Nameless Creek: And Yet It Flows

It’s not the bridge over trouble waters I look for when I can’t find my way to the other side of problems. I put on my rubber boots and walk right up the middle of them–like I did in Nameless Creek this morning.

Landscapes from Floyd County, Southwest Virginia by Fred FirstA whip-poor-will flushed from the gravel of the road as I approached well before six o’clock. I must have almost stepped on him before he broke, shadow against shadow, for a place higher on the ridge to resume his monotonous sales pitch.

The moon (alas, I can’t even say which side of full we’re on) was framed between the branches of the walnut just east of the house. I thought briefly about running back for my camera. But no. This walk was to simplify my thoughts, not add another layer of purpose and intention to them.

The short of my conundrums du jour, as far as transient blog browsers who might flit here briefly, is that for the time being, I’ll be doing some degree of blogging (what that means, to be determined after another few pre-dawn creek walks) over at the mostly-neglected “other” blog, Nameless Creek, where at least I can add and subtract from the page without fear of birthing grotesque monstrosities in the page script.

Having completely started over again with the new template here last week, already I’ve run into the same problem of not being able to make minor changes without causing damage to the rest of the page. I’m losing patience. Very little is working seamlessly, and the technology is taking precedence over the poor, beleaguered morning Muse.

Blogrolling doesn’t work. Google analytics shows NO visitors to the page, even though SiteMeter shows 160+. And while once these visits were once predominately intentional stops from other blogger-regulars, today they are mostly image-seeking search engine vagabonds. There’s not much community in that.

It’s time for a change. Changes, maybe. I’m just not certain where the currents are carrying me.

But then, I look back over the past half-dozen years and see that the month of June has marked the end of one seasonal and personal pulse and the beginning of another clearly different direction of flow. More often than not, the changes were both necessary and beneficial. Sometimes it was push, sometimes it was pull; approach, avoidance, you search for the middle course between them. In the end, movement in any direction is better than stagnant waters, don’t you agree?

Share this with your friends!
fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

Articles: 3007

8 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. Fred,

    When I ‘hit the wall’ (and it is frustrating)I try and reflect on how far I have come as I find it usually allows me to gather some composure. Perhaps someone you know can help (although not me as you are already way out in front of me).

    Paul

  2. Have you given any thought to a Typepad account? For $5 a month you’ll have an easy to use Movable Type based blog. You could point Fragmentsfromfloyd.com to the new site and continue on. Typepad should be able to import your existing blog so that your archives all end up in one place.

    $5 a month is $5 a month more than free, but the reduction in headaches might be worth it.

  3. As he walks along his watery trail letting thoughts flow past with the waters, we wonder, which bank will Fred step onto, the right or the left? I remember walking through the streams with my father, but I carried his tackle box while he fished for the trout. I hope you catch a good one!

    Carl

  4. I’m about to think along those lines. I DO worry about yet another migration. I have such weighty baggage in images and posts, what with five years under my belt.

    Any recommendations on making the switch? Will images come with me?

    I’ll have to take a look at what the typepad edit page looks like. MT was not very friendly for my purposes. Blogger (old type with template edit page) is more so. And new blogger is almost too confining in its brain-dead ease of layout modification. And I can’t figure out with new blogger how to make my main column wider, or my sidebar–that sort of thing.

    Adsense is bringing in enough to cover the dsl now. So adding $60 a year wouldn’t be such a big expense–if it would be reliable, go back and find FFF from years gone by, and just let me think about words and images and not so much about nuts and bolts!

    Thanks for the suggestion, COD

  5. I wanted to comment on your picture of the millipede. When I was a child in the early 40s most children couldn’t wait to go barefoot. I hated to have to “save” my shoes. I was always stepping on honey bees and millipedes, the latter having a terribly rank smell when disturbed.

  6. Fred
    I always drop by using Reader.

    I use Typepad and have found it easy and reliable

    I am experimenting with WordPress and I am very impressed.

    I have an old Radio site that I just keep. I just stopped posting there

  7. I have used TypePad from the start. Too lazy to think about changing I suppose. It has been solid and they manage to keep out the spam pretty well.