thank you to Dr. Sharon Griffitts for blindly drawing the winner's name. And thank you to all who entered. Your readership means everything and I appreciate your continued support and enthusiasm. 

 

 

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