Naturally Intriguing

   She grabbed the fanny pack off the passenger seat and fastened it around her waist. Before climbing out of her SUV, she looked inside the bag to make sure it was still there, a compulsory habit since she started carrying a firearm seven years earlier. The Jimenez .380 glinted silently at her. Satisfied, she zipped the bag and glanced over her shoulder through the Ford Escape's rear hatch. She could see a man walking under the oaks towards her vehicle. He was tall, late sixties perhaps, carrying about fifty pounds of extra weight, and clearly dressed for the woods.  She gathered up her camera bag and notebook and stepped out into the muggy August morning to greet him.    "Hey there, you must be Renee!", he called to her, closing the gap between them quickly as she shut the driver's door of her Escape.   She didn't know what was in store for her today, and her anxiety, as usual, was, trying to get the best of her. But she took a deep breath and turned to him as s

  A howling nor’easter wind awoke her in the night. She had left her window cracked to allow a breeze in the small bedroom she was calling home for the next week. Undoubtedly, her fellow writers in the isolated New England cottage had, too, as her bedroom door rattled in its frame each time her curtains fluttered. She rolled over and reached for her phone in the dark. As her fingers grazed the glass, the screen lit up and she saw the time – 2:52 am. She withdrew her arm back under the bedsheet and turned her pillow to the cooler side.    As she tried to fall back asleep, a sudden slam from somewhere in the house made her jump and her eyelids flicked open. She guessed it was the screen door to the front porch, ripped out of someone’s grasp by the gale force winds. But who would be coming and going at nearly 3 am? She thought about how there were no locks on any of the doors – not the front door, nor her bedroom door. Who was that serial killer in Florida that slaughtered coeds? Danny

    Blue and green . When people ask me what my favorite color is, my response is always "blue and green". The color of fresh spring leaves against a cloudless sky. The color of a floating island of water hyacinths drifting on river currents after a storm. The color of tall stalks of spiderwort beside the sparkling swimming pool at the start of summer.     Actually, "blue and green" wasn't always my answer. In the third grade, My Gifted Program teacher, an old man named Willis Wright, asked me what my favorite color was, to which I thoughtfully replied, "Ummm...red and black" (two colors known to induce anger and depression) . Can you imagine a 7-year-old girl loving the colors red and black? Most little girls that age are drawn to pretty pinks and purples. But not I - I was apparently drawn to blood and death....maybe this is what got me kicked out of 'Gifted'.     You might be wondering now, " Well, what kind of a little girl WAS she? &

  Fog is a great imagination enhancer. How many horror movies depict an undead monster stumbling out of the fog? How many pirate ships have you seen materialize out of the mist? When you look out upon a field blanketed in fog, you can imagine anything being out there. But when I look into the fog, I like to imagine what is NOT there.  Staring across the pale gray river under the pale gray sky, I see no separation between water and air. The horizon does not exist. There is no opposite shoreline. I can forget the gaudy casino cruise ships docked at the marina. I can eliminate the paper mill's polluting smokestacks from my memory. Roaring cigar boats cutting a murderous line through the tannin-stained water fail to exist in this damp dreary world. But there is something else about this perfect morning, something better than its visual limitations...  A foggy morning is still and silent. No one is mowing the grass because everything outside is wet. There is no wind pushing this all-env

I'm envious of barge workers. I see them in the early morning hours, before there's any hint of light on the horizon. Well, I don't see them, but I know they're there. As I stand in the yard before dawn, I hear the hum of a tugboat pushing a barge upriver. I move to a spot on the riverbank where I can see the twinkling lights through the trees. As the holidays approach, some tugboats get decorated with Christmas lights. Couple that scene with a distant ghostly train whistle and you've really got something. But back to the barge workers... I've never been on a barge before, but I picture all the men onboard the same, wearing camo cargo pants and army green t-shirts, steel-toed lace up boots, and dark gray beanies atop balding heads. I imagine several-day-old stubble on faces that smell like cigarettes...probably a pack or two of Marlboro Reds visible somewhere in the lineup. I haven't gotten to the enviable part yet. No one can get to you on a boat, at least

  We pulled up to the parking lot for the Mount Yonah trailhead about 8:30am that morning. It was cool and overcast, having rained heavily the day before. Our third day of our 2022 vacation, and we had only been able to hike Anna Ruby Falls so far, thanks to wet weather. These double falls near Unicoi State Park are easily viewed at the end of a paved trail approximately one mile in length, but we were craving something more challenging.   The drive up to the clay and gravel parking lot was a mild incline and rutted out in places. Could my Nissan Versa make it? My anxiety set in, recalling our foolish endeavor of pulling a Uhaul up to Redington Canyon in Tucson over a decade ago - we bottomed out several times and narrowly avoided being stranded. Thankfully this time it was just us and the dog in a hatchback, and we made it all the way up without incident.   There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot when we arrived, with no humans in sight. As I climbed out of our car, a deer

The following article is a piece I wrote two years ago for the Clay Today. It was published on October 9th, 2014. I wrote it to bring awareness to the plight of the gopher tortoise. Today, I am a volunteer with a licensed wildlife rescue organization, and can attest that gopher tortoises still need all the help they can get.  Please read and share... Gopher Tortoise: Friend, Not Food      In August 2014, the butchered remains of five gopher tortoises were discovered in Hawthorne, Florida, strewn in the grass just outside Little Orange Creek Nature Park. It is suspected these animals were taken for their meat, as there was evidence their shells had been sawed apart. Sadly, this was not an isolated crime. In the same month, Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission received a tip that a number of gopher tortoise shells had been dumped in a wooded location in Citrus County. The FWCC began an investigation which led to the arrest of a man who admitted to killing 15