Author Archives: Tim Gels

Crossed arms.  Lots of crossed arms.

Crossed arms and quiet.  Uncertainty.  Maybe a bit of fear, and maybe a bit of boredom: It was hard to tell.

Behind me, Wade Mountain and its deciduous forest stood some 700 feet above us.  In front of me stood some 50 feet, each pair belonging to about 20 Girl Scouts and a handful of their leaders.  

And they were quiet, with arms crossed and anxious energy on their faces.  Really quiet.

“Okay,” I started.  I always start my sentences with “okay” when I’m nervous, which I was, but for a reason entirely different from that of my young charges.

“Okay, who’s never been in the woods before? I mean, this is your first time up a trail like this,” I asked, gesturing to the path leading in through the trees.  Five or six hands raised slowly, half of them belonging to adults.  A murmur spread through the group, but it was too low for me to understand, so I went on.

“Okay, thanks. Okay, now, how many of you have been in the woods a lot?  Like, you’d be comfortable going alone,” I asked.  I was happy to see three or four hands shoot up, most of them belonging to the middle-school-aged girls.  That was encouraging.

As the hands went down, the group settled back down into silence.  And crossed arms.  Then again, that hadn’t really stopped.

It was just after 2:30 in the afternoon, and I had an hour and a half to introduce this troop to hiking and then lead them on a short trip into the preserve.  The trail we were to hike was relatively flat and easy, since I knew this was a beginner group.

I gave some information on the area and then began to go over some basic trail safety when a hand that was dying to go up couldn’t hold itself down any longer.

“Are there snakes?  Are we going to see any snakes?”

Normally, I answer that question with, “If we’re lucky,” but that clearly wasn’t the correct answer for today.

“Almost certainly not,” I replied.  Pointing to the parking lot behind them, I continued with, “Do you see all of those cars?  With that many people on the trail, any animal we might see is definitely hiding.”

She continued, her anxiety spilling out.  “What about other wildlife?  What lives up there?” 

“Well, there are some deer, raccoons, ‘possums, squirrels, and chipmunks.  Maybe some snakes and a few lizards, but, again, the chances of us seeing anything are pretty slim.”  The “snakes and a few lizards” part of my list came out quieter than the furry part of the list.  That seemed to work.

I’d talked enough, and it was time to go.  I turned to head up the trail, and with just the slightest bit of trepidation that comes with responsibility, the troop leader followed me into the open forest, her group trailing behind.  

North Alabama is beautiful in early November.  The trees still held enough leaves to give the woods a golden hue, and the trail was clear and wide.  The hike itself was wonderful, and confidence levels grew as the hour passed.  

Somewhere around the turnaround point, one of the older girls near the front decided that “Step up!” was the appropriate thing to say as every rock and root was traversed, which was often.  Her natural leadership ability was starting to come to the surface, so I rolled with her enthusiasm despite my love of the quiet woods.

As we rounded the final curve in the trail and the light reflecting off cars became visible, the words that I knew were coming rang out.

“We survived!  We survived!  We survived Wade Mountain!”

Yes, you did, and hopefully you’ll all give yourselves the chance to do it again sometime soon.

Crouching beside my granddaughter who was sitting on the trail, my wife looked up at me.

“Tim, do you have a handkerchief?”

I didn’t say anything as I reached up to release my daypack’s sternum buckle, allowing the bag to slip easily from my shoulders.  I moved it to lean against the front of my body and reached into the pocket where I knew I had stashed a clean bandana before our hike.

I didn’t say anything because this was a crucial moment.  My granddaughter, who had seconds ago crashed and burned while skipping down a north Alabama trail, was looking down at the scrapes on her knees that were starting to ooze blood.  Leaving her knees, her gaze then went to her hands which were also battered from the fall.  My wife and I waited, not wanting to encourage an outburst by revealing our concerns.  Were there going to be tears?

Nope.  Not that day.

My wife distracted our granddaughter by dramatically pouring a bit of water into the cupped handkerchief and then wringing it out before starting to clean the first knee.

“Ooh, you’ve got blood on that one.  That’s one knee.  Give me five!” she said, looking expectantly into the damp eyes of the six-year-old.  On something akin to autopilot, she raised her hand to slap the one offered by Lisa.

“Ooh, look, you’ve got blood on your other knee.  That’s two!  Give me ten!”  Again, their hands came together, this time twice.

“And your hand,” my wife said, wiping a smear of blood and dirt from one of the little palms. “You’ve got blood in three places!  Give me 15!”  Three hand claps this time, with a smile starting to form beneath the teary eyes.

“And your other hand, too!  Four places!  Give me twenty!”

I waited for them to slap their hands together four times before I offered more information.

“Umm, your left elbow, too.  There’s a bit of a mess there,” I said quietly.  They both looked down in unison.

“Wait,” my wife said, wiping the mud away.  “There’s no blood there, just mud.  That doesn’t count.”

By now the tears that almost rolled down her cheeks were starting to subside, and the kiddo wiped them from her eyes before taking the back of her hand to her nose for good measure.

A bit more time was taken to examine the wounds, then they both returned to their feet.

Our granddaughter had already turned back to the trail, not wanting to lose position with her sister. 

“Be careful,” my wife and I said together, but our admonition fell on ears that were already moving away at a faster pace than was wise for the rocky trail.

With my eyes rolling, I tucked the handkerchief back into my pocket and we were on our way, just hoping to keep up.

Have you ever tried teaching musical chord theory to a six-year-old?

Me either.  

Wow, that would be crazy.  I can’t even imagine.  I suppose there are people who can do it–and six-year-olds who can learn it–but they’re not in my immediate family.

If I’m being honest, my own grasp of music theory isn’t that great, but that doesn’t mean I can’t play what have been called the “three magic chords” on a few different instruments.  In case you don’t know, and you’re not six years old, the “three magic chords” in any key are the 1st, the 4th, and the fifth; in the key of C, that would be C, F, and G.  If that doesn’t make sense, please just trust me for now.  Many, many songs are based on those three chords alone; if you want me to I can make up a percentage, but for now I’ll leave it at, “it’s a lot.”

So, back to the six-year-old.  It’s my youngest granddaughter (my regular readers nod their heads and whisper, “Of course it is”), who’s been showing an interest in music for a few years now.  Until now, my encouragement has been limited to modeling (read: playing) and making instruments available.  Making them available, that is, with close supervision for everything except the dulcimer since it’s darn near indestructible.

When it comes to actually teaching, though, one of the obstacles young people face when learning a stringed instrument is, well, the strings.  Typically steel with a diameter measured in thousands of an inch, they’re tensioned to a degree that means simply pushing them to the fingerboard is anything but simple when your hand is small.  Adults know the pain as well when they first start playing–it’s hard.

The aforementioned dulcimer is nice to play because of its low string action, but it’s not a “guitar,” and it doesn’t have the same appeal as the instrument grandpa plays.  

Enter the ukulele.

The ukulele has enjoyed a surge of popularity in the last decade or so, but until now I’ve largely let it go by.  My, ahem, older readers might get the reference when I say that my being well over six feet tall and the fact that I go by, “Tim,” has had something to do with my hesitation toward the instrument.  Maybe I just wanted to avoid the latest fad, I don’t know.  Regardless, I haven’t had an interest until my youngest kin expressed a desire to play an instrument like the one I do.

Though the ukulele isn’t indestructible, it is relatively inexpensive, so two of them now have a home in my living room, readily available to the youngest musicians in my life as well as to me.  They’re fun to play, and they’ve got me thinking about polishing up my falsetto. We’ll see.

My family and I got home from the Gulf Coast just the other day, and it’s wonderful to be back.  My wife, Lisa, and I have, as long as I can remember, held the belief that the best part of going away is coming back home.  

Lisa’s an organizer.  I’m not going to say she enjoys the planning and packing, per se, but she’s good at it and I think she finds satisfaction in it.  There’s something to be said for unpacking once we’re back home, though.  We try to do it quickly so we can settle back into our home routine without bags and boxes sitting around for days.

The drive down (it’s usually “down,” as in south to the coast from our home in north Alabama) is an organized affair, with everything in its place and an overall sense of organization.  The drive back up, by necessity, has a degree of organization as well–just to get everything back into the car–but it’s not quite the same as that initial trip.

Settling into our destination is a lot of fun.  Those first few days are exciting, and we do our best to relax and enjoy the time with family.  We love being on the coast even more than being on the beach, and each day there is a pleasure.  That said, there comes a time when we each start to think about being back home, and we begin to look forward to it.

And here we are, back home.  Our youngest granddaughter has already asked if we could make a countdown chain for next year.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that, but it won’t be long.

I didn’t know the man, but, then again, we all did.  If not him, then another.

These words, written in the first week of October, 2020, are in response to the recent loss of Eddie Van Halen, but they could have been written anytime since the advent of the public figure.  

The public figure: We don’t know them, but we do.  They’re who a small part (or a larger part) of us wants to be.  During the moments they’re at the forefront of our awareness, they’re what living vicariously is all about.  In the case of Van Halen, he’s the reason we even have air guitar and the imagining that comes with it.  Turn it up, please!

I’m reminded of the words of Bruce Springsteen during his recent recorded performance on Broadway.  Describing his legendary (there’s that idea again) saxophonist, he said, “nobody captured my audience’s imaginations or their hearts like Clarence.” 

That’s what they do, those musicians, those actors, those poets and performers.  For that, I’m thankful.

Hosford, Florida, has a Dollar General store.  

That’s not unusual, I suppose, since anymore most every little town in the United States has one or more.  This one, though–the one in Hosford–brought a smile to my face like no other Dollar General has ever done.

We weren’t planning to stop in Hosford on our way to the Gulf Coast, but according to the ‘net, it was our last chance to pick up the gallon of milk needed to replace the one that didn’t fit in our cooler as we packed it that morning.  So, Hosford it was.

As is my habit when I can, I opted to sit in the car with the grandkids while their mother, along with my wife, went into the store.  The kids were chattering in the back of the van, and I was enjoying the sound and just hanging out some eight feet in front of their carseats.

I’d examined the wall ahead of me already, and found it to be wholly unremarkable.  From where I sat, I could see the ice cooler wasn’t locked, but that probably wasn’t unusual in a town this size.  Beyond the cooler, though, the store didn’t offer a lot to look at.  My eyes wandered to the vacant lot beside the store, and from there to the vacant lot just behind that one.

And then I smiled.  Big.

The lot closest to me had been mowed sometime in the last few months, but the one further away had trees and shrubs within their first few years of life, nothing more than 10 feet tall.

My smile didn’t come immediately, because it took my brain a few seconds to process what I was seeing.  Pines, again, not more than 10 feet high.  But they were dense, the individual trees were.  Each tree had three or four branches reaching skyward, and they were thick with lush green needles.  Lush, long, green needles.  Long, green needles.

Longleaf pine needles.  The reason for my smile.

I’d lived in Alabama for a few years before I became aware of the longleaf pine and its history.  The tree, native to the southeastern coasts of the United States, both the Atlantic and the Gulf, was once abundantly spread through the region.  Found up to a few hundred miles inland, spread from Virginia to Texas, the longleaf ecosystem was primary in the coastal areas of the region, until it wasn’t.  

Since the earliest days of European colonization of the continent, the longleaf pine was logged for its lumber as well as tar, pitch, and turpentine.  The long, straight trees were first prized for their nautical uses: masts and the pitch used to make hulls watertight as well as others.

Originally covering nearly 100 million acres, the natural resource was  considered inexhaustible, again, until it wasn’t.  Now, less than one one-hundredth of a percent of the original range can be considered old growth, and just around one percent of the original range has stands of the trees at all, with much of that planted and managed.

But not that vacant lot near the Dollar General in Hosford, Florida.  Seeds for those trees arrived without a plan other than nature’s.  Those trees, growing in a gravel lot, will probably never see maturity, but their presence is still enough to warrant a smile.

—

Check it out!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dollar+General/@30.3900222,-84.7991246,94m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88ecb7bae40f9065:0xf762bb7be20ecc01!8m2!3d30.3900222!4d-84.798851

I sat down to write this, and–after just a few moments–I stopped.

I had to wash my hands.  Again.

—-

A few months ago, I was watching a Billy Collins video when I heard him say one of the truest things I’ve ever heard about writing: “There’s a lot of staring involved.”  When I write, I stare.  A lot. 

In addition to staring, for better or worse, I’m a beard stroker.  The fact that I don’t really have a beard right now (I shaved it three days ago and started growing it back moments after doing so) is beside the point, but I guess it’s more accurate to say I’m a chin stroker.  My own chin, for the record.

Anyway, that’s why I had to wash my hands.  Not because my chin was dirty, but because my hands apparently were.  Still dirty.  They smelled like rats, despite having recently been washed.  You can trust me: whenever I do anything to make my hands smell like rats, I wash them.  

A lot of people don’t know this, but recently thawed rats have a distinct smell, unlike, say, mice or quail.  I handle those a lot, and when I do, my hands rarely hold a smell after I’ve washed them.  “Hold a smell,” as in, “retain it.”  I don’t know if there’s another way for hands to hold a smell, but it’s best to be clear.

Anyway, I washed my hands again, and now I’m ready to write.  Before I sat down, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about—that’s what led to the staring and chin stroking—but I soon found a topic right there at my fingertips.  Literally.

—-

Oh.  Before I sat down to write—even before I washed my hands—I had just gotten home from feeding one of the birds I care for, an American kestrel.  They eat juvenile rats, which, I’m here to tell you, have a odor all their own.