Running in Fog

In my last post to this blog, I wrote:  "Now we can look forward with hope to the beginning of the long, hard road ahead, of making things better again." As it turns out, that journey has not yet begun because, one week after the election, our current President refuses to concede as every other modern President has.  Without any evidence, he is claiming darkly that there was massive voter fraud. (Why that fraud would not also have resulted in more Democratic Senators has not been explained.)  In retrospect, it was naive to expect otherwise.

Even more worrisome is the thirty percent of the country that believes him, and the majority of the Republican Party who have refused to accept Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the election.  Martha and I have speculated how this kind of attitude would play out in the next road race we enter (whenever that might be).  I will simply claim outright the First Place Overall trophy.  "But you came in way behind most of the other runners," an exasperated Race Director might tell me.  "Doesn't matter.  It was a fraudulent race.  I refuse to accept that I did not win.  And if I don't get that trophy, I will file a lawsuit."

So instead of enjoying watching the huge nationwide celebration that took place Saturday night, where there was literally dancing in the streets, and listening with interest to the details of the progressive programs Joe Biden might have to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, pass a stimulus bill to help all of those who are hurting so much, and protect health insurance, we are listening once again to a Trump administration sucking up all the news.  It doesn't look as if this nightmare will end until January 20.

I had a good six-mile run yesterday during which I tried not to think about all of this.  And this morning I planned to run again, but was met with drizzling rain that increased in intensity on my way to Town.  I sat in my car for awhile, torn between getting soaked to the skin in a "character-building run" that I did not need after yesterday's six miles, or having to consider that I have indeed become a wimp.  I actually decided the latter, and started driving home, when the rain suddenly diminished, enough so that I turned the car around and returned to Town.  "I'll get in a mile, maybe two," I thought, but conditions remained nice, and I ended up completing three miles in thick fog.  I love running in the fog, just as I do in the snow!  And in mid-November, there are still bright blazes of color - Japanese maples, burning bushes - that seem to pop out more boldly than usual from the thickness of the fog.

But this is a familiar story to readers of this blog.  A window of opportunity opens for the hesitant runner, and he climbs through, sometimes being rewarded with the kind of run I had today, but often just the opposite.  The daily struggle with weather, terrain, and self.

Returning home, I noticed that our own burning bushes along the road are perhaps at their very peak of beauty, the leaves soaring upward through a rising spectrum of color, blazing crimson.  It is a beautiful time of year in Highlands!

There is good news, too, amid the drama of lawsuits and election recounts and the obstructionism of Republican Senators.  Pfizer has developed a vaccine that is 90% effective, and it will be available soon.  With competent people in our government once again, we can hope to return one day to some kind of normalcy.

President Elect

It was nice to come home from my long run on Saturday morning - eight miles in company with good friends, on another unseasonably warm November day - and see this on the news.

The final results keep changing day by day, but Joe Biden has either 273 or 290 electoral votes out of 270 required, and a popular vote lead of about four million.  The news networks declared him President Elect sometime Saturday morning.  

Joe Biden will have a tough road ahead.  The current administration has done much damage to our country and to our relationships with our allies, and its incompetent leadership has allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to spread without any containment, like those massive wildfires this year in California that one would hear described as "five-percent contained," or even less.  Last week, our country set a record for new infections:  100,000 in one day.  That comes to about one every second.  In the time it perhaps has taken a reader of this blog to reach this point in today's post, 40 people became infected.  One person dies of the virus every 80 seconds by last report.

We watched Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris speak to the nation last night, and they could not have given a more hopeful speech.  Hope has been in short supply these days!  He said, in part, what we are all longing to hear from a President:

"I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify. Who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States. And I will work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you."

We're with you, Joe!   Let us know how we can help!

It has been a long roller-coaster ride the past four years.  We knew four years ago that out nation was heading in the wrong direction.  In January of 2017, while we were staying in Atlantic Beach, Martha and I drove to Union Park in New Bern to attend the Women's March.  Millions of people around the nation, both men and women, attended similar gatherings, peaceful marches in protest of Trump's election.  I wrote this at the time (January 21, 2017):

"I feel that this is a similar profound moment in our history when good people must stand up and speak out against this President and all that he represents - the very worst representation of our nation, in my opinion - and the regressive policies he has already started to implement."

That prediction turned out to be far worse than we could have imagined, with an economy in tatters, children separated from their parents at the border and locked in cages, Nazis marching in the streets, and a deadly pandemic raging out of control.  

But now we can look forward with hope to the beginning of the long, hard road ahead, of making things better again.  I have learned as a runner that we can heal after an injury and run once again.  Let us pray that this nation can heal in the same way, and head forward on the right road.  

Siempre Adelante Nunca Atras - always forward, never back.

Post-Election Stress

Two days after the election, a winner has still not been determined.  So we're watching more television than usual, alternating between MSNBC, CNN, and PBS.  On the so-called "Road to 270" MSNBC has Biden leading Trump 253 electoral votes to 214, PBS has it at 264 to 214.  From time to time we check to see if there has been any change, and I find myself watching one commentator or another going into far more detail about the electorate in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, than I ever thought possible.

I can't remember watching election results with more anxiety than this year, except perhaps in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote.  That's because there is so much at stake this year.  One of the many commentators I heard sometime over the past week said that some 80% of Republicans thought that it would be disastrous if a Democrat won the Presidency, and the same percentage of Democrats thought the same about the other side winning.  That's certainly the way I feel about it. 

I also learned that 70% of Americans were experiencing stress over the election.  How do I deal with stress?  The way any good runner does.  Yesterday, I awoke early and ran six miles as hard as I could, and this morning I awoke early and ran three miles as hard as I could, including a fast ascent up "Monkey Hill" on Hickory Street, the steepest hill we have in Highlands, one that makes Big Bearpen look like an easy climb.  But that wasn't enough.  After lunch I got out the wheelbarrow and tackled that big pile of mulch down the road, completing ten of what I suppose I should call "wheelbarrow intervals" up the Sassafras Gap Road hill.  This is a project I began in early August and that big pile of mulch does not seem to be diminishing in size at all.  Our neighbor's little dog came out and stood on the bank above the road, barked once, and then fell silent and watched curiously this man who was working with such single-minded purpose that he barely noticed her.

It was a cool day, with a light breeze blowing, and after ten loads I realized I had stopped worrying about the election, for just a little while.  Soon I will return to that big map of Pennsylvania and wonder what is taking so long counting those ballots in Alleghany County.

Election Day

In my post of October 15 - "Watching Out for Each Other" - I departed from writing about running and building stone walls and raking leaves and talked about the 2020 election.  That was the first day for early voting in Highlands and Martha and I were, if I remember correctly, No. 94 and 95 at the polls.  We were not the only ones to vote early; nearly 100 million other voters took advantage of early voting or have already cast absentee ballots.  That far surpasses anything we have ever seen in this country.

I think I made it pretty clear who I voted for on October 15.  The current occupant of the White House may have believed, when he saw Nazis marching in the streets in Charlottesville over two years ago, that there were "very fine people on both sides."  Not me.  I know what side I'm on.

There were only two choices before the electorate this year.  I have learned a great deal about Joe Biden over the past couple of decades, and I have always admired him.  I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about the current occupant of the White House, so much so that I don't even like using his name.  It almost seems like an obscenity.  And yet his supporters are everywhere, even among my own circle of friends, who seemed to be willing to give an outsider a chance four years ago but now surely must see how terribly wrong that decision has proven to be.  Even here in Highlands, his zealous supporters have been driving in so-called "Trump Parades," a line of pickup trucks driving down Main Street, honking horns loudly and flying Trump flags.  This group was standing on the corner of Main Street and Third Street on Saturday.

I can't remember ever seeing anything like this in Highlands - nobody brandished Romney or McCain or Bush or Obama flags in parades down Main Street.  But I suppose that sums up the past four years pretty well:  we've never seen anything like it before.  Children in cages, Nazis marching in the streets, warm handshakes with Vladimir Putin, our foreign alliances in tatters, the economy the worst since the Great Depression, and a deadly pandemic growing worse and worse by the day.

One of my Facebook friends posted this photograph which summed up pretty well the contrast between the two candidates we have before us this year.

I'll choose the decent-looking guy, the one sitting comfortably on a bench in blue jeans with his smiling wife.  The one with the dog.  I know that if he wins the election, no matter what our problems may be, he will urge us to work together, not try to divide us.  He will work for progress.  And I will sleep better knowing that there are competent hands on the steering wheel.

Another Project Completed

It is always satisfying to complete another project, especially when it is a rock wall or column.  Yesterday afternoon, I put the final rocks in place, mixed up the final load of mortar, and lifted the huge cap rock in place.  A few final touches, a heavy rock propped against a flat rock in the back to keep it in place, and by this morning it had all set up.   

And the final column, as it looks today, and as it will look thirty years from now in all likelihood, except that by then it will be covered in green moss like the wall:

Hurricane Zeta

We were expecting Hurricane Zeta yesterday and today.  The forecast called for rain yesterday morning, a brief clearing in the afternoon, and then heavy rain and high winds all day today.  I used that afternoon clearing to complete a three-mile run up in Town in very mild conditions - you could feel the humidity, as if a little piece of the Gulf of Mexico was being shoved our way ahead of the bulk of the storm.  There was no mistaking that we were directly in its expected path.

We heard rain blowing during the night, that light hurricane rain that waxes and wanes in intensity.  Sometimes it sounded like it was really raining hard.  I awoke at 6:00 to total darkness on the bedside table and knew the power was out.  I have to admit that I was a little surprised; we had expected the power outage later in the day during the heavy rain and wind, but it had come in very swiftly during the night.  We heard later that someone in Cashiers had clocked an 82-mile-an-hour wind, which is high for these mountains that are usually relatively sheltered.

We learned to be resourceful years ago and are equipped for most short power outages.  I survived a power outage of several days with our daughter Katy during the blizzard of 1993.  She was only six years old, and Martha had gone to Raleigh to visit her grandmother, leaving us stranded with a vehicle that did not have four-wheel drive.  We actually enjoyed being resourceful at the time, and I still do.  So I quickly went about filling buckets from the dwindling water supply, lighting the kerosene lantern, and rigging up the small propane burner which we have owned since before 1993 and still works well to heat up a kettle of water for coffee.  I was drinking my second cup out on the back porch - light rain blowing so hard that I was getting a little wet - when I heard that beeping and clicking sound of returning power.  I was almost a little disappointed that it had returned so quickly.  I had already planned a lunch of black bean burgers cooked on the grill.

The rain had mostly faded away by mid-morning, and I realized I had the opportunity to run again, as well as to check out any possible damage in Town.  The conditions were a little surreal when I arrived in Town.  Rain had returned on my drive to Town, but then it looked as if the sun was trying to shine.  Tiny raindrops were blowing around, so light that they almost seemed like snow flurries, and it was a balmy 68 degrees.  I saw several limbs down but no trees on my route; however, damage must have been worse in parts of Town because the power was still out here and there and power trucks had the Dillard Road blocked.  The Main Street traffic light was out and a police officer was directing traffic. There was a lot more flooding than I had expected.  On my usual route through Village Walk I found back yards flooded and a muddy, roaring Mill Creek.

It was the same along Sixth Street, and the little creek that runs beside Trillium Place near Townsite Apartments was almost engulfing the footbridge that crosses it that I sometimes run on.

This house on Laurel Street usually floods during very heavy rains, and this morning was no exception.  Photos taken earlier that Martha later showed me on Facebook showed the front yard completely flooded, but by the time I passed by it had subsided somewhat.

I am grateful that we fared better than most, especially compared to New Orleans which had reportedly taken a direct hit.  By lunch time the sun was out and it was nearly 75 degrees.  We will enjoy it while we can, because cold weather is coming this weekend.

Rock Walls and Columns

I built a curved rock sidewalk from our driveway and patio to our back door 32 years ago.  After I had completed it, I built a rock wall that follows that same curve, and in the area between them we have planted hostas and other plants over the years.  I know when I built that wall because I unearthed a picture from an old photo album that says our daughter Katy was two years old, which would have made it 1988.  I know I had just completed it in this picture because the taught string that I used to make its top level is still in place.  Katy's holding a little whisk broom that I am still using to this day for rock work.

That seems like such a long time ago!  In the intervening years, Katy grew into a beautiful and talented young woman, her dad lost a good bit of hair on top of his head, and that jeep in the background was hauled to the junkyard decades ago.  And that same wall today is covered with moss and thrift.

That's one thing I like about rock walls - they will be there for a long, long time.  They will endure.  We see the remains of rock walls, foundations, and chimneys everywhere that have survived the houses they were once attached to, like this chimney I took a photo of several years ago.  

There is a good chance that this rock wall I built 32 years ago will be there as long as that chimney.  I built it on a good foundation, and I installed "weepholes" every few feet, short lengths of galvanized steel pipe that permit moisture to escape from the bank behind it and thus prevent it from buckling or cracking.  I wrote a poem about building walls like this many years ago.

I don't know why I terminated the wall the way I did, simply stopping abruptly just outside our back door.  I may have had something in mind like an outdoor fireplace at the time, or some stone steps leading up to the compost bins.  But I am glad that I left it incomplete, waiting for the right time to come along.

Could I ever have imagined at the time that these many years later I would be building a column there incorporating rocks collected from around the country, fished from the Pacific Ocean, picked up from the desert in Arizona, or a mountain in Maine? 

Stand firm, good column.