The Summer Solstice Issue
Friday, Jun 20, 2025, 10:42 pm ET
Farm Report
A new intern started last week. He’s a 20-year-old from a nearby town who wants to learn organic farming. He comes a couple of days a week, three hours each time. He’s a quiet fellow, very polite. He amazes me by not minding the heat. (Today the temperature was 95 degrees F, with a heat index of 103.) Our intern has been very eager to learn everything he can, and he willingly heaves to on all kinds of farm chores—replacing posts, stretching fence, weeding, spreading compost on fruit trees, catching a hen that needed to be back with her babies, and mowing. Raven works with him, and while they work Raven explains things about growing food. He has taught him to drive the tractor as well.
Two batwomen from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources arrived on a Monday a couple of weeks ago to install their Anabat recorder. They left it up all week. I’ll be eager to learn what bats they detected this year.
Raven went to the livestock sale the other Saturday, and he came home with 7 keets (baby guineas) and 6 poults (baby turkeys). Egg-laying has slowed down as the heat has increased. Weeds are growing madly, so keeping the garden weeded is next to impossible.
We caught another 4-foot gray ratsnake this week, and it took a ride in the truck back across the river. I have a suspicion that we keep catching the same snakes over and over. “Would you paint a pink dot on its tail?” I asked Raven this week, when he had the latest visitor in a large lidded, metal can. “Yeah,” he said, with no small amount of sarcasm.
The barn is finally rebuilt and back in order following the fall hurricane that knocked us down.
The champion crape myrtle has started to bloom.
Phenology
Loblolly bays are in bloom in the bottomlands. They look like small versions of Magnolia grandiflora although they are actually Gordonia lasianthus. A slope of Pinkneya on Highway 147 over near Georgia State Prison has been marvelous.
Green treefrogs are everywhere. In all parts, expect frogs.
Fox kits are getting big enough to roam.
I’ve seen two fawn now. One was with her mother on the dirt road that crosses the dam, as if the doe had been showing the baby where to drink.
Last week, traveling through the sandhills on the way to town, I came upon a gopher tortoise traveling down the center line. I stopped and managed to whisk her off the road before the next vehicle arrived. (I don’t know how to age them, but it was about 7 inches across the shell.) In the sandhills, Georgia wild basil has been blooming, and sandhill milkweed is going to seed.
There’s so much more, but I’m not outside enough these days to see it. I think the purple martins have left for South America, but I haven’t gone out to check the gourds to make sure. It’s just a feeling I have, since I haven’t been hearing them the past few days.
Small Kindnesses
The day my aunt was buried was hot, typical for southern Georgia. I had dressed the baby in a pretty pink gown, and because she was teething, she was drooling badly. I kept her face wiped during the short chapel service, and kept her clean while we rode in the procession, following the hearse to the cemetery.
It was mid-day, summer, and the cemetery had no shade trees. All the heat made Little Fawn drool prolifically.
Standing near us was a gentleman in a beige suit, something from the 1970s. “Your baby is drooling,” he said to me. I’m sure he was thinking to alert me of a single strand of drool, not realizing that when Little Fawn is teething, she is a faucet.
“Here,” he said. “Use this.” He pulled a pristine white handkerchief from his back pocket. It was perfectly laundered, ironed, and folded.
Now the graveside services were beginning. “No,” I whispered. “I can’t take your nice handkerchief. I’ll find a tissue.”
He lifted both hands, palms toward me, and took a step backward. “It’s for the baby,” he said. “Use it.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Everywhere I turn I find good, generous people who want, if they are able, to lend a simple hand.
Legendary Trees
This tree grows a few miles from me in Tattnall County, Georgia, where Peachtree meets Elza District Road. I think it’s a slash pine. Behind it—in the wrongheaded approach to forestry that our country not only condones but rewards—an entire forest has been clearcut. This single tree was saved.
The story is lovely. Greg Sharpe, who lived on this road, was paralyzed in a car accident as a young man, thrown from the vehicle and pinned under it. He lived most of his adult life as a quadriplegic, on this road. To entertain himself, he would leave his trailer home in his motorized wheelchair, ride down to this corner, and watch vehicles come and go. This is a rural road, and the vehicles were occasional. More importantly, here, underneath this pine, is where folks stopped to visit with Greg.
One other story about Greg never fails to thrill me. You’ve probably heard of Warm Springs, Georgia, where President Roosevelt sought therapy for his polio in the natural springs. Greg too went to Warm Springs for therapy, and while he was there he met a nurse named Yolanda. They fell in love, and when Greg left Warm Springs, Yolanda came home with him. They married and lived together until Greg died in 2017.
When clearcutting began on the tract of land where the pine stands, it was set to be cut. Greg’s family petitioned the landowner to save this tree in memory of Greg. That’s why a lone pine stands at the intersection of Peachtree and Elza District, Greg’s Corner.
I’m in Trouble and I Need Your Help (It’s Good Trouble)
I signed up to go to the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) conference in Maryland in July. ASLE is the academic arm of nature writing. This year we confer at the University of Maryland in College Park July 8-11, 2025.
I will be attending and also exhibiting and also taking care of a baby. I truly need help.
I will pay your travel, registration fees, meals and lodging, plus a stipend. In return, I’ll need about 6 hours a day from you. We’ll coordinate so you can attend ASLE sessions that interest you.
You’ll need to love meeting and talking with people, plus deeply interested in environmental writing. Okay, take out the word “deeply.” Simply “interested” is enough.
To apply, send me an email at wildfire1491@yahoo.com with the following information:
Why you’re interested in attending ASLE
Where you’d be traveling from and by what means you’d travel (preference goes to someone closer)
What makes it possible for you to be free during those dates
Anything else you want to tell me
Deadline for applications is June 21, extended if necessary.
If You Want to Attend But Not as My Assistant
You can find out more about the ASLE conference and register at the ASLE website.
You’re Invited to the Terrain.org Reading
Join
, Petra Kuppers, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, and me (!!!) at the ASLE offsite reading, to be held at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 4318 Gallatin Street, Hyattsville, Maryland, on Thursday, July 10, from 7-8 p.m. during the Cultural Crawl.From the Mailbag
Keep Seeking What You’re Looking For
In case you missed “The Chanterelle Seeker,” here’s a good place to turn around and go back. The essay features my good friend and neighbor, Ancil Jacques, mushroom farmer and forager.
Sixty-four people liked the piece, and it has 48 comments. Thank you for reading it, thank you for liking it. I received some direct messages I’d like to share.
From Maggie Johnston, Moulton, Alabama
Maggie sent a photo of mushroom foraging, plus her dinner the other night, now that chanterelle season has arrived in the South. She served chanterelle stir-fry over brown rice. Extra mushrooms she sautéed with sesame oil and sprinkled with balsamic vinegar.
From Erin, Atlanta, Georgia
“There is no joy greater than collecting delicious (and free) food in the wild. Even in the city, I'm constantly checking all my favorite mulberry, serviceberry, and fig spots. Alice and I had an incredible chanterelle spot that is no longer available, and we are devastated! If you ever need company for a pick, we'll drive down to meet you!”
From Noel, Savannah, Georgia
“Read your most interesting mushroom article about foraging with Ancil. Inspired me to go to farmers market after writing with you yesterday morning. Alas, I was too late, as he packed up early. I did manage to buy a variety box of cultivated mushrooms from his friends. One day I hope to forage in the Georgia woods.”
From John, Jonesboro, Illinois
“Thanks so much for sharing your story about the fungus finder. Very timely as Erin and I enjoyed black trumpet mushrooms in our scrambled eggs for breakfast recently. While I rarely go afield specifically for fungus, I do harvest when the opportunity arises: morels, trumpets, chanterelles, chicken of the woods, and—my favorite—hen of the woods. Free food!”
Orion Magazine’s Latest Issue Focuses on Mushrooms
Maria Popova has written a piece for the Summer 2025 issue of Orion called “Mushrooms and Our Search for Meaning,” which I thought was a wonderful coincidence.
Michael Moore’s Pledge of Allegiance
Michael wrote this on his Substack for June 2, “Here’s the New Pledge of Allegiance I Think We All Should Take.” The post is short and inspiring. I very much admire his courage and perseverance. This is a pledge I’m happy to take.
"I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE
TO THE PEOPLE
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
AND TO THE DEMOCRACY
FOR WHICH WE ALL STAND:
ONE PERSON,
ONE VOTE,
ONE NATION,
PART OF ONE WORLD,
EVERYONE!
A SEAT AT THE TABLE!
EVERYONE!
A SLICE OF THE PIE!
WITH LIBERTY
AND JUSTICE,
EQUALITY
AND KINDNESS,
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
FOR ALL."#Radical Sustainability
Next Week
Expect an update on Little Fawn.
If there is anything more grounding, more comforting, and sweeter than this issue, I haven't seen it. Everything...the kindness, the suffering and redemption, the sense of harmony with the earth and its creatures...it's all beautiful. And then the photo of Little Fawn and the aged hand of whoever is sitting with her. Do touching. Thank you, Janisse.
The crepe myrtle is amazing!!