What comes next?

Fog hung thick this morning. By now, mid-afternoon, the sun has come out and skies are clearing. There’s not a drop of fog in sight. Fortunately, we don’t have to choose, because each condition is appealing in a number of different ways. With the fog, more so if one isn’t on open water without a compass or fog horn.

late summer fog

Photo by J. Harrington

Coming back from The Cities, we saw a great blue heron flying through the Sunrise River marshes in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. It’s hard to believe a creature that looks like it should be awkward and unwieldy is actually graceful in the air and on its stilt-like legs.

The heron appeared as the Daughter Person, Better Half and I were returning from the interment ceremony  of a family friend who walked on back in June. He was a member of a Lutheran church in Minneapolis. As I recall from my childhood, Catholics didn’t used to combine funeral services with regular Sunday mass. I don’t know how regular it is for Lutherans to do so, but that’s what we were at.

The Daughter Person drove. I rode in the back seat. The church is located in an area that I had some economic development responsibilities for years ago when I worked for The City. Uncharacteristically, I managed to keep my mouth shut and treat the Daughter Person like the highly capable adult she’s become. I kept my mouth shut as she got us to the church following directions she had downloaded. I would have gone a different way, but I wasn’t driving. This getting older and being a considerate adult is sure a slippery slope once you start down it. I wonder if I need to sign up for skiing lessons for Seniors.

Funerals

By James Laughlin

.

in our village are short and to the point.   

While the mourners are finding their seats   

Etta Andrews plays “Now the Day Is Over.”

No one is ashamed to wipe his or her eyes.   

Then the Reverend stands up and reads   

the Lord’s Prayer with the mourners   

speaking it with him. Then there is a hymn,   

usually “Rock of Ages” or one chosen by   

the wife of the deceased. The deceased,   

I might say, is never present, except for   

an urn prepared by Mr. Torrant, who is   

always squinting. Next there are remarks   

by the Reverend. He is a kind man and   

can be relied upon to say something nice   

about the life of the departed, no matter

how much he may have been scorned or even   

disliked.

The Reverend’s eulogies are so much the   

same, with appropriate readings from scripture,   

that I gave up listening to them years ago.   

Instead, unheard, I eulogize myself,   

the real picture of how I’ve been in   

the village. I admit that I was self-satisfied   

and arrogant. I didn’t go to much pains   

to provide diversions for my wife. When   

the children and grandchildren came for visits   

I lectured them and pointed out their faults.   

I made appropriate contributions to the   

local charities but without much enthusiasm.   

I snubbed people who bored me and avoided   

parties. I was considerate to the people   

who worked in the post office. I complained

a great deal about my ailments. When I’m   

asked how I’m doing, I reply that I’m   

not getting any younger. This inveterate   

response has become a bore in the village.

After the Reverend’s eulogy is over

there is another hymn, and the benediction.   

As they leave everyone, except me, presses   

the flesh of the bereaved with appropriate   

utterances. But I get away as quickly as   

I can. If they don’t bore me I like   

almost all the people in the village.   

But as they go, I tick them off. I’ve   

been to at least fifty funerals. When   

will mine be?

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Piercing an autumn’s mist

This morning’s fog was lacking the smell of salt air and the haunting of horns, but it came close to bringing me back to Cape Cod Bay. It also reminded me of the time in Minnesota when I literally had to follow a fog line at the edge of the road to drive most of the way to a deer camp Up North. It’ll be interesting to see if conditions repeat again during this week of unseasonably warm weather to trigger more misty mornings.

Did you know that a Minnesota-born artist, one who specializes in outdoor themes, David Maass, has done several “misty morning” paintings around subjects like ruffed grouse or mallard ducks? My Maass prints are mostly incorporated into a book, A Gallery of Waterfowl and Upland Birds, which includes Gene Hill stories. I’ve not read them for far too long. I’ve just added it to my winter reading list.

misty October morning

Photo by J. Harrington

The picture above, of the fields behind our house on a misty morning, shows fog neither as low-lying nor as thick as this morning’s, but it was taken on an October day much like today. I’m thankful that the “red gods” used this morning’s fog to remind me of the good times I’ve enjoyed hunting and fishing and just being outdoors during October. If today's contentious times and their customs are wearying you, try an awe walk. That’s all for now.

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray. 

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As we approach Summer's once distant dog days...

Were you up early enough to enjoy the ground fog this morning? SiSi and I saw three different amounts and densities over three separate fields around the house. As attractive as I find misty mornings, some real rain is needed. Starting tomorrow, thunderstorms are in the forecast for four of the next five days. Of course, thunderstorms were forecast for the past two or three days and ... Nada!

the beauty of a misty morning marsh

Photo by J. Harrington

After the upcoming thunderstorms, a subsequent series of days with temperatures in the 90's should convince us that we're enjoying peak Summer. Right? Remember the cold and snow and wind of five or six months ago, when we, at least some of us, were wishing then that it was now? Now we have it. Are we trying to hurry Winter back? I hope not.

the drama of a Summer thunderstorm

Photo by J. Harrington

I do admit to a quandary. With the expected heat and humidity, wearing waders, even lightweight ones, promises to be more than a little uncomfortably soggy, especially if fishing from a bank instead of wading cool water. Then again, the sections of river I'm planning to fish are noted for their silty bottom, which suggests staying out of the water. I'm seriously contemplating wearing wading boots, jeans, and wading wet if need be. That might expose me to tick bites but I've already removed three this Summer so, maybe, that might be an end to them? Not likely. We'll give this some more thought. Instead of getting caught between a rock and a hard place, we may be caught between a tick and a soft (river) bottom.

Mist

Henry David Thoreau - 1817-1862

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,—
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men’s fields.

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A morning's magic moments

Most days early morning dog walks come closer to being a daily chore than a climb through a wardrobe door to Narnia. This morning wasn't one of those walks. The air was humid and the fields were cloaked in mist. Something had walked along the road and left an intriguing trail that SiSi was determined to follow. The sky was magically clear and highlighted with a few puffy clouds, a half moon and a morning star. As we approached the entrance to our fields, I noticed some movement in the neighbor's fields across the road and several hundred yards South of us. One whitetail doe stepped out of the mist to the edge of the road, noticed the dog and I walking slowly in her direction, raised her flag and scampered across the road and into the pine plantation on the West side of the road.

magical morning mist

Photo by J. Harrington

Hanging back, where the mist was denser, were three other whitetails. A second deer walked out of the fog, stopped on the road, and stared at the dog and I. The dog was patiently attending to what we had walked to take care of and I was standing stock still with my hands in my jacket pockets. In effect, the dog and I had become statues. After watching us for a few moments, the second deer startled across the road, Whatever we were, she wanted no part of us.

While the third deer decided to quickly follow the second across the road and into the pines, the fourth was slowly, very slowly, approaching the dog and I, still trying to decide what we were and if we were a threat. She would take a step or two, stop, stare, snort or stamp a hoof, and watch for a moment, then repeat the procedure. Within a brief time, she had come about halfway toward us from where she had started. The dog and I were still being still. Suddenly, the doe looked off to her right, our left. I glanced toward where she had looked to see a  flock of Canada geese, 7 or 8 of them flying in a checkmark (✔) at about treetop height toward the West, over the fields headed for the waters in the Carlos Avery pools. When we looked back, the fourth deer had disappeared, as if by magic.

the magic of new life

Photo by J. Harrington

If every morning were as full of magic as today, would we then come to take magic for granted? Being human, we fear the answer is "quite possibly." If magical moments happened more often, but not necessarily all the time, would we be happier? Definitely. In fact, we've reached a point where we've come to believe that sunny days, as few and far between as they've been this Spring (and last Winter) contain magic in and of themselves. May we all find more magic in our lives. In fact, with just a little luck, we hope to see the magic of whitetail fawns appearing in our fields sometime soon. This is about the time of year when does drop (give birth to) their fawns. Late next month to mid-July is when they may start to appear.

The Place I Want to Get Back To

The place I want to get back to
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let’s see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can’t be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

Mary Oliver

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Hoarfrost #phenology

This morning was gray on grey on gray...: overcast skies above freezing fog above hoarfrost covered trees and ground covers above snow covered ground. It was one of the most depressing landscapes we recall seeing. No signs of life were visible anywhere. Fairies had gone to hiding in the hoarfrost's fairy forest.

a hoarfrost covered fairy forest

Photo by J. Harrington

We get relatively few episodes of hoarfrost in our neighborhood. It can, under conditions dissimilar to this morning's, create beautiful views. Hoarfrost requires a temperature regime similar to what's needed for maple sugaring, warm days and below freezing nights, plus lots of moisture in the atmosphere, which comes from the Winter's snow cover melting. Tonight we'll be adding to this season's cover, with 6 to 10 inches of new snow forecast for our area. We'll make sure the feeders are full later this afternoon. Impending snowstorms trigger multiple visits from local flocks. How do they know? Do the fairies warn them?

                     Lines for Winter

By Dave Lucas

Poor muse, north wind, or any god   

who blusters bleak across the lake   

and sows the earth earth-deep with ice.   

A hoar of fur stung across the vines:   

here the leaves in full flush, here   

abandoned to four and farther winds.   

Bless us, any god who crabs the apples   

and seeds the leaf and needle evergreen.   

What whispered catastrophe, winter.   

What a long night, beyond the lamplight,   

the windows and the frost-ferned glass.   

Bless the traveler and the hearth he travels to.   

Bless our rough hands, wind-scabbed lips,   

bless this our miscreant psalm.

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Sins of Omission #NPM17

This morning began peacefully and beautiful, filled with the misty, drifting ground fog that makes everything haunted and romantic at the same time. Duck after duck, in singles and pairs, more than I'm used to seeing around here, flew low, just over the treetops, barely above the foggy mist. I was in a rare, mellow mood until I opened the web page on 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month and saw what was missing!

misty morning, sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

What the Hell?! Academy of American Poets!? For suggestion 21 on how to celebrate National Poetry Month, you offer "Watch a poetry movie." So far, so good. Then you provide a list that includes "Films About Poetry" and "Films That Reference Poetry." Fine! But, you have absolutely no mention of the films about or with America's latest Nobel Laureate in Literature (poetry), BOB DYLAN? (Yes, I am shouting. I'll try to calm down.)

Try including these poetry movies next year, or, even better, edit them into this year's list:

• Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennybaker's 1967 documentary


• No Direction Home, Scorsese's 2005 documentary


• The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival


• I'm Not There, six incarnations of Dylan

There are other options, but the ones listed seem to be an inexcusable omission since Dylan's award was "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Even the Academy's biographic notes on Dylan acknowledge that he is also the author of Tarantula, "a collection of prose poetry." How the egregious omission of Dylan's movie poetry, or would that be poetry movies, could have occurred is beyond me. Perhaps it's evidence of ... what? what could account for it.

Record

Katrina Vandenberg

Late night July, Minnesota,
John asleep on the glassed-in porch,
Bob Dylan quiet on a cassette


you made from an album
I got rid of soon after
you died.  Years later,


I regret giving up
your two boxes of vinyl,
which I loved.  Surely


they were too awkward,
too easily broken
for people who loved music


the way we did.  But tonight
I’m in the mood for ghosts,
for sounds we hated: pop,


scratch, hiss, the occasional
skip.  The curtains balloon;
I’ve got a beer; I’m struck


by guilt, watching you
from a place ten years away,
kneeling and cleaning each


with a velvet brush before 
and after, tucking them in
their sleeves.  Understand,


I was still moving then.
The boxes were heavy.
If I had known



I would stop here
with a husband to help me
carry, and room—too late,


the college kids pick over
your black bones on Mass. Ave.,
we’ll meet again some day


on the avenue but still,
I want to hear it,
the needle hitting the end


of a side and playing silence
until the arm gives up,
pulls away.

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Summer's swan song #phenology

fallen leaves, Coffee Talk patio

Photo by J. Harrington

Do you realize this is the last weekend of this year's meteorological Summer? Look about you. Not only have the leaves started their color change, some have already begun to fall, as demonstrated by thts morning's photo on the back patio at Coffee Talk in Taylors Falls.

leaf color change, Wild River State Park

Photo by J. Harrington

I doubt that anyone keeps records of such things, but this appears to be a bumper year for goldenrod.  I don't every recall seeing as much blooming as we did during our drive this morning. One of us wanted to check out some here-to-fore unexplored roads in Wild River State Park. (The St. Croix River looks to be flowing about bank full.) Many of the unplanted or "fallow" fields along Chisago County's back roads and side roads are just full of goldenrod, as are the usual spots in ditches and up hillsides along those roads.

early morning fog

Photo by J. Harrington

Before a trip to Taylors Falls and then to the park, but after SiSi and I took a predawn walk along our pitch black road, I sat drinking coffee and watched a fog-shrouded, lightless sky become not gray but less and less black until it finally started to brighten. By then we could see this morning's fog was so thick the goldfinches, chickadees, and nuthatches coming in to the feeder were flying by Instrument Flight Rules. They didn't seem in the least troubled by conditions.

Sightings

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds continue to arrive at the nectar feeder yesterday and today.

Three Songs at the End of Summer

Jane Kenyon, 1947 - 1995

A second crop of hay lies cut   
and turned. Five gleaming crows   
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,   
and like midwives and undertakers   
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,   
parting before me like the Red Sea.   
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned   
to water-ski. They have, or they haven’t.   
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone   
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,   
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.   
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod   
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;   
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks   
over me. The days are bright   
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today   
for an hour, with my whole   
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,   
and a crow, hectoring from its nest   
high in the hemlock, a nest as big   
as a laundry basket....
                                    In my childhood   
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,   
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off   
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,   
and operations with numbers I did not   
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled   
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien   
I stood at the side of the road.   
It was the only life I had.

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Mist-defying moon #phenology

This morning's full moon shone brightly on local mist-covered fields. Some call it the sturgeon moon, others, the ricing moon, the corn moon or the red moon. Names often derive from what's important in the place from which the moon is seen. You can explore for yourself by looking here or here or here. Truth can be found in many forms.

Full August moon on mist-covered fields

Photo by J. Harrington

I felt at home and comfortable surrounded by ghostly mist while walking the dog this morning, probably because I grew up with frequent fog on the East coast. On land there was usually a yellow or white line to follow along the road, or at least a shoulder or ditch to track. On the water things got more interesting and you trusted your compass and your ears before your eyes, and wished you could afford a radar unit and a bigger boat to go with it. Listening to an approaching motor on a boat you couldn't see but hoped wasn't bearing down on you set nerves and teeth on edge. Field-walking is a comparative piece of cake.

2015 acorn crop

Photo by J. Harrington

All the moisture we got this Summer doesn't seem to have done anything good for this year's acorn crop. I've read that some years are much better for mast than others and last year compared to this seems to prove it. Maybe it's just a few trees around the house that are so sparse, but I fear it may be a hungry Winter around here for the squirrels, turkeys and whitetails.

In Mist

By Laura Sherry

From “Ridge People” WHEN you can see the ground’s breath, And the sky goes muggy And drops before the world Like a perspiring window-glass; When beasts and humans creep to cover         5 And the steam-boats speak fog-language; The farm buildings sit still Folding their hands As if they hadn’t a thing in the world to do. A chimney’s belch smudges into nothing;         10 The earth’s breath noses around the roots of trees; Heaven-mist seeps through branches And wraps the country’s heart.

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