Author: Kristie Smeltzer

Categories
Culture Living

The sport of queens

Boar’s Head falconry experiences with Goldie and Wily (above) are offered daily and require a reservation. Staff photo.

A delightful side effect of writing this column is that people in my life now give me ideas based on their bucket lists and more obscure interests. When a friend said she’d always wanted to try falconry and asked if I would join her, “Heck yeah!” was my nigh-instant response.

Like many wheezy, middle-aged folks, the pandemic afforded me time to become emotionally invested in the birds frequenting the feeders on my deck—to the extent that I intervened when a hawk was trying to make off with one of my mourning dove friends. 

In my youth, the 1982 cult classic The Beastmaster tickled my imagination. I longed to have similar furry and feathered friends, like Dar’s slippery-pawed ferrets Kodo and Podo and his majestic eagle Sharak, whose eyes he could see through. At every ren faire and theme park my family visited, the raptor shows were a must. This is all to say I’ve always been enthralled by birds of prey yet never knew much about them, until now.

What

The Falconry Experience at Boar’s Head.

Why

Birds of prey are very cool.

How it went

While one can’t literally learn to fly by simply touching a falcon, figuratively I floated home.

At the Boar’s Head Outfitters desk, we met our falconer. He gave us each a falcon glove and bottled water before we headed out. In hindsight, I wish I’d left the water behind. Yes, I drank it. Yes, hydration is essential, but I’m a Gen Xer (therefore, part camel), and can make it an hour-and-a-half without needing water. What I found myself wanting during the experience was free hands for bird-holding or picture-taking.

As we walked to the falcon house (obvi not the technical term), our guide provided info about American falconry and regaled us with stories about the Boar’s Head’s falcons, Wily and Goldie. Mischievous Wily (think Wile E. Coyote vibes), an African auger buzzard, would be our companion for the experience. Falconry includes different types of birds of prey, such as falcons, hawks, and others, like our buzzard Wily, who is more akin to a red-tailed hawk. After collecting Wily from his abode, we walked to a picturesque spot near a pond where our falconer showed us what Wily can do.

Tempted by bits of unhatched chicks still dripping with yolk (yes, the visuals still haunt my dreams and inspire the urge to rewash my hands to avoid salmonella), Wily flew back and forth between the falconer’s glove and nearby trees. Our guide explained that it’s the food that motivates the birds, not a relationship with the handler, and that one must walk a careful line when feeding Wily to avoid him getting “fed up.” If a falcon gets full, the bird is not motivated to go back to the handler.

Soon our falconer invited us to hold Wily on our gloved wrists, after he tempted him to join us with more chicken. Even though we’d been awestruck by the beating of Wily’s wings as he flew over and around us, nothing prepared me for the rush of him alighting on my outstretched arm. Falcons pack a lot of awesome power per inch, weighing in at just a couple pounds though they have about 200 PSI grip strength in their talons. It felt humbling for Wily to hold onto my arm. At one point, he did his bat impression, dangling from my arm inverted. 

As I looked to our falcon whisperer for instructions, Wily let go and toppled unceremoniously onto the dirt. Let me tell you, falcons’ extraordinary vision extends to giving superior side-eye. Despite my faux pas, my friend and I must have passed the vibe test, because our falconer commented that Wily spent a lot of time with us during our experience.

Categories
Culture Living

Pull! A tale of sporting clays

Central Virginia Sporting Clays combines skill and intuition in its group lessons. Photo by Stephen Barling.

Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of shooting skeet. I must’ve seen it in a Bugs Bunny cartoon or something. My father liked hunting, and to varying degrees, family members enjoyed the venison from his efforts. I grew up around guns and, therefore, grew up with a healthy respect for them.

During grad school, I frequented a gun range, learning to fire just about everything it had. The unfortunate context for my interest at that time was that someone in my life had made threats with a firearm, and my thinking was that if I had to take a gun away from someone, I’d better know how to use it. What I didn’t expect was how much I enjoyed learning about the different weapons and firing them under safe conditions at a gun range using paper targets.

With stationary targets, I’m a decent shot. Still, I longed to try something like skeet, with moving targets. After not shooting for 20 years, I decided to cross skeet off the ol’ bucket list. I called Central Virginia Sporting Clays, and my education began. There are several popular shotgun sports: trap, skeet, and sporting clays. The main difference is how the clays move. With sporting clays, they can go in any direction. I scheduled a group lesson and donned my Elmer Fudd hat.

What

Shooting sporting clays.

Why

Because I’ve always wanted to yell “Pull!” and shoot a moving inanimate target.

How it went

Many clays exploded that day.

From Charlottesville, it’s a bit of a trek to get to Central Virginia Sporting Clays in Palmyra, but IMO it’s well worth the effort. The CVSC site says map apps may not get you there, but friends joining me used their apps with no problem.

Upon arrival, we met up with our instructor who grabbed shotguns before we headed to the five-stand area. Our knowledgeable teacher explained how sporting clay shooting works, shared safety information, and distributed hearing and eye protection. The most Yoda thing he conveyed to us was that shooting sporting clays is more about relying on one’s intuition than aiming.

My friends encouraged me to go first, because they’re kind and I coordinated the outing—but probably more so because the older I get, the less I care about embarrassing myself. The five-stand area has—as you might assume—five wooden shooting stands in a row. After sidling up to a stand, the instructor demonstrated how to load the shotgun properly and coached me on my form. A remote control launched targets from clay throwers in different positions around a clearing in front of the stands. Some clays launched toward the stands while others moved away. Some crossed from the sides, and one thrower skipped clays across the ground to mimic landbound animals (sorry, bunnies!).

My goal was to hit one clay. If I did that, mission accomplished—everything else was gravy. The first clay launched, and I clipped it. I hit three out of four clays in my first round and felt like the queen of the world. But I had just been hitting the edge of clays, making small bits pop off, and I wanted to make a target explode. The instructor repeated the initial training process with each of us, adjusting for our different dominant eyes, body types, stances, and firing quirks. After he finished, we were all breaking clays. I learned that I really enjoy shooting clays—at least trying to—and that I have a proclivity to double tap. Sometimes crossing something off your bucket list results in a new hobby. I know I’ll be back.

Categories
Arts Culture

The glorious goat of improv

The Big Blue Door’s classes and shows have been a resource for storytelling, self-discovery, and hearty laughter in Charlottesville since 2012. Photo by Eze Amos.

One of my favorite things to do is laugh. A hearty laugh makes a bad day a little less bleak and a good one golden. Live comedy has always been something I enjoy and have often fantasized about trying.

As a small child, I enjoyed performing—ballet, school plays, living room magic shows. Then adolescence crash-landed and middle school happened to me (as it does to us all). Self-consciousness rooted and ran wild like the destructive weed it is. I forced myself to overcome stage fright in high school, but it’s a battle I still fight every time I need to appear in front of a group. Though I was a certified “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” addict back in the day, I thought I’d shelved my comedy dreams for good.

Then I entered middle age, and, along with all the less-fun parts like plantar fasciitis and hot flashes, I unlocked that adulting achievement of having far fewer fudges to give about getting embarrassed. And that’s how I ended up enrolled in a Big Blue Door improv class.

What

Taking a Big Blue Door improv class.

Why

To challenge myself to get outside my comfort zone (and hopefully laugh a lot doing it).

How It Went

I’m still laughing.

At the first class, anxiety and excitement duked it out in my guts—very first-day-of-school vibes. The group members quickly realized we’d have little time to sit and think about our nerves though. Our intrepid instructor told us to “circle up,” and before we knew it, we stood playing a game to learn names and one true thing about each other. I didn’t realize how vulnerable and, to quote the introverted goddess Emily Dickinson, “public like a frog” the entire experience was going to be. But, golly, improv sure feels like the right kind of hard, the kind that comes from growth.

Class continued through a series of group and partner activities. Trust grows quickly with classmates from absolute necessity. In my limited experience, improv demands that we’re 100 percent present in the moment—and 100 percent willing to look extremely foolish. Our instructor provided clear, concise directions to get us going, and gentle guidance as we went. He also shared a key insight: It’s really hard to upset people with what we say when performing, so don’t stress. Implied in that wisdom is the notion that what people co-create in real time, improvisationally, is ephemeral. That’s part of the beauty of it, and only the most memorable bits—which hopefully got laughs—will remain in folks’ minds.

Twenty minutes into the class, my nerves had mostly calmed. I was just having fun, and the activities—such as “name five things” in which participants call on each other to name five things in a category: “Francine, name five different sandwiches!”—demanded that I get out of my own head. If we got stuck, our teammates and the instructor moved us out of it. I won’t say much about my classmates because I promised them that what happens in improv class stays in improv class, but they’re awesome.

In its purest moments, the class felt like playing with friends as a child. Do you remember that—the act of co-creating a shared imagined reality with other kids in which anything was permissible? Don’t get me wrong, there were other moments, ones in which I wished the floor would open and swallow me whole to spare me further embarrassment. But those moments were fleeting, quickly erased from memory when the next laugh landed.

At the class’ end, we finished with a game centered on a glorious goat. Circled up, we all passed around a glorious imaginary goat and said a series of repeating lines about it. Writing that now, it sounds ridiculous, and it was, but that’s what made it so marvelous. I’ve been walking around my house exclaiming, “I have the glorious goat,” and it never ceases to bring a smile to my face.

Categories
Arts Culture

Live Arts stages compelling he-said, she-said plays

Live Arts kicks off its season with two thought-provoking shows, "What the Constitution Means to Me" and "An Iliad," in repertory through October 28. Details at livearts.org. Supplied photo.

We humans are social animals, which is one reason why theater endures as a way for people to share space and feel something together. In a time when our nation feels quite divided (ahem: understatement), any opportunity to learn from history and engage with challenging subjects in thought-provoking ways is a good opportunity. The current Live Arts shows have us covered on that front with back-to-back chances to dig in to the depth of the human experience from two distinct yet resonant perspectives.

As Live Arts’ 2024/2025 Voyages season picks up steam, What the Constitution Means to Me and An Iliad share the Founders Theater and alternate performances. The choice of presenting the plays in repertory makes sense, because they are very much in conversation. Both shows feature powerful performances enhanced by the black box theater’s intimate staging conditions. Audience members feel essential to the storytelling.

In What the Constitution Means to Me, we find ourselves in an American Legion hall represented by a minimalist patriotic set. Enter Heidi, a character based on playwright/original lead Heidi Schreck, who takes us to a scholarship speech contest about the U.S. Constitution that she competed in as a teen. Heidi, portrayed by Tovah Close the night I attended, invites the audience to play the cigar-smoking men who filled the American Legion halls of her youth. We were a predominantly female audience, and the first thing many did when invited to embody men was to take up more space, which resonates with the play’s central theme.  

Through Heidi’s personal stories, and those of her grandmothers and mother, we come to understand how preposterous it is for Heidi to be speechifying about the personal relevance of a document that first explicitly mentions women in the 19th amendment, passed in 1919, that granted women the right to vote. As a woman, I found the play to be validating and emotionally challenging. Heidi’s statistics about rape and domestic partner violence against women landed pointedly. Just as the weight of the traumas became overwhelming, there was an intermission. Let me tell you: We hit the bar hard.

Fortunately, the play’s second act offers a respite from heartstring plucking (mostly) by featuring a debate between Heidi and an actual debater (Aafreen Aamir). The topic is whether we should keep or abolish the U.S. Constitution. Honestly, it never occurred to me that we could abolish our Constitution and institute a new one—one that protects the rights of Native Americans, people of color, queer folks, women, and other minorities with the same vehemence as in protecting the rights of white men like our founding fathers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proud American, which is probably why the idea of abolishing the Constitution never occurred to me. I’m also a disheartened American, an American who sees that some things need to change as our country continues to evolve, just as the founding fathers envisioned it would.

The following night, I saw An Iliad, which blends sections of Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer’s epic poem with moments of modern contextualization. Two nameless, timeless poets—an elder and a younger—arrive and investigate the sparse set. For several minutes, the audience watches as the elder, portrayed by David Minton (also the director), and the younger by Jesse Timmons, set the stage before beginning the tale. I love that live theater has the power to get me to care about watching a man adjust the placement of a milk crate—and I did care!

The Iliad is a familiar tale to many, with ancient heroes Achilles and Hector leading armies during the Trojan War. The added context breathes life into this show. The Younger Poet likens (spoilers) ill-fated Patroclus’ bloodlust in battle to our modern experience of road rage. He begins by expressing a degree of anger relatable to anyone who’s been cut off in traffic. However, Timmons then takes his performance to an extreme that fills the room with discomfort, graphically describing physical violence, inappropriate as a reaction for a roadway mishap. The Elder Poet touches the younger, to snap him out of his fiery passion, and the younger apologizes, saying something like, “That’s not me. It’s not me.” Reckless uncontrollable rage does not define the man, or at least The Younger Poet doesn’t want it to. One of the play’s most affecting aspects is the tension created by the tenderness between the two characters juxtaposed against the horrors of the Trojan War and all the wars after, including those that are raging even now.  

Categories
Culture Food & Drink

Carter Mountain Orchard’s fall food offerings come with a sunset

Fall food trucks line up at Carter Mountain Orchard though mid-November. Check the website for details. Photo by Martyn Kuyle.

It’s crazy that I worked at Monticello for seven years but never visited Carter Mountain Orchard until recently. I’ve had the apple cider donuts (worth the hype), but haven’t gone apple picking or to an event there. As the weather cools and the call of pumpkin-spice everything drifts to us on the autumn breeze, it seemed like a good time to check out the orchard. My original plan was to dig in at a
Fall Food Truck event, but instead I caught one of the season’s last Thursday Evening Sunset Series shows, which also feature offerings from food trucks, plus live music.

Upon arrival, I remembered why I’d never gone to a big gathering at Carter Mountain: my intense dislike of large crowds. Don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of folks in attendance were having a lovely time. I’m an ambivert, meaning I’ve got both extroverted and introverted traits. As I’ve entered my midlife renaissance (read: crisis), I’ve realized more and more that I refuel with alone time and that crowds
are not for me. Despite my social anxiety, I enjoyed a delicious meal along with a view that will only get more dazzling in the coming weeks as the fall colors grace the mountains yet again.—Kristie Smeltzer

What

Sampling food truck fare at Carter Mountain Orchard.

Why

Because enjoying a delicious meal without having to do dishes is awesome.

How It Went

Great—it’s hard to go wrong with ooey-gooey melted cheese. The view: a bonus.

The drive into the orchard from the Route 53 entrance follows a winding road that requires an attentive driver. If you’re visiting for a boozy event, I recommend using a rideshare app or having a trusted designated driver in your party. The path in creates a sense of arrival, of leaving the world behind as nature surrounds you. When I arrived, cars were waiting in a long line to get to the parking area.

Once parked, I noticed the entrance buzzing with activity. If you like that Fridays After Five feel, you likely love the Thursday Evening Sunset Series. The last one is on September 26, but the series resumes in the spring. 

Weekend visits to Carter Mountain during the busy apple-picking season require a ticket for entry, but on weekdays, folks can enjoy the fall food trucks and views between 11am and 3pm without a ticket (looking at you, introverts). The orchard’s country store and bakery offer picked fruit, plus a range of snacking goodies.

At the food truck area, I beelined straight for Raclette on the Run. I’d heard great things about the vendor and I was hangry. Raclette is a Swiss cheese usually served by heating it and scraping off the delicious melty bits to use in dishes. As I stood in line surrounded by jovial UVA students wearing sundresses and cowboy boots, I felt a little ashamed of my enthusiasm watching the cheese porn as the truck’s servers scraped hot raclette off a half-wheel of cheese. I thoroughly enjoyed The Classic, made with Vermont cheddar on hearty white bread with bacon. All the food truck’s sandwiches come with crunchy, salty, delicious tater tots. Yum!