May 2008 NewsletterJim Casada
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www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com May Makes Mighty Fine MedicineWhen I was a boy growing up in the heart of the Smokies, one aspect of the earth’s rebirth which occasioned considerable talk from the old folks was the subject of spring tonics. My paternal grandmother swore by them, making ominous comments about “thinning the blood,” “shaking off the winter miseries,” and “cleaning out your body.” Since all of that involved nostrums such as a spoon full of sulphur washed down with molasses or great draughts of sassafras tea, I made a point of trying to avoid any personal participation in these folk remedies. On the other hand, I heartily agreed with Grandpa Joe when he reckoned that the simple act of being, as he put it, “out and about” in the month of May “made mighty fine medicine.” After all, there’s something about viewing an impressive array of wildflower, enjoying the visual treat offered by more colors and shades of green than can be found either in a dictionary or the most well-stocked of artist’s palettes, or casting to rising trout that stirs the soul. With all the wonder before your eyes and beneath your feet, tonics scarcely seem necessary. Mind you, the passage of a whole bunch of decades have given me a fuller appreciation of “miseries,” which in my case seem to come, at this season, in the form of various sinus-related ailments along with a body which rebels at too many early morning awakenings for turkey hunting or too many hours spent wading cold mountain streams. Truth be told, as a good fishing buddy of mine puts it, “I just ain’t as catty as I used to be.” That sad reality being duly recognized, the fact remains that May, yet another vexing bout of sinusitis notwithstanding, long has been and remains one of my favorite months. Let’s ruminate a bit about some of the qualities which recommend it. *For starters, it marks the end of another period of weeks devoted to the quest for His Majesty, the wild gobbler. I look forward to two days connected with turkey hunting with pretty much equal avidity—I can’t wait for the season to start and by the time it’s been running for a couple of months and I’ve flown or driven to several states and reached an advanced stage of sleep deprivation, I can’t wait for it to end. *Then there’s the matter of gardening. As anyone who reads this column regularly has probably realized, along with taking inordinate delight in dining on nature’s bounty I find considerable pleasure in acting, as a now deceased lady of my acquaintance who had the greenest of green thumbs liked to express it, “like an old dirt dauber.” Earlier today I picked the first mess of squash from the garden, and we have been enjoying asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and chard for some time. My berries (lots of blueberries and raspberries) look promising after having escaped not one but two freezes, and since I saw a catbird a few days ago I feel pretty good about all danger of frost being past. In case you wonder what that is all about, Grandpa staunchly maintained, and with considerable accuracy, that you couldn’t count on being past the last frost until you saw the first catbird. I’ve got pretty much the first round of everything in the ground in one of my two gardens. This year I’m raising my own garden as is normally the case and a second one at my father’s home in the mountains. He’s finally reached a stage in life where, at 98 years of age, a garden is too much for him to handle. But working the soil he nurtured and bettered with leaf mold for parts of seven decades is a pure pleasure, and it gives me a welcome excuse to get my hands dirty during that portion of the spring and summer I’ll be staying with him. That garden is only partly planted, but I’ll complete the initial chores in a few days. I’ve got enough tomatoes, between the two gardens, to satisfy a soup factory. To the best of my counting ability, there are about 80 plants in nine varieties in my garden, and another three dozen plus in the mountains. Of course I’ve got seeds of three heirloom types just sprouting for late plantings, and I’ve also got suckers in a rooting medium for the same purpose. Then there are the cool weather plants—cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, turnip and mustard greens—for the short term. Add to that bush beans, two kinds of field peas, two kinds of corn, okra, a whole host of herbs, and some seedlings in flats for late plantings, and that’s a summer’s work of weeding and harvesting, eating and enjoying, ahead of me. Of course I like to piddle with flowers, most notably dahlias, as well. You can’t eat them but the fact that they come in almost endless shapes, sizes, and colors, along with being perennials, intrigues me. I’ve got a big bed of perhaps 200 plants, and for the first time I’m also trying to raise a bunch of them from seed. The joy of that approach is that you never know what the seed will produce other than that you will get lots of variety. *Turning from nurturing crops so they can nurture us, there’s the serious matter of fishing. The day after this is completed I’ll be headed to the hills—well the mountains which are the Smokies, to be more precise—and chances are pretty good that I’ll spend at least an hour or two of almost every day exploring some stream. I’m deep into a book on fishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and one of the joys of preparing that work is what I like to call primary research. That is to say, getting out on streams, especially those I haven’t fished a lot (there aren’t many in that category on the North Carolina side of the Park), but I have less intimate familiarity with the Tennessee side), and casting a fly. Along with that goes checking out trails, remnants of human history, and more. Old rock walls, house foundations, and especially cemeteries fascinate me. These are scattered all over the Park, especially at lower elevations, and even at high altitudes you are likely to come across old iron rails from the little narrow-gauge tracks which penetrated deep into the heart of the mountains in order to log virgin timber. Mostly of course, I just fish. For me, casting a fly is an unending exercise in pure pleasure, and what I like most about fishing for trout in small streams is that you are a student in nature’s school with learning opportunities at every turn. Or, as Horace Kephart, a man I have studied and written about quite a bit, and an individual who lived the final 27 years of his life in and around my hometown of Bryson City, North Carolina, put it: “In the school of the outdoors there is no graduation day.” That is certainly the case when it comes to fishing for trout, and even after 60 marvelously misspent years doing just that, I reckon that my education has advanced no further than perhaps the kindergarten level. *Along with trout fishing, I’ll do some exploring for waterfalls. Moving water of any kind holds a strange and strong fascination for me, and cascades, long slides, and waterfalls stir my soul. Although I’m almost ashamed to admit it, in the past few months I’ve learned about (and in some cases visited) several waterfalls in the county where I grew up which I did not even know about. At least one of them is truly spectacular. In time they will provide me the raw material for a whole bunch of newspaper columns and perhaps even a little guidebook. Meanwhile, they are a wonderful destination, camera in hand, for a day’s outing. *Mention of a camera brings me to one more magical aspect of May. It is the month of all months for wildflowers, and whether they are blooming at streamside, along a trail, or high atop a ridge, their beauty cries out for the photographer’s attention. I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, an accomplished hand with a camera. But just being there with a camera is a big part of getting fine photos, and rest assured I have every intention, before another May is just a warm memory, of taking pictures aplenty. Obviously I have plenty to do, outside of the bounds of daily chores, for the coming weeks. About all I can say in concluding is that if you aren’t walking and wandering, full of wonder, as May’s marvels unfold, you are missing one of nature’s grandest treats. Like Grandpa Joe suggested, May meandering is “good for whatever ails a body.” Thank you for subscribing to the
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