http://www.scribd.com/people/view/2005-fred-first This a feed for documents on Scribd written by fred1st 30 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:37:52 GMT Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:37:52 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/523603/ahAhaHaHa2 The Science, Art and Humor of Nearby Nature My googley-eyed friend invites us to begin our outdoor excursion. He will help us take our first steps, and lead us toward an understanding of the three gifts of creative experience that nature would offer you. These are three roads to wisdom that can arise out of every intentional walk in the woods or park near home. They will appear in different guises as we make our way along here. These are simple words so short your youngest reader can spell them out, and yet they are concepts of ultimate worth to the richness of your natural-world experience an Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:37:52 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/523603/ahAhaHaHa2 http://www.scribd.com/doc/503703/Fred-First-Bio-Page F red First has a T-shirt that says “No, I’m not a Floyd County native. But I got here as fast as I could.” It’s been home for good since 1997. After living in Wythe County for 12 years (where Fred taught biology at the community college) he and his wife Ann returned to his home state of Alabama in 1989 for him to become a physical therapist. They moved from western North Carolina back to the Blue Ridge, and the mountains that held their heart in ‘97. (For a while, Fred managed a PT clinic just across from the Country Store and they lived in a cabin on the Parkway.) In 1999, as hi Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:37:40 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/503703/Fred-First-Bio-Page http://www.scribd.com/doc/403228/forestrywatch-invite You are cordially invited to a party hosted by Mary Ann Capp, Carol Ann Garrett, and David and Lindsay West for Virginia Forest Watch. A special event to celebrate Virginia Forest Watch’s “Virginia’s Forest Heritage” Campaign. Bring your questions and ideas, and we hope that you will be inspired to make a donation so please remember your check book! With a special presentation by Fred First Our place in the world: A Visual Essay Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. –Margaret Mead Sunday Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:09:26 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/403228/forestrywatch-invite http://www.scribd.com/doc/238936/100-Steps-From-Home-a-GrownUps-Guide-Outside 100 Steps From Home ~ A Grownups Guide Outside  Preface  What on Earth has happened to us? Each of us once knew wonder, but it didn’t survive adult‐ hood. We were born with such curiosity in the outdoors. Do you remember?     It  might  have  been  a  caterpillar  crawling  on  the  back  porch  step  or  making  a  wish,  blowing  away  the  thistle‐down  of  a  dandelion  that  you  first  remember.  Or  maybe  it  was  an  hour  watching  a  procession  of  ants  on  the  sidewalk  or  the  chase  o Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:00:34 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/238936/100-Steps-From-Home-a-GrownUps-Guide-Outside http://www.scribd.com/doc/238933/No-More-High-Places Fictional Future Not Floyd’s But We Should Care Disclaimer: By sheer accident of geology, this fiction is not Floyd County’s future. But it depicts the very real losses of our neighbors in KY and WV just a few counties away—losses of their treasured mountains, clear streams and once-ordinary lives. Imagine. You might as well learn it from me right here and now, because this is big news, and it will change everything. You probably haven't even heard of balonium. But you will. It is a rare metal used for the manufacture of a kind of memory chip essential to the production of iPhones and th Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:55:54 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/238933/No-More-High-Places http://www.scribd.com/doc/92228/Poetry-of-Fatherhood-2007 Father’s Day Poem ~ Nathan First, 2004 Saved, Remembered, Found: a father’s day poem—a toast (and cleverly veiled roast) for Father’s Day 2004, received from our son, Nathan, then a single scholar just moved to British Columbia, and today married and moving into their first owned home in Columbia, Missouri—still far too far away. -- Fred First For the times you crushed between your fingers something sweet-smelling, or sharp-smelling, or minty-smelling, or putrid, and shoved it toward my nose, saying, “Nature snort;” For all the arguments we’ve had about religion, and all the ag Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:25:14 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/92228/Poetry-of-Fatherhood-2007 http://www.scribd.com/doc/32327/Earth-Day-2007-How-Many-More Earth Day 2007: How Many More? The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, marked the earliest dawn of my environmental consciousness, and I was so hopeful.   In southern Alabama, the channelization of streams by the Army Corps of Engineers and clear-cutting of southern forests by the mammoth forest products companies were the issues at the top of the local environmental agenda of the day. As a young zoology grad student, the issues seemed large but surmountable in the spring of 1970. Fixing them would just take time. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin was the founder of Earth Day. It took him almo Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:01:40 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/32327/Earth-Day-2007-How-Many-More http://www.scribd.com/doc/14315/foolish-farmer-of-erewhon-a-bloggers-parable There are risks in becoming visible. When we expose our greatest hopes and precious things to strangers, we may be thought a fool. But the ordinary treasures we share may touch lives in ways we cannot imagine. This is the story of one hopeful fool. The Foolish Farmer of Erewhon ~ a bloggers tale He prepared them lovingly, his precious mementos and carefully pressed flowers. He arranged them prominently on simple benches near the road. Just beyond, by the barn, a rough oak plank set across two tree stumps formed a crude table to display all manner of clippings and cards that flapped in the bre Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:49:07 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/14315/foolish-farmer-of-erewhon-a-bloggers-parable http://www.scribd.com/doc/14051/parkway-notecards 1 2 1 Parkway Skyline ~ Fall colors along the Parkway are dazzling from Saddle Gap in Floyd County. 2 Parkway in October ~ To be in Floyd County on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the fall just after a cold front has passed through is in every respect a “mountaintop experience”. 3 Mabry Mill at Christmas ~ wears a thin glaze on the duck pond, and the mill wheel is stilled by ice. 4 High Pastures ~ Parkway and rail fence converge in the distance near Milepost 166 in Floyd County, Virginia. 5 Last Leaves of Autumn ~ refuse to fall from a windswept oak near the summit of a Floyd County ridge along Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:24:27 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/14051/parkway-notecards http://www.scribd.com/doc/13714/Giving-Back-Nature-To-Our-Children-Ourselves Giving Nature Back to Our Children and Ourselves by Fred First © 2007 A building that had once housed a sprawling grocery store was now a brightly-colored entertainment megaplex called the Children’s Fun Palace. The parking lot was filled with cars. None of us knew what to expect when we walked through the doors on this first-ever visit, but it was obviously the place to be on a warm, April day in Rapid City. Inside, the neon flashed and blinked. Bells and buzzers and stereo sirens blared. Toddlers in diapers wailed and their older brothers and sisters whined for more quarters. I wanted to Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:22:45 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/13714/Giving-Back-Nature-To-Our-Children-Ourselves http://www.scribd.com/doc/13125/Fieldnotes-from-Nameless-Creek-a-Photographic-Excursion If you don’t know where you’re from, you the mind. Words alone don’t fully paint the pictures of the whole experience of being here in the way that won’t know where you’re going.   A time came at fifty four that I wasn’t sure about either of the wheres in this truism. I wrote out my perplexities every morning in an online journal. I brought home pictures from nearby for the clues they could give, to help me know better where it was that I was from. And in the end, the map that took shape to guide me forward became a book--a “book of days” called Slow Road Home.   The imagery Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:08:45 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/13125/Fieldnotes-from-Nameless-Creek-a-Photographic-Excursion http://www.scribd.com/doc/11732/AppVoiceReviewWinter2007 Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days By Fred First. Goose Creek Press. 216 pages. $15.95 Fred First is a biologist, photographer, and writer who did what many simply dream of. Several years ago he quit his “day job,” moved to a small farm nestled in the Blue Ridge, and set out to live as deliberately as he could, fully in the spirit of Thoreau. Living in an old farm house near a creek in Floyd County, Virginia, First is a keen observer and avid chronicler of his self-professed “love for the Blue Ridges of these ancient Appalachians.” He’s been writing about his life in the Appal Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:11:24 GMT http://www.scribd.com/doc/11732/AppVoiceReviewWinter2007