Black River Wednesday

If you've read my older posts you know how much I love the Black River. I think our group was turned on to how cool it is to have a place like this to just drift here in eastern NC. There's nothing like following the tea colored current and listening to the water and birds.

Robert and our friend Syndey got some quality outdoor time.



Steve enthralled with cypress knees.







My sister in law Tara.

Black River Paddle

A group of six of us went down the Black River yesterday. so wonderful. No really big critters were seen, but we were kinda loud. Still it was a great paddle.by our guess a liittle over 11 miles. Tired and hungry we went to Hollands Shelter Creek fish camp and pigged out!

Paths Chosen

Some things I've learned over the week... best said by Jung:
"Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health."

"Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not."

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

"Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us."

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."

"We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them."

What a brilliant soul.....

100 hearters on Etsy!

I just hit 100 hearters on Etsy! Yay!
Etsy for those who don't know is a website for artists and crafts people to sell their work. My daughter says its myspace for artists. It a community of like minded folk who sell what they make- everything from t shirts, magnets, pottery, jewelry to puppets and hand cobbled shoes! http://www.etsy.com
So now 100 other etsians "heart me"!

New Etsy item

Here's a new bracelet I just loaded up onto Etsy. check it out....
There's a delicious rainstorm raging right now. We've had such a dry summer... the yard is loving it I know. Everything looks so lovely out the door in the rain.

Big Beetle Bob

So we were watching the Last Mimzy last night. My daughter had a friend over and we were having a great time. Just as the boy in the film starts speaking to spiders this HUGE bug goes crazy in our dining room, flying around banging into things. The girls are squeeling and Robert goes to catch it. It is a really cool huge beetle...
we looked it up online and there was no difinitve picture.. I guess some sort of stag beetle? Robert found scarabs that look like him. Anyway, he was cool and lived in a garlic jar for a hour or so while we looked at him... or her. The girls named him Sparky...or Sparketta...or Sparkeesha...Sparkella?

Blog Catalog

Just submitted to blogcatalog
http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/art

Some Days are Just Better

Beautiful day in the studio yesterday.... Kate was there... which is always good. Met a wonderful couple from Holden beach who have a home in Switzerland....three great sessions with students. My newest private student is a fabulous photographer. Check out his work:

http://www.brimmages.com

Beyond the Call

I just saw the most powerful documentary! I am so stoked. It was about the founders of Knightsbridge International a humanitarian organization. Months ago, I stumbled on these guys on some morning show while on the eliptical machine at the gym. I became riveted by their story. I haven't forgotten it since. Then, today, while going into my favorite coffee shop here in Wilmington...(Folks on market street) I see this poster... and there they were! I recognized them instantly. These guys go all around the world helping those in need. They literally buy the food or other necessities and hand deliver them, no bureaucrats, no office, no paper pushing....just results. They do whatever it takes. Go see this film!!!!!
Go to their site http://www.kbi.org

Hot Hot Summer!

Well, it's roasting in my studio.... I can't enamel... its too dang hot! I did however start some brooches for an upcoming show of Badges. There will be three and these two are already enameled. The images show me working them in pitch, burning off the pitch and then the raw copper pieces prior to enamel.

VELVET to play

Just wanna shout out that my brother and sister in law's awesome powerpop band, Velvet, will be playing the Triangle area:

at NIGHTLIGHT
405 1/2 West Rosemary St.
Chapel Hill, NC
THIS FRIDAY
JUNE 8th
6PM-9:00P

And then:
BROAD STREET CAFE
1116 Broad St.
Durham, NC
THIS SATURDAY
JUNE 9th
9PM

and then on sunday at:

The CAVE
452 1/2 West Franklin St. Chapel Hill, NC
THIS SUNDAY
JUNE 10th
Flat tire? Wisdom tooth pulled out? You can join us via Cave TV, www.caverntavern.com, for live stage action!

"Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich

I just recieved this poem in an email and thought I'd share:

Poem: "Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich, from Original Fire:
Selected and New Poems. (c) Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity

Black River Paddle

To me the Black River is breathtakingly beautiful. In the spring the prothonotary warblers sing and dart there across the river. Paddling its waters allows you a chance to go back in time to a place where you only hear birds and the drip from your paddle. If you'd like to try it yourself contact Salt Marsh Kayak and Robert himself can take you on this 13 mile day trip.
http://www.saltmarshkayak.com

Twisted Old Ents

How can you float past these big old monsters and not think of Tolkein and his Ents?

Three Sisters

Like Wallace Kaufman and his daughter, we have never found BLK 69 one of the oldest trees east of the Rockies. I have been down the 13 miles of the Black with Robert three times now and I never fail to be awe struck by the cypress groves. They sit silent like frozen wizards waiting for us to pass so they can resume their mysterious activities. They stand tall and gnarled and often covered in moss and dragonflies.

Shallow!

There has been very little rain this spring and water levels are low. Robert and I had to get out and slog through the shallow section of the Black. I loved it! The bottom is white sand and the water while tea stained is very clear. It felt great on this hot spring day.

Bald Cypress

The Black river fascinates me. It seems an an untamed wilderness. While there are a few houses along its shores we rarely see anybody on the Black. Mostly we encounter gorgeous birds a snake here and there, a beaver once and a bear, and tons of dragonflies. Here you can see the scale of some of the immense bald cypress that populate the Black.

Black River History

The Black river has a section we call the Narrows. A forest literally grows out of the river which becomes navigable only by canoe or kayak. I love an article written by Wallace Kaufman in 92 in American Forests. Here is an excerpt:

"As soon as Scots-Irish settlers moved into Carolina's coastal plain in the early 1700s, they began to log the Black's bottomland forests. Nineteenth-century steamboats hauled off the big stands of gum, live oak, and longleaf pine. In 1885 during a five-day study of the river's navigation possibilities, Captain W.H. Bixby of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported seeing rafts carrying "about 620,000 feet of timber and about 10,000 barrels of rosin." To build bridges and docks, loggers took bald cypress out of the seasonally flooded swamps beside the river, but they left the largest trees because the bell-bottomed giants had been hollowed by dry rot.The last steamer left the Black River in 1926. The sandbars returned, the land was too wet to clear, and trees once more arched across the river. Local people assumed the remaining cypresses were no more than a few hundred years old.

Today, as the cypresses probably did then, the old silver-barked trees tower over the rest of the forest. The lower branches are often broken, and those on top are flattened as if they,d met an invisible ceiling. Some trunks are cracked open from crown to buttress. Every one of the cypresses seems to have been hit by lightning or survived a Civil War artillery barrage. This kind of "overmature" old-growth makes some foresters talk of silviculture, but as our worries about the global climate grow, these once useless trees have taken on an important role in helping us measure the seriousness of today's environmental problems.
In 1986 scientists from the University of Arkansas found one big cypress that time had not hollowed. Its annual growth rings revealed it to be the oldest tree east of the Rocky Mountains, having taken root some time before 364 A.D.

All around us rose the silver-gray and moss patched trunks of bald cypress trees. We were looking for one in particular. It would be four feet thick above its buttresses and have a slight lean and two distinctive burls. It would be labeled with a small aluminum tag inscribed, "BLK 69." It was the tree the scientists had discovered in 1986 the oldest known living tree east of the Rocky Mountains. Other trees either along the Black River or in other cypress swamps--may in fact turn out to be older, but BLK 69 is the one that has won new respect for this almost-unknown forest.

We found many larger trees, but when I struck the trunks with my paddle or even my fist, they echoed like a drum. I asked several local people how to find BLK 69. Each of them had read about it in the newspaper, but no one was sure how to find it. Fishermen who string their shad nets and herring lines across the mouths of creeks and coves say the tree is in an area called "Three Sisters," a system of old channels and ponds on the west side of the river. But channels that are distinct at one water level disappear at another. Getting in and out, even in a canoe, can be a little like squeezing down the passages of a cave. Even old-timers going in to fish, hunt or gather mistletoe sometimes got lost."

The Black River

The Black River is one of my favorite places to kayak. It is called black water because it is dark with tanin that has soaked into the water from the surrounding trees.

Heading Out

What a great day for a trip down the Black River here Sampson County in NC. We make a quick stop at Kelly Bear's for some Coke and nabs....