The retreat — and reach -— of biologist Ann Berry Somers

By Jim Dodson

“This is the place I love most,” says Ann Berry Somers, “because it’s where I do the thing I love most — to share and teach people about the Earth. There’s always something exciting going on down there in the pool, for instance. Let’s go have a look.”

The place she means is a lovely ephemeral pool in the midst of a 24-acre forested vale of mature hickory and poplar trees off Church Street Extension. There, the longtime UNCG senior lecturer of biology and leading advocate for box turtles, reptiles and amphibians, has made her home in a passive solar house she helped build in 1984.

On a spectacular spring morning, while much of the world is sheltering indoors due to the spread of a marauding killer virus, the wild birds of Ann Somers’ tidy forest are singing their avian hearts out as she sets off to find the elusive marbled salamander, North Carolina’s magnificent state salamander.

“Better put on these boots and take one of these,” she advises her visitors, proffering black rubber wading boots and dip nets for exploring the boggy pool below the house. Setting off, she explains that at least one other species of salamander — the spotted salamander — has recently emerged from the egg stage and the larvae have been feeding in the pool for days. There are four salamander species who depend on this wetland habitat. All four are listed as species of Management Concern due to habitat loss, making this restoration project even more important.

“It’s really a race for them to transform into terrestrial phase before the water in the pool disappears, though if they’re lucky that won’t happen until May,” she elaborates, sloshing knee-deep to retrieve a series of minnow traps attached to empty plastic bottles.

“By that point most will have absorbed their gills and be entirely adapted to land and will go underground or live deep in the leaf litter for several years before they return in the pool in order to reproduce years from now.”

The abundant life in Ann Berry Somers’ ephemeral pool — also known as a vernal pool, a body of water that seasonally appears with spring rains and typically vanishes by summer — was given a major boost by a restoration project begun some eight years ago first with a veteran forester named Joe Kelleher who just happens to be Ann Somers’ first cousin. NC Wildlife Resources Commission herpetologist Jeff Hall and other of Ann’s colleagues from the NC Herpetological Society helped survey the pool and U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Laura Fogo helped come up with matching funds to do the modifications required to restore the hydrology according to a design created by Emeritus N.C. State hydro-engineer Greg Jennings.

This team of professionals plus some of her UNCG student volunteers, she explains, collaborated on an innovative underground dam that required digging a 200-foot-long ditch that was 1-foot wide and 6-feet-deep.  A curtain-wall was created using a thick pond liner. The liner prevented the annual spring pool, which relies on rainwater, from being absorbed too quickly by the surrounding forest of trees. Over the years, Cousin Joe’s job has been to selectively thin the trees in order to maintain the delicate balance of nature that provides just enough light and water to support this annual baby boom of amphibian and insect life.

“This project never would have started without Joe,” Ann observes, leaning down to inspect a gelatinous green mass of algae floating on the tea-brown water beneath a patch of briars and fallen limbs, the signature of female salamanders at work. “Trees soak up a surprising amount of water, don’t they Joe?”

Cousin Joe is already a couple dozen yards farther along the pool, checking traps by a downed poplar tree to see if there are any marbled salamanders on view.

“Yes ma’am, that is the case!” he replies. “These trees can suck up 10,000 gallons of water per day in transpiration,” he adds with a booming laugh. “Got lots of marbled swimmers down here, by the way,” he cheerfully reports.

Somers delicately lifts the gelatinous mass from the water with the care of a priest holding an infant. On closer inspection, she discovers a few tiny salamanders still working their way out of the egg mass toward the next stages of their evolution in the pond. “Oh, how nice! Come look,” she urges her companions. “There are still a few stragglers coming out of their egg stage! They’re rather late and I hope they make it before the water vanishes!”

Life at every stage is a race for survival.   

“If I may ask,” says one of her rubber-booted visitors, “How do salamanders actually reproduce?”

“Oh, it’s terribly exciting! It happens on a rainy night in late February when the temperature is above 55 degrees. The normally subterranean adult salamanders congress in the pool in a rite of spring frenzy of breeding activity that is one of the startling impressive events in the natural world. In the aquatic swarm, males lay tiny white sperm packets on the dead leaves in the water and court the females by nudging them to absorb the rice-sized packet into their bodies, which will fertilize their yolked eggs. Later, the females lay a gelatinous mass of eggs, around which symbiotic algae grows providing oxygen for the growing larvae until they are strong enough to emerge and feed in the pool.”

Returning the egg mass gently to the surface of the pool, she chimes, “Good luck, little ones. We’re pulling hard for you!”

She looks up and smiles.

“My students love this sort of thing — especially the local kids . . . getting wet and dirty and learning about creatures they’ve never seen in the wild. Isn’t this fun?”

It is indeed.

And so is Ann Berry Somers who, at 68, is regarded as a leading environmental advocate and a passionate promoter of citizen-science, a woman who has dedicated her life to better understanding and preserving the vital role snakes, frogs, salamanders and turtles play in maintaining the fragile balance of life on Earth.

Last year, the State of North Carolina showed its gratitude for her life’s work with a host of prestigious awards that reflect her stature as a true force of nature and woman of the wild. The prizes included NCWRC’s Thomas L. Quay Wildlife Diversity Award, a Distinguished Teaching Award in STEM Education from the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research (NCABR), and the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Service.

What explains her devotion to helping others learn to respect and appreciate these wild and typically unseen critters like the spotted salamander?

“They are an important part of the web of life we share,” Somers answers with gusto as she sloshes on to where Cousin Joe has scooped up a dozen marbled swimmers. “What happens to salamanders and frogs and snakes can happen to other species — including us — if we don’t take care of the environment. These are creatures, in some cases, that have been on Earth longer than we have — we have fossils that are 30 million years old! We have only been around a few hundred thousand. To watch them suddenly disappear, to blink out one by one as pollution and loss of habitat alter the planet, is absolutely tragic and consequential,” she says, pausing. “The sad thing is, that it is happening all over the world at a more rapid rate than ever.” 

It’s passion like this that has inspired Ann Somers not only to teach a course on endangered sea turtles in Costa Rica for the past 25 years, but also to lead school groups and conservation-minded folks into the wild for decades in order to learn about the importance of snakes and turtles and amphibians, to spread the gospels of conservation and environmentalism that are so near and dear to her heart.

Last year, for example, the woman who found the last threatened bog turtle in Forsyth County back in 1991 — a gentle species that once flourished in these parts — grew so keenly interested in vanishing coral reefs, she organized a course with her UNCG students to Little Cayman Island. There they donned scuba gear and learned about the environmental crisis facing ocean reefs up close and personal.

“We had our class picture taken underwater,” she points out with a laugh.

That experience in part inspired her to help organize a conference for the NC Wildlife Federation called the Ocean Advocacy Workshop that was originally scheduled for this same spring morning at UNC-Wilmington — only to be postponed for a year due to the pandemic.

“Ironically, one of the interesting things that’s happened because of this crisis is the positive effect it has had on some aspects of the environment. With so many airplanes and cars idle, the air is noticeably cleaner, the skies clearer across the world, pollution way down in places,” Somers observes.  “In Venice, I understand, the canals have cleared and dolphins have once again been spotted. Maybe we should pay attention to how fast things can get better if we would just let up on the constant pressure we put on nature, if we would just listen and hear the difference in a quieter world.” She adds, “It’s not just about saving turtles.”

But to be clear, turtles do matter to Ann Berry Somers.

Twelve years ago, in partnership with state parks and private landowners, Somers spearheaded the creation of something called the Box Turtle Connection, an innovative volunteer project aimed at collecting data on vanishing native turtle populations, including threats and conditions affecting box turtles in the wild. Today, the program boasts 32 different turtle-monitoring projects ongoing across the state. “It’s designed to go for 100 years and outlive everyone currently enrolled in order to educate the next generations of scientists. Some of the turtles we are marking will be found by the next generations, they live that long,” she notes, leading her guests out of the ephemeral pool into a meadow where sheets of discarded tin roofing repose in weedy places near what appears to be a large pile of winter damage.

Flat sheets of roofing tin lying about, one learns, are designed to attract snakes for use in her popular classroom programs. The pile of limbs and brush she calls her “Miracle Brush Pile” because it’s home to dozens of species ranging from snakes to birds, box turtles to small mammals. “You wouldn’t believe the diversity in there.”

She carefully lifts up several pieces of tin but finds no snakes in residence for the moment, only a young skink making a hasty retreat.

With a pleasant smile, she proposes, “Shall we go see the graveyard? It’s just a 20-second walk up the hill behind the house.”

In a sense, Ann Berry Somers was destined to be a champion for the endangered lives of bog turtles, spotted salamanders and red-bellied snakes.

For like those creatures, her connection to the Earth is deep and ancestral, an essential part of her family DNA.

She and Cousin Joe — not to mention 51 other Berry cousins — hail from a large and celebrated Greensboro family that has made no small contribution to the preservation of the Earth.

In 1924, Nathan William Berry started a coal company called Berico in Greensboro. Pop Berry and wife Elizabeth lived on Colonial Avenue and had 13 children. In 1942, Elizabeth Berry was named “Mother of the Year” and feted at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, where her name is displayed on a plaque today. When asked by a reporter how she managed to raise 13 children who were so accomplished, she famously replied, “Wholesome neglect.”

This was the Berry matriarch’s code for “allowing her children to follow their own hearts and instincts in life, to explore and learn in the natural world,” explains Cousin Joe, who points out some of the significant things the Berry siblings accomplished.

Aunt Merse, No. 2 in the succession, became a nun with the Daughters of Charity and managed several hospitals in Bolivia. Sons Joe and Jim became outstanding aviators in WWII.

Child No. 3 was named for his papa, William Nathan Berry. He grew up to become a Roman Catholic priest, taking the name “Thomas” after the influential philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Berry became a religious scholar who wrote several books about Asian religions and started the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in Riverdale, New York.

The world remembers him today as the priest-turned-environmental-sage whose awakening and influential writings on the imperiled Earth were an early call to humanity to save nature in order to save itself. Berry’s groundbreaking lectures and books launched a generation of inspired environmentalists interested in the nexus of religion, human evolution and nature. Considered one of the leading thinkers in the modern environmental movement in America, Berry honored his vow of poverty, humbly referring to himself as a “geologian.” Ann Somers’ daddy was Joe Berry, the ninth child in the sequence. Cousin Joe Kelleher’s mama, Teresa, was tenth. Teresa named her son after Uncle Joe, who eventually took over running Berico Fuels from his father and moved wife Jean and their seven children — Ann among them — to a house on a lake on Four Farms Road near Horse Pen Creek.

“It was kind of a log house and magical for all the Berry cousins,” recalls Joe Kelleher. “Ann’s daddy had a rope in his living room and when we cousins came out on summer Sundays, the first thing we had to do was climb the rope.” Next? “Cleaning Uncle Joe’s pigeon coop. Then we swam out to a pier in the lake.” Kelleher recalls that his Uncle Joe taught them how to shoot guns safely and encouraged them to explore the outdoors. “That usually meant getting lost in the woods but we always found our way back,” he says. “The woods were where the Well-Spring [Retirement] community sits today. It was a glorious way to grow up.”

Ann Berry had hoped to become a psychologist after finishing undergraduate studies at Villanova University, but that was not to be, so she applied for a job no woman ever had ever sought, as a lake warden for the City of Greensboro — guardian of lakes Higgins, Brandt and Townsend.

“Looking back, it was a great job because it tapped into something in my makeup from childhood, a love of nature and life in the wild.” After she graduated from Appalachian State with her Master of Science degree in Biology in 1980, Distinguished Professor Bob Gatten, then head of the Biology Department at UNCG, recruited her to join the faculty and she has been there ever since. Recently she has also become the associate director of the Environment and Sustainability Program at the university.

About 35 years ago, she and then-husband George Somers built the house Ann designed in the forest off Church Street Extension, where they raised two sons, Noah and Abe.

Leading the way up a short path to a historic cemetery once belonging to the Heath and Smith family, some of its gravestones date to the early 1800s.

Ann’s restoration efforts have included removing limbs, small trees and setting upright some long ago fallen grave markers. Four newer memorial stones stand prominently as one approaches the site.

One belongs to her Aunt Margaret, who died at age 100 last year.

Two others remember a nephew and granddaughter who died in their youth.

The fourth is a memorial stone to Thomas Berry, whom the family affectionately called “Uncle Brother.” Its inscription reads:

With love and gratitude for Uncle Brother, Father Thomas Berry, scholar, wisdom teacher, mentor, friend. Earth is the maternal source whence we come, to which we return.

Both Ann and Cousin Joe enjoyed close relationships with “Uncle Brother.”

During the 1970s when Joe attended Holy Cross in Massachusetts, he frequently stopped to visit Thomas Berry at his spiritual retreat at Riverdale, and once spent a week helping Uncle Brother restore his residence on the property.

“He was so drawn to rocks and rivers and such, I once asked him about animals that were going extinct everywhere in the world and what we were supposed to do about that? He looked at me and replied, ‘My job is to get you to think about it. Your job is to fix it!’ That was Uncle Brother!” Joe says with his booming laugh.

“That was exactly what he said,” agrees Cousin Ann. “That was the message.”

When Thomas Berry retired from public life in 1994 and moved home to Greensboro’s Well-Spring Retirement Community — built in the former woods where the Berry Cousins explored the natural world — Ann Berry and Uncle Brother met and talked weekly; and she has dozens of composition books full of notes about their conversations. Thomas Berry passed away on June 1, 2009. He was 94.

The rotunda of the Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library contains a beautiful poem by Thomas Berry called “A Child Awakens to the Universe.”

“I think about our conversations a lot these days,” Ann admits as she and Joe walk back down the hill to her house. She glances up at the trees just exploding with spring green, alive with life, promise, birdsong.

“Uncle Brother believed we are evolving as a species. I’m hopeful that is true. That the lessons we could learn from this current crisis may be an awakening, if only we would listen.”  OH

Nineteen Fourty Four
[dancing the foxtrot]

Memories surfaced, I saw my parents

young and full of themselves.

He an Army Air Force pilot.

She a hostess at the USO.

The sudden rushing realization

of youth, impetuousness, and intention

to make a difference

in a world at war.

Feeling grateful for this . . .

this source of influence is deep in my bones.

Dictates of the time

flying into the future, together,

flying in formation

towards a life together

Moving on as seeing them anew

no longer as old:                young, with all that vigor.

No dementia any more,                 gone now

they are dancing the foxtrot together to Benny Goodman.

— Raymond Whitaker

A scruffy old guitar finds its voice again

By Stephen E. Smith
Photographs by John Koob Gessner

 

I’ll bet you’re nagged by a furtive longing to possess something that’s impractical. Maybe it’s Aunt Amelia’s Tiffany brooch or Granddad Ralph’s ’49 Mercury sedan. In my case, it’s always been a Stahl Style 6 guitar made by the Larson brothers of Chicago. Whatever the object, we know this: If we search long enough and can shell out the cash, we’re likely to get what we want. This is America; we invented conspicuous consumption.

Inspired by what comedian Martin Mull dubbed “The Great Folk Music Scare,” I bought my first guitar, a digit-mangling Kay archtop, in August 1961, from a pawn shop on West Street in Annapolis, Maryland. I was a rising eighth-grader and paid $15 I’d received for my birthday. Every Saturday that fall, I toted my caseless Kay to St. John’s College campus, where I sat under the last surviving Liberty Tree (on the very spot where patriots plotted the Revolution) and strummed “Goodnight, Irene” ad nauseam with five or six honest-to-God beatniks. On one of those cool autumn afternoons, a Maynard G. Krebs character handed me his guitar and said, “Here, give this a try.”

I strummed a G chord, one of the three I’d mastered. “Wow!” I said.

The proud owner beamed. “Plays like silk and chimes, like a chorus of seraphim,” he said.

“What kind of guitar is this?” I asked.

“It’s a Stahl 6,” he replied.

When I got home, I had to look up “seraphim” in the dictionary, but I knew in my bones what a Stahl guitar was.

For most of the 60-plus years that have slipped by since that autumn afternoon, I never happened upon a Stahl Style 6 I could afford. If I were a more accomplished player, I might have been willing to shell out $7,000 to $14,000 for a pristine original-condition Stahl, but alas . . . 

And then, eight months ago, a Stahl Style 6 materialized on my computer screen — and it was for sale at a reasonable price! The rub: It was in sad — very sad — condition. The seller listed it as “Non Functioning,” noting that the Stahl was a “Luthier Project” afflicted with a “Non Original Bridge, Non Original Tuners, No Pins, Back Cracks with washboarding” — and an all-too-ominous caution that the guitar would need “some finish work.” But the center strip was clearly branded “WM. G. STAHL/MAKER/MILWAUKEE” (a lie, since the guitar was made in Chicago by the Larson brothers) and 95 percent of the instrument was there.

I asked the seller a few pointed questions, made a reasonable offer, and PayPaled him the money. Four days later the UPS man delivered a big box that I ripped into with, I admit, adolescent gusto.

   

At this point in the typical restoration epic, buyer’s remorse sets in. What have I gotten myself into? the new owner asks. But I wasn’t in the least bothered by the Stahl’s condition — not at first. The seller had been reasonably honest — everything he said was wrong was wrong — but with each careful inspection I noticed flaws he’d failed to mention. The fingerboard extension was bent — not broken, thank goodness, but obviously sigogglin — the bridge (which anchors the strings to the body) wasn’t a correct Larson brothers’ flattened pyramid type and it was glued in the wrong location, the peghead overlay was damaged, the frets needed attention, binding was missing at the bottom of the fingerboard, the 3-on-plate Kluson knockoff tuners were flat-out annoying — and worst of all, some idiot with a paint roller had applied two gallons of runny gloppy gooey polyurethane or other superfluous substance to the guitar’s body, the front, back and sides. And that didn’t include earlier overspray of shellac, lacquer and varnish that had melted into the polyurethane — a deal-breaker for any vintage guitar collector, since original finishes are necessary to produce the instrument’s authentic sound.

Collectors argue endlessly about original finishes vs. restored. You’ve probably seen those Picker guys on the History Channel who love “rusty gold” and “the look” or the erudite appraiser on Antiques Roadshow who says, “In original condition this Philadelphia dressing table would be worth half a million dollars but since you refinished it, it’s worth seventy-five bucks. Maybe.” And that’s how it is with vintage guitars. But I’m not a vintage guitar collector. I simply wanted to play the guitar, and to do that I needed to have the polyurethane removed.

Poly finishes dampen sound and I had a lot of it on the Stahl, which meant that the guitar had reached a point in its checkered life where it was up or out. I might have relisted it on an auction site and gotten my money back, but I was determined not to sell or trash my latest acquisition. I was in possession of a rare Larson brothers Stahl Style 6 serial number 27022 (a numeral not based on production numbers), which meant the instrument was 100 years old! Who knows where it had been and the stories it could tell? Guitars, like their owners, have their own DNA and quirky personalities.

How valuable are Larson instruments? Consider this: A 1937 Larson-built Euphonon dreadnought recently listed on the Reverb for $64,500. Ouch! (If you’re interested in Larson instruments, I suggest you read The Larson Brothers’ Creations, by Robert Carl Hartman, or John Thomas’ excellent article in issue #15 of Fretboard Journal.)

What I needed was someone — the right someone — to save my Stahl Style 6. I’d heard that it’s possible, under unique circumstances, to remove a secondary finish while preserving the original surface. I got on the phone and chatted with luthiers in Wilmington, the Raleigh-Durham area, Charlotte and the Triad, and settled on Bob Rigaud (pronounced “rego”) in Greensboro.

Bob is a world-class builder, a luthier whose guitars are comparable to those of the Larsons. Seven years ago, he built for me a New Moon koa tenor ukulele, a high-quality, handmade instrument that sings with a surprisingly mellow, resonant voice, and he’s supplied instruments for many A-list performers, most recently Graham Nash, who travels with his Rigaud parlor guitar and uses it to compose new music.

More important, Bob has a reputation as a superlative repairman. A few years ago, “Steady-Rollin” Bob Margolin, Muddy Waters’ longtime sideman, stopped in Bob’s shop to have an old Gibson L-00 repaired. I was curious about Margolin’s experience with Bob, so I emailed him. He replied: “Bob fixed my mid-’30s Gibson L-00. He checked it out and knew exactly what to do. He told me the guitar would come back better than I could imagine and it did. Big admiration for Bob.” Margolin was so impressed with the sound of his Gibson, he went directly to a studio and recorded the CD This Guitar and Tonight, a ragged, in-your-face acoustic outing in which the old L-00 vibrates like the blues bucket it is.

Bob had also repaired two of my guitars, one a Larson-built student-grade Maurer that required delicate finish work, which he accomplished flawlessly. He also sealed multiple cracks, back and front, and made them disappear. Better yet, he left most of the original French polish intact.

So in late May I drove to Greensboro and handed my Stahl to Bob. He was busily at work on three new guitars — always his first passion — but his face brightened as his eyes ran over the damage wrought on my Larson by time and abuse.

“I can fix this,” Bob said. “I can make it sing again.”

Bob Rigaud is possessed of a gregariousness purely borne of enthusiasm. His life is guitars, and he delights in every aspect of building and repairing instruments and hearing them sing. We sat in his modest workshop and talked for two hours. His hands fluttered like birdwings as he pointed out myriad flaws I’d failed to notice and explained in detail how he’d approach correcting each imperfection.

“Can you fix the finish problems and make the washboarding and back cracks disappear?” I asked.

He was uncharacteristically succinct. “I can,” he said, smiling.

The Stahl was in his hands.

Brimming with faith and high hopes, I drove back to Southern Pines and waited. And waited. June came and went. On the last Saturday in July, I traveled from High Point to Bob’s workshop to check out the progress he’d made on my guitar. The old Stahl was laid out like a cadaver on his workbench, the fingerboard taped off. And miracle of miracles, most of the poly finish had been removed and much of the original French polish seemed to be intact. The washboarding was gone without a trace, as were the many back cracks and a small hole I’d somehow overlooked. The once-mangled Brazilian rosewood back had been restored to its original glory.

“How did you repair the back so perfectly?” I asked.

“I flattened the wood and sealed the cracks with an epoxy I tinted with rosewood sawdust.”

But there was still much work to complete, including the peghead overlay, the replacement bridge, and the angle problems with the fingerboard extension. I left satisfied but anxious to have the Stahl back home.

August, September, October and November passed, and I was content to have Bob work at his own speed. But in early December, my friend Craig Fuller of Pure Prairie League and Little Feat fame drove me to Bob’s workshop. Bob, always the perfect host, showed us the guitars he was building, and Craig and I examined the Stahl in detail. It was close to being complete: a new, handcrafted bridge with inlays was temporarily applied, a beautiful peghead overlay was in place, and new Stewmac Golden Age reproduction tuners were installed, but the frets still needed work and touch-up finishing was left to accomplish. I’d hoped that Craig, who’s played more guitars better than I ever will, might try out the completed Stahl and give me his opinion, but Bob was still struggling to correct the intonation, the key to ensuring that a guitar sounds as good as it possibly can.

“I’ve never repaired a Larson guitar that had the correct intonation,” Bob observed.

On January 22, 2020 my phone rang; the Stahl was ready for me to take possession. “I’m proud of it,” Bob said.

I stepped into his workshop at 9:30 the following morning. And there it was, my 1920 Larson brothers Stahl Style 6 guitar resurrected. I picked it up, strummed a fat G chord and felt an instant synaptic connection: I remembered the sweet sound — the sustain, the purity of voice — that had amazed me all those years before. It played like silk and chimed like a chorus of seraphim. It had the mojo and “the look.” Bob smiled but said nothing. He didn’t need to. He absolutely understood how I felt. He was feeling it too.

“I loved working on this guitar,” Bob said. “When I was regluing the internal braces — which, by the way, are all maple, not spruce — I could see evidence of August Larson’s work, and I felt like I was having a conversation with him all these years later. A hundred years from now maybe some other luthier working on this guitar will be having a conversation with me.”

“You don’t have to reveal any trade secrets,” I said, “but how did you save so much of the original finish?”

“Sense of smell,” Bob explained. “As I take down the finishes, I can smell them and after all these years of working on guitars, I can pretty much tell you what the finish is and when it was applied. When I got to the French polish, it gave off a very distinct smell. That’s when I stopped.”

Great luthiers are the real guitar heroes.

I play the Stahl every day now. It’s my musical soul mate. I know I’ll never be a great musician. And that’s fine. The process of learning guitar continues to unfold for me. I like it that way.

Was resurrecting the Stahl worth the time, money and effort? Was it merely an attempt to recapture my youth? What I can tell you is that my Larson guitar testifies that a tradition honored 100 years ago is adhered to still with patience and pride. I’ll be passing the Stahl along someday, and isn’t the past always present in the hope we have in the future?

My Stahl Style 6 sits in my guitar room next to a Liberty Tree guitar made from the wood of the tulip poplar I sat under on St. John’s campus all those years ago. Hurricane Floyd roared through Annapolis in 1999 and fatally damaged the 400-year-old tree. Taylor guitars purchased the wood and built 400 fancy instruments. It’s strikes me as wholly appropriate that my Stahl and the Liberty Tree sit side by side.

After all, something so complete has a beauty all its own.  OH

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press Awards.

By Ash Alder

 

May is a series of miracles so intertwined that nothing feels separate from it.

Take, for example, the mockingbird fledgling, who leaps from its nest 12 days after hatching.

Twelve days.

The descent is less than graceful. More like a stone than a feather. And when he lands, stunned, on the soft earth beneath the tree, each blade of grass performs its highest service. As if cradled in the hands of an invisible, benevolent force, the fledgling rests.

Tender new life abounds. White-tail fawns take their first wonky steps. Red fox kits explore a world outside their den. And like the mockingbird fledgling, now flapping its newfound wings and hopping in the grass, these precious babes are easy prey.

As baby bird performs his hop-flap-plop routine, mama and papa bird stay close, ever ready to defend him. That’s the thing about mockers. If ever you’ve seen one chase off a raven, jay or crow, then you’re familiar with the raspy battle cry of a tiny beast that knows no fear. 

Days have passed, and the fledgling’s wings are growing stronger. There’s no shortage of ants, grasshoppers and beetles for feeding, and under his parents’ watchful eyes, he’s gaining air with every jump.

Not far from the tree where the mocker babe hatched is a quiet road not far from your house.

This is where you enter the picture.

On a leisurely walk, the air sweet with magnolia blossoms and spring roses, you notice a stopped car, the driver kneeling in front of a small lump in the middle of the road.

“I can’t leave him here!” says the driver, a young mother who is visibly shaken by the sight of this tiny being — a mockingbird fledgling whose wiry feathers and wide yellow beak somehow make it look like a curmudgeonly old man.

He isn’t injured, you observe. Just spent from a recent flight lesson. Relieved, the driver snags a toddler shirt from the back of her car, and you use it to gently scoop him off the road.

When you set him down on the earth, the fledgling gives a brave little squawk, flaps his wings, then musters the strength for a few shaky steps before plopping down in the soft grass for more rest.

One day, you think, that mockingbird will take flight. And one day, sooner than you think, he will have one hundred songs to sing.

You hear a crow caw in the distance, and as mama bird watches from her nearby perch, you can’t help but smile at the miracle of it all.

 

But I must gather knots of flowers,

And buds and garlands gay,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The May Queen”

 

 

The Rose Garden

May is a jubilant explosion of fragrant blossoms.

Crabapple and dogwood. Violets and magnolia. Flame azalea and flowering quince.

And then there are roses.

If you’ve ever known a rose gardener, then you’ve seen the light in the eyes of a soul who has seen life after perceived death (dormancy).

I once toured the rose garden of a retired Episcopal priest who described the deep sadness of cutting his blossoms each winter, and the wonder of their return. I’ll never forget his tender nature or, for that matter, his favorite rose.

“Dolly Parton,” he told me, pointing to a fragrant red rose in the corner of his garden. “She’s wonderful. She just blooms and blooms.”

 

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it
hitched to everything else in the Universe. — John Muir

 

Garden Spotlight

Let’s hear it for fennel, folks!

This perennial herb has long been cultivated for the digestive-aiding properties of its fruit (fennel seeds), but its bulb and leaves are likewise packed with nutrients.

Fennel is good medicine for the heart, skin and bones. It aids with inflammation and metabolism. And, lucky for (most of) us, it tastes like licorice.

There are dozens of ways to eat the bulb, but if you’re looking for fresh and easy, try pairing it with red plums (thinly sliced) for a slam-dunk salad topped with honey-ginger dressing. Enjoy!  OH