March 29, 2012 Glendale Shoals Greenway

Take Pine Street South from downtown Spartanburg, turn left on Country Club Rd.  After a few miles, cross Glendale-Whitestone and drive directly to a few parking spaces at the old bridge, now impassable, over the spillway.  If you like, you can turn left on Glendale-Whitestone, go over the bridge over Lawson's Fork Creek and take the immediate right to the Glendale Post Office and the Wofford College Goodall Environmental Studies Center.  Take the trail to the right of the Center.  You will walk by the creek where it tumbles over the spillway onto boulders and pools below.
I cannot pass this area without the memory of the young girl in one of my therapy groups who told of swimming with friends in these pools on a hot summer's day when one of these friends went under and drowned.  In the hot weather, local people often come to splash in the pools and picnic on the rocks.
This is the site of the old Glendale Mill, which had been shut down for years when it burned down
about 15 years ago.  I remember getting out of bed at four in the morning and opening the front door to the sound of a helocopter above and down the road to the right, a red sky full of flames.  I grabbed my camera and ran down the road to join the crowd that had gathered to watch the old mill burn.
Now the post office is in one of the remaining buildings.  Wofford College bought another still standing building for its environmental studies and SPACE developed the trail.  In early spring I walk down by the creek whose banks are covered in great wild purple gardens of blooming plox.
The tall brick towers remain with five or six stories of roman arch windows now empty with the blue sky and clouds moving through them.  There are two towering smoke stacks and an ancient
base of a building made out of large grey boulders, looking like the remains of a primitive prison.
Today there is an artist seated out on the rocks painting.  He waves and I wave back.  There are split rail fences, here and there, places for small groups to sit on tree stumps. There are grape vines behind the Goodall Center and as I walk, the constant sound of roosters crowing and dogs barking far off.  The trail is short, not more than two miles, going along the creek and then circling back along a high ridge.
In the summer, there is an annual fund raiser on the bridge over the spillway with tables set formally and a jazz orchestra playing.  Often there are yard sales at the Post Office.  On top of the ridge on a nearby street is the Outdoor Leadership Center located in an old church.  This is where Sergay, Liza and Mathew are going to go to a day camp in June and stay at my house at night.

March 21, 2012 The Little Gap Trail at Dreher Island

Get off I-26 at Chapin. Take a right on St Peter's Church Rd until you get to Dreher Island Rd.  You will pass country homes with many Tupelo trees in full astonishing bloom.  You are still in Lexington County until you pass Buckaroo's Bar on your left and cross the Adam's Camp bridge.
Now you are in Newberry County.  Keep going straight on a point of land that stretches into Lake Murray.  At 11:00 am, there is a soft mist over the lake.  Near the shore, it is green, covered in pollen, then clear and blue, then silver.  The Visitor's Center is a tackle shop on the left.  Keep going through the park, take a left onto Red Maple (on the right is Yellow Poplar).  You will see a picnic shelter and rest rooms but immediately on the right is a kiosk accouncing the 2.1 mile trail. The way is covered in pine needles, leaves and fallen trees from the winter.  Everywhere there are the dropped blossoms of yellow jasmine.  Once I lost the trail and found the secret lunch place of a raccoon on the edge of the water with a big mound of fresh water clam shells.  There is green green moss along the banks of the lake.  There is the sound of woodpeckers drumming, small birds twittering, small water creatures plopping into the lake. A huge black and white water bird flies up and across the water.  Again I find the trail.  My car is parked under a big muscadine vine where there will be berries in the fall.

I leave the park under an azule sky full of cherry blossom clouds with the Classic Oldies radio station WRBK out of Chester playing.

March 20, 2012 Strolling from Rosewood to Assembly

Across Pinewood, down Saluda, over on Kiawah, down Edisto, across Tugaloo, down Saluda again, across Catawba, around a new Charleston like neighborhood, back on Pickens and down S. Gregg to Pinewood again on this first day of spring, Boofa and I stolled in the twilight on a cloud of aromas of flowering trees:  plum, cherry, dogwood. Azaleas of all colors.

"Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;
When Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That sleepen al the night with open ye--
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages..."

March 17, 2012 Walking Down South Tryon Street

I parked behind the Elmwood Cemetery and walked 8 or 10 blocks to find Zoyia, Zach and Shane across from Discovery Place.  Soon, Hanah, Paul, Sergay and Liza arrived, then Michael after parking the car. Everyone was wearing the green: shirts and head gear for the Charlotte St. Patrick's Day parade.  I wore the shamrock pin that a my parent's minister brought from Ireland after visiting the Quigley home in County Roscommon (he also brought back from the home, an old worn pitcher with an ice skating bear emblazoned on the side-- I have that to this day in my cupboard).  Down Tryon came the bag pipers, the Irish dancers with their curly locks, the radio stations blasting Irish tunes, the Storm Troopers in their white helmets but also wearing kilts, groups of golden retrievers wearing green costumes, Mastifs likewise, Pit Bull groups too, high school bands, High Step groups, Fire Trucks (also with pipers), a real leprechaun with a green coat and short pants, stockings and high heeled black shoes dancing and tipping his hat.  The children got green necklaces and lots of candy.
After the parade we met John and Colleen and James at Hanah and Paul's house for a cookout and cerebration of Sergay's birthday.  Paul had built a tree house in the back yard. A beautiful day in the low 80's, blooming Bradfood Pear trees, pansies, dogwoods, clover, tulips.  We missed Eleanor's family.

Eirinn go brach!

March 14, 2012 Ar Dheis De Go Raibh Anamacha Na Marbh

"May they be at the right hand of God".  I discovered the monument at the Columbia Canal today, which also reads:  "They were indentured to the river they linked."  In Memory of the Irish Who Built the Canal.
When Boofa and I start out, it is 58 degrees with a cloud cover and fog. There is a pleasant heavy moisture in the air.  The canal today is a smooth slate brown.  Through the trees, there are dogwoods blooming, jasmine, red buds and the tiny white blossoms on red tips.  Down on the Congaree rocks there are upwards of 60 cormorants.  We turn a bend and there are 60 more.  A man tells me he thinks they are anhingas.

By the time, we leave, it is 68 degrees. The sky is blue.  The clouds have parted and gone away.

March 11, 2012 A Walk With Katherine Quigley

I was having my third experience of auricular accupuncture.  The first two had been like a step down to quietness, a strong feeling after the shen men needle went in. Today  I realized that my mind was clear and then I heard the ticking of a clock.  I thought that I would just allow thoughts to enter and  pass on through.  I had the memory of my grandmother taking me, my brother, Buddy and my sister, Jill walking across the Winthrop campus.  We would stop and watch the goldfish in a small pond in the wall of the Carnegie Library. Then we would explore the paths of a flower garden and she would tell us the names of the flowers.  We would sit down on a hill and make necklaces and bracelets with white clover blossoms.  We would go into the the science building.  It was always open.  There we would see a fox, a wolfe, an owl preserved through taxidermy.  And real fetuses
in bottles on a high shelf.  And then in a deep reverie, I saw myself as I am now with my grandchildren walking along with her seeing the fish, the flowers, the animals.

I am learning to do auricular accupuncture.

March 4, 2012 Kings Mountain National Park

After green eggs and ham for breakfast, my daughter, Hanah, her children, Sergay and Liza, and I took a brisk, windy walk on the Kings Mountain Battleground.  We saw the Judas tree in purple bud (the tree that betrays the spring, also called The Red Bud) near the summit.  This is Sergay's birthday tree.  Hanah walked this trail in her childhood.  I also walked this trail in my childhood when we took rocks to place on the cairn of Patrick Ferguson.  This is now forbidden as it is considered disrespectful.  Now his last words of farewell to his friends and followers," I have gone to the warmer place" are heart breaking as are the so familiar names on the monument of the dead and wounded.  These are the names of the nearby towns and counties, the people who live now in our communities, our ancestors, our flesh and blood.

After the battle, there were so many bodies of the dead in shallow graves, that packs of wolves roamed the mountain for years. eating the remains.

Now there are children's summer camps nearby on this mountain.  My brother and I went as children, as did my children and his children and now their children.

March 3, 2012 Recipe for Sergay's birthday

First eat two pieces of pepperoni pizza.  Then go skating at the Skate Palace. Fall down once. Next, make this cake:
1/2 stick butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups flour
3 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla (or more)
Mix in that order, pour into greased and flowered pans. Bake in preheated oven at 350' for 35 minutes.
Icing:  Boil 1/4 stick butter, 2 Tsp millk . Add 1/2 box confectioners sugar. Beat with spoon.  Ice cooled cake. Put on 10 candles.  Give Sergay piggy bank full of coins from past year.