Blue Ridge Parkway Surprise

"Forget the showy orchis."

Surely I hadn't heard Carol correctly. After all, photographing this year's showy orchis blooms was my reason for being here, and I hadn't yet found the low-growing plants.

As I had let Carol out at the trailhead a short time before, I had admonished her to walk slowly because I had to drive eleven miles to the other end of the trail where I hoped to do a quick hike to the orchis site before we met on the trail.

Due to my frequent stops along the roadside to capture photos of beckoning wildflowers, I was just now getting started on my end of the trail. Yet, Carol had walked the entire length and was telling me to forget going further!

I was in a quandry deciding which way to go.

Carol, who had already started walking towards the car, added, "I've found something better than the showy orchis. It's an orchid I've never seen before."

Casting aside thoughts of showy orchis blooms, I hurried to catch up with the modern Michaux.

As my silver Ford retraced its tracks to the trailhead near the Blue Ridge Parkway, images of various, published orchid plants flitted through my mind. Which one was the surprise that Carol had found?

Carol and I now share the Blue Ridge Parkway surprise with you.

Platanthera grandiflora


Standing nearly 3 feet tall, the Large Purple Fringed Orchid was easy to see long before we got to it.

The plant grew in a moist depression in the rich, mountain soil.

A single, sturdy green stem grew from the soil with no basal rosette of leaves.

Lanceolate leaves alternated their way up the stem towards the blooms.

Pinkish, purple blossoms grew beyond the leaves in a raceme at the top of the stem.



As we looked closely at each pinkish, purple blossom, we could see numerous flying insects enjoying its nectar.



An enterprising spider had captured one and was carrying it off for his evening meal.









Before we turned to leave the Large Purple Fringed Orchid to its mountainous habitat, we gazed one last time at the magnificent native wildflower. The Blue Ridge Parkway had given us a lovely surprise that Memorial Day weekend.

The hike was made Sunday, May 30, 2010, near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Patrick County, Virginia, USA.


Text, photos, and layout by Cecelia Butler Mathis
Botanical speciman discovered by Carol Broderson

Two poems from a long while back

I'm sharing two poems that were published back in the mid 1990s in a little Georgia magazine, Red Mountain Rendezvous. The first, "White Gate Prison" is a draft where I surrendered after 14 years of trying to get the best words and images I could think of: words for an important journey...a trip I took by car with my mother and one of my aunts. I was five years old. We traveled from Ferrum to Bland Correctional Unit, a federal prison farm just inside Bland County by the border of Giles. I don't remember the roads we traveled, except for Route 42 where I saw many trees glistening with sleet. I remember my aunt and mother becoming concerned about ice on the pavement. And I remember seeing my father for a little time.

The second poem, "Buren Pendleton" is a poem about a grandfather I never met. Buren Clyde Pendleton died when my mother was six years old. Of the little that I know about him, he was a marvelous fiddler, and he would call the dance moves at square dances. My grandmother and my grandfather Buren had seven daughters. I enjoy legends about the Pleiades because of the seven stars / seven sisters stories there. I have a few not so good drafts of poems about them.

One note: some Saponi people lived in the area well into the 1800s. Some of my ancestral surnames were the same as surnames among these folks, but I have not yet matched up direct connections.

Another note: Jack's Creek is a small stream flowing into Smith River near Woolwine in Patrick County. Jack's Creek Covered Bridge is there, of course, a landmark you can visit, just off Route 8. A couple of miles from there is another covered bridge: the Bobwhite Covered Bridge. Not far from Jack's Creek is Jill Creek. I may yet have to write my own rendition of a Jack and a Jill fetching something up the hill. This area of Patrick County is just a short ride from Rocky Knob and Rock Castle Gorge on the Parkway



WHITE GATE PRISON


Father stood in his cell with me,
there was sleet outside and a field
which carried me like a shadow.
His nerves were drunk with evening
and ridges that defined winter
as a place full of deer and dogs.


He asked who gutted the steer
and I said "nobody" because it stood
in the shed like a toy animal
refusing cornstalks and grain.
Its bony shoulders
rubbed and rubbed against a post.


And then my aunt and mother stood up
like women aiming to tell some truth
on his fears and dreams.
The firewood was sold.
The fences were still strong.
The hay bales listened to children and mules.
The frozen creek took a long time to thaw.




BUREN PENDLETON


He played Jack's Creek to live
fiddling and calling the dances.
One night he heard cries like a child,
maybe a panther flew like a ghost in the woods,
maybe a child squealed to mock Woolwine.


He had a wife and seven daughters
near a creek where the Saponi were bones.
He wanted to hear their songs.


Instead he heard his name in the boneset:
sickly come home, weary be cold.
Then his name dissolved.
Then he dreamed he sang Barbara Allen
to the wild stones in the twining briers.


And he sang his daughters to their dreams.
He learned fictions. He kept news.
But he could not coax away the silence:
it was born, it could haunt.


Copyright 2009, Clyde Kessler