A Sourwood Mountain Nighthawk
Vol. 106, June 25th, 2024 Published a day early online
Sourwood Mountain
The thunderstorm waved, tousled my hair, and kept away to the south. The path stayed dry as a bone, my feet kicking up tiny clouds of dust in the evening air. Sundays are good for roaming. I slipped past the oak that watches over the last of the buildings, dropping down the hill to say hello to the pines. A deer jumped, startled at the human visitor.
The Jimsonweed bloomed near the creek, poisonous looking white trumpets tinged with purple, a witch’s garden with an industrial smell if trampled. I didn’t.
The trees and the grass seemed to hunker down, half-dormant from the drought, the same feeling as in a deep cold.
Wonder if the sourwood is blooming yet. The bees are in the Dearth, the lean time of the nectar flow, and should be hungry. They’re getting honey somewhere, though. Sure enough, there!
By the fenceline, white on green. Like a petite southern lady displaying a ring on impossibly beautiful hands, the blooms stretched out like fingers, framed by lemon lime leaves.
The faint buzzing of bees filled the still evening air. I marveled at this tea party of the highest class, then took my uninvited self back down the mountain with a smile. One shouldn’t interrupt the ladies.
Lady of the Woods
A sourwood tree blooms on the edge of the forest in Campbell County, VA. The bees love it (and the honey is fine).
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Right Smart–a good deal of. “Carol Stuart of Roanoke has a right smart amount of these interesting phrases.
(Speaking of Appalachia and sourwood…)
Book of the Week
Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is a magic piece of summer, a masterpiece of description, and a classic for a reason.
Happy Birthday, Color TV (1951)
Arthur Godfrey hosts TV special “Premiere” on a historic broadcast today–in color.
Quote of the Week
“Where are you between two thoughts?”
–Shri Atmananda, via Joseph Campbell
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #191)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: Mailboxes
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! “What are the specs, man? I only want to dig the hole once. Gonna put concrete in it.”
The postmaster remained unfazed, cool under fire when dealing with the general public. “42-45 inches above ground.”
I shook his hand thanks, and left. They could write a training manual about me.
The mailbox is up, a final piece of the puzzle for the house build, 43 ½ inches above ground, new and shiny and spiffy. Boy is it fine. Well, it looks crooked, actually, but the level says otherwise. Must be the nearby fence that’s off. It’s starting to feel like home.
The summer cicadas are back, too, as routine and dependable as the mail. It’s an odd time of life to hear them. Some things are brand new: this house, this mailbox, this geranium I’m watering on a porch made of fresh wood, even the particular cicada singing in the tree. Some things are forever: houses, mailboxes, flowers on porches, and cicadas singing on hot mornings in an early summer.
When I was younger, the Everyday seemed terribly dull. Then it started to catch my attention. Things like mailboxes. (One of them almost caught my mother’s arm, too, according to her. That first week of me learning to drive was startling for everyone in the car, but the mailbox too close to the road escaped ruin–narrowly.) COVID hammered that point home. Sometimes it takes losing something–especially the Everyday–to value it.
I’m lucky to have a lot of friends older than me, and I notice how they like the Everyday, too. A lot of them live in retirement homes, and don’t have their mailboxes and geraniums anymore. We sit and talk about it sometimes. I like to hear their stories. They teach me about the things that matter. A prize garden deserves to be marveled at, and remembered.
The mailbox stands shiny in the sun. Further on down the road, it’s postal neighbors wait for the daily in all sorts of shapes and colors, some nestled in flowers, others tottering out of the weeds, all dry and wishing for rain. I wonder if I followed this road up, past ten thousand mailboxes...if I’d still find my grandfather’s leaning out of the iris by the old beach drive. The URBAN letters must be faded beyond recognition. The new owners probably threw it away, but I remember it, a piece of the everyday, priceless.
Someday, this new mailbox will be old and rusty, too. The house numbers, so proudly carved into the oak board and painted dark green, will fade. But there will be someone watering a geranium on their porch, and a new cicada singing in the tree on a hot day in early summer. They’ll be carrying on the tradition of a morning in the country, and it will be good.
In the meantime, it’s a pleasure to keep the little things rolling forward. Sometimes it’s with a story, or sometimes it’s with concrete and specifications from the postmaster. But it all starts with noticing.
Catch you on the flip side,
Josh