March was the month that our second daughter-in-law, Connie, announced that she was pregnant with her third child; also the month in which she miscarried.

Two days after the sad occurrence, we talked by telephone. She told me that she had told beautiful Amy, her sensitive three year old, that God had removed the future brother or sister growing within her because it just wasn't right, but that there would be another day for a brother or sister.

"We both cried, just bawled together," Connie told me. My eyes moistened as I listened.

March
Sunday
Jeanne has returned from her afternoon walk in the forest with the dogs. She reported two major occurrences: walking up the gravel state road which fronts the cabin, the dogs frightened a pair of Mallard ducks, a drake and a hen, from the surface of the pond above us. She also reported that the azalea bush on the roadside bank of our pond has budded and is about to bloom. The daytime temperatures remain in the 50's, but spring marches inextricably toward us. The ramps (wild onions) are shooting up in open spaces in the forest; the earliest harbingers of spring.

The winter was mild. There were no crippling ice storms to rip branches and limbs from the evergreen trees, as during the preceding winter. The damaged and destroyed trees which resulted from the ice storms past are of great current concern for those of us living in the forest. Spokespersons for the national park and forest service have warned us that they have left so much tinder-dry debris on the forest floor that, absent above-normal rains, we will be in danger of exceptionally hot and fast-moving forest fires during the remainder of the year.

In the summer and autumn, forest fires are never far from our thoughts; each rain storm, no matter how light, is received as a welcome friend.

Yesterday, Jeanne, the dogs, and I took our favorite mile circle walk: down the path behind the cabin, one hundred yards over large walk-over boulders, across the picturesque mountain stream, falling with whitewater from up the mountain to the right, walk up the sharp bank on a path we have beaten to highway hardness; from the top, above the stream, onto another path for 75 yards to the old park fire trail, now on the doctor's property. From there it is an easy, wide descent through a mixture of pines, poplars, oaks and hemlocks down again to stream-bottom level. Part of the walk once was over thick beds of brown hemlock needles, but, alas, the hemlocks are dying. The forest is becoming littered with dead trunks of once huge and tall-standing trees.

"It's beginning to look like a war zone," I remarked to Jeanne.

Because of the extraordinary warning of the national park and forest officials, we began in earnest to talk of our escape from a raging, killer forest fire. We agreed that if time permitted, we would sweep the photos of family and friends into a bag and carry them out with us and the dogs. We talked as we walked.

At the bottom of the river bed, crossed by the fire trail, we began the climb up the vehicle-wide trail, framed on each side by budding wild raspberry bushes, which we will harvest in July. We continued to discuss our escape of a forest fire. Usually when we walk up to the point where the fire trail meets the gravel state road, we proceed up the road to our pond bank, about twenty yards, up and around the bank to the cabin.

"Let's go up to the open space under the power lines. That would be our best escape if the road were sealed off below us," I said to Jeanne. We walked up past the cabin to the 20 yard wide scrub-brush path under the power lines. We gather blackberries under the power line path in years when the terrain has not been poisoned by those responsible for keeping down the underbrush. There would be room to run down the path to an open area below the mountain, if it were not already in flames.

We walked higher on the state road. We decided that the pond above us, larger and more open, freer of trees than our own, would be our salvation in the case of an inescapable, flaming forest around us. We would enter the pond near a stone wall serving as a foundation for the bluff on which the next cabin is built. That area of the pond would be largely free of falling, burning trees and we could remain in the water until danger had passed. Jeanne and I agreed: if all escapes are sealed off, it will be up to, and into, our neighboring pond, hopefully to safety.

March
Monday
It was dark Saturday evening when a vehicle drove into our Jewell Hollow gravel drive. Already outside, Duda growled and Attila barked high-pitched staccato sounds. I walked to the door and to the top of the stone wall overlooking it. Persons seldom come to us in the forest at night unannounced; when it happens it is my custom to meet them, sometimes armed, most often not.

Johnny and his wife, Mary, and Johnny's uncle, Bob, emerged. The dogs turned into a welcoming committee of love. As usual, when in Jewell Hollow, Johnny was somewhat toward the top of the drunk meter. Having known him since he was a teenager, I invited the now prematurely-gray Johnny and entourage into the cabin.

I was drinking a cocktail. I offered our guests nothing. Years of experience had taught us that unless we were looking forward to a long bout with whiskey-drinking guests, we should not offer the first drink.

Johnny had come to inquire about the health of Granny, my mother, so it was said. In reality, he was looking for pro bono legal advice.

We could discern as a boy that Johnny was a bit brighter and certainly more aggressive than most of the young persons wandering in and out of Jewell Hollow; he was also a troublemaker when drinking. He had partiality to the whiskey bottle; that reminded us of his quiet, pleasant father, long dead of hard drink. When Hotshot, master carpenter, W.W.II combat veteran, and our long-time repairer and teacher of the practical, and blind Bob, who long ago lost his sight to a degenerative eye disease, would bring Johnny's father to Jewell Hollow, He would speak softly, gulp his whiskey, and sit on his haunches for as long as their sojourn endured.

The last time I had heard from Johnny was many months ago, during autumn deer hunting season. He had telephoned me at 10 PM, knee-walking drunk and said:

"There are some hunters trespassing on my land. I've got my rifle and I'm going to shoot 'em."

I took a dim view of Johnny shooting trespassers. I tried to reason with a very drunk and unreasonable rifleman. His plan was that after he had used his deer rifle on the trespassing hunters, I was to come to the Page County jail and get him out. I allowed as how trespasser shootings exceeded my law-enforcement-officer-persuasion-powers. We continued our telephone conversation: Johnny insisted that he had the legal right to shoot the trespassers, and I insisting that he did not. The rambling, sometimes incoherent, conversation wandered for half an hour. Finally, I was certain that I had relieved him of his desire to handle his trespassers problem through the barrel of his rifle.

Saturday evening I inquired about the trespassing dispute.

"The damn sheriff locked me up -- for three days."

I chuckled aloud at the unexpected answer. Johnny had returned to the hunters, rifle-at-the-ready, and forced them to leave his premises. They drove to the county jail and swore out a warrant for our guest's arrest; a deputy sheriff complied. In his drinking-state Saturday night, Johnny was still distraught: his attorney had plea-bargained him to a brandishing-a-weapon misdemeanor, down from assault with a deadly weapon, which had the potential for Johnny of significant time in state prison.

"He didn't do nothin', Gary," was Johnny's lament. I am sure I had as much success convincing him of his lawyer's proper course, as I did to not handle his trespass issue with a rifle.

Others are claiming an adverse right-of-way over Johnny's land. He had been served to appear and protect his interests in a law suit between one hopeful for the right-of-way and the defendant, a land owner up the mountain from Johnny. I gave him advice; it will likely not be followed.

Johnny is a pipe fitter. It is a highly paid craft, particularly when one works under a union contract, as he does. Each working day he drives over 200 miles round trip, to the far reaches of metropolitan Washington, DC and return. I gave him some advice on that account as well.

Years ago, when we were friskier on Saturday night, we once sat with Johnny at a dance at the VFW hall. During the evening, the subject of arm wrestling arose; Jeanne challenged Johnny to a match. After our guest had removed themselves from Jewell Hollow this Saturday evening, Jeanne and I reminisced about Page County Saturday nights long past.

"I can still feel the pain, as I think about it," was how she summed up her arm wrestling challenge to Johnny-the pipe-fitter. Johnny won.

...