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 Swinging the ax and maul has not yet been replaced by a gas powered hydraulic splitter.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 »
…Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
Writing this good makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Ted Kooser, the poet who drew this scene from his memory and his mastery of language in a poem about his mother, lives in Nebraska, where electrical storms truly are shaggy beasts stalking the prairie. By comparison, New England is a port in the storm.
New England is the only region on the east coast that has an offshore cold water current, and the cool sea breeze tempers the muggy summer stew that so quickly creates thunderstorms in other parts of the country. The coastal zone of New England has fewer thunderstorms than anywhere else east of the Rocky Mountains. In an average year, the number of thunderstorm days in New England is 20 or fewer, according to New England Weather, New England Climate, by climatologists Gregory Zielinski and Barry Keim. Pennsylvania, they point out, has 30 to 40 thunderstorm days each year, and Florida, with up to 100 per year, is the thunderstorm capital of the lower 48.
Even still, for our dog, Boon, there are far too many thunderstorms dragging their bellies across our little hill. A few months ago, I wrote about Boon’s umwelt, or surrounding sensory world, wherein hound sensitivities far beyond my understanding shape his everyday experience into something I will never know or comprehend. His perception of thunderstorms is something I am glad I don’t have to experience. He is a most courageous dog when it comes to facing down a turning high-tailed skunk, or chomping wasps and bees mid-air, or stealing lunches from the cluttered vans of $50-an-hour tradesmen. But the most distant rumble of thunder sends him scrabbling under the bed, where he remains peering out at concerned humans with the desperate look of the condemned. Continue reading »
Meadow bluets
One of the fundamental puzzles each species must solve is how to live successfully in relation to a place. Whether plants or animals thrive or fail seems to have as much to do with where they are as who or what they are. As Darwin observed, we must adapt to our place or adapt our place to us. So Kate and I are reassessing our place – and our place in our place – now that we have lived here for more than a decade.
By most measures, we have been successful. We have been successful in dogs and, let’s say, proficient in cats. Our cat proficiency (keeping them indoors) has allowed us to be accomplished in birds. Our cup runneth over with squirrels and chipmunks. We have been successful in spite of ourselves in lilacs, lavender, and iris, which seem to have a sweetheart deal with our soil and sunny spots negotiated entirely without our mediation. I count our dragonflies and butterflies not so much successes but blessings. Continue reading »
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.
