Author: Tim Gels

In many ways, probably too many to count, I’m a conservative person.  Okay, given the times, I suppose I should clarify that I’m not politically conservative, at least not as much as I once was.  Depending on the day and the situation, I’m a right- or left-leaning moderate.  Mostly left, lately.  You know, this slice of life has absolutely nothing to do with politics, yet there it is: I felt the need to clarify my usage of a word.  These are strange days we’re living in, and I’m not sure I like all aspects of them.

So, back to me being a conservative person.  Let’s go with the “slow to change/cautious about change” meaning of the word.

Recently, I built some stairs coming off of our side porch leading down into the back yard.  There’s nothing particularly special about the stairs, other than the amount of planning time that went into them. By some estimates, some six or seven years went into the process.

Anyway, the steps are done.  It’s been a few weeks, so they’re almost ready to paint (pressure treated lumber needs time to thoroughly dry).  

Normally, I’d be looking at a white paint.  Not “white,” but one of the “off whites” that one typically sees on a set of steps.  In lieu of white, I might just leave them natural.  I like natural wood, and “natural” is what one goes with when what they really want is an “I didn’t have to paint” color.

Anyway, let’s back up a few weeks.  I’d just finished the steps, but knew I didn’t have to worry about painting them for a while.  The treatment in the  lumber wasn’t dry, and even if it was, I live in Alabama.  You don’t paint outside during an Alabama summer unless you want to wait until an Alabama fall for it to no longer be sticky.

I was out and about that day, and found myself walking into a local business that had a small picket fence around some mechanical thingy just outside the door. 

The fence was blue.

It wasn’t a dark blue, nor was it a robin’s egg or sky blue.  I don’t know what the painter called it, but it was a shade typically seen in a “beach” palette of colors. 

Not a coral, not a turquoise, and definitely–most definitely–not me. No, it wasn’t.

But that color stuck with me.  

And it stuck with me, over the weeks since I built those steps.

That color is not me, or is it?  The rest of the woodwork on my house: White.  Other projects I’ve built: Subdued Earth tones, including (of course) “natural.”

Yet, that color stuck with me.

At the local big box home center, it’s called “Cool Rain.”  I’m not sure I can believe it, but I’ve got a quart.  I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Sometimes, poetry happens right in front of us.  The challenge then is to figure out the words to put down on paper!

This past Saturday morning was one of those times that cause cliches to almost sprout from the ground around you.  The rising sun, its brilliance seemingly driving shadows away, was over my shoulder as I walked toward the back of my yard.  The blue sky above was cloudless, and a color that brought sapphires to mind.  The bright sun didn’t cause it to wash out as it sometimes does–it was simply gorgeous.  The temperature hadn’t started to climb on that August morning in north Alabama, and a breeze made the air feel even more delicious.  The day was beautiful in the truest sense of the word.

As I approached the garden planted and tended by my wife, the deep green of squash and cucumber leaves provided a backdrop to the stalks of the sunflowers that rose well above my head, nearly double my height.  I anticipated looking up at the blooms, knowing from the previous day that they were at the height of their visual appeal.

Bringing my gaze up, I was startled to see unexpected movement.  There was a goldfinch, clutching the face of one of the flowers.  The bird wasn’t simply standing there, rather, it was laboring to pry seeds from the head, oblivious to me in its efforts.  The yellow of the finch’s wings fluttered to aid with the effort, and that in turn seemed to animate the sunflower, the hues nearly matching.  The few seconds I was able to watch before being spotted seemed to last much longer than they really did, and eventually my presence was known and the bird disappeared in a streak of gold against the sky and then the leaves of the nearby tree line.

That was poetry.  My words simply try to keep up.

—

A solitary goldfinch
Some ten feet off the ground
Working hard on a sunflower head

Against the blue Alabama sky
Hue overload

---

In her writing this past Friday, Molly Hogan of Nix the comfort zone published a blog post (Gratitude and #poeticdiversion) in which she presented some poems she’d posted to Twitter with the hashtag #poeticdiversion. Following her lead, I also posted and tagged this poem. You should probably post one, too.

So, I think I’ve got to learn how to play Pokémon.  I’ve still got a few years, but eventually I’ll have to learn.

My granddaughter, who just turned seven a few months ago, was over yesterday for school.  For better or worse, her grandfather is an elementary grade teacher who really needs someone to teach, and she’s convenient. Well, and there’s the pandemic. I suppose that’s relevant.

Anyway, we sat down at the kitchen table like we always do, but today she puts a small box on the table and announces that we’re going to play a game of Pokémon.  

I looked over at the pile of stuff I had ready for reading, then looked at the  expectant face sitting across from me.  Time was tight, though, and there wasn’t enough of it for a game.  So, I said we’d play if that’s what she wanted to do.  I think I mentioned I’m a grandfather. 

Really, there was a little bit of time for a game, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over 15 years of teaching it’s that you’ve got to bend a little every once in a while.  Especially if, well, it’s your granddaughter.

Now, here’s the thing.  I’ve been around kids and Pokémon cards for a long time, and I’m not sure I’ve ever known one (a kid, not a card) who actually knows how to play the game.  Heck, I’m not even sure if it is a game–for all I know, it could just be an example of incredible marketing.  I’m sure that thousands of those cards have sat safely on my desk at school before being taken home at the end of the day, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen the game played.

It certainly wasn’t today, at least not the way the game designers intended.  My granddaughter told me we were going to play the way her dad taught her to play, but it turns out she couldn’t remember how that worked.  It was a tricky spot for me to be in: If we just called it off, I could go ahead and scrap my reading lesson as well because, to put it mildly, the mood would be broken.  If I let her decide, without any help, how the game was to be played, the reading lesson would have been called on account of darkness.

In keeping with the spirit of things, I played the “this is how the kids in my class play the game” trick, and it worked!  We basically played “War” using the point values on the card, and she couldn’t have been happier that I won.  Well, she actually won the Pokémon game, but I got to teach my lesson with a happy student.  I’ll put that win in my column any day of the week!

Just two weeks ago, which seems like forever when you’re on quarantine time, I wrote about memories of an environmental education conference I attended several years ago.  The story I wrote was mostly about bird calls, woodpecker drumming, and a bunch of environmental wackos, many of whom make me happy to now call friends.  Those memories make me smile, and probably always will.

That story started, though, by me recognizing the bark of a persimmon tree on a trail near my home in north Alabama.  I wasn’t able to recall the leaves when I saw them on a young tree, but when I saw them on a mature tree I instantly recognized the bark.  “Alligator hide” was what I learned to think of when I saw it, because that’s what Big Dave called it.  He’s not the first, and won’t be the last, person to call it that I’ve since learned, but he’s who taught it to me.

That’s one of the guys who was leading that naturalist hike that day, “Big Dave.”  It was a while before I learned his last name is Hollaway, because everyone just called him Big Dave.  He was indeed a pretty big guy at the time, and when he later lost a bunch of weight it felt kind of strange calling him that, but not really.  His personality carried on where his size left off.

I’ll be honest: When I lead kids hikes or other environmental experiences, I have, since that very day some nine years ago, tried to put a little bit of Big Dave into my presentations and dialog.  His gift of showing the natural world in a way that made sense just spoke to me.  I watched him do all the “identify it stuff” as well as or better than most folks, but he also communicated how everything fit together.  This tree, that bird, those deer: They were all there for a reason, and I’m not the only person who found myself richer after he shared the natural world with me.

The eastern towhee singing, “Drink your tea,” and the barred owl calling, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” is old hat for me now, but back then when I learned it from Big Dave it was magical.  In a lot of ways, it still is.

Dave had a way of seeing the spiritual–not the religious, and not the new age stuff–side of nature.  As he walked you through the world, it was the foundation of everything he saw.  He especially, as I remember, found a kinship with the birds of prey he worked with.  The great horned owl, the red-tailed hawk, and even the diminutive screech owl: He had a kinship with all of them.  If you’ve ever been eye-to-eye with one of those birds, you might understand where he was coming from.  He saw a bigger picture than most.

I found out recently that Dave left this world a few days ago, and it hurts.  I hadn’t spoken with him in over a year, but the towhees behind my back yard remind me of him often.  And then, of course, there are the persimmon trees.  They won’t let me forget.

Thanks, Big Dave.

—

Where am I going, I don’t know. I’m not sure? I know this though…I don’t get lost anymore.  -From Dave’s Facebook page.