On My Own Two Feet

I'm home from Wisconsin and happily painting blue jays and eating leftovers in the quietest of quiet houses, deliriously glad not to be huddled in a corner of some gray airport. Written while on the road:

I like travel. Even though I'm writing this as I'm finishing a 7-hour airline stranding in Detroit, and it's pushing 10 pm, and I have another four hours to go before I collapse in my own bed, it's usually good. There are a few things about travel, besides airport strandings, that I'm not crazy about. One of them is being stuck so I can't go wherever I want. As in: being deposited in a hotel without a car. In those cases, I look around for places with trees and meadows and head out on foot to find them.

 

Early Sunday morning, I had three hours before I had to be back at the hotel to catch the airport shuttle. My room was beautiful--huge, modern, well appointed. But I wanted OUT of this glass and granite box, so clean and sterile that a spider in the shower elicited an exclamation of wonder from me. How in the world did it get there? How could it survive? I peered out my second floor window and eyed a long low ridge that in Wisconsin is referred to as a "mountain." Well, OK, thought this Midwesterner-turned-Appalachian-hillbilly. They can call it whatever they want. It's a rise. It'll do. The ridge was covered in forest, except for some ski runs cut down its flank. Got a rise? Put a ski resort on it. I figured I'd walk to it. There should be access or maintenance trails that run under the ski lifts.  Then I'd walk up the trails and get a view from the top.

I figured right. It took me about an hour to get to Rib Mountain Ski Area, but by gum I got there. And there was a wonderful trail that went right up the mountain. I met two women who were walking two doodle-crosses and a friend's Boston terrier named Willie. He was beee-utiful. They said Willie was on his third home. And he was so well-behaved and sweet that all they could think was that he was surrendered because he farts so much and so badly. Well. I know all about THAT. I told them to put his food dish on a paint can, so he wouldn't gulp so much air as he eats. And to put a couple tablespoons of canned pumpkin in his food every day. They were so excited to learn all this, and promised to pass it along to Willie's owner. It made me feel good to offer help, but not as good as it felt to run my hands over a Boston terrier again. Willie was only the second Boston I'd encountered since Chet had to leave me on August 30, 2017. He seemed puzzled that I wanted to touch him so badly, but being a perfect gentleman, he suffered my attentions. And I hope my advice changed a few  lives for the better. Being a good Boston, he'll still fart, but maybe it won't be as potent.

Farther up the trail, a woodchuck flowed out of the weeds and stopped to look at me. I took it as a very auspicious sign. I love woodchucks and always try to pass them mind-pictures when we meet. He's the dark loaf on the right of the path.

 

 There were harebells on the way up, and tall bellflower on the top.

At the top, I was a bit more than 2.5 miles from my hotel, much of it in a climb. In this photo, my hotel is the long black rectangular building on the far right, below the lake.

It felt pretty amazing to have gotten myself that far away, with only the power of my two feet.
To be up among the migrating indigo buntings, Swainson's thrushes and yellow-rumped warblers, and out of earshot of the damned freeway.
To have exactly an hour and a half to get myself back to get on a bus, then a plane. It was time to turn around, as much as I wanted to explore the next thing I discovered: Rib Mountain State Park! Trails everywhere! None of which I had time to take!

In this photo my hotel is the black rectangle. I'm gloating that I'm in a high meadow and not in it.

I thought to myself that more people should try and see where their own two feet can take them. Big granite and glass boxes are fine for a little while, but they aren't my habitat. On a beautiful day with three good hours to spend, I'll go outside every time.

It's not just for exercise and health. It's for my mental health. I figured a lot of things out on that hike. I saw my path forward just as clearly as I saw the dirt trail under my feet. I saw where I should and shouldn't be spending time and energy. I met myself on the trail. And you know, that happens pretty much every time I put a few miles behind me. 

As I descended into the subdivision, I could hear the freeway roaring again. A small, lithe whitetail doe burst out of a backyard and crossed the wide quiet street in front of me. I could hear her hooves tickering on the hard surface.

She stopped in the scant cover of tree shadows between two houses and hesitated. Her ears were swiveling and her tail was switching. I stopped still to give her as much room as I could. She thought for a little while then wheeled and galloped right back the way she'd come, crossing right in front of me, headed back to Rib Mountain.

Oh how I longed to follow her! I had to go back and start my 15-hour journey home. I didn't know it was going to take that long, but we aren't given to know much in the wonderful world of commercial aviation.

Back to the big glass and metal box. Collect your stuff and go.

 I wouldn't soon forget that hike. I closed out the day with 18,000 steps on my Fitbit, about 12,000 of them happy hiking steps in pellucid September air.

As I rotted in Detroit, writing blogposts to pass the time, I was so thankful that I'd chosen an adventure for those three Sunday morning hours.

If I ever find myself in that hotel again, I'm going to head straight out and climb Rib Mountain again.

Art and Love in Wisconsin

 Displaying two perfect, squeaky squidgy Wisconsin cheese curds. From left, Master Artists Robert Bateman, Cindy House, and Not-Master Artist me.

 

The center of art in Wisconsin: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, with a fabulous crane installation called "The Dance" by Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein.

 

What a sculpture garden this museum has! 

It's not at all like me to blog something so current, but I'm stuck for 7 hours in Detroit's airport, just trying to get home on a dreary gray day, victim of a malfunctioning emergency aisle light on a plane, that had to be fixed before it would be cleared for takeoff. That little burned out light meant I missed my connection in Detroit, and the next plane going to Akron doesn't leave Detroit until 10  tonight. That gets me in at Indigo Hill at approximately 1:30 AM, after I drive the two hours home in blinding rain. Yay. First world problems. I have a car, I have a home to go to, right? Still, it is a bit of a bummer to be so tired and not be able to get home in a remotely timely way.

Reflecting on the great time I had while in the care of Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's wonderful staff seems a good way to feel thankful while sitting in a corner on my enforced staycation. Cindy House, fabulous pastel artist and dear friend, asked me to introduce her at two functions during the Birds in Art show at which she received the Master Artist medal. I got to hang it around her neck!!  I also wrote a long article for the show catalogue, in which I attempted to say enlightened things about the importance of her glorious art. Better than that was getting to tell a lot of other artists and art appreciators how much Cindy means to me personally. I really loved getting to do that.

 

One thing I wanted everyone to know was how funny Cindy is, something that doesn't come through in her majestic pastels at all. My intro turned out well, because Cindy's talk immediately after my little speech was cripplingly funny. Here, she's describing being on enormous Antarctic seas in a hurricane, and saying, "You know you're in trouble when the maid puts a seatbelt on your bed..."

The talent packed into this wee person is inestimable. Go to her website and look at her pastels. This is one of my favorites. You can see through the waves way down into the water.

We had no trouble at all with PDA's. That's how we roll.

It was such a delight to be among friends and fellow bird artists. I got to see Elwin Van der Kolk, with his gorgeous miniature of shelducks on a mudflat.

 

Such a simple concept, but so, so beautifully realized.  His website: for more of Elwin's incredible work click here.

I've no idea how it came up, but somehow Elwin and I discovered that we had both contributed art to the cover of two different editions of Vernon Head's wonderful book, The Rarest Bird in the World: The Search for the Nechisar Nightjar. Elwin did the cover of the Dutch language edition:

 

and my painting was used for the cover of the English language paperback edition:

 

The bird is known only from one dried wing from a roadkill, which is why our paintings have a certain similarity.

More beauty--John Pitcher's breathtaking nesting parasitic jaeger.  Holy wow.

 

Irish artist Julian Friers' incredible northern fulmar painting. He's a barrel of monkeys--plays guitar and pennywhistle; paints portraits of rock stars, extinct animals and other awesome things. His website is here.

 

I gloried in a huge auxiliary exhibit of Master Artist Anne Senechal Faust's serigraphs. Oh My Gosh. 

It was such a privilege to be here among such gifted people. Utterly humbling. 

 

Speaking of soul-feeding... I got to spend some incredible quality time with the wildly talented Debby Kaspari. We made music together, yakked, talked art and life, and soaked each other in. Oh my heart.

The artists all had to stand by their paintings in the Birds in Art show, which left me orbiting rather aimlessly, and wanting to get out into the warm September sunshine. There's no way you can put out enough cheese and crackers for several thousand people, so I got really hungry at the cheeseless Saturday morning public opening.  I decided to go foraging. I only walked about five blocks before I lucked out and found some wild plums dropping their fruit with abandon along a driveway in Wausau. 

 I gobbled about a dozen of them, and wish I'd taken more.

Saturday afternoon is given over to a trip to Hazelhurst, the private estate of the Woodson family which so graciously hosts Birds in Art. There are ravishing gardens which looked fabulous, even in September.  Glorious tall Japanese anemones blew me away.

 

 

 Morning glories were just starting to bloom, and already closed for the day. Mine in Ohio are only thinking about making buds. It is ever thus.

  

 I was delighted to find a new bee for me: Tri-colored or Orange-belted Bumblebee, Bombus ternarius. It's on Sedum "Autumn Joy."

 

They're zippy little bees, tolerant but fast. 

I found a Grail--a plant I've grown but once and then lost touch with. This is Salvia patens, Gentian Sage, so called because the only flower that comes close to its jaw-dropping pure royal blue would be bottle gentian. I have to say that this salvia beats even gentian for a true blue. It's bluer than almost any delphinium I've seen. Not a hint of lavender. BLUE. blue blue electric blue. Nothing like it.  Not that I'm hung up on blue or anything.

 

Debby Kaspari, a fellow plant freak and awesome gardener, caught me massaging Salvia seedpods until I found some fat brown ripe seeds. Eureka!

 

I would imagine you know what will happen to those. It's gonna take about a year, but expect to see this plant in my garden in 2019. Garden goals!

 

Debby and I were taken on a deluxe two-person sunset pontoon boat cruise around the lake, during which we ogled a young common loon, three hooded mergansers, a bald eagle and about ten billion whirligig beetles. I fell asleep with the sun on my cheek.  I dreamt I was in a Cindy House painting.  And that is a beautiful dream indeed.

Thank you, Kathy Foley and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum staff, for having me up to honor one of my dearest friends. It was a trip I'll never forget. 

Thank you my dear dear friends for all the love. I'm going to try and store it up for awhile. 

 

A badly-lit goodbye clench at the hotel last night. I had soul-feeding conversations with (from left) Amy Montague, Larry Barth, Cindy House, Barry (and Lisa, far left!) Van Dusen and Eric Derleth, and I'm much the better for it. Gosh I love these people. I feel so lucky to call them friends. Shoutout to my beloved James Coe who was yakkin' elsewhere when this shot was taken.

 

Now to walk .6 miles in search of dinner. DTW Terminal A, here I come.

On Beyond Warblers

On my way to the Duluth/Superior airport for the flight home from Wisconsin, I finally got into some grasslands. Burbling bobolinks and western meadowlarks, Savannah sparrows, and these little cuties: clay-colored sparrows. It's a little blurry, but see that gray hindneck? Kind of like a bleached-out chipping sparrow. They like evergreens in grassy savannah. I got out of the car at several places and just breathed, and let the songs wash over me. It all made me thirst for North Dakota's Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival, held in Carrington June 7-10, where we'll be speaking, field-tripping, and playing music for the fifth consecutive year. I missed it last year due to severe burnout; Bill soldiered on alone. We're taking the kids. They can't wait. This year, they'll be going on the field trips with us, as they did in West Virginia. Oh, boy! It's nice that they're old enough to drag out of bed early, and be good troopers on long field trips.

Here on the blog, we're still in Wisconsin. I hope that by now all birders with a pulse will be heading to Chequamegon Bay's Second Annual Birding and Nature Festival next May. Tuck your pants into your socks. I'm currently fighting a tick-borne disease (take your pick; there are at least four I could have) and I'm rooting for the doxycycline. Feeling like I've been run over by a truck, and still having to get up and go. I've had Lyme disease four times (oddly enough, while living in Lyme, Connecticut) so I'm pretty familiar with the symptoms. Had a spectacular bulls-eye bite on my ankle, and a week later couldn't lift a jug of milk without groaning in pain. I will say that this is a fairly mild case as they go, and I hope I'm catching it in time.

Enough about me. Not only warblers were migrating, and stacking up on Superior's south shore. Everything was moving: woodpeckers, hawks, sparrows, nuthatches, vireos, grosbeaks. It was a heady show.

The nasal yanks of red-breasted nuthatches sounded through the spruces everywhere I went. They'll breed here, but they, too, were waiting for a tailwind.
I was eager to see a black-backed woodpecker, which would have been a life bird, so I checked out every woodpeckeresque form and woody tap. Who's that? All the clues are there.
A resplendent female yellow-bellied sapsucker. If she were a guy, she'd have a red beard.Earlier in the day, I'd followed a slow pecking deep into the woods, visions of black-backed woodpeckers dancing in my head, to find a pileated woodpecker working on a trunk at ground level. It always pays to check. And it reminded me of my childhood, when I made a sport and science of sneaking up on any woodpecker I heard in the Virginia woodlands. Man, the looks I got at pileated woodpeckers that way! I learned the peck intensities and rates of different species, too, stuff you can't get from any field guide. Funny: we all seem to remember our childhoods as quite solitary. I can assure you that, for the most part, mine was. Youngest of five, obsessed with birds and nature, alone and quiet, and in the woods as much as possible. Not much has changed.

A red-eyed vireo found a lovely backdrop in maple seeds. I always marvel that maples set seed before most trees even have their leaves!This gorgeous adult broad-winged hawk flew low in front of my creeping car, then swept up onto a low-hanging limb. Car as blind. I poked myself out the window to make a portrait, then waited for him to move on of his own volition before advancing. I count it a little victory when a bird moves because it wishes to, not because I've forced it to. Each bird has its own comfort zone, and I try not to violate that. Wisconsin's gifts have fueled this blog for a long time. Hard to believe I was only there for two full days and parts of two more--Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. What treasures will four days in North Dakota's pothole region bring to a blogger who's finally gotten a good camera? I'll probably be blogging about the birds out there until Christmas. Brace yourselves! We're off at the screech of dawn.