Peeking Tree

      'As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty (degrees) below (zero) spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly, it was colder than fifty below....'  Jack London - To Build a Fire

     One of the great aspects of a Jack London adventure story is a combination of authenticity and nuance. He didn't only write about the Yukon region of Canada, he experienced it during the dead of winter. 
     I too am penning an adventure novel. It's set in the southern Appalachian Mountains during
contemporary times.
     For the purpose of research, I spent a couple of days visiting settings in this novel. One such location is a cemetery nestled in a remote part of Georgia. In one scene in the novel, a boy hides in the woods adjoining the cemetery.
    A tree with two trunks caught my attention. It stood along a line of brush.
    I imagined the boy peeking through the narrow space between the trunks.
    Seeking authenticity and nuance, I pushed aside some branches and moved behind the tree. When I did so, I came upon a dumping ground. Plastic flower pots and artificial flowers lay strewn about the forest floor. This debris was not visible to anyone strolling among the headstones.
     I stood on tippy toes to see through the trunks. My view was lousy. The crack wasn't wide enough. More height was needed to get my eyes beside the wider part of the crack. In a change of tactics, I positioned a flower pot upside down beside the tree. I stood upon it.
     The pot crackled and shattered. I keeled over and almost fell down.
     Undeterred, I tried again with a sturdier flower pot. It sagged but didn't collapse. I peeked through
a wider part of the crack. At this height the view was better.
      Here's a coincidence: One of the headstones next to the peeking tree belonged to a dead person
whose last name was Peak.
     The boy in my novel will soon find himself tottering on a flower pot while peering through a crack between trunks.
     That kind of authenticity and nuance could not have been possible had I conducted my research with an internet search engine. For a novelist in fact-finding mode, boots on the ground beats the heck out of eyes on a monitor.