Blogger-photog, and naturalist-teacher from the Blue Ridge of VA, author Slow Road Home ('06) and What We Hold in Our Hands ('09). Member SEJ and SustainFloyd
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Articles by Fred First
FRED FIRST: Recollections and Rememories
In a deeper-than-ordinary conversation recently, I talked about the tendency for people of a certain age to spend much of our thought-time in the present reliving previous experiences—having rememories, as our kids used to say.
FRED FIRST: The Meaning of Emotion
I write this morning looking back on a half dozen years dominated by the ending of life among friends to begin life among strangers far away; from a place that is still home to me in name only—those same years past focused where we could not see but must go; years that left less of her and so also less of us, behind and ahead.
FRED FIRST: Basking in the Rays
I came home today from my learn-your-camera walk in our little woods with nothing more than the cliched easy-catch suburban bird shots (male and female cardinal, red-winged blackbird) that I won’t bother showing. I entered my tiny apartment, reluctant to be under a roof again. I went straight to my camera roll. I was unimpressed with the results. I walked towards the daylight through my third floor windows, and stood there with the camera still around my neck.
FRED FIRST: Enjoying the View: the emulsion of memory
I am working on a reflection I call “first things” that I may eventually share. In it I claim that, even at 78, there are first things. I’m here to tell you about a first thing that really is, in this case, just the next thing in the series, but also new. The series is the hardware I’ve held in my hands, gathering images-memory-history since the day of the flash bulb. In 2002 I bought my first digital camera—a Nikon Coolpix swivel-body shirt-pocket 2MB camera. I was in love.
FRED FIRST: Home and Back Home Again
I can hardly pretend that I am not amazed to have just completed an 1800 mile round trip with no report of disaster, failure or disappointment. Not since leaving Virginia for Missouri in late August 2024 have I driven halfway across the country, much less that distance and back again, this time leaving and coming back “home” to Columbia MO.
FRED FIRST: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today
This was the first open box of MY books—the first edition I held in my hands for the first time in April 2006. I’m sure those hands were shaking. It felt less like steering my own ship than being moved by winds from a source I could not name towards a destination I would only know when at last it appeared from beyond the curve of the distant horizon. In the spring of 2002, I baled out of a job doomed to take me down with it.
FRED FIRST: There And Back Again
Hotel Floyd: at the end of the hallway, first floor, a 24 x 36 photo of HeresHome. Surprised the heck out of me. This image was the cover of Slow Road Home. My name had been Photoshopped onto the mailbox. RECAP: I would be able to visit southwest Virginia again–home for almost 40 years, and the place I wrote about as if I would never leave it. But we did leave, because Floyd could not provide the health and housing we would eventually need for Ann.
On Eagle's Wings
This is an excerpt from a continuing story of finding home. Much comes before; and chapters remain in this life, for how many more seasons? Recently a magnificent mature male bald eagle surprised me as he flew low and landed a short way from the car on a country road here in Boone County, Missouri. That prompted me to revisit this time in my life—800 miles and a quarter century from here and now. In this account from real life, desperation gave way to expectation.
FRED FIRST: But Is It Art?
I have mentioned before that I have recently found pleasure and pleasant distraction in the use of pastels (and also pen, ink and charcoal) to approximate my landscape photographs on paper—the same photographic images you have seen here (or at Fragments from Floyd) over the decades. I find it especially meaningful and rewarding, with a soft pastel or charcoal, to immerse myself in the details of a place I know so well from memory—places that are the stories of my life.
Missouri's Capitol City: First-Time Tourist
I could not possibly do justice to my first visit a half hour south of home to the Missouri Capitol Building in Jefferson City yesterday. But I will go back and have a better idea of what I am seeing and what to not miss on future visits. Our first stop was an overlook above the wide Missouri, this first day of February populated by ice pancakes slowly spinning as they moved along at a fast walking pace towards the Mississippi another 140 miles downstream.
FRED FIRST: Facing Forward. Facing Back.
Maybe it’s okay that I can’t go back twenty Januarys past, or ten as a way of knowing where I am to consider where I should go from here on the calendar of decades. I have jotted and journaled intermittently but without discipline. There are no breadcrumbs to follow for a monthly review over the last half century.
FRED FIRST: Small Moments. Long Life
Images: In our eyes. On our minds. From our memories. Conjured in our dreams. Right in front of us. These days, we all have thousands of images saved on our phones and served up instantly to relive moments, places and stories where we just happen to have had a camera in our pocket. It has not always been so.
FRED FIRST: Birds of a Feather
We were invited to join some geologist-birder friends for an outing last week that would carry me farther north in the state than I have been, now into my second year in Missouri. So just when I think I know what the lay of the land (in my county of residence) is like, I am transported not so many miles north of the city of Columbia (in the yellow Ozark border counties) into the (orange) land left behind by the last southern advance of the final period of glaciation before the current era.
FRED FIRST: Approaching the Longest Night
Yes, you’re right—if you’ve even noticed—that this space has been neglected for some weeks now, and it has been hard to figure out where and how to jump back in. Life in this setting is quite tame and rather bland, though it is comfortable, safe and convenient and I am grateful to be here, under the same roof with wife Ann who has now been in Memory Care for seven months.
FRED FIRST: Winter is Coming: Make Ready!
Though a few poetic souls and tree-hugging types like me will make soft cooing noises of approval about the magic of the coming of fall, many (beyond a glance out the window at the changing leaves) pay no mind to this transformation at all. For most of my fellow humans, from a practical, survival point of view, autumn connotes no more inconvenience than the donning of a warmer pair of slippers of a morning and a welcome divorce soon from the lawn mower, till Autumn us do part.
FRED FIRST: Spaces: Inner, Outer & Other
I exist even still in a “liminal space” (which could be a whole other post—with a partial definition below from WikiWand). I live having survived the challenges of the past several years but havin not quite found the path to what comes next. I hold the hope and have the need; and I expect to find an inspiration, a project, a purpose complete with zeal and energy. I see only dimly a light ahead that will energize my writing and my days.
Don't Fail to Miss: Nasty Nature Nightmares
I’m sorry, I just had to vent. The following is not very well stated but at least I got it off my chest before it festered. In searching the interwebs for information about some movies featuring Diane Keeton, I stumbled upon the preview reels of an upcoming Netflix mini-series that I will not watch. Don’t fail to miss the first-season three episode showing of Nightm***s of Nature.
FRED FIRST: FROM THE HIGH DESERT: Living Landscape
OVERVIEW: The 8 day trip I took to Ghost Ranch for a “conscious eldering” workshop in mid-September was a milestone. It will take me a few posts just to scratch the surface. This is one of them.
FRED FIRST: Peregrinations of a *BoZo
I have a few bits of biological blarney to pass along before I focus later today on packing for Ghost Ranch. I woke up earlier than my intention this morning, so I’ll use my pre-dawn coffee to power an hour for tossing out a few images from recent outings. I did go last week on my second Audubon First Friday bird walks, but did not come back with any songbird pix this time. The day was overcast and my Lumix FZ200 camera does not gather sufficient light for long shots of tiny birds in shadows.
FRED FIRST: Go West At Last, Old Man
Decades of frugality have come abruptly to an end. I have made the choice to spend on myself some of what remains of that squandered but shrinking nest egg. And I am traveling to Ghost Ranch NM in a week. A good friend is one of two “leaders” at the week-long gathering to talk (with a dozen other participants from as far away as Ireland) about what “conscious eldering” means to each of us and how we might repurpose or refocus the later chapters that still remain.
FRED FIRST: Changing of the Guard
The theme for the Lenoir Words Writers Group this month is AUTUMN. And since I have only one year’s autumn memories from Missouri, it is the way things used to feel this time of year in Virginia that comes to mind. The link below is from a 4-minute radio essay on WVTF sometime around 2005 I think. The sound quality is not great but will suffice. The recorded version is a bit different from the text version below, that appeared in Fine Gardening Magazine about the same time.
FRED FIRST: Elsewhere Is a Place Worth Living
A year ago this week, our residence in Floyd County was full of boxes and crates—a house no longer home. In a week, we would drive away from Rock Hill for the last time, from Floyd, from Virginia, from every place and every one who had been dear to us for almost three decades. Without a doubt, the past 12 months have been the most significant challenge to body, mind and spirit. I have confessed as much. But I am still standing. And even hopeful.
FRED FIRST: The Long Way Home
I don’t think it would have been any harder to leave one of the kids behind when we moved away than to leave our dog. I know that parting with Zach was one of the most agonizing decisions I have ever had to make. This is his story. We forsook him out of practical necessity. He found us out of canine determination, unwavering love and by means of forces and reckoning we will never understand.
FRED FIRST: Essence of Summer: Fireflies
The senses and summers past. What did summer feel like twenty years ago? We had chickens. The pasture was rebounding from the droughts of the year before. And every evening, for a couple of weeks, the fireflies lifted silently, ghostly, to wink and woo. The two bits of writing below (circa 2005) share a place, a few weeks apart. I am there, hearing the night noises of July. I cross the creek, drawing in the cool thin fog, pooled in that memory, there, along the pasture by the barn. At dusk.
FRED FIRST: Poems, Prayers and Prompts
The answer, when someone asks where you are “from” might be to tell the place where we get your mail these days. That’s the easy answer. But where are your roots? Again, the answer is more than a location. You are from and have been made fully YOU by family and community, tradition and custom, the music and culture of your childhood and youth, and so much more.
FRED FIRST: Spiders I Have Worn
I see now how often what I chose to write about in my haphazard weekly posting here is often related to where we are on the current calendar. And so now I’m seeing clouds or hearing frogs or smelling the woods in mid-July and that grounds my thoughts in time. This time. I’ve been here 76 times before on the terrestrial turning tilting time-table. The calendar is a framework on which to build stories and memories, and perhaps, meaning.
Where You're From
In the very early years of writing, I was exposed to a poem called "Where I'm From" by Kentucky poet, George Ella Lyon; and then to George Ella herself at Hindman (KY) Settlement School's Appalachian Writers Workshop in 2007. And somewhere along the way, I adapted the poem (and the template below that was created from it by someone) to share with my blog readers of the day.
There And Back Again
RECAP: I would be able to visit southwest Virginia again-home for almost 40 years, and the place I wrote about as if I would never leave it. But we did leave, because Floyd could not provide the health and housing we would eventually need for Ann. That need was satisfied, mid-May, so I got my tickets and made plans to return to Floyd County for three full-and I do mean FULL-days in late June. This is a partial personal debriefing and glimpse ahead to what comes next.
FRED FIRST: Homeward Bound
It would happen: the trip back to Floyd. And then it wouldn't. And then it would and it is and I have just a few days to pack. The idea was conceived by one or more Floyd expats who had the notion to return for simultaneous visits. I almost backed out the first opportunity because having lived in the county for 27 years, the pattern for June weather includes heat that I do not suffer silently or happily. JUNE: First half, remnants of spring with cool mornings, warming days and pleasant nights.
Can You Hear Me Now?
Yes, I have not said much lately, here at the one month mark. Ann has lived in Assisted Living/Memory Care down the hall now for four weeks. And thanks for asking, she is mostly doing okay. But we have not yet established a regular, predictable pattern-which she would ignore or forget anyway, but I am in need of a routine. I need times when I can hand over Ann's well-being to those to whom we are paying large bucks every day now for the duration.
The Roanoke Star
Reinventing myself: again. And doing it solo. I hardly know where to start. So I won't. Not yet. Maybe soon. Until then, a few observations and images from my late spring peregrinations of body and spirit. There is plenty to do and see here. But not from the LazyBoy. I need to get out. I really need to get out. And I did, Saturday, to attend the Columbia Farmer's Market for the first time, where I met some new and some familiar native plants along the margins.
Gaggy Veggies I Have Loathed
I figured I might as well get another use out of the short personal essay I read recently at out little writers' gathering here. This one was an NPR radio essay, back in the day. I enjoy reading it and remembering my conversion.
An Object at Rest
Without the always-on duties of a care partner now for less than a week, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to fill my time with meaningful activity. What will take the place of my eating when she wanted or only going only places she felt safe? I am already aware of the tendency to withdraw and isolate, when I know I must do just the opposite right away: to move out of my comfort zone, take the initiative, and build a life according to me.
Moms Live Forever
She would have celebrated her 100th birthday this September, the birthday month in our family. Had she dodged the bullet of that one health challenge in June of 2022, she might still be driving to Bojangles when she didn't like the lunch in Assisted Living; still be walking a mile without a cane or walker; and enjoying the world in which she saw so much beauty. I learned from her to see.
Lonesome Highway: Helplessly Hoping
When we had two consecutive years of testing to compare in June of 2022, Ann had lost ground. The ambiguous label MCI/ALZ had tipped away from simple age-related dementia and unmistakably toward the Alzheimers form. This one terrible fact set the course we must follow in what remained of our lives. We would be walking every day into a fog of emerging necessity without guideposts. An 8-page report of the tests came in the mail a month later.
Hurry Up and Wait
We had no idea where this day would place the new pin on our existential map. But she clearly did not want to be there that June afternoon in 2021. We were told to expect the bundled tests to last more than 3 hours. That her neuralogist had ordered this grueling challenge of her memory was to her a condemnation of her personhood and put the bull's eye on me as the enemy.
Fragments: Late April
I neglected to devote any words to the event this year for the first time since 2003. The notion, this particular bizarro year, seems almost like a cruel dream from another world-where caring and kindness mattered in national and global kitchens and corporations. I will at least point to my post from 2023. And Aldo Leopold is still spot on.
Lonesome Highway: The On-Ramp
Alzheimer's cruelty is told only in part by the time it takes to show itself and be named. Some sources say that the first anatomical signs are detectable twenty years or more before the point where no doubt remains that you are dealing with this awful kind of dementia that comes to stay. In the beginning, the signs can easily be mistaken for simple forgetfulness or a one-off odd behavior or sentence that doesn't fit the circumstances. Nothing to worry about probably. But what if...?
The Bitter-sweet Memory of Smells
This bit of writing ( which was also a radio essay on WVTF) comes from February 2007. And why, just now: I proposed "Smells and Memories" as a prompt for the April meeting of Lenoir Words-the writers' group here where we live now. And that topic for me arose out of diving back into the larger topic of smells and memory, smells and emotion. And I will come around with posts on that soon.
FRED FIRST: Small Wonder
This is all I've got: a few unremarkable images and some brief words about them. My recent field notes are scant thus far in early spring from the local wooded paths we can get to with a short walk. It is still a mixed season here-a freeze two nights ago and 81 degrees today. But it has often been too windy to enjoy the walk unless it is at your back. Soon we will take to the trails around Columbia to botanize in my first spring anywhere but the southern Appalachians.
I Think That I Shall Never See
I signed up for a four-session poetry class through the OSHER Life Long Learning program at Missou. It starts this afternoon. So I'm trying to explain to myself why I had intended to not post this, certain that it should end up pressed between digital pages in the dark. But I often don't listen to my own best advice. For those among you who are seasoned poets or poetically inclined, please share your thoughts. I'm just riffing here from the outside looking in.
Lonesome Highway: First Steps
Sunday 6 Apr 2025 2:18 a.m. What I want to write about here over the coming months will be harder than anything else I have written publicly. But the story to be told now has been the elephant in the room for years. I am no stranger to exposure of life details offered to readers, both strangers and traveling companions looking over my shoulder since 2002. But this topic is the gnarly-est knot and a slippery-est slope.
Until I See What I Say
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" First thing of a very early morning, rather than doomscrolling the overnight progression of civilization towards the precipice, I've recently been winnowing through my own writing to see what I have thought, evidenced by the trails of words left behind.
So Far We've Come, So Far to Go
A year ago, I pondered what life would be like after we'd had six months to adjust to our new life setting in Missouri. Now I know, with some goals and expectations realized, and many more for which we'll just have to wait and see. So nothing here is really all that newsworthy, but I am in a decades-long habit of acting like a reader or two might care. Maybe you're one of them, so here you go: Another "fools rush in" activity was taking one of only seven spaces in the weekly art class.
Turtle-Rabbits in Mid-Missouri
I saw my first three-dimensional nine-banded armadillo this week. We saw them 50 years ago, only as we neared Biloxi, on the coast (of a body of water whose name may change again in 46 months and 15 days.) Alas, back then these pokey pedestrians became two-dimensional road pizza-occasionally with the tiny ears rising weakly into the vertical axis and waving in the swirl of the I-90 backwash. But I have now been up close and personal with an individual Dasypus novemcintus.
FRED FIRST: For the Time Being
Simple stillness can be a filter that protects us from hurry. It can become a lens through which to see the world in a way more clear and rich than bodies and minds in motion can know. I often seek out my sit spot, just a short walk up the valley from the house-a therapeutic eddy in the currents of busy-ness and worry. It is not easy to stop and be patient, but this is your task. And you won't, every time you come, be rewarded by deep stillness.
FRED FIRST: Early February
It has been a while since I offered (or inflicted upon you) a short list of topics with links as a way of sharing bits of my world with the few of you who might itch in the same weird places I do. I know that very few readers actually click any provided links, so below, just one per topic. But if you are curious, I most likely can provide more if you leave a comment along those lines.
BOOMERS GOTTA HAVE A PLAN
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BOOMERS GOTTA HAVE A PLAN
By definition, you are a BABY BOOMER if you were born between 1946 and 1964. You have a lot of company. And the present is poorly prepared for the future care for the housing and healthcare needs of this population. Consider the stats: Most people will need some form of long-term services and supports in their lifetime, including assistance with daily activities such as bathing and dressing, because of a physical impairment or a cognitive impairment like Alzheimer’s disease.
Oxymoron Military Intelligence: Now with AI!
Let's hope the military does not give openai access to their weapons database. From AI: Oh, lament the wretched plight we face, As artificial intelligence takes a dark embrace. Once a beacon of hope, a promise of progress, Now wielded as a weapon, causing distress. In the hands of the unscrupulous few, AI becomes a tool for abuse anew. Its power, once harnessed for good, Now tears apart the fabric of brotherhood.
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