A LAKE WALK

Tangle of Yellow Floating Heart leaves
at Lake Cheston, Sewanee, TN

I wish that I had a dollar for every walk I've been on that involved a hunt for plants. My friend, Victoria, a botanist who is world-renowned for her work with Eupatorium, a white flowered weed that has no utilitarian value in the human world (that I know of), often asks me to accompany her on ventures into places that are close to nature's heart and, sometimes, places that bear the signage: "Posted, No Trespassing."

Yesterday, the plant hunt centered around bodies of water near Sewanee, Tennessee that are called lakes. I use the word "called" because to me, the ones I saw were more like ponds. I understand that there is a lot of uncertainty about what should properly be called a lake, and some simply define them as larger versions of ponds, or as bodies of water that are at least five acres or more in area; while others define them as twelve to twenty acres in area. I've read that in the state of Wisconsin almost every pond is called a lake; whereas in Newfoundland, every lake is called a pond.

Whatever the ecologists say about the appropriate definitions of lakes and ponds, we walked the perimeter of Lake Cheston on Wiggons Creek yesterday, and I think that we must have covered close to two miles, sometimes walking over rough terrain where matted tree roots made the going difficult for an aging tenderfoot like me.

We were trying to collect a water plant called the Yellow Floating Heart (Nymphoides peltata), a yellow-flowered species of plant that somehow got here from its native Eurasian habitat, was established in Quebec, and now occurs from New England southwest to Texas. We could not get close enough to the water to pluck a specimen so we stood on a bridge, attempting to "catch" a specimen with a long stick we had found on the trail. The floating heart-shaped leaves, with long petioles, grow so thickly that they form a network almost impossible to disturb with a stick. After numerous attempts, the botanist said, "I'm going in," and I shuddered because the ground around the lake's edge looked mushy enough to absorb a human up to the knees.

As this particular botanist has been touted as someone who walks on water, often wading in marshes around south Louisiana to demonstrate to students how a plant can be captured in boggy areas, I was surprised when she turned back and decided that the Yellow Floating Heart wasn't worth the effort.

Beached Yellow Floating Heart

We continued to walk the perimeter and as we neared the beach area, I spied more of this water lily-like plant. However, again, we were too far from the plant, and, again, the botanist gave up the catch, sighing heavily. As we turned to climb the hill where the car was parked, I looked down at the grass just beyond the lake's edge and at my feet lay a perfect specimen of the plant, its yellow face smiling up at me. "Eureka!" I said.  "A floating heart. It followed us." I felt like I had found a Swamp Candle in a south Louisiana swamp or a wildflower in the crack of a city sidewalk!

Readers may think that such finds are not so momentous, but I am proud to write that I've finally attained the title of "Amateur Botanist," with a specialization in the field of Yellow Floating Hearts.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

COWS COOLING OFF

Walt Whitman wrote in A Song of Myself "I could turn and live with the animals, / they are so placid and self-contain'd, / I stand and look at them long and long / they do not sweat and whine about their condition..." Perhaps they don't whine about their condition, but they do get overheated and sweat (on their noses, of course). Lately, when we drive Templeton Way on our way to the Convent of St. Mary, we see a small herd of cows and calves bunched together, up to their bellies in a pond in the pasture where they graze. Although I'm one of those humans who's afraid of cows, dating back over seventy years, the distant sight of these bovine creatures, half immersed in pond water, becalms me.

My first experience with a cow was not a good one. I was three years old and out playing in a side yard when I spied a cow tethered to a stake in a pasture alongside our yard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A young boy who was probably no more than ten seemed to be tending the cow, and he kept beckoning for me to open the gate in the fence that separated our yard from the pasture. Since my older brother only gave me attention when his six-year old playmates were away, it was one of those desultory days in hottest summer when I had no one to keep me company and nothing to do but poke a stick around in every hole I could find in the yard. So when I saw that finger beckon me, I ran to the fence and placed my hand on the latch of the gate. My mother, who had been watching from the kitchen window, flew out of the house, screaming at me: "Don't go near that cow!"

The cow looked innocuous enough to me, but I was unfamiliar to her, and my mother was probably wise in alerting me to the danger. When I screamed back that I was going anyway, my mother slapped me for the first and last time I can remember experiencing corporal punishment from her during my childhood. The slap and the admonition not to go near the cow have stuck in my mind as a dangerous experience. Later, when I'd visit my grandmother during the summer and often walked up 10th Avenue to visit my aunt, I'd walk as close to the street as I could to avoid an old cow staked out in an unfenced vacant lot near the sidewalk.

So I've never been near a cow, but I like to view them from a distance because they engender a feeling of pastoral peace. After all, they've been around as domestic animals for over 10,000 years and there are one billion of them alive and doing well. Those bovines clinging to one another in the pond at Sewanee create that peaceful feeling in me, and we took pictures of them yesterday—but from a distance and at a vantage point behind a barbed wire fence.

When I lived in Iran, I often saw a cow anchored in a desert lot near the Ahwaz Super Grocery and kept my distance from the poor animal who had no pond to dip into to cool off. I wrote a poem about my exposure to this creature in a long poem entitled "A Girl and A Cow," which appeared in my book of poetry about Iran, The Holy Present and Farda:

"She guards the stringy tan cow
not even a 'friendly cow all red and white,'
its neck encircled by thin rope
like a frayed shoelace tied loosely
to one stick anchored in sandy soil,
nibbling parched summer grass—
short stubs in a vacant lot
staked out for future houses—
the coming of more expatriates,
new neighbors in Melli Rah.

Dressed in knee length overblouse,
blue cotton buttoned at the neck,
matching pants,
and head covering of same blue cotton,
she is an outfit without a life,
looking longingly at Ahwaz Super
just a leap across the concrete djube,
near enough to offer its wares,
far enough for one who has no rials,
wishing for a break from the all-day vigil,
guarding a cow without milk,
an animal not likely to be eaten,
the girl surely wondering why,
why she must encourage its chewing,
tend it in 110-degree desert heat.

She stands there, unspeaking,
ignoring us,
knows little of Anglos,
people in Melli Rah
who live on the springs of oil,
no more bothersome to her
than the blazing sun.
But my blond-haired teen-age daughter,
cycling to the Ahwaz Super,
worries that a girl her age
tends a cow in the hot sun,
asks me to buy her chocolate bars,
fetch her a parasol from the bazaar
to ward off the sun, unrelenting...
the cultural disparity, scorching.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan

LOOKOUT TOWERS

We left Big Bear Lake, California just a week before wildfires began to spark during this hot, dry summer season. I assume that the fires were spotted by some lookout with the Forest Service who mans one of those tall fire towers prevalent in the National Forests of the West. While at Big Bear, I thought about a vacation I've always wanted to take—not in a cabin but in a fire tower hideaway built by the CCC's during the early 1900's.

During the 1940's, 4,000 lookout towers were built in National Forests, but today there are only 900 left (over 500 active and abandoned ones in California), and if you have the camping bug and don't want to invest in tents and camping equipment, you can rent one of these towers for $30-$50 a night. The space is small—12 to 15 sq. feet—but most of them have heat, table, chair, and a bed but no water or electricity. However, the panoramic views from these eagle perches are said to be unforgettable, especially from the Little Guard Lookout in northern Idaho that touts sweeping views of the Bitterroot Mountains.

The Forest Service still uses many lookout towers, using mapping tools to determine the location of fires, and both men and women man them. According to the National Forest Foundation, in 1913, Hallie Daggett became the first female lookout in the Forest Service and spent fifteen years working in the Eddie Gulch fire tower in Klamath National Forest in northern California. My deceased brother Paul drove us through part of this forest near the border of Oregon back in the 90's, and the firs and incense cedars there were breathtaking.

When I returned from California a week ago, with visions of fire towers dancing in my head, I picked up The Messenger, our Sewanee, Tennessee newspaper, and voila! Right on the front page was a story about the Sewanee Fire Lookout Tower, a site that has been added to the National Register of Historic Places by the Tennessee Historical Commission. The site will be listed under the Tennessee Division of Forestry Fire Lookout Towers, 1933-75.

The Sewanee Lookout Tower is described as an Aeromotor MC 39 steel structure built from 1933-34 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and is in a complex that has several other buildings constructed in 1934: a crew cabin, a vehicle service platform, and the lookout operator's cabin. In 1940, a new crew building was built, and in 1950, a radio tower was added.

Although I have no intention of asking for a room at this local fire tower, we drove out to the site located on Fire Tower Road and took a look at the historic place this afternoon. It isn't quite high enough to provide the panoramic view that I imagine as part of fire tower charm, but I could envision it as a writer's retreat in a rustic setting. As I'm spooked by lightning, I don't think I'd like any of the western towers because of their susceptibility to lightning strikes. Towers in the West, located high on mountain tops, are natural conductors of lightning and have to be grounded with copper wires. The wires attract lightning strikes and cause the electrical charge to go deep into the ground where it is dispersed. However, I'd still hyperventilate if lightning hit any tower in which I was having a private retreat!

If you're interested in lookout towers in a National Forest, check out the recreation.gov site. Or if you're a Sewaneean, drive out to Fire Tower Road and take a look at a cultural resource that has been deemed worthy of preservation, but I don't think it's available for rental.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan