Hill Country Living
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I’m unhappy to report that I missed two recent great events – the Aurora Borealis and the opening of the Farmer’s Market.
As far as the Aurora Borealis goes, I wasn’t totally aware that it was supposed to happen until everyone started posting pictures on social media of skyscapes that looked like the cover of a 1980’s Trapper Keeper. What a sight! A retro sky! I ran outside to the back deck to see for myself but it just looked like a normal modern-day sky.
So, I ran to the front porch thinking that maybe I was facing the wrong direction but, again, just a nearly-nighttime charcoal greyish-blue.
Now, normally I would think that the evening-time deep grey-blue skies were already incredibly beautiful but, compared to the pictures on social media, our typical denim-colored skies suddenly looked super lame and I was wondering if maybe I was colorblind. It was at this time that my oldest child texted me with his own glorious picture of what looked to be a post-apocalyptic stratosphere over Yalobusha County – a highway view of night-vision, neon green trees and skies as red as a fresh tomato. The whole scene looked radioactive! When I told him that all I could see outside was a dark void and some mosquitos-eating bats flying past a buzzing street light, he informed me that I had to use my camera to see the effect.
Well, well, well. Nobody mentioned that the incredible pictures I was seeing on social media were due to extra vision endowed by the cell phone camera! That’s cheating, y’all. I don’t know exactly how it’s cheating and I probably would lose in a rulebook challenge but I just get the general gist that there is a cheating element involved. It’s like those telescopic pictures of giant moons – it ain’t really that big.
Now, I know that a lot of y’all caught the Aurora Borealis at just the right time and truly did see a spectacular show of the Northern Lights in the sky. I’m not talking to y’all. Y’all are the real ones. I’m side-eying everybody else, though. Including my own kid.
As far as the Farmer’s Market, I did walk past it on my morning walk/run and it was hopping. I didn’t want to bless everyone at The Farmer’s Market with my existence in a post-exercise state so I waved from across the street. I should have taken a picture of it with my cell phone. I bet it would have been twice as big and had three times as much produce! Maybe the magnolia blooms in the trees overhead would have been pink!
The school year is winding up. Only one real week or so left and then I get to set my teenage boys totally free into the wilds of Yalobusha County. I sort of feel bad for all the fish they claim they’re about to catch over the next two and half months. From what it sounds like, their projected catches might affect the balance of the ecosystem. So, expect many fish pictures on my social media. It’ll most likely always be two teenage boys, each holding a bass straight out as far as they can toward the camera.
