Doctor Flowers

North Fork, Cherry River, Nicholas County WVA, May 25, 2007

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Nicholas County WVA North Fork Cherry River  photo by Roy Burke

By 2007, Roy’s vacation road logs had become a model of organization and a data mine into the ecological and aesthetic ebb and thrum of the backwoods he traveled. On May 25, 2007, Day 5 of his annual Blue Ridge ramble, he logged the following botanical observations: cinnamon fern, yellow daylily, fire pink, butterwort, black snakeroot. Wildlife sightings that day were limited to a single box turtle. He took this pic of the North Fork, Cherry River around 5:21pm that afternoon.

Bell Wringer: A Humbug’s Christmas

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Stone Mountain Park, 2013 photo by Roy Burke

Stone Mountain Park, 2013 photo by Roy Burke

Doc loved Christmas in his own way. In 1988, to celebrate his move into his new home and new way of life in Stone Mountain,  he created one of his greatest cassette mix-tapes Bell Wringer:A Humbug’s Christmas(tape #319 in the archive).  You can see his original playlist below. This  Maxell UDXL 90  minutes-worth of his lavishly curated collection of Christmas music runs the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the canon to Scrooge McDuck.  Clarence Carter’s Back Door Santa? Natch. Harvard Glee Club? Of course. He gave me a copy for Christmas that year, and for the quarter century or so afterwards we regularly set aside a holiday season opportunity to listen to it together at his Stone Mountain home, lights strung across the INSIDE of the house, an obscure college football bowl game soundlessly providing our ‘fireside’ holiday glow as we soaked in the music, sipped some liquor, and talked and laughed about the world at the end of another year.

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Windows And Doors, Murphy NC, October 2003

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Reflection Portrait In Window, Murphy NC 10/12/2003

Reflection Portrait In Window, Murphy NC 10/12/2003

Roy loved small town photo walks, and made dozens of them over the years. He always looked for windows and doors, the more weather-beaten and unrenovated the better. I accompanied him on many of these walks, rambling the back alleys and main streets in search of a perfect combination of light, vernacular architecture and setting that worked for him. This photo, taken on a cool, misty October morning 13 years ago in Murphy, North Carolina(Clay County), includes a reflective portrait of the two of us. Roy created a monochrome version of a different shot from this same photo walk for his Doctor HP Flowers blog in a post called Epistemological Indifference.

Doctor Flowers Goes SLR, 1983 Photos Revealed

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Dekalb Co Ga Rose first picture 1983, Roy Burke

Dekalb Co Ga Rose first picture 1983, Roy Burke

Roy Burke got serious about his photography in 1983, took a class, and learned that art and its equipment with the same devotion and obsession he brought to music, fluid mechanics, wildflowers, watersheds and rural roads.  Shooting film at his peak, Doctor Flowers would return from his annual Spring trip along the Eastern Blue Ridge with hundreds and hundreds of slides to go through. But everyone has to start somewhere, and the rose picture above, taken in Dekalb County in 1983, was digitally archived by him years later as Dekalb Co GA Rose first picture. He considered it his first ‘real’ photo. There were thousands more to come. The double exposure self portrait below was shot from the same roll of slide film.

Dekalb Co GA Doc Flowers double exposure 1983 Roy Burke

Dekalb Co GA Doc Flowers double exposure 1983 Roy Burke

Road Food

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Tailgate lunch outside of Newberry, SC 10/08/10

Tailgate lunch outside of Newberry, SC 10/08/10

One key to a successful backroads run with Doc was the right food and refreshments. Mixed nuts, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, dried apricots(for gas), M&Ms, Diet Mountain Dew, a cold beer, road sandwiches made with turkey or roast beef deli meat and cheese on a kaiser roll, light mayo. His truck could not leave the driveway without the dry box of snacks, and the cooler filled with sandwiches and drinks.  Particularly prized were Hostess Sno Balls, preferably stale and chewy.121116061621-gallery-hostess-snoballs A proper amount of snack foods of marginal nutritional value are required to properly fortify you for a hard day’s voyage across rural two lanes and unpaved county roads. I took the above photo of Roy enjoying a tailgate lunch in a typical country churchyard, this one outside of Newberry, South Carolina off of State Route 34 on October 8, 2010, during a trip we took to visit both the Carolina Sand Hills National Wildlife Refuge and Rockingham Speedway.

Courthouse Valley Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway NC 6/19/2014 On The Final Glidepath

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Doctor Flowers Road Rules: Avoid cliche, indulge whimsy. Always take the county two lane road over any alternative. Any alternative excepting the Blue Ridge Parkway. Always take the Blue Ridge Parkway. This road loomed large in Doc’s perspective throughout his years as a writer and photographer. Click here for the real stuff. He started a separate logbook specifically dealing with his travels on it. These shots of a storm passing over the mountains, taken from the Courthouse Valley Overlook on the ‘Parkway outside of Canton, North Carolina would be taken nearly a year to the day before his passing. We talked many times about this late stage of life over the years. Roy avidly followed the space program and NASA. During the space shuttle era he adapted their phrase ‘the final glidepath’ as a metaphor for the last of the years we are all given in this life. “But what about climate change,” I would rant. “F*ck it, someone else will have the solve that one. I’m on the final glidepath.” As are we all, sooner or later.

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Blue Ridge Parkway, Courthouse Valley Overlook 6/19/14 Roy Burke- 1st in sequence

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Blue Ridge Parkway, Courthouse Valley Overlook 6/19/14 Roy Burke- 2nd in sequence

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Blue Ridge Parkway, Courthouse Valley Overlook 6/19/14 Roy Burke- 3rd in sequence

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Blue Ridge Parkway, Courthouse Valley Overlook 6/19/14 Roy Burke- 4th in sequence

Doctor Flowers Redux Aborning

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Roy Burke a.k.a. Doctor HP Flowers, was a friend, polymath, a poet, musicologist, photographer, and scientist. He was a teacher to everyone he met. His insatiable desire to study everything from wildflowers to country roads to Lightnin’ Hopkins and fluid dynamics was reflected in nearly 50 years of professional and ‘amateur’ work. In the last years of his life from 2010-2015, Doc published first Doctor HP Flowers and then Stone Mountain Meanderings on WordPress as a way to express himself and amuse his friends. I encourage you to visit those sites to feel the full 100 proof buzz. Doctor Flowers Redux is an attempt to post additional Roy Burke photos, musicology, and writings by him and about him in an effort to keep alive his inspiring mind for those who knew him and some who might find his work for the first time.

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Roy Burke, Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area-East Palisades Trail