Gentian Church

One of the things, it turns out, that is almost impossible to do when one is constantly traveling is: 

Put up blogposts. 

I miss it. It's a meditative thing. I get to roll around in my photos and think about what I've experienced and try to put all that into words. 

But I can't do that when I'm rushing around preparing talks and publicizing said talks, matting prints to sell, packing the car and meeting people for lunch and dinner and trying to sell books and prints and notecards and keeping track of all that by myself. Talk about a one-man band. Yikes. It's amazing how much energy goes into making your living on the road. Which, I realize suddenly, is what I do now.  Just ask Liam and Bill and Chet. 

I'd been saving one special experience from my eastern Pennsylvania trip at the end of September. I was saving it for dessert, for myself, and for you. And then it fell off the radar screen altogether. 

So I'm sitting in a hotel room high above the Cornell campus right now and the view looks like this in the morning: 

and it also looks like this:

and I feel incredibly lucky to be seeing these things, to be treated like visiting royalty when all I'm doing is giving talks and showing people pictures of my little corner of Appalachia.

But  it's all going by much too fast. I don't even have time to reflect on it, to write the way I used to about every little thing I see. And I miss that, the down time I need to process all this beauty.  I woke up this morning meaning to go for a run but I couldn't tear myself away from the sunrise on Ithaca. I mean, holy smokes. How could you walk away from a view like that? So I took a little time just to watch it and take some photos and fool around with them until they looked as beautiful on the screen as they did to my eyes.

That's the thing--to try to share things so you feel a little bit of what I did when I experienced them. 

I'll try with this one. 

September mornings are magical almost anywhere, but September 20 in Kunkletown PA was killing me. 

I took off on a 4 mile loop and breathed in the meadows and the slowly changing trees, the expansive skies. 

I saw a closed gate with a No Trespassing sign on it. By the signage, it seemed to lead to a gravel pit, that for all I could tell was now defunct.  I examined the blacktop road. It was clear to me that it had had no truck traffic for some time. Weeds were growing up through the asphalt. I walked around the gate. Gravel pits can be interesting places.

I was drawn to the blooming goldenrod and New England asters that were thriving in a meadow. It looked to me like at some point the meadow had been a vacant lot, scraped, perhaps, and leveled for stacking timber from the surrounding forest, which had been heavily cut over. But the wildflowers were growing, thriving in rank profusion on what was once a waste place. I liked the way they looked against an unsettled morning cloudbank rolling over the Kittatinny Ridge. I knelt and got down low to put them as high against that blue ridge and sky as I could.

And then I noticed a royal-blue flower in the grass and goldenrod and aster tangle. And another, and another. 

I hadn't seen greater fringed gentian (Gentianopsis crinita)  for easily 27 years. I knew a place in Connecticut where I could find a couple of plants come September. That was it until now.

It was cool, early morning, and bumbles were asleep on the flowers, waiting for them to open and release their sweet nectar and pollen to the bees' care. You can see the fringed eyelashes on the petals.

For all I knew they'd fallen asleep in a nectar-drunk stupor the evening before and spent the night on the bar's front step.  I stood up and gazed around me after taking these photos. There was gentian everywhere I looked. 

photo by Diane Husic

And that's the way gentians are. They sneak up on you. Maybe you see one here, one there. And then one fine September morning when you least expect it you come on a meadow and decide to walk into that meadow, deer ticks be damned, and kneel down to take a photo of goldenrod against a dark sky, and damned if you don't find a gentian. Or a hundred of them. 

A HUNDRED OF THEM.

Did some unseen hand send me around that gate, into the meadow? Sometimes I wonder.

When the sun warms them the gentians' eyelash fringed petals open up, the caps on the bottles, and the bees hurry to fall into them, crawling all the way to the bottom.

And they have to back out.

This plant grows as an annual or biennial in wet alkaline soils. It's rare, nowhere common. To find it in such profusion, growing to such magnificent heights,  overwhelmed me. It literally brought me to my knees, as in worship. 

And why not? For the plants were approaching a yard tall, each one so magnificently arrayed in tiers of elegant violet-blue blooms that they looked like a floral arranger's work, a perfect bouquet in each plant. I couldn't take it all in alone. The next morning Diane and I came together to the service at Fringed Gentian Chapel.

We wandered, aimless as two clouds, amidst the impossibly rich splendor in the grass.

For they hide, not easily apparent until your eyes are ready to pick up that royal velvet purple deep in the meadow. And once you see it, and begin counting, and pass 60, 70, 80, 100 plants....it's like drinking a whole bottle of wine, and then pouring another glass.

We began making Best Bouquet photos.

Here's a foursome of goldenrod, heath aster, New England aster, and fringed gentian.

This was a nice combo, too. Red sumac, heath aster, New England aster, and fringed gentian.

Might as well go all red white and blue while we're at it.

Each plant was so full of buds I could tell the show would go on for weeks.

What a sweet coda to the end of summer.

Diane and I spent Sunday morning in our makeshift church, praising satin blue creation. David was competing at a fiddle competition, but he'd come worship later that week.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,


And colored with the heaven’s own blue,


That openest when the quiet light


Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean


O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,


Or columbines, in purple dressed,


Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com’st alone,


When woods are bare and birds are flown,


And frosts and shortening days portend


The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye


Look through its fringes to the sky,


Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall


A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see

The hour of death draw near to me,

Hope, blossoming within my heart,

May look to heaven as I depart.

"To The Fringed Gentian"  William Cullen Bryant 

Yes. That Massachusetts poet had knelt at the same altar perhaps 170 years earlier, marveled too that this splendid plant raises its cup as a toast to dying summer, just as the nights turn sharp.  This poem made me happy, made me feel that Diane and David and I are part of a continuum of appreciators of the best things, which are, after all, often hidden in thick meadows.

When I'd said my thank-yous to the best hosts ever and finally got in the car to head home, my clock read 11:11. Yes. This morning had definitely gone to eleven. No time could have been better spent.

I drove east all day, and as evening came on traffic ground to a halt. A truck was burning up on SR 50 in West Virginia. I sized up the situation, took a couple of photos of someone's savings going up in flames, and peeled off on the side road to the right of the picture. I have driven enough side roads to know that sooner or later they all come back out on the main road. I'd just head west and hit Rt. 50 farther on down the line.  I'm sure the traffic was backed up for miles behind that conflagration. 

Not for me. I rolled the windows down and opened the moon roof and breathed the sweet autumn air as I found my way home. 

Hawks, Heavy Metals, and Good People

What a treat to stay with David and Diane Husic, to walk their field in Kunkletown, which is chock-full of goldenrod, with them. To be with people who have the same feelings and care for their land as we do. Who see it not as a potential cash crop of timber or something to level and scrape, but as a living thing. 

This meadow is managed for wildflowers and butterflies and those who appreciate them. There are paths winding in through the clumps of goldenrod so you can get closer to the bugs. 

Diane's looking at the Endless Mountain, the Kittatinny Ridge, as she and David do every day, in its ever- changing moods.

Walking back to the house

where David will soon be incapacitated by Zyzzy's need to nap right on his lap. Cats are good for that. And we could all use a little incapacitating now and then.

Diane and I went to Hawk Mountain to attend a luncheon for special friends of the sanctuary, and pick up a whole mess of original artwork I loaned to illustrate a beautiful new book commemorating Hawk Mountain Sanctuary's 80th anniversary. I'm excited that my paintings and drawings will grace this important book. And it's always fun working with Director Jerry Regan, the Human Tsunami!

photo (off a projection screen) by Diane Husic

photo by Diane Husic

While we were there Hawk Mountain's Sarkis Acopian Director of Conservation Sciences Keith Bildstein watched some hawks with us, and gave me a tour of their gorgeous new library, offices, labs and intern housing, also courtesy of the late, wonderful supporter, Sarkis Acopian. Wow. Hawk Mountain has certainly changed for the better since I'd been there! And the hawks still pour over.

photo by Diane Husic

I was amazed how rusty my soaring raptor ID skills had gotten. A young bald eagle hove into view, and when someone called "Osprey," I looked at it long and hard and thought, "Wow. That has a really big head for an osprey." And assumed they just knew better. Get with the program, Zick. It's every Science Chimp for himself out here on the rocks.  It was an eagle. I then completely failed to ID a broadwing with its wings reefed in until I swallowed my pride and asked Keith what it was. Um, thank you. This is me, trying. You can put binoculars on her, but don't rely on her for raptor ID's...

The fabulous Lee and Courtney Peterson were there for the meeting and Lee's talk that evening. He, being the son and spittin' image of Roger Tory Peterson. She, an amazing artist and jewelry creator.  I was playing it cool, hangin' with them; they're fun, creative and lively folks. And besides, I knew his dad.

Leaning into a distant raptor...she's cool she's cool in her fancy pants

photo by Diane Husic

But inside, I was all geekin' out at being next to some fabulous Peterson DNA once again.

The real Zick. Awful, rambunctious and shameless. Photo by Diane Husic, who knows.

Diane, loving the scenery at the South Lookout, Hawk Mountain, PA.

 I'm proud to know her. She told me the story of a huge section of the Kittatinny Ridge that was ravaged by almost a hundred years of toxic fallout (heavy metals, mostly) from a smelting plant in the Lehigh Gap just a half-hour away. The aerial fallout, tons per year, had killed all the plants and rendered it miles of rocky moonscape. Diane initiated a study of plants, determining that trees were taking up the heavy metals, which stunted and killed them. But warm-season grasses don't take them up and can grow and flourish there. So with her work, she was able to guide revegetation efforts, and the ravaged ridge is coming to vibrant life. It will probably be a savannah, studded with a few hardy trees, which opens up interesting possibilities for breeding birds, as that habitat type is very scarce. Already there are prairie warblers, and it is being colonized by blue grosbeaks, a southern species that needs this rare savannah habitat. 168 species have been counted so far!  She told me of lifelong residents of the Gap in tears, seeing that poisoned ridge greening up again, or possibly for the first time ever. Just after I left, Diane was to join the reclamation crew at Lehigh Gap Nature Center to accept an award from the EPA for their stellar work on reclaiming the largest Superfund site in the nation. Their work is only beginning, but it's hugely promising.

What an honor to stay with people who are leaving the planet a better place for their being here. One of my favorite moments was falling asleep on their couch, belly full of grilled salmon, while David, awesome musician,  Salmon Griller, Head of Chemistry and Professor at Lafayette College in Easton PA, played old-time fiddle tunes. I'd wake up at the end of each one, murmur, "What's that one called?" and then drop back off. Mmm. 

Another thrill of speaking at Lehigh Gap Nature Center and Moravian College was meeting people who had watched Corey Husic grow up, who are his mentors. It was hallowed ground for me. I think a lot of this couple and their boys (Corey's younger brother Joren is a dryly funny, brilliant jewel!)

photo by David Husic. Only a daddy could take a photo like this.

Corey at two. His favorite book? A Peterson field guide. Nooooo. The cute is killing me. Put that boy on a bun with some yaller mustard. Somehow it doesn't seem fair. I didn't get a Golden Guide to Eastern Birds until I begged for it at eight. No wonder he's so much sharper than me.

That little boy grew up, met Phoebe on Hog Island, Maine in the summer of 2012

and then a lot of other stuff happened.

Thankful.

Looking at Pennsylvania

Bethlehem and Kunkletown, Pennsylvania are very beautiful towns. Although I've been to mainland Europe only for the briefest time, and that was Holland, I can't help but feel I'm being transported back to my ancestral Germany with the gorgeous architecture and lush plantings. 

An allee of hydrangeas. Really! An Italian villa, plopped down against the Kittatinny Ridge.

And yet a fieldstone house is so uniquely Pennsylvanian, and I celebrated that fact every time I went for a walk. My dad was so enamored of Pennyslvania's fieldstone houses. I remember as a kid wondering what the big deal was, what a house was made of. Now I get it. Local stone that nobody else has. And so beautiful. I'm so thankful to have been raised by parents who sought out and appreciated what was special about each corner of the America they knew. Dad, Mom, it sank in.

A John Deerey bit of Americana. I couldn't resist.

More Europe in Bethlehem, but with New England asters. 

Diane Husic and I went on a little tree safari around the campus of Moravian College, where she is Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences. This oak rang a distant bell, but I don't get to see many of them, so I held out a leaf and used Diane for scale against its magnificent trunk and rectangular chunky bark so I could check my Sibley Tree Guide when I got home.  It turns out to be a burr oak, which my dad always called "Vanguard of the Forest" because it was the first one to grow on the prairie. Sigh. Glad I remember all this stuff. Or maybe he's whispering in my ear. This photo makes me smile. iPhone as Naturalist's Companion. Note to self: identify this oak. Tiny Diane perched on my hand like a parakeet in her chicory-blue sweater. I had a parakeet named Bing. Chicory blue he was.

Diane showed me a fern garden growing in a London plane tree (sycamore, Platanus x acerifolia). Those little fern spores can blow around and land about anywhere. Moravian College's campus is absolutely loaded with plane trees, which glow golden in fall light. Their bark is distinctly yellower than our native sycamore's.

Ahh, I could look at their bark for hours. 

There are so many pictures in it.

Moan. These trees are such extravagant beauties, such a lovely choice for streets and campuses. Magical.

 We walked toward Moravian Academy, where soon-to-be-world-famous naturalist Corey Husic had his start. It was all so beautiful, so surreal, so very different from my low-slung brick elementary school, baking in a field next to a strip of loblolly pines in Richmond, Virginia.

 Diane showed me the building where I'd lead a creative writing class that morning. Wow. It was so...Harry Potter.

Out on Main Street, a duplex that made me laugh out loud. A schizophrenic house. Yes, we are joined at the awning and roof, and have had to live as Siamese twins for decades. But don't for a moment think we are ANYTHING alike. Hodge, baby, this one's for you.

I was also amused to note how thoroughly the birds had enjoyed this urban American Poke's fruit.

Stripped nekkid, it is. A fine bird food, makes for lovely purple poops to swoop down and put on cars. I tell anyone who will listen that American Poke is valued as a specimen plant in fine English gardens. And in not-so-fine Ohio gardens as well. I do pull it out of the main border when it tries to start, as it has a little problem with scale. It leans toward gigantism, then it leans toward the ground and flops all over smaller, weaker plants.

Just a few things I noticed and enjoyed on my Pennsylvania strolls.