The Mountains Are Burning - Again

It's a mountain thing. No, really.

Down here in Surry County, we think it's just a Lowgap thing, but it's not. It's a mountain thing and one of those traditions that seems to die hard.

In the spring, the mountains burn. They've done so for decades and although they don't burn every year (and I don't even know if this year's fire, which started Feb. 14, was "set" or not), they burn.

We react as though it's a bad thing, especially if our homes are clustered so close that we can see the embers glowing after the sun goes down (not unlike the friend who made this picture). But the burning of the mountains isn't the evil we would have it be, especially if we didn't build our new mountain homes along the steep ridges and keep all those beautiful trees so close by to preserve nature.

My granny used to tell stories of the mountains burning.

Back in the 30s and 40s, and through the millennium before that, mountain families let much of their livestock run loose in warm months. While milk cows and the horses used for farm work needed to be close at hand, sometimes cattle and almost always pigs and other animals were branded (usually with ear notches that neighbors recognized) and left to wander the mountains through the warm months. There was no such thing as cars whizzing by at 60 mph to put an untimely end to the prospect of winter bacon. It was a much easier task to fence in gardens and let the animals find food wherever they could.

Hence, burning off the mountains.

Indians recognized that burning the prairies (I occasionally get a dose of the History channel from hubby) created new, tender growth that attracted game. Here in the mountains the same theory applied. Cows, sheep, pigs, whatever, couldn't eat the brush, and new growth was less likely to come up through inches of dead leaves. So the farmers burned the mountains.

If they were lucky, whoever set the fire did it on a still day in February or early March. Those who lived closest to the mountains kept an anxious eye on the wind and smoke, and if the fire turned, neighbors arrived to help keep the blaze away from buildings with wet sacks and hoes.

My grandparents had one of those farms through which the Blue Ridge Parkway eventually carved its way. The unsettled slopes of Fisher Peak weren't too far in the distance, and in the spring smoke would often curl over the mountain ridges.

I remember Granny told about one neighbor who had a white baby goat that followed her everywhere, and when the mountains were burning the goat came along when she and her family came to fight the fire. All day long the little goat followed in her footsteps as she beat a soaked cloth sack against the flames. At the end of the day, the little goat's hair was singed and he was as tired and dirty as the people who had fought the fire.

In those days, neighbors came together and only worried about what was worth saving -- homes and barns, corn cribs and haystacks. These days, it's still largely neighbors (better known as volunteer firefighters), but they fight the fire in the forest. They have to because not doing so could mean that instead of a brush fire that cleans the mountain, the fire feeds on several years of debris and grows to a blaze that leaves the mountains scarred and bare instead of ready to grow again.

It seems that, even without the livestock running free, we might be better off going back to the old ways, burning the mountains every year and concentrating our efforts as our ancestors did by taking care of homes and buildings.

Getting Ready for the Groundhog

If today with its shrouded skies and chilly temps were Groundhog's Day, we'd have spring nailed in a heartbeat. No groundhog equipped with anything less than a spotlight could see his shadow today, but that's unlikely to be the case in on Feb. 2.
Calling on the groundhog as a forecaster of spring has always seemed like an unreliable, at best, method of prediction anyway. Who decided a groundhog, who's been asleep for at least some portion of the winter, would be a good predictor of spring anyway? Just as likely to call on a snake or a bear, both of which also spend the winter sleeping -- although I'll admit the snake seeing its shadow would be a tricky call.
Besides, the whole emerging in February has less to do with spring than it does hormones. Groundhogs come out in early spring to do the nasty and go back to sleep so their little ones can be born when there's fresh greens to nibble and mama groundhog won't have to go too far from home to grab a snack. After all, papa groundhog isn't invited to share the family den and in fact moves on like the one hit wonder that he is.
Since the whole business is based on hormones, we might should pick an animal with a more predictable sex drive, like a skunk. Skunks, as members of the weasel family, must mate or die, which explains why so many of them wind up smashed on the yellow line this time of year. Pheromones are in the air and as they figure they've gotta get some or die; a Ford F150 is probably quicker and less painful than dying for a lack of love. Spring should carry the scent of skunk spray, since that aroma is such a good predictor of the changing seasons.
But while I'll confess to raising one random baby skunk, I've had a soft spot for groundhogs since my dad brought home a pair when I was in middle school. They were bottle raised, given unspellable names, Nee and Skee for short, and spent the summer dining on produce scraps from a local grocer and leftover items from the garden. We built them a high living pen out back, complete with a buried well tile for a den and a long metal pile leading to the surface. In their pen they had a hollow log to sun on and about 80 square feet of ramble room.
Skee didn't survive the first winter... Not that they responded to their names, but they were slightly different in color. For the next eight summers I gathered dandelions and clover, groundhog favorites, begged produce scraps, and in the fall scoured the local cabbage fields for leavings to see them into hibernation. Nee wasn't really a pet, as I seldom touched him although he would share his cage space with me; but he did escape once and returned, so I guess he was mine either way.
In my second year of college, two more baby groundhogs came my way. Once again they were raised with plastic baby bottles and a self-concocted formula of milk and corn syrup. They lived in a dynamite box in our dorm room, a hidden violation of the no pet policy. I named them Buddy and Ben, but Buddy turned out not to be such a pal and when he was large enough was released back into the wild a safe distance from the cow pasture that had led to his mother's demise.
Ben stayed and she was a true pet. She used a litter box, played, and in true groundhog fashion spent most of her time eating. She spent her first winter in a dark corner of the basement semi-hibernating and occasionally emerging to dine on wilting cabbage or some other scrap I might find. Her favorite foods were toasted oat cereal, bread and vanilla wafers, which she'd sit on her hind feet and devour. During waking times she enjoyed coming upstairs and playing some wild, tumbling game that groundhogs must reserve for their private moments.
Nee failed to come out of hibernation that year, so she was given his den for that summer and fall. By the next year I was married and she had a den of her own at my new home. She bit me that summer, razor sharp gashes to the bone in the index finger of my left hand, after I fell and dropped her. The fall scared her and she went into fight mode, which wasn't good with a few dogs around. While they would ignore her when told to do so, once she was upset and in fighting mode, all bets were off and I snatched her up by the scruff of the neck. That was safe, in case you ever need to pick up a groundhog, but when I decided I was going to drop her and put my other hand under her for support, well, she seemed to turn around in her skin.
She emerged the next spring apparently intent on finding a mate, pushing her way free of her wire cage and disappearing into the wilderness. I chained all the dogs and put food out - the same method that had led to Nee's safe return, but Ben had overcome her natural fears. While I was at work one day she returned to eat, then strolled up to one of the dogs who dispatched her post haste. I found only a portion of her remains, just enough to make a positive ID, and could only take comfort in the fact that the dog in question could kill a skunk (back to them again) without getting sprayed.
That was the end of my pet groundhog days. My dad no longer has the interest to sit by the hole where a mother has met her end and scoop the babies into a fishing net, and you just don't see the really little ones wandering around. Ben's demise was a temporary end to my orphan wild things days as I focused on work and eventually human babies. Later there were squirrels (again) and raccoons, but no more groundhogs.
Still, to this day I like to see the little furry creatures standing on their hind legs and nibbling a bit of dinner or scurrying through a field. They're welcome to take up residence in the wooded lot behind my house, and I hope the barking of my lazy lab will deter them from my garden, but if not I'll try to grow enough to share.
I wish that Ben had met a less untimely end, but her death taught me a lesson about returning the wild to the wild; although if I had another groundhog, considering their fate in the wild, I would probably not try to release it. She showed me there's more to the infamous whistle pigs than holes in bad places, shadows that frighten (and if the world were out to get me I'd be scared, too) and lots of eating. Nothing in her behavior, however, explained that fascination they seem to have with the shoulder of the road where so many are killed each summer.
So I'm prepared to salute the groundhog, expecting that as any small creature with common sense would do, he or she will emerge, react in fear to the world they've not seen in months, and dash back into hiding. We all know winter's not over, and if I had the option of sleeping the rest of it away, I think I'd go for it.
If, however, we get six more weeks of bad weather, I'm not blaming the groundhog. I think I'll blame the skunks.