Closing

Christiansburg, Va., bungalow, a short gravelly turn from Oak Grove.

Closed on this place Monday. And then had satellite internet installed, tested the landline service, scoped the attic, uncorked and drained the pond taking much notice of the cold-bloodeds contentedly murked in the early December slurry, chatted under light rain showers with the neighbor, and then on the way home—wherever after all really is home—ate Due South BBQ, the “trough” with sides of fried okra and banana pudding. These next two weeks are peak moving chaos between managing to keep pace with work and managing to transition so that bills aren’t piling up at the new place and the Blacksburg apartment for too long. It’s a welcomed change, moving to this address, what I think is the 26th place I’ll have received USPS mail in now going on 48 earth years. And it’s more rural than most for being at the end of a dirt road, not a cell signal in ping’s reach. Of those 25 other addresses, one was seven years (in high school); two trailers on Winn Road were five years apiece (when I was a tot and then early elementary school-aged). Seven years is the longest anywhere. But this hollow, if I can befriend the watercourse, the insect kin, and the reptile kin, I do like to imagine being here for a while.

Drainage

Early Wednesday, I stopped about a mile into my run for this shot of a nearby subdivision’s drainage pond. It had been drained and excavated. A foul odor all around. Usually, this spot is busy with nervous sparrows who dive-bomb me (to intimidate) when I pass through. The low creaking of frogsong. Deer flies. A heron stilt-stalking minnows. A beaver hauling a branch across the breech to an unnecessary dam. So, what sort of eco-sphere is this, the recently drained and bulldozed pond? What are the air-earth-waters? What toxins pollute the muck? Why empty it and push the mud around in late July?

x-posted to G+ (experimenting with something…)