Ronnie Blackwell

Archive for September, 2007

Road Trip!

September 28th 2007

After a summer of staying close to home, Lin and I snuck away for a proper road trip about mid-September—even stayed over night! We drove just ahead or just behind rain showers all the way to the Pensacola. We were planning on birding Santa Rosa Island but were surprised to find the road to Fort Pickens was still closed, three full years after Ivan. We did find a few shorebirds including our first-of-season Ruddy Turnstones and Willets, then we set out to drive the island over to the Navarre Beach Bridge. We were shocked to find that the island road is also still closed through the National Seashore. Right at the end of private land there is now a cluster of massive condominiums more than twenty stories high, the Portofino Island Resort. They’re even trying to change the name of the Island! The sight sent cold chills up and down my spine. Is this Dauphin Island’s future?

We back-tracked and drove Highway 98 down to Panama City. It’s been maybe six years since we’ve made that drive. The pace of development is stunning. I’ve grown numb to the sprawl that’s eating the community where I grew up, but to see miles and miles of faux Tuscan concrete strip malls is truly unnerving.
We went to the Panhandle for the Gulf Coast Writer’s Conference in Panama City. I had much trepidation about this conference. I don’t really know why, but it turned out to be a conference much like the last 150 conferences I’ve planned, produced, or attended. I didn’t even get bloody! We did meet some good people, and ate some great food. The conference gave me some perspective of the writing game here in the new millennium. The one clear message I brought back is that we’re all scared. Big publishers, small publishers, agents, editors, and writers are all scared of the changes in publishing, the challenges of “New Media,” and pace of change. All in all, I found that quite comforting. I do scared real good.
The unexpected highlight of the trip was the hamlet of St. Andrews Florida, now part of Panama City. We had a great meal at the Captain’s Table near the St. Andrews Docks, and we later drove around the quiet neighborhoods where eighty-year-old houses sit under live oaks and back up onto St. Andrews Bay or one of the tidal lakes. It felt like going home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast of forty years ago. St. Andrews has been tagged as a revitalization zone, and there’s already a condo tower at the foot of the docks. So, hurry! Get in your car and drive to St. Andrews right now before it sinks under the weight of Tuscan concrete.
I would highly recommend the fried grouper throats with cheese grits.
Take care.

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And the Slithy Toves Did Gyre
And Gimble in the Wabe

September 20th 2007

Yes, I am still alive, although you wouldn’t know it from reading this blog. This entry, in fact, will say exactly what the last entry says– just with many more words. I cannot remember a more busy August, and I wake daily with a shock that September is already here. I’m just about ready for a lazy Labor Day break. But, of course taking advantage of every minute of the long Labor Day weekend is one of the reasons that I’m so behind. Now, I’m not really complaining. It was a great weekend. It started with far-flung members of our family-of-choice converging on Hattiesburg for a mini-reunion. It was a scary pleasure to see how kids have grown, and how everyone but Lin and I have aged. There was good beer, better food, and splendid fellowship for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

But the weekend was just preamble. The climax of Labor festivities was a genuine quest. On Monday Lin, our friend Larry Morgan, and I chased the Jabiru. No, we didn’t fly to Belize for the day, we drove to the heart of the Mississippi Delta in search of a nightmare of a bird.

This all started when the worker’s at a catfish pond in Isola, Mississippi, came to work one day in early August and found a giant bird with a naked black head and large red pouch eating dead catfish in a pond where there had been a fish kill. News moves slowly in the Delta, and by the time I saw an incredible picture of this beast surrounded by great egrets, the bird had been gone from the farm for three or four days.

By Labor Day weekend dozens of big-time birders had come from all over the country and had spread out over the flat countryside. The theory is that Jabirus, which should be migrating from Mexico to Central and South America right about now, get caught up in the post-nesting dispersal of Mexican Wood Storks and drift north into the US instead of south. Not often, mind you. This was the 11th Jabiru ever documented in North of Mexico. On Saturday, not only all the spare expert birders in North America fail to find the big Stork, they also could not find a single Wood Stork. By Sunday only a few stragglers were still looking. On his way home to Memphis, Jeff Wilson, AKA Ol’ Coot, called another die-hard birder, Philip Barbour, and told him he had run across at least two hundred Wood Storks feeding in a pond. Again, the hunt was on!

By the time we got to the Delta on Monday, we pretty much had the field to ourselves. We wandered over three counties and looked into every catfish pond we could find. We drove tiny roads into places I had never been, got lost often, found ourselves in the TRUE middle of nowhere at sunset. No, we didn’t find the Jabiru, but we did see thousands of great egrets, and many other waders, including dozens of Wood Storks. We also scored the very best hot tamales I’ve ever eaten from the Rib Shack in Greenwood. The ribs we got there were so good that we ended up the trip by eating more ribs at Sonny’s Barbecue in west Jackson on the way home. And we made it safely home. I call that a successful Quest. It twas brillig, indeed!

All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.