Logging in July
Widow-Makers
The Poplar and the Box Turtle
But Not Bob’s Wife
The climb gets steeper and more punishing, but work awaits at the top of the hill. The air is already heavy and oppressive, like a steamy wool blanket, though the day has barely broken. Sunlight slips through scattered holes in the dense canopy, casting beams of luminous vapor to the forest floor in the hills of southern Indiana.
The undisputed champions of the summer woods harass me incessantly. Gnats, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, hornets, wasps, and countless others feeding and breeding in a frenzy. The man or beast that dares to toil in this maniacal din pays a heavy toll. I have sworn many times never to return to logging, yet here I am — and in the worst month possible. Rejecting the constraints of conformity has a price. My price, my sentence, is logging in July.
When I left an acting career in New York and returned home to Indiana, I was convinced the only remedy for my inner extremes was to live …
Friday Night Smackdown in Puerto Rico
Hyped-up Ricans Pop for Bad Bunny
Real life is fake, wrestling is real
‘Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!’
I’m a middle-aged man on a plane heading to San Juan, Puerto Rico to watch professional wrestling. Many failures have led me to my aisle seat across from the toilet. I failed as a baseball player after a decent run. I was what they call a 5 o’clock hitter, which means that I looked great during batting practice before the game; at 7, when the lights came on and the crowd streamed in, I struggled. After the bat let me down, I decided to pick up the pen. A guy whose first language was Spanish and who’d spent most of his life hanging out with jock savages wanted to be the next Philip Roth. A total fool, I was. I am. A foolish failure who persevered a bit, wrote some decent stories, and got into the top creative writing program in the country, except the novel didn’t sell. I’d struck out yet again.
Why am I writing in the third person? It must be something failures do. Which is how I decided to become a …
The Old Remedies
Wildcrafting in Eastern Kentucky
Yellowroot, Bloodroot, Black cohosh
‘For everything that might hurt you, there’s something close by that’ll help.’
One night in July, standing in the Eastern Kentucky bottom where my uncle keeps his garden, I tell him I’m looking for someone in the mountains who has the old remedies.
He stops working and crosses his sun-baked hands atop the handle of his garden hoe. “That’s going to take time,” he tells me, “There’s nothing about it that’s automatic.”
At my uncle’s urging, I start looking on the other side of the big mountain. There’s a man in a little coal town in Virginia who deals in roots and herbs — ginseng mostly, but also slippery elm bark, yellowroot, bloodroot, black cohosh, and so on. “If you can find him,” my uncle tells me, “and you can earn his trust, maybe he’ll introduce you to some people who can help you.”
I don’t have a name or address, so I ask around. I’m not sure why, but something about it feels illicit. Up front, no one really seems to know what I’m talking about. I get a lot of …
