We have one visitor to the farm who comes often, once or twice a week, and each visit is a thrill. When we hear him, Skye and I go running outside or out from under trees, and we wait for him to arrive. He doesn’t hang around, and if we don’t get out quickly we will miss him entirely. We’ve never met him. 
 
He comes by air, flying very low, in a red-and-white plane with a tiny motor that drones in a particular way we recognize. Skye can hear him miles away, and when she does, she starts yelling. “He’s coming! He’s coming!” We know to instantly drop shovel or trowel, book or mixing bowl, and head out to a place where there’s open space. 
 
The clear view is so that he can see us waving at him from the ground. If he sees us, he’ll wave back, wiggling the little plane’s wings, and sometimes he’ll do more.
 
The first time he came, Skye and I were on our back deck. We waved as he passed overhead. He must have seen us because he doubled back. He came flying at the farm from the north, where there's a pasture about 20 acres in size, with trees lining it. When the pilot passed the treeline he dipped low to the ground and rushed toward us. He couldn’t have been more than 25 feet off the ground. Just before he crashed into our house, and into us, he yanked the plane into a climb and rose above the roof.
 
Raven was not so happy about that. He thought only a crazy person would fly like that, endangering others.
 
A few days later the pilot returned. It was almost as if he’d received Raven’s message, telepathically. Over the pasture he climbed to a thousand feet, then dove for the ground, bringing the plane out of the dive at the last minute. Raven was okay with this, since the pilot wasn’t aiming at our house. If the crazy guy wanted to kill himself, fine. But Raven wished we didn’t have to watch it.
 
When he visits now, he will circle us. We can see his face he’s so close, and we can see him waving. Most visits he does something to the controls where he waves the wings, one then the other dipping in a lovely salute. Sometimes he rises high and dives. It’s usually almost sunset when he comes, as if we’re on his route back to the Vidalia, Georgia airport and he can take a minute to say hello before he has to rush on.
 
We found him on Facebook. From the posts it’s apparent that the pilot’s fly-bys bring a lot of joy to a lot of people. He calls himself a backwoods pilot. That’s probably what brought him over our farm in the first place -- we live very close to the confluence of two rivers, the Ohoopee with the Altamaha. The scenery must be amazing from up there. In one post he says, "It's all about enjoying the limited time we have."
 
And he is a daredevil. In one FB video he is skimming up a small blackwater river, probably the Ohoopee, his tires throwing up spray. 
 
I’ve written a lot about the loneliness in most people’s lives and the particular loneliness of rural living. So I thought it would be important for me to acknowledge how much joy our visitor, pilot and stranger, brings us.

Thanks for that, sir. Thanks for brightening our quiet days. Thanks for pushing the limits. 

Note: My web platform won't allow me to post videos without upgrading, so I'm posting a photo. 
​

PHOTO ABOVE: Julia Yearout & Sarah Clark gathered the bat data for 2019. They loved the Anatolian & she loved them.

Total # of bat calls:  465
 
Calls identified to species: 100
 
At least one bat of the following species were identified with a 95% or more “confidence interval” (determined by the overall number of calls collected at the site):
 

1. evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis)
2. tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) – This is a Georgia species of concern currently under consideration for listing as an Endangered Species, so we’re particularly happy about this one.
3. Brazilian free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)
4. northern yellow bat (Lasiurus intermedius)*

 
Other sound files not identified as bats: 2,774
 
The biologists thought these were most likely insect calls. The guineas make weird noises at night, and there are lots of owls. Mockingbirds are sometimes night-birds. As I write this it’s night and I’m hearing crickets, frogs of many species, and some deep eerie whale-like ringing that is probably the universe singing to itself.
 
*Trina Morris, wildlife biologist with Nongame, wrote to us that “This detection of a northern yellow bat so far away from the coast is unusual. We have historic records of this species in the upper coastal plain but haven’t captured any in this area recently. It is certainly possible that this species could be found on your property, but we cannot consider it a true record until it is verified by a hand capture.”
 
That could be exciting.

​(PHOTO CREDIT: Tri-Colored Bat, Al Hicks, NYSDEC, nynhp.org, with thanks)

 Total # of bat calls:  312
 
Calls identified to species: 129
 

1. eastern red/Seminole bat (Lasiurus borealis, Lasiurus seminolus) – Apparently these two species can’t be differentiated by their calls, only by sight. Because of its geographical distribution it’s expected to be a Seminole. 
2. northern yellow bat (Lasiurus intermedius)
3. tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus)
4. hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) 

 
Other sound files not identified as bats:  1,967
 
That is six species of bats recorded here. Some were here one year but not the next. All this is so strange and wonderful.

​This year the unit comes down on Juneteenth.

​I have always thought holidays a little ludicrous. They become so monetized. Even Anna Jarvis, the woman credited with the idea of a Mother’s Day, was later arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration. She told a reporter she wished she had never started the holiday because it had become so commercialized.
 
After the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, the holiday began to lose its outrage and its muscle. 
 
The holiday was the brainchild of Gaylord Nelson, senator from Wisconsin who helped ban the use of DDT and Agent Orange. Nelson had become increasingly concerned that the state of the environment was "simply a non-issue in the politics of the country."  Emulating Vietnam protests, he set about to organize a massive grassroots teach-in against environmental destruction. Twenty million people, mostly university students, took up the banner.
 
I didn't hear about Earth Day until I was in college at Florida State in 1982, and by then the holiday was becoming a pop-culture event, a Keep-America-Beautiful love-fest with polluters as corporate sponsors. Throwaway coffee cups in hand, driving their SUVs from starter castles built on the vestiges of wild land, people would show up for pet blessings, surfing competitions, fireworks displays, canoe runs, poster contests, recycling drives, alternative-fuel-vehicle fairs, plant giveaways, street festivals, field trips, lectures, and beach cleanups. 
 
I always thought we should really celebrate Earth Day.
 
We'd have a paid national holiday. Nobody would go to work. We wouldn't climb into our cars, not at all. We wouldn't buy anything – no planet-shaped chocolates, no strands of green lights, no big blow-up replicas of Earth to tether in our front yards. We wouldn't buy so much as a newspaper. We'd start our gardens. 
 
We would force ourselves to be still long enough to think about what our actions and our inactions were doing to the earth. All day we’d listen to disappearing songbirds among disappearing spring wildflowers.
 
This year, 2020, the 50th anniversary of Gaylord's splendid idea, we got a chance to do that, celebrate my way -- to do nothing, to be quiet, to listen, to notice a blue sky, to hear birds again, to watch goats and bears move into towns, to quit driving, to stay home, to take a hike, to garden. 
 
Nothing good has come out of the coronavirus pandemic except maybe this – we have gotten a chance to hear the earth itself breathe. 
 
That is truly a celebration. 

So that's it, my garden. Today I scoured my seed bucket and started some very interesting things, old friends I haven't grown in awhile -- hyacinth bean, Jack bean, Sadie's horse bean from Donnamarie Emmert and the Abingdon Seed Library, four kinds of sunflowers (including mammoth), running butterbean. I started the gold-striped cushaw, having been unable to get the gold-striped, which I lost.

Gardening is not work to me, the same as writing is not work. (Well, maybe a little.)

When I was sitting at the edge of the aisle full of nutgrass, I felt 25 again, working in my garden at Sycamore, listening to "The Prairie Home Companion" on a radio plugged into an extension cord. I felt more free than I've felt in years, and younger, and happier. I felt myself coming back. 

Jack Hill was a big believer in community. He believed that our duty is to act in ways that improve our lives and the lives of others around us.
 
Lucky for me, Jack Hill befriended me a decade ago when his birth hometown became my adopted one. An idea would come to me of a way to enliven the community, and I would go to Sen. Hill. Every time, without fail, he was enthusiastic. Scrolling back through emails, I see so clearly how much he loved his place and how sincerely he wanted it to thrive.
 
"Put me down as a member," he would say. "I’m sending a check and an offer to help in any way I can. Can I rent the building for your conference?"
 
When he wasn’t in Atlanta he’d show up to meetings or fundraisers or talks at the library. He could be counted on to support any endeavor that brought economic, cultural, or spiritual gain to his town and county.
 
Hometown folks loved Jack, but to most, I think, he was a neighbor who happened to be a senator. Because he was so down-to-earth and approachable, most didn’t realize how famous he was in Atlanta and how much power he could wield under the Gold Dome. 
 
I am bereft at the death of Sen. Hill. I admired many things about him. One was how he dropped everything when a hometown person showed up at his office in the Capitol or at his office in Reidsville, and how welcome he made you feel. One was his courtesy, his good manners, his quiet demeanor – he never failed to stop and talk. One was his generosity. I especially loved how he took exquisite, compassionate, daily care of Mrs. Hill.
 
One of the last times I saw Sen. Hill was some months ago, before the 2020 Legislature started. We were both at an NAACP banquet. He had his beautiful wife with him. All we did that evening was smile and wave across the room. I was reminded then and now that Sen. Hill was a person who knew the right thing to do and didn’t mind doing it.
  
Sen. Hill brought many gifts to Tattnall County, assets that would not be possible without him, including the timber-frame lodge at the state park and the designation of historic landmark for the Alexander Hotel, to name only two. He did not have an inflated ego, and he did a great many things for all of us without desiring or receiving credit. We are going to miss his advocacy and his support, and we are going to miss how he made us proud. We are going to miss our friend.

​About this time of year my friend Albert Culbreath will hear a strange bugling in the Tifton sky.
 
Actually, he feels it more than hears it, he says. Gazing upward, Albert will witness a flock of sandhill cranes, flying northward, calling back and forth to each other their magnificent ga-roo-roo-roos. 
 
Before Albert lost count one year, he had tallied over 100 cranes.
 
Sandhill cranes stand four to five feet tall, with a gray body and a red forehead. They court with enthusiastic, leaping dances. They mate for life and nest in marshes and other open, treeless places.
 
Florida naturalist Archie Carr once wrote that only three great animal voices remain in the southeastern United States -- "the jovial lunacy of the barred owl... the roar of the alligator...the ethereal bugling of the sandhill crane.”
 
The birds never fail to put me in mind of my great friend Milton Hopkins, a passionate observer of wildlife on his Osierfield, Georgia farm until his death last year. Milton always dropped me notes to say that the cranes were passing in their flyway. Sometimes they descended to feed or spend the night. Once Milton was standing in a field when a flock of over 300 cranes landed. Milton always reported the cranes migrating between March 1 and 19.
 
After Milton died, right in the middle of his funeral a long vee of sandhill cranes passed overhead, sounding their ancient music, their rattling trumpets. Maybe Milton heard the cranes, Albert wrote me, and decided to fly off with them.
 
I don't live in the crane flyway. When I hear reports of sandhill cranes, I know that spring is on its way. I start looking for purple martins to come flying in from South America, and the dogtooth violets to bloom in the woods. Frogs will be breeding, and soon we’ll see our first swallow-tail kites.
 
This study of plant and animal life cycles is called phenology, or in other words, a natural calendar. 
 
I too am a phenologist. On March 3, 2015 I first noticed purple martin scouts. On Feb. 2, 2020 I saw the first Carolina jessamine bloom. Right now Carolina jessamine is in full craziness, cascades of yellow in the tops of leafless trees. Red maples are putting out their samaras. Redbuds are starting to bloom. (March 7, by the way, is the birthday of writer and environmental activist Rick Bass.)
 
The climate crisis has disrupted many evolutionary adaptations of many species. People say the cranes are moving earlier in the spring and later in the fall. Some plants are blooming earlier than ever or later than ever, and some are leafing out at crazy times. Often fruit trees bloom early, only to get their blossoms zapped by late frosts. South Florida birds are moving into Georgia. Some birds are not migrating as they once did.
 
When things change so often and so chaotically, a person can feel shaky. As a human, we want to be able to depend on patterns and schedules. A psyche can't take too much chaos and crisis and remain healthy, not without a lot of self-care and interventions.
 
Now, it seems, there is very little on which we can depend. There's too much rain. School gets cancelled and houses get flooded and roads get closed. Then there's too much wind and trees fall. Then there's not enough rain, and we're deep in a sucking drought. Then there's a tornado where tornadoes did not traditionally occur and at a time they did not occur. Then comes another fortnight of torrential downpours.
 
The migration of sandhill cranes, going and coming, has been something we could depend on. Now it’s almost spring, the time to watch and listen for them. I'm hoping they come when they're supposed to come, not too early and not too late. I'm hoping we get serious about making the adaptations we humans need to initiate, and soon, to mitigate these climate disruptions and more. 

This week a friend said to me, “I thought when the children went off to college that our lives would slow down. Instead, they seem to be speeding up.”
 
Many of us feel as if we’re running constantly, and that we can’t stop. Even I, who work at home and often never leave the farm for days at a time, find myself sprinting to meet deadlines, do the chores, finish projects. Sometimes I am literally running, dashing back and forth from my office.
 
I find myself racing the clock, the weather, seasons, the calendar, age, colleagues, and my own goals. The more we dash, the more of the earth’s resources we consume. The more stressful, the more unhealthy.
 
However, I believe that we can make conscious decisions to decelerate. Some people call it voluntary simplicity, which means improving the quality of your life although perhaps not your bank account.
 
Here are a few ideas for slowing down.

1. Once a week (or more often) refuse to climb into your vehicle at all.
2. Literally decelerate. Keep your speedometer below 55.
3. Take the time to walk instead of drive whenever you can.
4. Fly half as much this year as you did last year.
5. Stay home.
6. Try slow food, not fast food. Put Mississippi John Hurt on the turntable and whip up a good, home-cooked meal. Relish it with your family.
7. The more possessions I own, the more responsibilities I have. Therefore, buy less. Shop less. Get by with what you have. Sometimes our family keeps a daily log to track how we spend money. Even the simple act of recording expenses makes us think twice about making a purchase. Do I really need this? I ask myself. Can I make it myself or make do with something I already have?
8. Learn to say no to those tasks that aren’t worth the effort. Focus on the essential.
9. Get out of debt and stop paying interest and fees.
10. Do what you love and spend time with those you love.

When you stand on Temple Mound at Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon, Georgia, you can look out across Walnut Creek and its floodplain. Interstate 16 runs less than a quarter-mile away, parallel to the Ocmulgee River. The creek runs beneath an interstate bridge to get to its mama, the Ocmulgee.
 
Yesterday when I was there the creek, floodplain, and river were one body of water, lapping at the interstate embankments and bridge pilings, swirling around leafless willows and river birch, flooding the park trails and also the boardwalk, with only the railing visible above water. Although the Ocmulgee is a blackwater river, the water everywhere was red as clay, hepatica-colored, saturated with the red silt from nasty construction projects upstream, the blood-sucking of a booming economy. 
 
Red earth turns its water red.
            
Yesterday all day the sky looked as if an old wool blanket had been pulled across it, and occasionally rain poured out of the blanket. You could tell by looking up that more rain was coming. On the ground, the spring ephemerals were coming out, things like henbit and the tiniest violets in the world. 
            
History will always find you, said the man who introduced the poet. He said a poet laureate embodies the soul of the nation, one moving now toward reconciliation.
            
Joy Harjo is the first Native American poet laureate of the United States. 
            
Harjo said that the Ocmulgee Mounds touch her deeply. This is her ancestral home. The Creek Nation was forced to leave when Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. They left behind homes, cornfields, pottery, printing presses, food stores, horses, trading posts, burial grounds – so much they loved. 
            
Harjo was 23 the first time she came to Macon. When she returns to visit, she is a ghost -- for the people who stayed behind, the people forced at gunpoint to leave were essentially killed. 
            
She sang a song. Ah-le-na-le-no.
            
She was wearing a red, v-necked sweater with black pants and tan boots. Her black hair was thick. Circular earrings tangled in her long hair.
            
She read from An American Sunrise. She said that our spirits always ask us questions. Hers asked, "What did you learn here?" and that's how this book got started. She read "My Man's Feet" and "Redbird": I think of all poems as love poems, she said. Then she played her flute and sang a poem.
            
We were in the visitor's center, probably 250 people, about half of us in chairs, the rest standing. The room was rounded to look like a kiva. The earth, she's a circle, Harjo said. I was wedged behind a massive display, a thigh-high cabinet with a map of the territory printed on it, perching on a narrow concrete window ledge. Between the slats of the blinds I looked at Earth Mound, Great Temple Mound, Lower Temple Mound (2/3s of it was destroyed with the first railroad came through), Cornfield Mound.
            
A lot of powerful, intelligent people live in Macon, and I could see many of them when I looked around. The people were so beautiful. When Harjo played her flute, one woman in a long, multicolored skirt wiped her eyes.
            
The poet Gordon Johnston was standing beside the cabinet. He teaches at Mercer. He and Matt Jennings, who introduced Harjo, wrote a book on the Ocmulgee Mounds. Before the reading Gordon and I were talking. Gordon has been canoeing all the waterways of Georgia. 
            
Gordon said something I've been thinking, that I've not heard anybody else say. He said, "This is the worst flooding I've seen since I've lived here." I agree. This is the worst flooding I've seen, I think my entire life. Only the roof of the picnic shelter is visible above water at Deen's Landing on the Altamaha. At English Eddy, where last fall somebody made a moonscape out of hundreds of acres, it's all standing water now, proving they logged a floodplain. Crossing the bridges, with so much water, is dizzying.
            
I asked Gordon if he'd paddled the Ohoopee, and he said no, so I invited him to come visit, told him I'd like to paddle with him.
            
Since we're talking about reconciliation, I could say a lot about reconciliation with the earth. But this is a blog-post, my first, and I'll just leave it with this: yesterday I heard the first Native American poet laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, read her poetry while her dead ancestors listened and while ancient ceremonial mounds, emerald with grass, rose high above the swirling red waters of the Ocmulgee.
            
"We all make our way back home eventually," Harjo said. "May we all find a way home."
 
From “Equinox”:
Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead.