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10 things I’ve learned about homesteading: Lessons from adventures, successes, and failures on the land

“If you’re thinking about goats for any reason, get yourself a really amazingly wonderful fence. And good luck." Photo: Getty Images

I don’t claim to be an expert on anything in the homesteading realm. But my husband and I have been gardening for 18 years and raising chickens for nine, preserving foods and getting to know our local ecosystem, and we have picked up a few nuggets of knowledge along the way. Here are some of them.

1 It all starts with soil

There’s a lot to know about growing vegetables and herbs, but what always comes first is soil health. The most vibrant seedlings in the world, if planted in poor soil, will not flourish. So building soil—its texture, drainage qualities, and nutrient content—is job number one for the gardener.

That’s not as tricky, or as boring, as it sounds. Over the years , we’ve tried various ways to prepare garden beds, from arduous double-digging to lazy lasagna methods (layers of cardboard and mulch on the soil). Finally, we’ve settled on something pretty simple: Remove grass by the roots with a mattock, then add a lot of compost. A season or two later, turn with a spade fork and voila: ready to plant.

You can use any number of methods, but the key is this: As you continue to grow vegetables in the same spot, your soil needs to be renewed. That can be accomplished with regular additions of compost (we like Panorama Paydirt) or manure, or by growing crops that feed the soil. A great guide to this is John Jeavons’ guide to “biointensive” farming, How to Grow More Vegetables. First published in 1974, the book is now in its eighth printing with a foreword by none other than Alice Waters.

2 You can have too many pickles

Years of experience have taught me that, while preserving an abundant crop feels noble and satisfying, not all of that food will necessarily get eaten. I’ve thrown away five-year-old pickled okra, eight-year-old habanero jelly, and 10-year-old green tomato mincemeat. All of these seemed like a great idea at the time. Only trial and error could teach me what we would really use from our pantry.

These days, I’ll still work hard to preserve certain things—tomatoes being the main one. No jar of diced tomatoes will ever go to waste at our house, so it’s worth it to plant scads of Big Beefs (50 plants this year) and stay up late packing and processing them. We make tomato soup, tomato juice, and tomato sauce, too, if we have enough. I also ferment sauerkraut, freeze portions of pesto, and dry bundles of mint and oregano. Those are the foods I know we’ll eat.

3 Chickens are easy (except when they’re not)

People who raise cows sometimes have to help them give birth. People who raise sheep have to shear them or pay a shearer. People who raise bees have to fend off bears and, well, bees.

Compared with all those species, chickens really are easy—they just don’t need much from their humans. There’s an initial investment of time and money in preparing a coop. Any homesteader worth her wattles will put something together with scrap wood and a roll or two of chicken wire from the hardware store. Some basic research will tell you how many square feet you need per bird and what they prefer their roosting and egg-laying places to look like.

After that, it’s as simple as feeding the birds once a day, filling their water maybe once a week (because you were smart and rigged up a large, hanging water bucket instead of buying a little jug they’ll knock over and poop in) and locking them up at night to keep out the varmints. You can do this! Your neighbor can do this when you’re on vacation!

Once in a while, though, it does get real (see above: varmints). Your birds will die. You will have to deal with the mess. Know this going in, and you won’t be so shocked to find yourself adding a dead chicken to your compost pile, or plucking and gutting it when you’d planned on watching a movie.

4 Fruit trees are worth it

“Plant pears for your heirs.” That’s a maxim we didn’t learn until four years after we planted our little pear trees. Wait a minute, we thought—these things will take a generation to make fruit? No, it turned out; we have since gotten a few pear crops. Though they’re slow to produce, they’re not glacially slow.

The point is that the project of growing fruit trees is full of tricks. Some types will pollinate themselves; some won’t, but will pollinate their neighbors. Some need to be pollinated by neighbors of a different variety. You’ve got to consider diseases, insect pests, and placement of your trees relative to forest trees, like cedar and walnut, which can affect fruit crops. (Edible Landscaping is a source for both trees and info.)

But it’s all worth it when you reach up and pick a pear, apple, che berry (also called mandarin melon berry), or sour cherry off your very own tree. The abundance of a healthy fruit tree is practically the definition of paradise.

5 Goats are not worth it

We got goats because we wanted to clear some heavily vegetated land. We purchased two pregnant does, the miracle of birth occurred, and suddenly we were the owners of six goats. We realized that half a dozen goats eat a lot of plants, and the lightweight movable fence we were using to contain them had to be reinstalled about every 10 days to keep them in fresh browse.

That’s one thing on open pasture, but again, we’re talking about heavily vegetated land—so clearing new fence lines was a major job. And speaking of the fence, one morning the goats effortlessly jumped it and trotted briskly into the distance. It took several days of walking the woods, calling, and banging feed buckets to get them back. (The sheriff got involved too. Not even joking.)

After a bunch of other shenanigans, we gave our herd back to the man who’d sold us the does in the first place. And that’s how we learned that—for us, at least—goats just ain’t worth the hassle.

If you’re thinking about goats for any reason, get yourself a really amazingly wonderful fence. And good luck.

6 Gardens are food, and not just for humans

Gardening humbles you. Drought and hailstorms and flooding will do that, of course, but what can really bruise the ego are creatures: everybody from vine borers to voles, all the various hungry eaters that will somehow find their way to the crops you were sure you could successfully raise.

Butterflies lay their eggs on your kale, and soon their larvae are chewing the leaves to skeletons. Hornworms strip tomato plants overnight. Squash bugs run around on your pumpkins. And deer—don’t even mention deer.

There are things you can do to prevent all these problems, but the main strategy is to accept it up front: You won’t be the only one eating your garden.

7 Hold on. Write that down!

Where do we turn when we wonder how far apart to transplant our cucumbers, or which salsa recipe from the Ball Blue Book we liked last time, or which month we usually seed parsley? We ask our garden journal.

Stained with soil and missing both covers, the journal records both essential information (planting dates) and entertaining oddities (a bear in the yard). It contains a map of the garden with numbered beds, and brief entries for almost every time we’ve planted or transplanted something. A lot of the harvests get recorded too, along with canning projects. Sometimes we wax poetic about the weather or the progress of spring.

The important thing is not the writing down so much as the looking back. It’s the closest thing we have to a family autobiography.

8 Eat from the wild

We heat our house with scavenged firewood—free warmth all winter. The world is full of resources, we’ve found, including apartment-dwellers and even restaurateurs who will donate food scraps for your home compost pile. Another amazing resource: the plethora of wild edible foods that are yours for the taking, if you know what to look for.

There are the glamorous and elusive morel mushrooms, of course, but there are many others that are easier to find. Wineberries and blackberries want you to notice them. And your yard is likely home to any number of wild greens: purslane, lamb’s quarters, violet, dandelion. But don’t take my word for it; there are real experts around here who can really get you up to speed on wild edibles. Check out the Living Earth School for starters.

9 There’s nothing silly about safety

Over the years, I’ve gotten a little smarter about those ounces of prevention appropriate to outdoor time: hats to keep from boiling in the sun, boots to prevent a snakebite when wading through unweeded beds, and a watchful eye in general. Once I found a black widow spider living in my marigolds. Other times we’ve seen copperheads in our wood pile and behind our shed. This year, a nest of yellowjackets appeared near the fig tree. There’s no need to be fearful, but a little awareness goes a long way.

One of the worst risks, for my money, are ticks. It’s easy to miss them and they can really mess up your year, or even affect your health in the long-term. Do the nightly tick checks: It’s annoying but important.

10 Add fresh herbs

I know people who can tell you exactly which herbs they grow for their wintertime teas and how exactly to make a tincture. I am not one of those people, but I certainly respect all that knowledge—I’ve been known to simply pour boiling water over some mint leaves and call it a party.

Herbalism, I’ve surmised, is a complex endeavor, the kind of practice you can hone over a lifetime. For those who want to embark on that journey, Sacred Plant Traditions is a local hub of knowledge. The rest of us can start small. Plant some mint, oregano, rosemary; use them in your cooking. If you want to get fancy, add some yarrow—it’s a medicinal that can help stop bleeding. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

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Something wild: A native habitat grows in Free Union

Behind the house, a hill tumbles down to a dry creek bed, and then the land rises up to a hilltop that Amy Lewis and her husband, Reid Humphries, have turned into a vast tract of native plants. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

Sweat glistens on Amy Lewis’ brow as she cracks open a bottle of beer in the kitchen of her home in Free Union. It’s late August, and she’s just back from the 1,000-acre Albemarle farm where she maintains the grounds and gardens, her full-time job. At the wooden dining table sits her husband of 21 years, Reid Humphries, and at her feet lie their two Australian shepherds. A hummingbird hovers at the feeder hanging on the back porch.

“Everything you see here, we did,” she says, patting her forehead with a wadded-up paper towel. She sweeps her hand to direct my view out the glass-paned door. The land tumbles down to a dry creek bed and then climbs a broad hillside covered by a sun-drenched thicket of native plants.

Before the sun goes down, Amy Lewis tends to her multi-acre native garden for hours after leaving her full-time job—as the gardener at a 1,000-acre private farm. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

She’s sure they are native plants—with a few invasives to be weeded out—because she and Humphries put them there. They have been tirelessly creating their 11-acre “labor of love” (her words) since 2010. The landscape has become a showcase of cultivated wilderness and environmentally conscious living, so much so that the Piedmont Master Gardeners and Rivanna Garden Club chose it as a site this year in a series of tours of extraordinary domestic green spaces.

Lewis has lived in Charlottesville since 1978, when she moved here with her now ex-husband after he took a job at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. Humphries, born and raised in Virginia, had been an itinerant carpenter—living and working in Manhattan, Colorado, and Nantucket—before landing in Charlottesville. He met Lewis 25 years ago on a job: She was installing a garden that included a water feature Humphries was building.

After Lewis’ kids moved away—her daughter, 35, now lives in Washington, D.C., and her son, 32, in Denver—she and Humphries, who has a wry and slightly off-color sense of humor, bought the land in Free Union. He likes it because it’s secluded. “My definition of privacy,” he deadpans, “is that I can take a piss off the back porch and not get busted.”

Amy lets that line slide without comment but takes it as a cue to begin our tour of the property. The upper portion of the parcel, in front of the house, has a small orchard, vegetable garden, chicken house, and barn, all built by Humphries, who is a multi-talented craftsman. When their house was being built, they hit rock—dense sandstone—not far beneath the surface, and excavated a great deal of it. Humphries used it to build stone walls that bracket the house—the wall in back is 82 feet long.

Australian shepherds Ollie and Mo trot along the grassy paths and sniff out critters in the tall plants. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

For gardeners, the real show begins at the creek bed, where ferns, bulbs, Virginia bluebells, and woodland phlox have naturalized. Paths of packed soil and mowed grass lead up the hill and into the meadow, a scraggly but beautiful three-and-a-half-acre display of native plants: witch hazel, bee balm, St. John’s wort, plumbago, cedum, aster, prairie grass, coneflower, sumac, and the list goes on. Grassy paths criss-cross the meadow, the plants buffering the sound and providing a green embrace. Butterflies flit around, alighting on flowers. Songbirds provide the soundtrack.

Before the couple cleared that land, it was a livestock pasture that, once abandoned, became overgrown with non-native trees, poison ivy, rosa rugosa, and more. “It was a mess,” Lewis says.

To clean it up, Lewis and Humphries successfully applied for two federal grants to create the native habitat, one from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and the other from the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.

The funds enabled the couple to realize Lewis’ vision. “I wanted to contain the soil on the hill with natives that have strong root systems,” she says. “I didn’t want a landscape that was tied to plants that require a lot of water and can’t survive on their own.”

Today, the meadow—and most of the property, in fact—consists of plants that not only survive on their own but are deer resistant. They provide an idyllic preserve where birds forage and bees and butterflies thrive, fulfilling their natural duty as pollinators.

The work, usually initiated by Lewis, has been intense for the couple, and the property is always evolving. “She gets this look in her eye,” says Humphries, “and I say, ‘Oh, here we go.’”

“People ask, ‘What’d you do this weekend?’” Lewis says. “I say, ‘Oh, we gardened.’ We’re cheap dates. Our entertainment is built in.”

In the front yard, Reid Humphries, Lewis’ husband of 21 years and a skilled craftsman, built not only the barn but also the rock wall, which is made from stone excavated during construction of the couple’s home. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
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Bugged: Non-native insects threaten Virginia’s ash trees and fruit harvests.

Recognizing the threat to Virginia’s wine, beer, cider, and fruit yields, the VDOF and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services undertook an aggressive lanternfly eradication program that started in May and runs until October 31.

With its metallic-green shell and wings, the emerald ash borer looks almost like a smaller version of a brooch your great-grandmother pinned to her lapel. But it’s not a decoration—it’s a killer. The beetle lays its eggs inside ash trees, producing voracious larvae that deplete their hosts of the water and nutrients they need to survive.

Initially detected in Michigan in 2002—a suspected stowaway in wooden packing crates arriving from its native Asia—the borer showed up the following year in Fairfax County, Virginia. In the ensuing decade and a half, it has spread across the northeast, destroying tens of millions of ash trees. A major infestation this summer in Richmond and Henrico County moved the state to issue a quarantine, that is, a prohibition against moving ash firewood across county lines or bringing it in from out of state.

“By not moving the firewood, we’re actually reducing possible exposure to the insect,” says Lara Johnson, a program manager with the Virginia Department of Forestry. “If there’s a valuable ash tree in your yard, you should get it treated.”

Pesticides are available online, at garden centers, or in big-box stores. But Johnson recommends hiring arborists to do the job, because, as certified applicators, they have both the expertise and access to more concentrated treatments. She adds that introducing a systemic remedy before or very shortly after exposure is much more successful than trying to save an infested tree.

A less prevalent but potentially much more destructive non-native species, the spotted lanternfly, sparked a quarantine order this summer in Frederick County and the City of Winchester, about 100 miles north of Charlottesville. Indigenous to China, India, and Vietnam, this planthopper (it has wings as an adult but moves mostly by crawling and jumping) was first discovered in the U.S. in 2014, and now also lives in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. It eats more than 70 species, including stone-fruit trees like peaches and plums, as well as apples, grapes, and hops.

Recognizing the threat to Virginia’s wine, beer, cider, and fruit yields, the VDOF and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services undertook an aggressive eradication program that started in May and runs until October 31. Elaine Lidholm of the VDACS says crews hit the lanternfly’s favorite roost, the tree of heaven, with a chemical herbicide and insecticide, and followed up with bioinsecticide applications. “Treatments will likely be repeated,” she says.

Lidholm advises that anyone who finds one (or more) of the critters outside of Winchester or Frederick County should capture a specimen and send an email to spottedlanternfly@vdacs.virginia.gov. The sample needs to be submitted for identification and verification,” Lidholm says.

If that sounds like a hassle, just imagine your life without Virginia-made beer, wine, cider, and peaches. See? We knew you’d understand—and help out if you can.

Recognizing the threat to Virginia’s wine, beer, cider, and fruit yields, the VDOF and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services undertook an aggressive lanternfly eradication program that started in May and runs until October 31.

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“I was about to die!” Three writers recount terrifying close calls.

“A gale blasted the tent with sudden, extreme force, ripping up the stakes and prying up the floor and rolling the shelter onto its side before I had time to scream,” Earl Swift writes. Illustration: John Garrison

Exploring outdoors, whether in a city or the wilds, can be relaxing, exhilarating, ennobling—and sometimes, extremely dangerous. We’re not talking about the kind of danger one knowingly faces, for instance, during an extreme undertaking like climbing Everest, where 11 people have died in 2019. Most injuries and even fatal incidents occur during much more low-key adventures. They result from twists of fate, lapses in judgment due to fatigue, innocent missteps, and just plain accidents. For example, it’s been a particularly brutal year for cyclists in New York City, with the death toll at 18 (not all “accidents,” strictly speaking) as of the end of July.

We’ve all been there or at least know someone who has. The worst cases end tragically and with breathtaking swiftness. They end with irrevocable loss and soul-crushing sadness. Other situations—the ones we live to tell or hear about—are variously known as brushes with death, close calls, or some other shorthand that falls drastically short of describing the drama and emotional untethering that accompany reaching the edge of nothingness.

All of that said, a good storyteller can help us make some sense of—and perhaps even draw a lesson from—a life-threatening experience. Here are just three examples. 

The storm

Lightning, thunder, and the frailty of life
By Earl Swift

One summer I convinced my editors at the newspaper to buy a sea kayak and let me paddle it in a 500-mile circle around the Chesapeake, filing stories and pictures as I went. I pushed off from Norfolk, paddled 20-odd miles across the Chesapeake’s mouth to the southern tip of the Eastern Shore, and started north from there, my boat loaded with food and camping gear.

Three days into the voyage I pulled into a wide break in the shoreline at the mouth of Mattawoman Creek and beached for the night on tiny Honeymoon Island, a lump of sand in the creek’s middle sprouted with beach grass and a few water bushes. I set up my tent, broke out my stove, and cooked dinner. Then, as darkness approached, I crawled into my sleeping bag to read by headlamp before turning in. I was immersed in a book when, at about 9pm, I heard a low, long rumble of distant thunder. I paid it little heed. Not three minutes later I heard another snarl—this one much louder, and deeper, and closer. And just seconds after that a gale blasted the tent with sudden, extreme force, ripping up the stakes and prying up the floor and rolling the shelter onto its side before I had time to scream.

I threw myself to the tent’s windward side and stretched to pin down the corners with hands and feet, while from outside came the sounds of my cook set skittering away and the kayak sliding on the sand. I heard that for only a moment, though, because now came a deluge pounding the tent, and lightning in a flurry, bolts striking by the score, so close that the ground bounced under me, their blue-white strobes blinding through the tent’s two layers of nylon, and the sound of this hellstorm—the roar of the wind and rain, the concussions of the thunder—blotting out my every thought except that I was about to die.

My tent had an aluminum frame. I was trapped in a cage of conductive metal that stood tallest of anything for a quarter mile in any direction. I was certain the lightning would find me. As fast and close as it came, it seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. For 25 minutes I crouched inside the tent, wrestling the wind to keep its floor down, listening to the sky make sounds I’d never heard and haven’t since—like great sheets of fabric ripping and fighter jets buzzing just overhead. And layered on top, the cacophony of the strikes. And then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. After a few retreating rumbles, the creek fell quiet.

The floor of my weatherproof tent was under an inch of water. My sleeping bag was sodden and all my gear soaked. I was so spent that I hardly noticed: I have probably been more frightened in my life, just for a moment or two, but never have I been so terrified for so long. I bailed out the water as best I could, collapsed on my wet bag, and slept like a boulder.

Mind you, I was on land. I can’t imagine what it would be like to encounter such a storm on open water in a small boat. I hope to never find out.

Excerpted from Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island (Dey Street, 2018). A long-time reporter at the Virginian-Pilot, Swift wrote six previous books and has contributed major features to Outside and other magazines. He is a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in Afton. earlswift.com

 

Symmetry

The vital importance of a bicycle helmet
By Rachel Z. Arndt

The further I move from the accident, the more the scar above my lip becomes just another point in my morning makeup routine, the more the scuffed right bike brake becomes a slight rough patch I can feel with my palm. I remember not the accident itself, only what happened around it: the unremarkable February morning in Brooklyn, the black car I hailed from the street outside the hospital, the way my roommate’s mouth opened when he saw my eyes, the flowers my office sent, the swelling, the ever-ballooning swelling, the Vicodin-induced calm. It never hurt as much as I thought it should; I thought it should hurt. I was not stared at; no one stared. I was hit by a car; a driver ran his car into me.

I always thought it was a story about symmetry: Before and after, bicycle and car, unscarred face and scarred face, passive and active retellings. But the mottled narrative refused to seep out, and what could have been a trauma-induced fear of riding a bike never manifested in part because there was never any recollection to base it on. I’m not telling you I was lucky; that much is obvious. I’m telling you that retrospect looks empty from here because I still can’t describe what happened beyond what I’ve gathered from the moments that surround the crash:

A driver ran his car into me, throwing me over my handlebars, throwing me face first into the pavement, which cracked my orbital bone, my cheekbone, my nose, my sinus. It split the skin above my lip. It did not break my brain because it instead broke the outer plastic of my helmet, compressing the foam cells beneath into a spooned-out dent. I came to on the grass next to the street next to the bike path, and there were people, two or three of them, and one of them kept using the word “chunk” to describe the hole above my lip. I asked if my teeth were there, and these people, these strangers, assured me they were. I was taken away in an ambulance; an ambulance took me away. My bike came with. I was not afraid because I could barely name the president, and that seemed, there in the ambulance in 2012, like some kind of revisionist joke.

At the hospital a nurse asked me to rate my pain on a scale from one to 10, and because I could not feel most of my face, and because I could remember only that it (my face) was made of fragments, and because that was an odd way to behold my own body, I added a few numbers to the dull ache of my forehead and the sharp line above my lip and said seven, which seemed strong enough to reflect what I was learning was a bad injury.

When I look at the series of photos I took of my healing face, one a day for a month, I see myself reemerge, as if machined from a heap of flesh, winter-pale and imperfectly blended. I see the right side slowly deflate to become more like the left, the cut’s redness fade into pink and then white, the red splotch in the white of my right eye shrink imperceptibly each day until, at last, it was gone.

Now, I rarely study my face so seriously. And I rarely think about breaking my face, lacking the language to come up with the right thoughts. Or I am unable to force the language I do have, finding it unrealistically brutal: I never say, “A driver hit me on my bicycle.” I say, “A car hit me,” or, more often, “I was hit by a car.” The driver disappears, and the story turns mechanical. It is called an “accident.” A “crash.” A “sudden shock.”

And when I do think about breaking my face, I can almost convince myself that I just fell, that there was no gray minivan riding the line between street and bike path. Maybe it was my fault. I broke my face. But then I remember the people who were there—not the driver, not the other drivers, but the cyclists who stopped. The point is they stopped. The point is I got back on the bike, and I started thinking about symmetry, trying to force a tidy package around an event whose memories I never formed.

But no matter how hard I thought, the symmetry never emerged. It was an accident, and nothing lined up, not even the voids. I’m now learning to give up trying to assign meaning to every detail, down to the pill the hospital nurse slipped me, the calipers to measure the cheekbones’ asymmetry, the drying blood beneath my fingernails. More often than not, there’s nothing there: The narrative won’t yield. Or there’s something, but it’s not the lesson I for so long thought I deserved—the lesson of recovery and learning to accept that a bad thing happened because bad things happen. Nothing wraps up, and what remains is only the story of how I was hit by a car—of how a driver hit me with his car and then drove away.

Rachel Z. Arndt is a writer and editor. Her debut essay collection, Beyond Measure, was published by Sarabande in 2018. She received MFAs from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Brown University. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Popular Mechanics, Fast Company, and various literary journals. She now lives in Chicago. rachelzarndt.com

 

Missing the train

Hundreds of miles on a bicycle, one fateful decision
By Chris Register

Financial security, respect in one’s community and profession, a loving relationship, reaching old age—achieving these goals requires making good choices, time and again, one behind the other, every day, in a nearly unbroken sequence. But one bad decision—just one—can send a lifetime of good decisions into oblivion. I was reminded of this while riding my bike one late afternoon in Sandusky, Ohio, when I was nearly killed by a train.

Just thinking about it makes me feel queasy. It happened at the end of a full day of pedaling, as my mind shifted to finding the house of a nice couple who had offered me a place to crash for the evening during one of my multi-state bicycle tours. I was cruising along a highway running parallel to (in this order) a line of trees, a railroad track, more trees, a line of houses, and a street I needed to get to. The map on my handlebar-mounted phone showed that I could continue a half-mile or more, turn right, and then turn right again onto the street, and backtrack to the house. Or, I could shave a mile off my ride by cutting straight across the tracks and through the woods from where I was—a tidy little shortcut.

When we hear someone say they almost got killed, I think it’s natural to imagine a tense, touch-and-go situation from which the survivor just barely escapes. When you read “nearly killed by a train,” I’ll bet you pictured my bike halfway across the tracks as I realize the imminent danger, dodging the speeding hulk at the last moment, my helmet rattling in its wake. Maybe you envisioned a skilled conductor instantly assessing the situation and applying the behemoth’s brakes with just enough force to slow it down and buy me time as the train’s growing headlight washes out my face, and its furious horn roars my demise.

The truth is—though I very nearly died that afternoon—I never got near the locomotive. My brush with death occurred several seconds before the train even neared the crossing, as I flirted with a decision that could have been the most cataclysmic of my life. Here’s what really happened:

I came to an unmarked farm crossing—a gravel drive departing the highway and running across the tracks, making my shortcut idea even more appealing. I vacillated for a few pedal strokes, literally leaning towards the crossing, glancing back at my GPS, still rolling along the highway. At the last moment I chose to stay on course, mainly because of the bike’s momentum (it was packed with 100 pounds of gear) and my desire to avoid riding up into the wrong backyard by mistake. Turning my head away from the tracks, I noted a low rumbling nearby. I had just begun wondering about the sound when its source burst out of the shaded wood with terrifying speed, severing the gravel crossing in two.

Though surely just an Amtrak commuter with its dull silver cars, or a freight-hauler covered in bulbous graffiti, my memory has long since cemented the train as an evil thing—a matte-black harbinger of destruction, bellowing acrid smoke, guided by the searing eye of Tolkien’s Sauron, fixated on my death.

Flying past, the beast left me dumbfounded, disturbed, shaken. As I had been considering whether to take the shortcut, it never so much as flitted through my mind that an actual train might actually be hurtling towards the crossing at that moment. Had I decided to cross the tracks, I would never have thought to slow down and look before doing so. I would have arrived a split-second before the train, and then exploded into a thousand pieces.

But I hadn’t chosen to take the shortcut. That fickle decision that turned out to be right, that flip of a coin in my favor, is the only reason I’m here to tell the story.

Chris Register is the author of Conversations With US—Great Lakes States (Spoke & Word Books, 2019). He is an instructor at Charlottesville’s Writer House, runs a writers’ critique group at the downtown library, and is in the process of writing more volumes for his Conversations With US series. conversationswithus.com. spokewordbooks.com

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Urban wilderness: Jill Trischman-Marks brings her love of nature to McIntire Botanical Garden

The new and first appointed executive director of the McIntire Botanical Garden will lead the realization of a park designed by renowned landscape architect Mikyoung Kim. Photo: Mikyoung Kim Design

Jill Trischman-Marks bears the title executive director in her new role at McIntire Botanical Garden, but
she calls herself its chief cheerleader. Her enthusiasm for the outdoors and all things wild (and some cultivated) is so abundant that the self-proclaimed title fits. As the first person to head up the nonprofit civic effort, Trischman-Marks, a landscape architect, brings decades of design and horticultural experience to the job.

And what a job it is. Trischman-Marks will guide the realization of an eight-and-a-half acre design by Boston- based landscape architect Mikyoung Kim, whose projects also include the Chicago Botanic Garden. Kim is quite a catch. A recipient of the 2018 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the American Society of Landscape Architects Design Medal, her firm was named by Fast Company this year as one of the world’s most innovative businesses. Working in tandem with Charlottesville’s Waterstreet Design, Kim will transform the McIntire Park parcel into a showcase of the Piedmont landscape—and what Trischman-Marks believes will be central Virginia’s premier botanical garden.

Jill Trischman-Marks holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the UVA School of Architecture and has worked in the field—and in her own garden—for 30 years. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

The garden plans have been in the works since 2015, and it’s going to be a challenge for Trischman-Marks to bring them to life. It helps that a world-class design team is in place, and that the new executive director is charging ahead with great energy. She’s definitely going to need it as she pushes to secure $600,000 to complete the design phase and then see the project through to completion.

Trischman-Marks has no shortage of confidence that she will succeed, and introduce local residents and visitors alike to a space that will bring them closer to nature just a short jaunt from downtown Charlottesville.

Unbound: As a longtime resident of Charlottesville, what makes you most excited about the plans for McIntire Botanical Garden?

Trischman-Marks: The garden will be a free and accessible destination. It will be a community nest of sorts, a nurturing, safe space where visitors can learn, relax, and celebrate the natural beauty of the Piedmont with Virginia’s flora as the background.

Free and accessible—let’s talk more about that.

The “free” aspect is a given with the space we’re in, as a part of McIntire Park and this project being in partnership with the City of Charlottesville. As a free community asset, it will become more relevant, vital, and beloved—a space for the whole community to grow. Children will grow up here, become parents one day, and remember their own childhood memories and come back. Generations will help maintain the garden.

It’s clear that it will take some time to build the landscape. What’s going on at the garden now?

As a part of McIntire Park, the space is open for people to enjoy. It’s not a curated garden yet—it’s in process. We’ve already cleared nearly four acres of invasive plants. The best way to maximize an experience in the landscape now is to go when a garden representative is there during our butterfly, bird, and tree walks.

What’s next?

We just completed the schematic phase for the future site and the next phase will be design development, where we think about things like drainage and walls for deer protection. We’re holding a community night on October 10 at City Space from 5:30-7:30pm to share new schematics and garden updates. Visioning walks will follow in the spring.

We know you’re passionate about the outdoors. Can you speak about the importance of a garden vs. native plants and habitat?

A botanical garden is a curated garden, where the best of what’s available is pulled out for display as a community resource. The celebration of the Piedmont region is our key goal. We want a design that speaks to plant communities as opposed to individual species of plants, where everything is working together as a habitat for pollinators and to improve air quality.

Climate change is obviously a pressing issue. What’s your perspective on how it influences the botanical garden?

I’ve spent the past 30 years not just as a landscape architect, but also in my own garden, and it has affected my own thinking every single day. I have weeds in my garden I’ve never seen before. All the rules are being broken, growing zones and temperatures are changing. Our team is always thinking about that and what it means.

Which central Virginia flora are you most interested in highlighting in the space, and why?

In my own garden and most of the gardens I’ve dealt with  in the past, there’s enormous deer pressure. Since the garden will be protected by deer fencing, plants will be given the opportunity to grow and thrive. Old species will be coming back, and we’ll have a chance to see our understory friends again.

McIntire Botanical Garden has been a dream of many in the community for a long time. Can you speak to that?

We’re so fortunate that years ago people like Albemarle County resident Helen Flamini advocated for a botanical garden in Charlottesville, and that the city’s Parks and Recreation department had the foresight to think of McIntire Botanical Garden. Without them, there would be no garden. We have a talented and committed board of directors and hard-working volunteer corps who are helping to make this signature community asset a reality.

At a glance:

Jill Trischman-Marks

Born: Connecticut

Years in  Charlottesville: 30

Education: 1992 Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; 1981 Bachelor of Science, Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont

Profession: Started her landscape architecture firm in 2001; now MBG executive director

Spouse: William (Bill) Marks, owner of Marks Fine Woodworking

Children: Elizabeth, 24

Pets: Two dogs, Crockett and Inca, plus “whatever Service Dog of Virginia puppy is being fostered
at our home at any given time.”

Pet-peeves: “My husband and I are cyclists, and it always gets me when we take a long bike ride on a beautiful day and don’t see anyone else outside.”

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Trail nix: The Dominion pipeline should not be allowed to cross the Appalachian Trail

The proposed pipeline crossing of the Appalachian Trail would occur at the Augusta/Nelson county line north of Reeds Gap and west of the Wintergreen Resort, near Three Ridges Overlook. Photo: Jack Looney
“Dominion’s pipeline would permanently affect the trail experience on these protected federal lands, carving up a largely forested mountain landscape with a cleared right-of-way the width of a multi-lane highway.”
—Jonathan Jarvis, National Park Service director, 2009-2107
By Jonathan Jarvis

Dominion Energy wants to run a massive pipeline across America’s treasured Appalachian National Scenic Trail and some of the least developed wildlands remaining in the East. This isn’t just a bad idea, it’s an unprecedented one. Dominion, the Virginia-based power giant that serves customers in 18 states, wants to do something that has never been done in the half century since the iconic hiking path was enshrined in law: force a pipeline across the Appalachian Trail on federal land managed by the Forest Service.

To get its way, the company must persuade lawmakers to overturn a federal court decision and change a law that has protected important parts of the trail for almost 50 years. Congress should say no.

The conservation of the American landscape is a deeply patriotic tradition to which I have dedicated my life. I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where my experiences along the Appalachian Trail and in the Blue Ridge Mountains fostered my love of the outdoors and my career in conservation. I climbed every mountain within sight of my home and fished every river. From 2009 to 2017, I served as director of the National Park Service, capping 40 years at the agency working to ensure—as Congress required when it passed the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916—that our national parks remain “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The Appalachian Trail has been one of the jewels of our national park system since its creation in 1968. Every year, it draws millions of visitors, offering the opportunity to explore scenery and solitude from Georgia to Maine. Lands adjacent to the trail also provide important habitat for wildlife and plants. Like the creation of the trail itself, conservation has traditionally transcended politics. As a nation, we have decided to set aside some areas as national parks or designated wilderness and establish an American vision of conservation that resonates around the world. The writer and historian Wallace Stegner called our national parks “absolutely American” and “the best idea we ever had.”

But that bipartisan idea is now under threat from an administration working aggressively to undo legal protections for our public lands. One of those threats is Dominion’s irresponsible route for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a pipeline that would carve its way across the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway and two national forests.

To be sure, many roads, powerlines and even pipelines already cross the trail along its 2,190-mile route, which winds its way across private, state and federal land. But as I and other trail hikers know, the national parks and forests where the trail runs are special. Their mountain vistas offer some of the most scenic and undeveloped wildland hiking in the East. Dominion’s pipeline would permanently affect the trail experience on these protected federal lands, carving up a largely forested mountain landscape with a cleared right-of-way the width of a multi-lane highway.

The proposed pipeline route would cross under the Appalachian Trail at the Nelson and Augusta county line, cutting through a wide swath of forest on National Park land.

To achieve its goal, Dominion has courted Trump appointees eager to promote the administration’s energy-at-any-cost agenda. Two years ago, it looked like Dominion might get its way. In January 2018, the Forest Service gave the company a permit to cross the Appalachian Trail on national forest land, but a coalition of conservation groups quickly challenged the decision in federal court. Eleven months later, the court concluded that, under federal law, the Forest Service did not have legal authority to allow the crossing and invalidated the permit. Dominion wants to overturn this court decision in Congress.

The court relied on a federal law known as the Mineral Leasing Act, which since 1973 has prohibited oil and gas pipelines from crossing all units of the national park system, including Appalachian Trail segments on federal land. Almost five decades ago, Congress understood that pipelines presented extraordinary risks—including the effects of heavy construction, spills and explosions—that have no place alongside the natural beauty that our park system protects.

Dominion wants lawmakers to upend that protection, changing the law to allow the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross the trail on national forest land. Congress should not roll back this longstanding protection for the Appalachian Trail on federal lands. Dominion has other options to cross the trail, and it must work with property owners, local communities and state and federal agencies to find an alternative route that will protect the trail’s integrity.

America’s national park system is truly magnificent, a testament to our best instincts and aspirations as a nation, and it deserves the full protection that Congress has afforded it.

This story is reprinted by permission of Politico LLC. Copyright 2019 Politico LLC.

Editor’s note: As this magazine went to press, in late September, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project, led by Dominion Energy, had been halted due to federal court rulings that voided permits for construction that would have harmed several endangered species and led the pipeline beneath the Appalachian Trail between Augusta and Nelson counties. Dominion and its partners have undertaken a two-pronged effort to resume construction, petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, and lobbying federal legislators to change the law so Dominion can build the pipeline in its preferred location.

UPDATE 11:10am October 5: The Supreme Court agreed on Friday, October 4, to hear the appeal of a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond. That court’s decision revoked a permit by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the pipeline to be built beneath the Appalachian Trail at the Nelson and Augusta county line. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case early next year.

Jonathan Jarvis served as the 18th director of the National Park Service from 2009 to 2017.

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Unbound

The View: River of history

The beauty of the James River, here partially shrouded in fog, is matched only by its storied past. Photo: Robert Llewellyn

Upon finding the source of the Jackson River, parent to the James River, Earl Swift writes in Journey on the James: Three Weeks through the Heart of Virginia: “From this trickle grows a river that offered sustenance to Indian and early colonist, carried pioneers to new lands of the West, bloomed red with the blood spilled in three wars. No other feature of American topography has so witnessed the country’s history. The continent’s first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, rose on the river’s bank. George Washington explored it, fought on it, and hatched plans for a grand canal system along its shore. On the run  from the Redcoats, Thomas Jefferson may have holed up in a cave in its bluffs.”

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Unbound

That dog will hunt: The poodle returns to its roots as a water retriever

AKC champion standard poodle Clapton, of Louter Creek Hunting Poodles, sports a Historical Continental Clip while fetching a duck. Photo: John Carelli

Poodles get a bad rap as frilly leash candy. For this, we can blame the French.

Forget Best in Show. The poodle has hunting-dog roots, which were developed in central Europe—particularly, in the area that would become Germany—in the 16th and 17th centuries. But during the 18th century, the breed became popular among French nobles, who, vainly imitating their own ornate hairstyles, had their pets’ coats elaborately clipped and primped.

It’s little wonder that when the American Kennel Club first registered the poodle in 1887, it fell into the non-sporting group. Over the years, the poodle’s hunting instincts had diminished, because it was bred for companionship and as a show dog. Poodles also have hair instead of fur, which—given enough Aqua Net—makes it possible to sculpt them like topiary. But it’s also interesting to note that they are the only non-sporting AKC dogs eligible for retriever hunting tests.

Searching online for a Virginia breeder of hunting poodles, I came across Four Oakes Kennels in Danville, which produces the pudelpointer—a cross between a poodle and an English pointer. Close, but no zigarre. Fortunately, I also came across the story of Charlottesville-area hunter Jason Pittman, who had acquired his dog, Walker, from Louter Creek Hunting Poodles, near Atlanta. Louter Creek is the South’s premier breeder of these specialized dogs. They are ideal for a hunt. Their webbed feet make them good swimmers, and they demonstrate agility, obedience, and eagerness to complete a task, such as fetching a bird shot out of the sky.

“Guys would laugh when they saw Walker come out of the truck,” Pittman said in the Garden & Gun article. “My joke was ‘Laugh now, but you’ll be crying after you see him work.’” In AKC competitions with Pittman, Walker has earned Junior Hunter and Senior Hunter titles.

I spoke with Rick Louter, who owns and runs Louter Creek with his wife, Angie. The couple has been breeding poodles as working dogs for close to 15 years, during which time they have also trained about 200 of them for water-fowl and upland-bird hunting. In early April, the Louters were in the midst of putting 12 seven-month-old standards through a four-month program.

“A poodle makes a fantastic bird dog,” Rick Louter tells Unbound. “They’ve got such a good nose—I’d put ’em up against any of the more popular hunting breeds for that alone. There’s more to it than that, of course—and people are catching on. We are seeing an uptick of poodles in hunting trials.”

All dogs, except those corrupted by humans to behave badly, deserve praise. But I challenge any breed to both rock the show ring and fetch a duck like a poodle.

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Unbound

Devils’ dogs: Adventure dogs are on everyone’s mind

Devils Backbone trade marketing manager Elizabeth Van Noppen shares a tent with June, a yellow Labrador retriever, at the brewery’s basecamp in Roseland. Photo: Devils Backbone Brewing Company

Many years ago, in a different life, it seems, I steered a little aluminum boat with an outboard motor across the glistening surface of a lake. The memory is so vivid that it includes the oily smell of the exhaust swirling around my head and mixing with piney puffs of the soft summer air. In the prow of the boat stood my deep-chested standard poodle, Muddy, staring resolutely ahead while the breeze ruffled his ears and curly chestnut-brown coat. He looked so heroic that it was comical.

He sprang from the boat when we reached our destination, a rocky little island studded with trees. I secured the skiff, grabbed my fishing pole, and joined Muddy on dry land. Within 15 minutes I had hooked my first catch. As I reeled it into shallow water, the fish, a decent-sized bass, came into view, and my dog splashed toward it, furiously wagging his stubby tail. Muddy lunged toward the fish as I lifted it into the air, and I gently pushed him away, not wanting the hook to snag him.

After I freed my catch from the line, I held it up for Muddy to inspect. He sniffed it, barked at it, and finally, licked it. Catching the fish had been fun. Witnessing Muddy’s reaction was pure joy.

These scenes played in my mind like a home movie when I hatched the idea for this magazine’s cover story last January. Then, a few weeks later, a co-worker emailed me a link to the Devils Backbone Brewing Company website—specifically, to the page calling for entries to a photo contest called Adventure Dogs. Clearly, something was in the air.

When I called Marisa Black, Devils Backbone’s marketing director, I could tell that her enthusiasm for the subject of adventure dogs, and their owners, matched mine. She was a little breathless on the phone. “We’re really overwhelmed and excited by how many people have been interested in the contest,” Black said. “We got the idea based on how many people come to our brewery with their dogs, a lot of them after a day of hiking.”

Limited to residents of 15 states, including Virginia (of course), the contest started—and people began sending in photos of their dogs, along with heartfelt accounts of spending time outdoors with them—ran from February 25 to April 1. According to Black, the final tally reached 6,054 entries and 86,674 votes. “That’s way, way more than we ever expected,” she said.

The winners, which received between 3,000 and 4,000 votes each, are Archie, a golden retriever, Pokie, a Jack Russell terrier, Clementine, a bulldog, Brody and Valor, labradoodles, and Murphy, a collie. The dogs will be rendered by an illustrator and have their images printed on cans of Gold Leaf Lager. The beer, in 15-packs, hits the market June 1 and will be on shelves for four months. For each sale, $1 will be donated to Devils Backbone’s charitable partner, Washington, D.C.-based City Dogs Rescue and City Kitties. The nonprofit rescues animals from high-kill shelters and fosters them until they are adopted.

Black says the contest has inspired her, and confirmed the genuineness of the connection between dogs, their humans, and outdoor adventure (and beer, natch). “It’s been really cool to hear from the owners about how dogs enhance their lives, about the special relationship they have with them,” she said. “The heartstrings part of this has been endearing.”

I can relate. It’s been 14 years since my fishing adventure with Muddy, who crossed the rainbow bridge, as they say, on July 24, 2017. I will never forget that day, and I will always love Muddy.

Now, I’m going to cry into my beer.

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Unbound

Adventure dogs! Nothing beats being in the great outdoors with your best four-legged friend

Flushing a chukar partridge on an upland hunt, Clapton, an AKC Champion standard poodle, proves that the breed can do more than look pretty. Photo: Louter Creek Hunting Poodles
Science has proven the extraordinary connection between humans and dogs, but perhaps the best evidence of the bond is easier to find—when people and their pups get outside and play.
Golden retriever Aspen (foreground) loves to kayak with her owner, but half-brother Koa prefers hiking. Photo: Samantha Brooke

Earlier this year, dogs made headlines for astonishing outdoor-sporting feats, much to the joy and gratitude of their human friends.

In mid-March, the story broke about a stray Tibetan mastiff-Himalayan sheepdog mutt that joined guide Don Wargowsky, of Seattle, and his climbing expedition in the early days of their month-long ascent of Baruntse, a Himalayan peak. Before the final push to the top, the dog—later named Baru, after the mountain—put in for the night at basecamp in Wargowsky’s tent. He left Baru behind, planning to rejoin her on the descent, and set out in the pre-dawn darkness. But when the climbers reached about 22,500 feet, Baru was waiting for them. She stuck with them all the way to the 23,389-foot summit, and was adopted by a Nepalese local at the end of the expedition.

On March 17, Thomas Panek, 48, of South Salem, New York, became the first blind man ever to complete a half-marathon. Taking turns leading him along the 13.1-mile course in New York City were yellow Labrador retrievers, Waffles, Wesley, and Gus. “You probably don’t want the dog who wants to cuddle by the fireplace as your running guide,” Panek said after the race. “But there are some dogs who just love to run.”

As any dog owner and outdoor enthusiast will tell you, there are also dogs who love to swim, fish, camp, hunt, compete in agility trials, and lead the way on mountain- biking rides. For every outdoor adventure—with the exception of sheer-face rock-climbing, perhaps—there is a dog that will join you. We’d like to introduce you to just a few from the Charlottesville area, and their owners, too.

Pippy, a terrier mix, can run the trails for hours with her owner, Gordon Wadsworth, and Wadsworth’s wife, Emily Hairfield (wearing pink socks). Photo: Gordon Wadsworth

The trail runner: Pippy

Breed: Terrier mix

Owner: Gordon Wadsworth

Adventure: trail-biking

Gordon Wadsworth and his wife, Emily Hairfield, see the trails they bike through the eyes of a dog. And they owe it to their tireless terrier Pippy.

“Her love of the forest and being outdoors totally changes our mindset,” Wadsworth says. “Whatever is going on in our life, being outside, life is good.”

Wadsworth, a professional mountain biker and three time national champion, and Hairfield, also a competitive rider, had been looking for a dog to join them on mountain biking trails for about a year when they saw a notice for a wire haired female terrier-schnauzer rescue in 2014. They called the shelter in Raleigh, N.C., asked a few questions, and had to have her.

They climbed in the car on Valentine’s Day and drove seven hours through a storm to bring Pippy home.

“We knew we wanted a dog that could handle bikes and running, and terriers are good dogs for that,” Wadsworth says. “She has outshined what we expected.”

Pippy is pooped! After running the trails with her owner, Gordon Wadsworth, and his wife, Emily Hairfield—both competitive cyclists—the terrier mix chills out. Photo: Gordon Wadsworth

A scruffy salt-and-pepper pup standing a foot and a half tall and weighing about 30 pounds, Pippy has faithfully followed Wadsworth and Hairfield for as many as 25 miles through rugged terrain. Her average run is 8 to 12 miles, Wadsworth says, and she always shows great trail manners.

Wadsworth credits Hairfield for training Pippy to stay out of the way of her riders as they’re exploring the outdoors. Pippy checks her speed when the bikes are climbing and dutifully sneaks aside as they tilt downhill. Wadsworth says Pippy started hiking and running before making the transition to hanging with humans on wheels.

“She is a great size for it—she’s amazingly healthy,” Wadsworth says. “It’s less about the bike training than just being outside with the family. You have to have everyone in mind when you’re on the trail with an animal. That’s the goal—it’s about family.”

 

When Ragged Branch distillery co-owner Alex Toomy hunts, his black Labrador retriever, Bootlegger, is completely in tune with him. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

The go-getter: Bootlegger

Breed: Labrador retriever

Owner: Alex Toomy

Adventure: Wingshooting

Alex Toomy was duck hunting with his dog Bootlegger when the wind started “blowing like crazy,” he says. Toomy, co-owner of distillery Ragged Branch on Taylor’s Mountain, sent Boot to retrieve a duck, and the male black Labrador retriever promptly brought it back.

Another duck was down, as well, but it was in high chop in Lake Anna. Toomy was worried his loyal hunting dog might drown if he tried to retrieve it. He told Boot to stay put, and the dog obeyed.

“He is just a really intelligent dog,” Toomy says. “He can figure out what’s going on in any different situation and just go with the flow. He never goes running off.”

Boot was built for hunting, Toomy says, coming from a line of duck dogs in Delaware. He’s on the small side for a male lab at about 70 pounds, but he’s relaxed, obedient, and a great swimmer.

“I’ve hunted with other dogs that are crazy, and he respects them when they are going to retrieve,” Toomy says. “A lot of times dogs are a pain in the ass to hang around [with] when hunting—guys yelling and screaming at them. It’s very stressful. With Boot, it’s not like that.”

According to Toomy, Bootlegger knows where to position himself during a hunt, waiting along the banks prior to shots fired or sitting quietly in a blind or walking through fields. He looks to the skies as soon as he hears the sound of a safety click off, and he waits to retrieve until he’s released.

“The key to making a great hunting dog is, when he’s a puppy, keep him in with you all the time,” Toomy says. “Other- wise, you have to blow a whistle at him all the time, and he’s like a robot.”

Visitors to Ragged Branch, about 15 miles west of downtown Charlottesville, know Bootlegger for more than just being a great hunting dog. He’s the distillery’s brand ambassador and “official greeter,” Toomy says.

 

Happily traversing any terrain, the three amigos, Jewels, Zeiss, and Leica (left to right) get their paws wet. Photo: Lynne Brubaker

The tireless trio: Leica, Zeiss, and Jewels

Breed: Border collie

Owner: Lynne Brubaker

Adventures: Agility trials, exploring

For border collie owners without acres of land and hoofed animals to herd, there’s only one thing to keep the canines capable—agility courses.

Collies like photographer Lynne Brubaker’s Leica, Zeiss, and Jewels, are working dogs. According to the American Kennel Club, they’re constantly on the move, looking for something to do. They’re quick-footed, balanced, fast, and focused.

Indeed, a border collie holds the current speed record for the Westminster Kennel Club’s Master Agility Championship.

And while Brubaker’s collies aren’t record holders, they’ve held their own in competition. Leica, a small, black and white female, is 11 years old. She’s now in retirement but was “quite successful” during her career, Brubaker says. Zeiss, a large 7-year-old, is in semi-retirement from competition after injuring his shoulder. And Jewels, a 2-year-old female, has just begun “trialing.” The young red and white collie started training at 8 weeks and is tougher in temperament and beefier in body than the rest of Brubaker’s brood.

Zeiss leaps while racing through an agility-trial course. Photo: Lisa Jacobs

“You are constantly training the dog, learning new skills,” she says. “There are always new things to learn in agility as course design changes, and that requires different kinds of handling techniques.”

When they’re not working on agility or competing against other doggy daredevils, Leica, Zeiss, and Jewels stay fit hiking the trails around Keswick, where Brubaker has friends with farmland. They’re partial to hiking Montpelier, as well, but avoid the more difficult area hikes like White Oak Canyon. “I take them to places where I know it is really safe for them,” Brubaker says.

Brubaker takes the time to capture photos while she’s on day hikes with her collies, and the dogs take the time to stay mentally sharp and physically fit. Sometimes the lot of them will jump in Brubaker’s Airstream for overnight adventures.

“It makes life very enjoyable having a dog in it,” she says.

 

A faithful companion since his rescue 8 years ago, Jack the hound dog catches a scent while his owner, Brennan Gilmore, tries to catch a fish. Photo: Sanjay Suchak

The fisherman’s friend: Jack

Breed: Hound mix

Owner: Brennan Gilmore

Adventure: Fishing, boating

Brennan Gilmore doesn’t have much time left with his best friend and fishing buddy, Jack. The 10-year-old hound was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer only a few weeks ago.

Gilmore’s been taking Jack on adventures since 2011, and says he plans to make the most of the coming months with his pup. “We’re going to spend this entire spring giving him as much fun as he can have,” he says.

Gilmore met Jack at the SPCA in Rockbridge County. He was looking for a traveling companion before taking off for the Central African Republic. For two years, Jack prowled the dangerous jungles and streets of Bangui alongside Gilmore, who worked at the embassy there.

The 70-pound dappled hound dog was happy to be home when he and Gilmore returned to Virginia, his owner says. Gilmore, who runs Clean Virginia and competes in bass tournaments in his spare time, has taken Jack hunting, camping, and hiking over the years. But their favorite activity has always been fishing. “He prefers the fly fishing because we’re out moving around,” Gilmore says.

Jack also happens to know his way around a hootenanny. Gilmore dabbles in bluegrass music, and Jack has become a talented singing dog.

Gilmore says he spent a good amount of time training Jack while the pair patrolled Central Africa, but mostly he’s been a natural for outdoor sports. He no longer wades into the fishing hole to scare off Gilmore’s fish, he’s figured out the grass mats on tidal pools aren’t good for standing, and he’s learned the hard way that a slick dock can send him careening into the water after jumping off the boat. He even mostly stays away from lures as Gilmore sends them arching back and forth at the end of his fly rod.

“He’s super chill and used to being around fish,” Gilmore says. “He knows his way around the boat.”

Gilmore says he couldn’t ask for a better companion in the outdoors.

“Being out in the natural world with a dog, it draws your attention to things you wouldn’t otherwise see. He is constantly searching the woods for interesting smells,” Gilmore says. “He is definitely my best friend.”

 

Aspen the golden retriever takes to a kayak like a fish to water. Her half-brother, Koa (shown at the top of this story), prefers terra firma. Photo: Samantha Brooke

The boater and the hiker: Aspen and Koa

Breed: Golden retriever

Owner: Samantha Brooke

Adventure: Kayaking, hiking

Samantha Brooke immediately pegged her male golden retriever, 6-year-old Koa, for a boater. She started putting him in her kayak when he was just a puppy, trying to get him used to the feel.

But from 6 months on, Koa couldn’t sit still in the boat. He’d stand up, wobble around, shake the whole kayak.

Brooke’s 65-pound female retriever Aspen, on the other hand, came to boating naturally. Brooke was camping with friends in western Virginia when she tried to leave the now 3-year-old pup on shore as she kayaked out to take pictures. Aspen, Koa’s half sister from the same mother, wasn’t about to be left alone.

“She started racing after me,” Brooke says. “She likes to swim but is not the strongest. I thought she was going to drown. As soon as she got in the kayak, she was content. That was day one of her kayaking story.”

Brooke says she, her husband, and their 6-month-old son had their eye on goldens from the beginning, looking for dogs that would be good with kids and willing to go on long runs. Aspen and Koa have fit the bill as far as the family’s concerned, but they “are not big into endurance sports,” Brooke says.

Aspen and Koa are fine with some light hiking, their owner says, often going as many as six miles, but Aspen’s true love is the kayak. Whereas Brooke tried to entertain Koa on the boat with toys and bones, Aspen sits or lies quietly while they glide along the water.

Brooke says Aspen and Koa have made ideal companions for her lifestyle as a full-time PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant and part-time photographer. After a long week of consulting, sometimes on remote projects, Brooke says the chance to head outdoors with her pup pals is the ideal release.

“With my dogs and my son—it allows that forced downtime,” she says. “In the world of consulting, that reset is very much needed, and it allows you to set that boundary.”

 

A speedy Whippet in full stride. Photo: Getty Images

The right dog for the job

Looking to have some adventures with your canine compadre?
Make sure your pup is a good fit for your favorite activity.

Doga: Bulldog

So you’re into downward facing dogs, and your dog’s into lying around. Doga is definitely for you and your best bud. If you’re more interested in the “dog as prop” style of the practice (some folks prefer to pose actively with their dogs) the docile, zen-like bulldog is the perfect partner.

Frisbee fetch: Whippet

Whippets hold most of the world’s records for Frisbee fetch, and it’s no wonder—the American Kennel Club says they’re exceptionally athletic due to their deep chest, trim waist, long neck, and slim legs. In other words, if you want a good disc dog, you must whippet.

Hiking: Burmese Mountain Dog

Dogs love hiking—except they just think of it as walking. Depending on the difficulty of the hikes you’re planning, a Burmese mountain dog might be the perfect companion. They excel on short hikes through rough and rocky terrain, according to the veterinarians at PetMD.

Swimming: Newfoundland

Newfoundlands are in the AKC’s working group, and the breed experts say they’re just as comfortable “working” in water as on land. The large dogs originally come from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the area from which Labrador retrievers also hail, and were bred to tow ship lines in harbors.

Trail Running: Weimaraner

Most dogs love to run, but each breed has its specialty. Sure, greyhounds are lightning fast, but they’re not ideal for the trail.
For long, steady runs, the AKC says the Weimaraner’s a winner, owing to its high energy and medium, muscled build.—S.G.