Review: Flight of Passage

A memoir by Rinker Buck


He had a fantastic story to tell and he told it well. Better than well--wonderfully.

It's about two brothers, a father, and an airplane. And a magical, impossible, adorable trip across America. Having been to most of the places that the boys flew over, I understood and appreciated the scenery and challenges better than other people might. But even if you haven't been there, this book comes highly recommended.

It is quite dated now, having taken place in 1966. But not dated in a bad way--rather in a delightfully nostalgic look back at how young and innocent our country used to be and how beautiful the scenery can be when there weren't so many cars and roads and superhighways in it. Some of his descriptions of horses or prairie dogs or even Stearman pilots are a bit sad making, because their days are no more and no one can ever see what the two boys saw. But it's definitely worth a look back--a delightful one!

Review: Charles Dowding's Skills For Growing

I'd read one of his gardening books before--it was where I learned how to do "no-till gardening" and became very addicted to it.  In a plot as small as mine (25'x30') it makes a lot of sense, and seems to work well. The main problem I have is that I don't make nearly as much compost as I need (making compost is a lot of work) and so I end up periodically scraping up the mulch between the rows and using it as compost for top-dressing the beds. That also works well, but it is a good bit of work.

But back to this book. He had some new stuff to add to the previous book, and it is very well done. The skills he speaks of are all things I could use a refresher course in, like transplanting, watering, covering the beds, and succession. He's really big on succession. I've never been very successful with it.

Especially useful to me was the section on frost protection and how different families of plants vary in their degree of frost tolerance.  But other than that, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff from this book. But I enjoyed it.

Review: The Big Year

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession
by Mark Obmascik

Wow, eye-witness modern history! With a backstory--when did big years start, how did they get so big, and why in the world would someone waste so much time and money chasing about after silly birds?  

Well, he can't quite answer the last question, but you get a strong feeling for the three guys in the narrative. And it's fascinating, throughout. With a good bit of seat-gripping action thrown in from time to time.  The competition is not so much man against man against man as it is man against "previous record" and sometimes, man against bird.  Seasickness, foul weather, and mosquitoes play prominently in the action, too.

It's hard to explain how this became so interesting. All I can say is it was hard to pause (I did the audiobook recording) and easy to pick up. If I'd been reading it on paper, I'd probably have gulped in in a few long sessions.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 10

(No pictures--my phone decided to store images in a compressed format that the computer can't convert. Some stupid upgrade changed my setting.)

Fri Apr 19, at Stephens Park (Corp. of Engineers)

We've stayed in a lot of strange and unusual places, but this one was uniquely weird in a lot of ways. It looked and felt like a pull-off at the side of the road. Not really, but...really. The drive into camp is just an offshoot of a small state highway. On either side of the drive, there are camping sites--mostly back-in but a few pull through. There are no sidewalks and very little pavement; if I want to walk the dog I have to go up and down the drive past other campsites or cross the grass to the road, and walk alongside the road.

Molly's evening walk consisted of two loops around our campsite and past the ones immediately to either end of ours. If I went further backward, I'd walk past people enjoying a quiet campfire. If I went further forward, I'd pass the people at the end with the two barking poodle-type dogs. I didn't see anyone sitting outside down there, but I didn't see the point in stirring up noise.

And that's all there was. A bathroom, a pavilion, and a tiny playground down by the lake, but I couldn't get there without walking across the grass and alongside the road, which is luckily little traveled.

We were right beside a creek which is mostly dry but still has a trickle or two of water. And there's no trash around anywhere, which must mean someone is cleaning it up. There's always trash, especially at COE campgrounds, so the lack of trash means that maintenance is being done daily.

On our afternoon walk, Molly and I went across the bridge and past the power plant and alongside the huge spillway. Then the road split off to the right but there was a COE drive on the left-hand split that went up, up and up a huge hill until it reached a scenic overlook of Lake Ouachita. Wow.

The campground was a cute little place. I feel both exposed and pleased.  There were t*Tons of summer tanagers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, chipping sparrows. And a bunch of little warblers I couldn't ID by ear and couldn't see in the trees.

Better luck tomorrow...but there's a long drive tomorrow. Four hours and thirty minutes with a gas stop. Yuck.  I won't have time for birding in the morning...the spring migration trip is over.

Review Stephens Park
$15 with discount

Hard to find on google maps, but if you search for the address listed on recreation.gov, Google takes you right to the entrance. There were some dodgy little roads getting there and a few tree branches creeping out over the roadway, but nothing serious. (We came from the east, near Hot Springs)

Don't be put off by the appearance--it looks run down and crummy but once you're parked and settled, it's actually very nice. A good bit of traffic on the little road that runs beside it, but it's not a super busy road so there's only a little noise. Other than that, it's quiet and very clean.

Our site 6 was pull-through and very unlevel but we have pretty good jacks on the Class A and were able to level easily. Picnic table a little old but okay. Site surface was hard gravel. Water, sewer and 50-amp electricity. Sufficient room between us and the neighbors; not as spacious as some COE parks but okay.  And it's a small park so there aren't a lot of neighbors--maybe 20 sites or so total. More than half empty on a Friday in April.

There's no good place to walk your dog other than down to the tiny playground by the river, but if you're feeling adventurous you can walk past the power plant along the spillway, then turn right and go up the huge hill to the scenic overlook of Lake Ouachita. Nice view up there.

It's convenient to fishing in the tailwaters below the dam. Not sure if there were any fish there, but an Osprey kept patrol.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 9

Thu Apr 18

Nothing exciting happened on our second day at Lake Poinsett. We went to , Jonesboro to see the Crowley's Ridge Nature Center. It was probably a pretty nice--and very small--nature center, but the trails were closed and there were a bunch of students and wheelchair people visiting.  I didn't ask why the trails were closed, but it didn't matter so much. the crowd would have made it hard to see anything anyway.

They had an excellent botanic garden set up, but very few of the plants were blooming at the time. Odd, because there are blooms all over everywhere else.

So we went back to camp and Molly got another very long walk. We took the second half of the trail we'd done before, in reverse, and looped back to the entrance station.  The skies had been threatening thunderstorms all day, so when we passed a group of park ranger-type guys I asked them, jokingly, when are the storms coming? They said the last forecast called for 3:30 pm.  It was only about 3:15 by then, so Molly and I went on and did the trail called the Upper Heron Loop or something like that, then took the same route back to camp.  Round about 4pm, rain started spitting down on us. But it wasn't serious enough to even need a raincoat.

Nice park but very small. We pretty much hiked all the trails they had in under two hours.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 8

 My Palm Warbler pics,

 

Good-bye to Reelfoot Lake, and back to Arkansas. We went across the flat, northeast delta of Arkansas, where the farm land was marked with irrigation canals, probably from the Mississippi River. Or the St. Francis But oddly enough, I don't remember the route we took. It seems like it would have been faster to go south on I-55, but I don't think we did.

Anyway, we liked the campground a lot. It was in a forest on a hill, with no lake in sight, but still nice. Actually if you went all the way to the end of the camping loop you could get a glimpse of the lake over across the day use and playground area. When we arrived and settled in, Molly and I took a long walk across the fields, through the day use area, and then on a trail that cut through the woods behind our campsite. It eventually came out to another "arm" of the lake with a nice view.

Here's my review which will give you an idea of the details.

Review Lake Poinsett State Park
$35 site 4
Immaculate and almost brand-new
A good bit of loving care had gone into the design of the campground. On the map it looked like a straight-line road with lined-up campsites on either side, but in actuality they were varied and well spaced. Some looked like they'd be great paired sites; some had little rails making a balcony effect; the one or two at the very end of the loop had lake view.  The whole park is very park-like--clean, well-mowed, huge pine and oak trees with little undergrowth, light and airy and beautiful. But there are more than enough ticks around to remind you that you really are out "in nature."

Site surfaces hard gravel; our site 4 was extremely level. Water and electric (50-amp) worked great. No sewer, but the dump station is beside the visitor center and well set up.

There were a few trails, all of which could be walked in a couple of hours. But they were very nice.  There was a big playground, basketball goals, and a few swings to sit on and admire nature.  Our campsite was quiet other than the sound of gunfire that went on until after 9:00 at night. It was coming from down south out of the boundaries of the park--not close, but close enough to scare my dog and ruin her walks. The only other issue I have is that several campers had extremely bright outside lighting that they left on all night long. If we'd been near to them, any chances of sitting out and enjoying the everything would have been ruined.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration Day 7

Tue 16 Apr

Last day at Reelfoot Lake. I finally found a new warbler, I think--a Palm Warbler. The rusty-colored crown was significant, as well as the face pattern and the yellow "undertail coverts". I'm almost, almost sure about it.

But am I sure enough?

Yes. I saw another one later and took pictures.  (See tomorrow post)

Osprey and camp wildlife

We didn't do much, just went over to the State Park Visitor Center and walked the little boardwalk there. 

 

On the way back we stopped at a boat ramp/eagle nesting site and watched a pair of eagles who appeared to be feeding at least one fledgling. Here's the best pictures I could get, without approaching the nest, of course.

Ate at a Boyette's Dining Room.  Not bad; not great.  Very good slaw.

Gardening mid-May

 We interrupt this spring trip with an urgent garden report:

 

 

Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillars in the dill!

Four at last count. I wish I'd planted more. 

Butternut Squash is blossoming,

Jalapeno!  The plants look horrible, but at least I have a few peppers

A few lovely little carrots,

And tomato blossoms aplenty,

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 6

Mon Apr 15
Review: Reelfoot Lake SP

site 7  Paid $130/3
All about the location

There were a lot of people camping here on a weekday in April, and I can only guess it was all about the location. It's not all that close to any major interstates--the nearest on is probably the I-155 cut-over at Dyersburg. And it's not really on the way to or from anywhere interesting.  But still, it's Reelfoot Lake! And that's interesting all on its own.

We had an asphalt surface that was mostly level but crumbling on the sides and back.  It backed up to the lake, and some of the others on the "Lake Loop" were even worse than ours--the cypress roots had attacked the backstop and crumbled the edges. On ours, the picnic table was so close to the swamp that if you tripped you'd fall in. But I'm not complaining--it wasn't all that deep there, and it was absolutely beautiful.

The water pressure was a little low but it worked fine. Electricity fine, too. They were keeping the part maintained pretty well; we saw workers removing the heat wires from the water pipes and mowing.

The other campers were quiet and most kept their outdoor lighting to a minimum. It was beautifully dark at night. The sites were about 1/4 to 1/3 full at the time (weekday in mid-April). The only strange thing I have to report is that Google Maps couldn't seem to find it. Google navigated us to the visitor center which was a couple of miles away. But signage got us to the campground.

The boat ramp at the campground was unusable for all but the smallest of motorboats--don't try. There was only little trail--the Broad Slough trail--over to the cabins. It was hard to find the trailhead--you go to the sign at the tent camping area, then walk along the mowed grass mound (floodwall?) beside the road. Then you see a second sign where the trail actually begins.

The restaurant "Down home family" was closed despite google saying it was open.

The park Visitor Center has a lovely boardwalk out back.  And the Wildlife Refuge visitor center is very nice. This is at the south unit--the north unit in Kentucky was pretty much empty of wildlife or birds at the time of year. Maybe in the winter when the marshes are full of it would be okay.

Don't miss seeing the nesting Bald Eagle pair at the main boat ramp, around the lake halfway between the campground and the visitor center. And check out the nesting ospreys out on a dead tree in the lake near our camp site.

From the boardwalk:

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 5

Sun Apr 14
Heading to Reelfoot Lake at last!

So on we drove, up through the the flat river plains of Arkansas and southeast Missouri.  We got to watch the precious alluvial topsoil blowing away in a strong wind from the southwest.  Then we crossed the Mississippi river on I-155 and headed north on little roads where the wind, at our tail, wasn't a problem.

Crossing the Mississippi

 

I figured this place, where I always wanted to go but don't think Dad ever took us there, would be a perfect place to see the best of spring migration but not have to go too far from home. And it was, sort of--there were yellow-rumped warblers migrating all over the freaking place. For a while it seemed like ever single bird I picked out of the trees was yet another yellow-rumped warbler. After a while I learned to ignore them--if it was staying fairly low, moving kind of slow, and easy to see...it was just another butterbutt. Skip it!

Reelfoot Lake was formed in northwestern Tennessee when the region subsided during the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes, which were centered around New Madrid, Missouri.
A land survey begun by Henry Rutherford in 1785 identified the existent waterway as the Reelfoot River. The now extinct river flowed into the Mississippi River prior to the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.[3] Jedidiah Morse, in 1797, described the river as 30 yards wide, 7 miles from the mouth.[4] Eliza Bryan, an eyewitness to the earthquakes, wrote in 1816 from Missouri Territory that an enormous lake had grown on the other side of the Mississippi River...

It was an exaggeration, but still, there was the lake where little or no lake existed before.

I can't find a good article explaining it, but after the massive decline of eagles and osprey due to DDT concentrating in their food chain, in the late 1970's eagles were reintroduced into the lake area. It was a big deal at the time--my dad was the one who told me about it, and he was fairly excited.

There is an interesting article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-eagles-of-reelfoot-lake.html
but it doesn't mention the repopulation project.
 
Anyway, back to camp. Molly and I took a nice walk, looking for the trail which we couldn't find and watching stupid butterbutts in the trees but also a pair of osprey gathering sticks to add to their enormous nest out in the lake.  We don't think they had chicks yet, but Ed did see one take food to the other.

What a lovely place! 

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 4

 Sat Apr 13

I chased a lot of warblers in the morning but never caught one. The pair of Canada Geese hanging out nearby were unbelievably loud. What a wake-up call for the people camping there!

Our site photos

 

The park was pretty full that day, with both campers and day users. Most people were fishing.

We took a long, slow drive down the road to the south end of the park, where we found another campground which looked brand new.  It was called Storm Creek Campground; it had big, 50-amp sites and some gorgeously huge cabins.  But there was no lake view--it was just sites cut out of the woods. There was a little lake to the south that you could walk to, and of course if you had a boat you could launch it. So it's work remembering.  (And there were almost no people there other than a very nice park ranger)

We drove back up the Crowley's Ridge Parkway. At the 'overlook' you could see, barely, at the very limit of binocular vision, the brown mud of the Mississippi River.

I think I've written about Crowley's Ridge before. To recap, it's a narrow rolling hill region rising 250 to 550 feet above the alluvial plain of the Mississippi embayment in a 150-mile line from southeastern Missouri to the Mississippi River near Helena, Arkansas. The flora and fauna of the ridge seem more closely related to the Tennessee hills to the east than to the Ozark Mountains to the west. The vegetation is predominantly oak and hickory forests, similar to vegetation found in the Appalachian Mountains. Examples are the tulip tree (or yellow poplar) and the American beech. Ferns and flowers abound here, including the American bellflower, fire pink, butterfly weed, cardinal flower, blue lobelia, phlox, verbena, wild hydrangea, hibiscus, aster, and yellow jasmine.

Fascinating place. I just wish I'd seen more birds.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 3

Fri Apr 12

Today the travel took us to Mississippi River State Park, which is in Arkansas and is NOT on the the Mississippi River. (It's on the St. Francis)  But it comes pretty close to being in the river's flood plain.

We went there a few years back on that fateful adventure of the leaking hydraulic line. But this time, knowing where to go and what to expect, it was easy breezy. It's a long--three mile?--drive from the visitor center to the campground, on a curving peninsula out into a little lake. It's well-laid out and beautiful. I'd reserved the very best site at the end of the peninsula; just past out picnic table is a bench that looks out over the water. It's not technically our own private bench, but it's certainly convenient.

I realized later that the two spots at the south end of the penisula are better for birding. There's a tree there which seems to breed little warbling birds. So if we go to that park again, I'll get one of those even though they're spaced a little too close together. One of them has it's own lake viewing bench, too.

The only fault I'd give this park is the lack of trails--there's a lovely nature trail just across the road, very vertically challenging. But it's only about a mile long, and the only trail is south of the campground in the National Forest area.  But I got to thinking, there might be some good places to walk along the road toward the visitor center.

Lots and lots of birds, especially Orchard Orioles. I saw a hummingbird. But no especially birds on our walks. We went around the lake to the boat launch and back. The spillway down to the creek was a long, loverly grassy slope filled with wildflowers. I wish I'd walked down it, but I wasn't wearing boots and didn't feel like wading through knee-high vegetation in hiking sandals. Lost opportunity--sucks.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 2

Thu Apr 11

We stayed at White Oak Lake state park another day. Following the advice of the girl at the visitor center, we drove a few miles to see the Arkansas Grand Canyon. We found the parking area on google maps, but there was no sign saying we were there. So we parked and took the little trail around, and soon found a nice view of the river and some rock formations that very vaguely resembled the view of the real Grand Canyon. At least, to someone who'd only ever seen the Grand Canyon in photographs.

 

But it was pretty and peaceful and made for a nice day trip.

For Molly's walk, I was determined to see the singer of the bird son on the little nature trail by the group shelter/basketball court. It required going off trail and standing still for a long time, but finally I had it!  Louisiana Waterthrush.

The location was correct, but the behavior not I would have expected. The books say it walks alone the ground and waggles its tail like a fine Southern lady. But this one--and presumably also the one up the hill it was calling to--was just sitting still on a lower limb of a tree.  And singing his loud, distinctive call.

New life bird for me. I didn't get a picture, but it was unmistakable.

After that we went down to find the other trails on the map. There is a very well-marked sign, with maps, down at the tent camping area. There were three or four trails of varying lengths going off. Again, they were very well marked with color-coded blazes.

We took the shortest one, the Beech Ridge Trail, which was 2 miles. The others were 3 miles or 9.8 miles. It was a lovely little trail, no birds to mention but a very pleasant walk for us both.

I don't have much good to say about Arkansas except that they have some great state parks.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration

Wed 10 April

The plan for this trip and the timing thereof, are evident in the title. We were heading east in pursuit of the rush of spring songbirds flowing up the middle of the country. I wanted to get out of Texas--although a lot of migrants do head through Texas--specifically to get to the warblers that stick further to the eastern states.

So our end destination was Reelfoot Lake State Park in northwestern Tennessee. Just over the Mississippi River. But there was no reason to rush to get there--there are plenty of birds in Arkansas, too.

Thus our first day took us to White Oak Lake State Park in south-eastern Arkansas. On arrival, I looked at the news and they said "Millions in Southern U.S. face flooding, tornadoes and hail from massive storm".  The storm was in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and luckily, not Arkansas, although it had just started in raining at about 6:30 and was likely to continue for a long time.  Felt like that, anyway.

Lovely park. We came here several years ago, in August, and I remembered it as a very nice place. What I didn't remember, were the trails.  A lot of trails. (Will explain later), No one was around except old people, except for the very young lady who checked me in at the office. And, of course, the birds were around. There were birds all over the place. We were greeted by barn swallows at the office, then chipping sparrows, mockingbirds, warblers of several unknown vintages. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Fish Crow, Great Egret, and oddly, a Kingfisher in the trees next to the water. I've never seen one skulk in trees like that, but that's what he was doing.

But all that would come next day, because the rain was driving us indoors for the night.  We have a lot of Doc Martin episodes to complete.

Review: The Last Cold Place

The Last Cold Place: A Field Season Studying Penguins in Antarctica
by Naira de Gracia

Sometimes poetic, often grueling, always interesting. I have overall praise for this book, a well-written memoir about a season spent as a field researcher in Antarctica. She seems to have taken excellent notes because the book is detailed and often feels like you're right there with her, at the current time and in the thick of melting slop, penguin muck, mold and goo, infinite goo. In fact, the only thing I wished she'd done differently is to capture the fun a little more. She mentions the fun times but doesn't dwell on them like she does the minutiae and the misery.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, and especially if you've ever wanted to do it, this book is highly recommended. But if you're just looking to share someone else's adventure in a far-away place, like I was, not so much. As much as I enjoyed it--parts of it--by the end I was ready for it to be over. Sorry to admit that; it's probably just me.

Review: Telling Lies

Telling Lies, Sam Mason Mysteries #1
by L.A. Dobbs

I think this was described as 'cozy', but I hesitate to call it that. The main characters were both police officers, and the murder was simply an investigation of events that happened in their small town. It wasn't especially violent or gory, but it didn't have that light and fluffy characteristic I associate with cozies. And no recipe.

It was well-written and had a great main plot plus a to-be-continued subplot. The people were pretty interesting, especially the lady cop who has a mysterious past she won't talk about. (Second subplot?)  I'd recommend it wholeheartedly...

Except, be warned. There's a dog. A mysterious, detecting dog who shows up from nowhere, comes and goes as she pleases, and helps find the body. But we never find out where she came from and why she seems to be so invested in this particular dead body. It would have been so very easy to give her a motive--maybe the person was kind to her or gave her a cookie?  Maybe she's an ex-police dog from somewhere. Why do we never find out?

Possibly she will become a fourth subplot. I'll see.

Gardening in my Roots, early May edition

 Oopsey--I wasn't paying attention to the beans and they got ahead of me.

 

Squash is lovely. This is butternut. I gave up trying to grow yellow summer squash because the vine borers always get it. But luckily, the "winter" varieties of squash seem to be resistant. They're called winter squash (butternut, acorn, etc) because they have hard rinds and can be stored without refrigeration, but they grow in the summer just like anything else.

 

 

And my snap peas are still producing beautifully--I should have a couple more weeks of these.

Review: Late Life Adventures in London and Beyond

by Annemarie Rawson

I am embarrassed to admit that I'm abandoning this at about 40%. It's really entertaining--really entertaining--wash, rinse, and repeat. I can imagine a person enjoying this to the max, especially a person who'd traveled in the places they are traveling or who plans to do so. But for me, it just goes on and on and never gets to the door.

They go places, meet people, make friends, eat a lot of really good food. And she's very descriptive--beautifully so--with phrases like "sparkling azure sea" and "fat, sweet, juicy orange crevettes." And it's lovely, lively, likeable and any number of other ell's you can imagine.

But after a few chapters, I just got tired of all the scene changes. If I kept a copy in the bathroom for reading during my short sits, it might be perfectly suited. But not for an evening's long read.

Book review: A Reckoning in the Back Country

A Reckoning in the Back Country: A Samuel Craddock Mystery
by Terry Shames

I enjoyed it almost as much as I have the others. And the reason I say "almost" is that there was a certain plot element that seemed to go nowhere in the end, and while I can understand why it was there, I can't quite see the point of it. It was a little painful, too.

If she'd brought that one and the related subplot element to a more satisfactory resolution, even if the resolution was negative, I'd have been completely happy. But, of course, 98% happy is probably pretty darn happy.

I can't wait to read the next one.