Before I realized I could not fly, I would spend whole afternoons perched on the front porch rail, ready for adventure, with a towel tucked in the back of my collar, launching myself into the sky. The crashes were dramatic – as dramatic as I could make them once I concluded the towel/cape wasn’t the key to flight. The costume was mere artifice; every Superman needs a gimmick, apparently. The real trick to flying is determination and belief, I decided. My problem was that I lost faith at the critical moment when I became airborne, and in failing in faith I also failed at flight. Thinking quickly, as all flyers do, I would switch quickly to Plan B: execute a spectacular crash.
I thought about that boy of little faith when I discovered on a trip out by the barn one recent night that the towel was, in fact, crucial to flight. At Kate’s urging we went out to the large maple that looms over the barn, where she had heard strange scrabblings in the tree. We took the flashlight and illuminated the branches and trunk of the suspect tree to reveal… small flying towels!… no wait, flying washcloths! Continue reading »
It was one of those early May afternoons where the breezes move in sprints and pauses, like robins foraging the lawn, and a squall of cherry blossoms settled upon us as we took a break in the sun on the terrace. Kate and I looked up from our preoccupations at the windward tree to watch the show, and there in the midst of this whirl of white was a flash of orange – orange and black.
An oriole was celebrating itself as the first to feast upon the tree this year. He plied the blossoms for nectar, working one branch then moving to another, and another. The regular winged riff-raff in the yard will be attacking the tree in six weeks when it will be waving sour cherries in the breeze before them like tiny toreador capes. And on the Fourth of July, if there are any cherries left, we will make a pie. But for now, this beautiful and rare visitor has got the tree to himself because of his preference for nectar. The cherry tree suits him. And he suits the tree. Continue reading »
In these remaining weeks before the trees leaf out and set the woodland stage with shadows and scrim, it is still possible to walk in the woods and soak up the sunshine. Connecticut’s hardwood forests have yet to drape their winter-whipped skeletons in green, so the scene is just towering torsos and knobby limbs in all directions. Sadly, this year, we can also see all the trees that fell last October without witness and, some philosophers say, without a sound.
Philosophy aside, it is interesting how silence sharpens the ear, darkness focuses the eye, and deprivation of any sense makes it keener. The empty woods of March sit warming in the sun, inviting every one of our senses to lean into that space just beyond perception, where something big is just about to happen. And by leaning in this way, we find, of course, that the woods are never empty – not in March, nor in January and February. Yes, a tree may fall in the woods when we are not there, but its silent crashing is just one event in a full schedule of daily eventualities confronting woodland plants and animals bent on survival.
This March, masses of insects rise in the warm air from damp depressions in the ground, as do the ruddy claw-like spathes of skunk cabbage. A chorus of peepers begins rehearsals at dusk at a neighbor’s pond. And birds are obsessed with sex. We notice these things more in March because they are playing out on a relatively empty stage. Soon these singular performances will be subsumed by the rush of life that fills the landscape in April, May, and June, when so much happens – and so much escapes our notice.
Midwinter is when I am most removed from the natural world. Darkness form-fits the work day so snugly that what little I see of the landscape is viewed through office windows. And of the weekend chores and errands that linger so persistently around the edges of my lassitude, the only one that gets me outside for any length of time at all is the need for cord wood split to woodstove size.
Splitting wood is still manual labor around our place. Swinging the ax and maul has not yet been replaced by a gas powered hydraulic splitter. Working in close proximity to an internal combustion engine is, for me, to be sealed off in a sarcophagus of sound; one might as well be working on the factory floor. Kate and I both still prefer to hear our own heavy breathing and the critical chortle of red squirrels overhead in the spruces as we work the woodpile.
I’ve wrestled with firewood every fall and winter for the past 35 years in an effort to trim heating oil bills while still staying warm in a succession of old houses. I’ve done it every which way, from cutting standing dead wood in the middle of a snow storm in a wood lot, to ordering eight and ten-foot lengths from land-clearing contractors, to my current routine of ordering it cut to length and quarter-split. The last few splits required to fit it through the stove door are up to us. We enjoy the work. Continue reading »
Now that Connecticut no longer has any tree branches for birds to sit on, thanks to the freak October nor’easter, the birds in our yard are settling for perches on stone walls, steps, Adirondack chairs, and any convenient sheltering shrub. It is not really the time of year on the avian calendar for loitering and taking in the scenery, however. The remaining migrators in the area are flocking up and feeding, and the natives are securing winter hideouts and banking seeds in cracks and crevices. The few thin hours between December dawn and dusk are filled with a fluttering urgency.
On recent mornings a group of six bluebirds – residents or travelers, I don’t know – have been frequenting a winterberry bush beside the back walk. One or two perch and pluck berries while the others watch from nearby fence posts and rails, waiting their turn. The bluebirds are normally shy birds who keep their distance from the house, but the bulging red winterberries are too much of a temptation, so we have had these handsome birds pressing in on the house, filling the window panes with passing flashes of blue. The fluttering urgency of our own lives in this holiday season is forgotten completely as we stand transfixed by the windows accepting this rare gift of bright color from the stark year-end landscape. Continue reading »
As months grow old, the clean white squares of my desk calendar become defaced with angled jottings and their attendant underlines, circles, exclamation points, and sweeping arrows from one day to another, smeared here and there with a wash of coffee or tea – pretty shabby accommodations for things deemed important enough for me not to entrust to memory. And in the occasional square in neat 6-point Times Roman italic are messages from the culture: Armed Forces Day, Ash Wednesday, Passover Begins at Sundown, Administrative Professional’s Day, and just last Friday, Fall Begins.
The earth’s solstices and equinoxes, of course, transcend human culture. They keep their appointments in the continuum of eternity, along with all the other natural cycles that rock the cradle of existence, without the help of calendars. But I am grateful for the written reminder. I want to know when the world tilts toward winter. I don’t want to forget the succession of cycles stirring the galaxies and all their moving parts. I want to remember that not all events are human events
Lately, I have been immersed in human events – specifically, the events of my own family. My mother died this summer at the age of 92. Since then, my brother, sister, and I, along with our steadfast spouses, have been sifting through the archeology of the house where she lived, which has been our family home since my grandfather bought the place in 1914. We all have our own homes now, and the time has come for this house to belong to another family. Much of its contents, however – furniture, artifacts, and old books – we cannot part with. So many objects are freighted with meaning and memory. We have been sorting, saving, and distributing several generations of family stuff, which will settle into our own homes to await a similar sorting when we ourselves are cycled into history. Continue reading »
Before I realized I could not fly, I would spend whole afternoons perched on the front porch rail, ready for adventure, with a towel tucked in the back of my collar, launching myself into the sky. The crashes were dramatic – as dramatic as I could make them once I concluded the towel/cape wasn’t the key to flight. The costume was mere artifice; every Superman needs a gimmick, apparently. The real trick to flying is determination and belief, I decided. My problem was that I lost faith at the critical moment when I became airborne, and in failing in faith I also failed at flight. Thinking quickly, as all flyers do, I would switch quickly to Plan B: execute a spectacular crash.
