Think Sewanee First

Sewanee prides itself on its long and illustrious literary history.

In that light, one might consider this an in situ demonstration of a literary term: irony.

Alas, probably not.

The bicycle, cigar butt, quarter, beer jacket, and beer can on, behind, and under the Cheston beach bench indicate someone thought about Sewanee not the least little bit.

A Trick of Memory

sometimes
but only
sometimes
I miss
closing rituals
like graduation
but then
remember this
among my stash
button stash:
how can
I miss
you if
you won't 
go away?

After Commencement

Yesterday, they graduated.

Some left yesterday; some today; some will hang around.

A walk at one of the two campus lakes depressed me as much as the cold, gray weather. Litter. Everywhere. Beer bottles, take-out containers, liquor bottles, cigarette butts, books. Someone somewhere could have used this one.

I can't help wondering if the parents ever notice the junk their children fling about.

Other community members do. One sent out an email on the Classifieds system noting the perfectly good mattresses and box springs left outside the house next to the post office. Because it's supposed to rain, she suggested someone might want to scavenge them.

Need I say this?

I shall anyway.

The folks who lived in that house are students.

Ah privilege. Ah disposable culture. Ah entitlement.

On the upside: odonates don't seem to care about the trash.

Campus Hijinks

Two dorms and a frat house border Lake Finney, and evidence of extreme partying still litters the grounds, even almost a month after commencement.

Undergraduate celebrations have nothing on the Slender Bluets, however, who do it en masse. I suppose that once a female has found just the right spot for oviposition, others hone in on the same spot. Today, I ignored the human evidence of extreme behavior and focused on the bugs instead, skimming and dipping across the lake in droves of electric blue.

At Lake Cheston, Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Reckon the folks who made this

and left these behind

say they love the outdoors?

Lake Cheston ABCedarian Day 9

J is for JUNK

The kind a dog leaves, not once but three times over at least three visits, in the company of his human, who leaves it where the canine deposited it. This pile is at 6:00, with others at 11:00 and 3:00.

The kind an adult leaves for someone else to pick up or throw away, that someone wondering if the child left with cold feet.

The kind an animal drags from somewhere else.

Happily, the insects don't seem to mind the junk nearly as much as I. A leaf inside a plastic container will do just as nicely as any other leaf.

There's Cold and Then There's *Cold*

Halfway around the lake, a woman and her Doberman caught up to me.

"Hi!" I called, unfolding myself from the icy moss where I had been lying (my favorite photographing position).

"Hi!" When she caught up to me, she said, "Do you live here? I mean, right at the lake?"

"Near enough."

"I've never been here in the snow before. I'm from Nebraska," she said.

Before we could pursue Nebraska or why she's here, we discovered two large coffee containers, still topped, sitting upright in the sand.

"Is there a garbage can nearby?"

"Yep. Look right over there on the other side of the beach," I said.

"If my child did this, I'd lecture her. Do people litter here often?"

"Oh yes, all the time. You wouldn't believe what I pull out of the lake."

After dumping the cups, we discussed the weather, of course. (Everyone has been discussing the weather. My Birmingham family and friends had challenges yesterday, and we've hit single digits more time this month than I remember in ten years here.)

"I heard the students complaining about the cold," she said. "They should come to Nebraska where the wind blows 30 miles an hour, and then they'll know cold!"

I asked if she had seen the footprints on the lake ice -- large ones, clearly a male's, with a love note by one of the footbridges and small ones -- child size -- across from the beach.

"We teach children in Nebraska that you don't walk on a lake or pond until the water has frozen all the way down to the bottom," she said.

"That sounds wise."

And with that, she and the Doberman continued on, into the woods.

There's cold and then there's cold. For her, it's wind in Nebraska's winter snow. For me, it was 20-something with 100% humidity in New Orleans.

But for Lake Cheston, cold is cold, and continued cold has meant myriad patterns of ice -- flowers, bubbles, sheets, striations, chains, beads. I'll take this cold anytime because it's so beautiful.