Ractracks and Watercress

First Snowflakes of the year nestle
gently in some moss near
Silver Spring

17 January 2008 - There used to be a race track on the Carlisle Pike called Silver Spring. The only sprint car races I've ever been to were there. It was speed week and Byron and I took all the teachers and priests to see the races because I had free tickets (Cindy Rowe Auto Glass was a sponsor). It was a small race track with a dirt surface usually reserved for stock cars and street cars, real local competition. But once a year it hosted the best regional sprint car racers and the national "Outlaw Posse," the best sprint car racers in the country. It was all part of "Speedweek" where there were races every night at different tracks and people came from all over to see the Outlaws. I remember David Taylor's son, Matt, approaching me before the races began to say, "It would be more comfortable with earplugs." Why would one need earplugs to watch a race? That's how racing naive I was. So, I went under the grandstand to a vendor selling earplugs and got some for all the boys and Byron and myself. I won't forget how my entire insides shook each time the cars passed the grandstand. At least our ears were protected! Alan Kreitzer owned the race track with his sister and mother but sold it to Target Stores a couple years ago. I never knew why it was called Silver Spring.
On this day I was driving the Carlisle Pike trying to find another location for Cindy Rowe. It was biting cold and had been for several days. It was the day of the first snow of the year addressed in an earlier blog (remember the snowman?). As I passed over a small culvert the creek below was a vibrant green. Perhaps I noticed it because earlier that morning it had occurred to me how challenging and fun it might be to seek out all the real colors of winter. It's so easy to see gray and brown, but wouldn't it be fun to find other colors that exist in the midst of the cold. Perhaps that isn't at all why I noticed it because the green was literally fluorescent. Though working, the camera was in the car and my curiosity was high so I found a place to park and walk down to the creek. While taking pictures, a neighbor came up and gave me some information about the place. I was standing at the very spot where Silver Spring bubbled out of the ground. It comes out of the ground at 50 degrees. It is warmer around the water than the air and the flora reflects that. The moss pictured above grows on a large rock beneath which the spring flows out of the ground.

As it turns out the bright green plant in the water is water cress. I learned this from the neighbor who thought I was a private investigator taking pictures related to an incident not far removed where a pregnant woman was accidentally shot to death by a hunter at the spot. Apparently people come to harvest the watercress and unfortunately one got in a cross fire.
Can you imagine the things you don't know? Of course not! Otherwise you'd know them, but stopping at a place I'd driven by hundreds of times to take some pictures for ten minutes made me ponder just what I don't know. It answered one long standing question, "why did they call the racetrack Silver Spring," and led to all kinds of others, not the least of which is, "why would anyone eat watercress?"