American Idyll 3: Visions of Ivory

At Brinkley on Interstate 40 in east Arkansas a big billboard boasts that the little town is ‘home to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’. You have a much better chance of seeing Bill and Hilary Clinton riding naked on a tandem bicycle at Brinkley than you do of spotting an ivorybill there, but never mind, there’s a good story here anyway. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was thought extinct for the past seven decades but in 2004 reputable observers reported seeing one or two in the vicinity of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge south of Brinkley. This was so astonishing that numbers of experts who think they know better simply don’t believe it. I’m inclined to accept the claims and feel heartened by the notion that a big beautiful woodpecker – North America’s largest – could be hanging on by a toenail or two in the wilds of southeastern Arkansas despite the best collective efforts of 300 million Americans to wipe out their habitat. Jan and I of course did not get to see one; the closest we got to an encounter was seeing a lovely illustration on the cover of an Arkansas birding brochure but what fun it was to imagine that we might have been within a hundred miles of a healthy mated pair going about their carefree business in the same fashion their ancestors did throughout the eons.

Jan and I like American national wildlife refuges. Typically they are beautiful out-of-the-way oases often as devoid of people as they are chock-a-block with birds. Two refuges entertained us in the past few days: Holla Bend in Arkansas and Salt Plains in Oklahoma. Neither provided spectacles as grand as some we have seen in other NWRs but we always feel rewarded by the time we spend in these marvellous places.

NWRs are there for wildlife, not people; normally there are no camping facilities so we look for nearby public campgrounds boasting unique or attractive natural features. State parks have been very good to us on this trip: lately we’ve had fascinating geology at Petit Jean, mountain vistas at Mount Nebo (both in Arkansas), salt flats and selenite crystals at Salt Plains, expansive sand dunes at Beaver Dunes (both in Oklahoma).

At this time of year crowding is not a problem – we can usually find a corner off by ourselves. We camped at Great Salt Plains State Park adjacent to the NWR, went to sleep with a horned owl calling from a tree beside us, then awoke to find a huge flotilla -- hundreds of white pelicans and double-crested cormorants -- rafting down the Arkansas River Salt Fork right behind our camper. Try matching that at your typical KOA campground.

On these transcontinental migrations all we can ever do is a trace a long thin line, trying to ensure the current line is sufficiently different from the ones we’ve traced before. Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma were ‘lifers’ for us this time so we headed out into that new territory. Following Oklahoma 64 along the Oklahoma Panhandle, squeezed between Kansas to the north, Texas to the south, we know we’re now well and truly in the west: prairie-dog towns, loggerhead shrikes, singing western meadowlarks, rusting ranch windmills. New Mexico is next on our horizon.

--Alan

American Idyll 2: Days in Dixie

George Washington National Forest in Virginia provided sanctuary from Interstate 81. We had out-of-the-way Elizabeth Furnace campground almost to ourselves and went to bed with only a chorus of crickets to let us know we weren’t alone in the world. In the morning we ambled through a forest of soaring unfamiliar hardwoods – hickories, ashes, walnuts – and got reacquainted with some of the birds of Dixie: red-bellied woodpecker, Carolina wren, eastern towhee, tufted titmouse to name a few.

Having spent time in the White Mountains, then the Green, we moved on to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Shenandoah National Park. Jan impressed me no end singing every word of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’. No wonder he so adored Shenandoah. After two vista-filled days there we decided we’d lingered long enough and needed to make up some ground before falling hopelessly behind schedule. Back to Interstate 81 we went. How gratifying it was to find that the Virginia’s segment of 81 is vastly calmer and more scenic than Pennsylvania’s. On the road our favourite music sounds even better. Who better to accompany us through Tennessee than the incomparable Jesse Winchester. Mississippi, You’re on My Mind, Yankee Lady, Biloxi and of course, The Brand New Tennessee Waltz never sounded better.

Jan demonstrated yet again why she is the woman for me. Cruising past another vast field of ripe cotton she commenced to recite Robert Service from memory: Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows...

Tennessee delivered two out-of-the-way state park campgrounds on the US long weekend, Panther Creek and Meeman-Shelby. On our late-in-afternoon walk in the former we found six woodpecker species. A rule of thumb we abide by: if woodpeckers like it, so will we. At Meeman-Shelby at the edge of the Mississippi we camped in a tall forest of oak, cypress and tupelo and, at night, listened to barred owls outshouting each other. In the morning we went down to the high cottonwoods at the edge of the Mississippi and got lost in a reverie of Huck Finn and his pal Jim rafting down the great river.

In Memphis we visited the national war cemetery which dwarfs even the biggest of the Great War cemeteries we saw in Flanders only a month ago. Nearly 14,000 Civil War soldiers are buried here, more than 8,800 of them unknown.

--Alan

American Idyll 1: Mountains of Every Hue

We bade farewell to Nova Scotia after turning the key at Big Bras d’Or and spending four perfectly relaxing days with Jon and Kathleen at Halifax. Before leaving Nova Scotia we detoured to Port Greville on the Parrsboro shore to pay respects to George Perry, an old pal I admired from the get-go who in 40 years has never given me reason to change my opinion of him.

We spent a night with Cousin Carol and Herb, her spouse of 50 years, at Nackawic, New Brunswick. I am known to claim that Carol was the first woman I ever slept with, during a visit with us at Dartmouth long ago. The truth is, she was a teenager, I was only eight and I have no recollection of trying to exploit the situation. Carol is still a babe after all these years – and ever so kind too. Two hours after leaving Nackawic, well into Maine, I realized I’d left my laptop at her place. She and Herb generously drove to the border at Houlton to return it to me. There was a time I thought my father somewhat harsh for calling me ‘Halfwit’. Nowadays I consider him to have been too kind, perhaps by half.

Maine gave me a new sense of itself, not necessarily a flattering one. After eight years of George Bush how could anyone be hot for a four-year date with John McCain? But here’s the rub: we saw 39 McCain campaign signs before our first Obama one hove into view, a life ring to a man drowning in heavy seas.

We rendezvoused with Bob Nagel in New Hampshire and spent an entirely happy day wandering among the White Mountains, eyeballing a galaxy of fall colours, tramping a creekside trail, enjoying one another’s company over beer and Aussie wine. There are wooden ships, Bob likes to say, and iron ones too, but there’s no ship like friendship.

Driving through New York we only waved at the Adirondacks and Catskills. Perhaps if they were called the Pink Mountains, or maybe the Chartreuses we might have lingered awhile longer to supplement our mountain crayon collection.

On our own again At Gifford Woods State Park at the south end of Vermont’s Green Mountains we climbed a thousand feet and gawked at the view from Deer Leap Overlook.

Interstate 81 through Pennsylvania was often hair-raising, evoking a demolition derby. South of Harrisburg, boxed in by 18-wheelers on all fours sides, I thought, this is an accident waiting to happen. Soon afterward traffic ground to a standstill and we quickly learned why: tailgating had claimed two big trucks, one of the trailers snapped in two, gutted of its 20-ton load of turmeric. Or was it 40? Who knew there was so much turmeric in all the world.

By now we were in Civil War territory – or War Between the States if you prefer – passing Gettysburg, Martinsburg, Antietam.

--Alan