Messages from Bill

           One of the hard things about losing someone is that you keep thinking they're going to get back in touch with you--that you're going to get a message here pretty soon. But you listen and watch and stay open, and though they're on your mind so much, the messages mostly never arrive. You have to slowly let go of that thought that you're going to hear their voice or get a strong feeling that they're near. I guess thinking and hoping that that might happen is one way we forestall grief, hold off the emptiness.

   And then there are the days when things happen. You let yourself think that you've just gotten a message, that you're still accompanied, that there might still be a connection.

  The whole time I've lived here--29 years now--I've maintained a "yard list" of all the birds that have flown over, stopped by, bred, or visited this sanctuary. New additions have slowed to a trickle, but I have to say that the species I'm adding now are the coolest of the cool, and that makes up for the years between new additions. Bill was always prognosticating on the next species we were going to get. Me, I'm pretty Zen about it. What shows up, shows up. But oh, the thrill of discovery! The surprise! 

 On May 10, I went out to feed the bluebirds in the yard and the meadow. Both pairs are feeding fledglings now, and I have been subsidizing them once a day, early on each freezing-cold morning. I figure it's hard enough to feed four or five fledglings without temperatures starting out in the 30's every morning. I was leaning against the garage, watching the bluebirds through binoculars, when I saw something that looked like a dark stick in the middle of the meadow.  

 It was a shorebird, and it wasn't a woodcock or a killdeer. It wasn't even a Wilson's snipe, which was species #188 on May 2, 2013. It wasn't a black-bellied plover (#182, May 18, 2006). It was a solitary sandpiper, and it was species #198 for the sanctuary! 

It was poking around looking for food in the little swale that Bill always said would be perfect for a pond. He and I had quite a few discussions about whether making a pond was even feasible. I maintained that the sandy loam there was the wrong soil to hold water, and furthermore that there wasn't enough runoff to fill it, much less keep it wet long enough to even raise a tadpole. I still think that. I go back and forth, back and forth. I would LOVE to put in a shallow frog pond, to serve as a vernal pool for all the wonderful amphibians we have. But I just don't think there's sufficient water, and I'm sure the soil is too permeable for this wonderful notion to work. So now I'm thinking about how much a liner would cost, because I'm still thinking about it.

Here's a little digiscoped video (I just hand-held the phone up to the scope's eyepiece, so it's pretty shaky) of the solitary sandpiper messing about in Bill's little wishful pool. 

            

                  

That gracious and beautiful visitor stayed long enough for me to charge the house and grab my scope and long lens.

Solitary sandpipers are such pretty birds. They have a constellation of stars flung across a dusky back, a nice white eye ring, and a long, tapered shape that is distinctive. They bob and weave like an oversized spotted sandpiper, but they aren't quite as compulsive about it. More elegant, more restrained.

 

This was an amazing thing to see, walking right next to Bill's grave. Did he send it to me?

 

 

 

The sandpiper wasn't saying. It took flight with a three-part rolling trill and arrowed out, to disappear over the northeast horizon. 

 

 

I was so glad I was there to see that. It would have been so easy to miss it. And hearing its wild woodland call over the meadow made my day.

 

I came back inside from watching the sandpiper, sat down at my drawing table, and glanced out, as I do 5,000 times a day, to see this...

 

Who came up with this design? Is there a flashier bird in the world than a red-headed woodpecker? Durn thing looks like a stuffed toy out there!

It occurred to me that I had just come in from seeing a brand new species right by Bill's grave, and now here was his favorite bird, flying and hitching around like it owned the yard.

Perching like a hieroglyph on the feeder post

 

 

Using all the feeders, as red-heads will..they are fearless, inventive and inquisitive birds

Speaking of inventive, this is how I feed sunflower hearts now that tube feeders have been taken out of service. The mesh, intended for black oil sunflower seed, is too small to admit the new improved fatter shelled seeds, but it's perfect for the hearts! No ports to spread house finch disease--it's working well! I had sidelined this feeder because black oil sunflower wouldn't fit through the mesh, but it's back in service now.

 

Little character was shuttling peanuts, one by one, to storage in the crevices in a telephone pole out in the yard.

Making the place ring with its churring growl, kerr kerr kerr!

With the solitary sandpiper and the red-headed woodpecker visiting on the same day, I had the feeling that Bill was reaching through the veil. Phoebe's immediate response: "He's saying BUILD THE DAMN POND, WOMAN!"

Yeah, well, I still have to think about it for awhile. Ohio can be pretty stingy with rain in the spring and summer. I just tipped ten gallons of rainwater into the two tadpole puddles I'm tending now, which are full of all the American toad eggs I saved from the driveway! With all the rain we got last week they were still actively drying up, and they're in straight clay, in the shade. Hard times for frogs and those who lug 40-pound jugs of water to their squiggly offspring. I take them out in the garden cart, three at a time. It's all I can do to hold the cart back with 120 pounds of water in it as we go down the steep hill. Do I really want to sign on to a large vernal pool all the way out the meadow? Kinda thinking I have enough to care for now...

But Bill, I just wanted you to know I got your messages, and your beautiful messengers. Thank you for sending them. We miss you more than ever.

 

Labrador Morning

It was such a beautiful morning. Cold, but every morning has been cold.

I’m used to cold. 23 degrees meant four layers, gloves, headband. Everything able to be zipped down or shed should the sun and the heat of running require it. I was really happy because my tiny Swarovski binoculars were finally back from repair. I’m so tough on binoculars. The bridge hinge was broken again, and they were badly out of alignment, too. That's what hundreds of miles of shaking will do. But this morning they were back and good as new. I saw a little head poking out of the grass on a high bank and with the binocs it resolved to an Eastern meadowlark. I reveled in the view, after so many runs without binoculars. Next up was a singing field sparrow, then three more meadowlarks and a displaying red-winged blackbird. I was so happy to see my friends up close again.

I saw some pineapple tops in the cow pasture and knew that the Harrises were tossing them out as treats for their Herefords. I smiled. I've seen pumpkins and apples in the same spot. I've fed pears to them here, too. 

I went to see one of my shadow barns, and I thought as I walked up how nice it would be to see Chet Baker’s little shadow on that warm red wood. All right, I couldn’t see him any more, but what if his shadow were to appear?

 

I could feel him near. Oh, how I miss seeing him, touching him. I’d have to settle for knowing his spirit was near. That’s something, but today it wasn’t enough. I heaved a big sigh. It was OK to miss him, but yearning wasn't something I could afford to indulge.

 

 I was going to stay happy this morning. I had my binoculars and somewhere to go. And nothing hurts when I run.  When you're my age, that's cause for celebration!

I was looking as I trotted along at the tufts of cow hair on the barbed wire to my right, thinking that if I could find one backlit, it’d be worth a shot. I caught a large dark shape out of the corner of my eye. It was a dog, a young Lab, and when I caught its eye it put its ears back and smiled. When I spoke to it, it tucked its tail and ran a little ways away.  "If you don't want me near you, I'll leave." Not afraid, just polite. So I averted my eyes, turned away and sat down on the side of the road, presenting the smallest profile I could. Soon enough it crept up and gingerly but neatly slipped under the barbed wire to come closer to me. As I watched, I thought, “This dog knows its way around barbed wire. This is a country dog. It's done this before."

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Once it decided I was no threat, the dog held its tail high and moved with confidence. Soon I was stroking it and rubbing its sides. I had thought it was a male from its high- carried tail and commanding presence, but a quick check showed it to be a female. Hmm. What an interesting dog. She seemed very happy to see me, a bit hungry, but by no means frantic or questing. Still, I was concerned. She wore a faded pink collar that had probably started out red. Her rabies tag was broken in half—no help in identifying her. I shook my head. You have a dog that can run for miles, and you don't put a viable ID tag on her collar? That’s what collars and tags are FOR. Then I laughed at myself. I'm one to talk. Until he lost his hearing, Chet never even wore a collar. But then he never went anywhere without me, either.

 The only other clue on the collar was a transponder, probably for an invisible fence. Data into the Situational Awareness processor.  It suggested to me that her escape was a jailbreak, that she was well-enough cared for to be kept inside a pricey electronic fence. Her glossy coat and shining eyes spoke of good food and good care. Her kindness and manners said that she'd been treated with love. She was not a dropoff, I decided, though Lord knows this is the kind of place people drop off unwanted animals. I’d just live-trapped a tomcat last week, clearly deposited in my turnaround to help reduce the avian population at that hippie lady’s bird sanctuary.

 

I was still gathering data. I sniffed her ruff. It smelled of stale winter house interior. This wasn’t a hunting dog; she was a house pet who had been let out just this morning. She wasn’t far from home. Her home-smell still clung to her.  For her part, she was gathering information on me. She knew I hadn’t had breakfast yet, either. I smelled of fresh air. She knew I was a ways from my home.

 I looked at her and decided I’d do whatever it took to reunite her with her owners.  It didn't matter how long it took. But first, she’d have to come along on my run. I knew without even asking that she would take me up on the offer. She'd already decided, too. At this point there was a great deal of nonverbal communication flying between us. It was electrifying. I hadn’t had a chance to speak dog for ever so long. To look, to sniff, to deduce, to exchange thought pictures. Dogs can get us in touch with that which is essential within us: Our senses, quite apart from our thoughts.

 

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 As I'd guessed, she was only too happy to come along. Her tail waved like a flag as she rocketed along dozens to hundreds of yards in front. We had forged an instant human/canine contract, an agreement to stay loosely together this beautiful morning. I'd keep her safe, and she'd keep me company.

I aimed to get off the county road as soon as possible, to turn down the dirt road.

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It was truly extraordinary to see a black inkblot on the landscape in front of me again.

To aim my camera at it and fire away.

 

I needed to call her something. "Roma" popped into my head, because she was roaming, for sure.  Roma she'd be, for the duration of our run.

 

Just like Chet used to, she'd stop periodically to look back and check on me, and then she'd double back. Three times she snuck up on me from behind, having made a huge circle around me. Each time she surprised me, I laughed. What a fun, interesting companion.

I called her, to see what would happen. Heah, Roma!!

 

She came back for all the world as if Roma were her name.

 

There was such a connection between us, it was as if I'd known her before. I had to wonder who had sent this wonderful dog to me this fine, fine morning. 

I wanted one thing, and that was to sit on a sunny hillside, where I used to sit with Chet, and gaze down into the valley below.

Roma thought that was an excellent plan. She was so excited to be out and about that she made about twenty circles around me as I sat and emptied my mind.

She had a prey drive that would do a cheetah proud. She dug, rooted, sniffed, watched. This dog was going to go away knowing something. It was awe-inspiring, and a bit unsettling. I'd become used to Chet, who in his later years kept mostly to the road or trail, and was happy to let most animals pass on by with just a word of caution from me. At one point on our run she spotted two distant deer I'd been praying she wouldn't see, and she bounded down the road to give chase. Ye gods, the eyesight and hearing on this animal! A sharp shout from me, and she stopped and stood to watch them run. Good dog. That told me she'd had some training. She was listening, even as she orbited. What a good girl.

And then, glory be, she flopped down to join me, rolled in the grass, and relaxed for a moment. That was all I'd ever wanted: just to be in the company of a dog again. To look at the landscape over the head of a good dog.

 

 She was the most interesting color. Not black, but deep seal-brown, like someone I loved so dearly. A seal-brown angel.

 

I'm so happy to meet you, Roma. Wherever you're from, whatever it takes, we'll get you home. Until then you and I are friends. Friends for a glorious hour or two.  

  

There was a perfection about her I couldn't take my eyes off. A lot of dog, with a lot of potential, and brains, too. Not camera-shy, as so many dogs are. Willing to be looked at and photographed.

 

 

Not dopey in the least. Not overbearing or obnoxious. Noble. Nobility is hard to find in dogs these days. So few people seem to be willing to work with their dogs to bring it out. This dog clearly came equipped with it, and had had some training. She had dignity.

Her light lemon eyes look a little crazy, but they're not. They reminded me of a lion's eyes.

  

Also a good dry-kisser. She planted a couple on my cheek. Yep, Roma had it all.

 

On our way back, she checked out the Toothless Lady. Oh, the memories. Chet used to walk a little gangplank into that collapsing barn. He drove me nuts. I'd writhe until he re-emerged from the rubble, so afraid he'd drop through what was left of the floor. Once he even went up into the haymow!! Arrrgh!! I watched helplessly as he climbed the stairs, could hear his footsteps up there, with me down below, afraid he'd run into a nest of coons or squirrels and lose his head. Terrible. Finally he came back down the rickety stairs with a look that said, "You worry too much."

Roma promised not to scare me like that. This dog has sense. Chet did too. He was just overconfident. A highwire walker.

Roma's Lab came out full bore when she found a ditch full of ice-coated water. It couldn't have been 25 degrees, but that dog broke the ice with playful slaps of her paws and LAY DOWN in the water!!

Oh how I laughed!

She was so cute I had to make some videos.

               

 See what I mean about her carriage? She's got presence.

Imagine loving to be in water so much that you lie down in it on a subfreezing morning.  I love the redwings singing in the background of this next video.




              




I knew our two-hour idyll had to end soon. As we neared home my mind was working through lots of scenarios. I'd stop at the most likely place and ask. If Roma wasn't theirs, I'd take her on home and call the dog warden. I'd offer to keep her until someone came forward. I knew someone was missing this wonderful dog already.

I stopped at the driveway to the house where I thought she lived and watched her carefully. She trotted up the driveway, betraying little anticipation. My neighbor came out on her porch saying, "You found my buddy!" A flood of relief washed over me. Thank goodness!

Roma turned to me and smiled and wagged. Their other dog, Dozer, who I knew from years of running past him, put his paws in my hands and looked up at me. I was so happy to have guessed right about where she belonged. Their owner explained to me that Roma had recently taken to roaming, willing to take the shock from her collar for the adventure that followed beyond.

I'd be that dog.

A new collar "for stubborn dogs" was on order. It would have a 9-volt battery. I winced inwardly, but kept my reaction in check. Not mine to judge. Everyone has a different way with their dog. I'd been lucky to live 2/3 mile off the dangerous county road. And Chet was nobody's wanderer. He wanted to go wherever I went, period. If Mether was home, so was Chet, and that was that. He wouldn't even go out the driveway to get the mail with someone else if I wasn't along. Roma, on the other hand, is built to run all day. She lives right on a dip in the main county road, and people regularly hit 65 mph going down that hill. Her owners don't want her wandering at quitting time when everybody's rocketing back from town to their home in the hills, too many with a Bud Light already in hand. I get it.

Now came the moment I'd been waiting for. "What is her name?"

"Remy."

I gasped. Could I have come much closer, with my made-up name? No wonder she came when I called her! There's something going on here. My little voice had been listening hard, knowing things.

 

Ah, Remy. What joy you brought me, just being your loose, wild, untamed, jail-busting self. A dog with no use for obedience training, for leashes or collars. A dog who is no annex of any human, a dog who is nothing but herself. This dog runs and hunts and digs and splashes and savors every inch of the landscape, 100% alive, 100% animal, 100% grateful to be outside on her own.

But on this morning, she chose to be with me.

Remy, whoever sent you to me, whatever spirit moved you to follow me down and give me a hit of your grace and humor and beauty, I thank most humbly.

 

Perhaps we'll run again someday.

Travels with DOD: The Abandoned House

Curiosity is my constant companion. Must give credit where credit is due: Both my mother, Ida, and father Dale were curious people. Ida kept a Webster's Unabridged about ten feet from the kitchen sink so she could look up a word she wondered about. She had a terrific vocabulary and was a voracious reader (these things tend to go hand in hand). My dad, too, read stacks of books, with history, science and biography his favorite fields. My childhood, I realize now, was the heyday of magazines, with Popular Mechanics, Farm Journal, National Geographic and The West Virginia Hillbilly all gracing our coffee table and continually renewed. Oh how I loved reading them. 

As a result of this parentage, I find it impossible to drive by an abandoned house, if I have time and privacy to investigate. I'm still telling you about all the things I saw and did on April 10, 2017, in commemoration of DearOldDad's passing. 

They are getting harder and harder to find. But one doesn't go looking for abandoned houses. One just comes upon them.

And the upholstered chair outside the side door just calls to you.

And there sits the washing machine on the back porch,  just where Frieda Ruigh kept hers. 

And you've just got to go inside, though it's dark and spooky and the floor isn't so good.

World's Greatest Grandpa mug is no surprise. The last people to live here were likely old, old, old. 

The kitchen window. Oh, man. I'm loving this place. I'm seeing it in its glory days, and in its decrepitude, too. 

I'm certainly not the first to go snooping here. Someone's laid a cookbook out on the drainboard.

To my great surprise, it's a microwave cookbook, which spends a great deal of time explaining how microwave cooking is very different from conventional cooking. No kidding. I look around but don't see the oven in question. 

I do find a treasure in the rubble: a handblown tumbler from the Princess Anne Inn, Virginia Beach, Virginia. It looks to date from somewhere in the early 60's, judging from the turquoise font. It is now on my bedside table.  I do a quick Google and find this article from  The Virginian Pilot, Dec. 28, 1997.

The Princess Anne Inn, a fixture on the Oceanfront for 35 years, closed its doors in September in the wake of stepped-up city enforcement of the state's fire sprinkler law. The hotel was one of 33 resort inns cited by city fire officials last February for failure to comply with a 1990 law requiring inns three stories and higher to be equipped with fire sprinklers. Others either met the Sept. 1 deadline or their owners had signed consent orders drafted by the city attorney's office promising to complete sprinkler retrofitting within a day or two. 

Next, I search for images. Oh yeah. That's the one. A grande dame in her time. I think the newspaper article has it wrong. That place was built before 1962! The cars alone there look like mid 1940's to me. 

I run and fetch my tumbler. Its lines please me. The curved bottom reminds me of some of the  hand-blown glassware produced in the big West Virginia glass factories. No two were alike. My mother loooved to stop at the factory outlet glassware stores. I did, too. My DOD, not so much, but he humored her. 

As I look at the tumbler, I wonder if this is an apport from DOD. We used to, very occasionally, drive to Virginia Beach for vacations in very dark, very cold, very smoky motel rooms, where we would nurse our raging sunburns at night. Because there was no such thing as sunscreen, just suntan lotion. Which did nothing more than allow you to fry in your own oil. 

DOD hated the beach with a passion, because you couldn't grow anything there, and there was nothing to do or produce. And he wasn't much for water, or lying in the sun. As I think back on it, I remember him taking off in the car when Mom would take us to the beach. He probably hightailed it for the nearest agricultural land, to see what they were growing, check out a diner or two. 

I'm very pleased to see the similarity in font between tumbler and publicity postcards. I think we have now seen the Princess Anne Inn. And the tumbler is never going to go into the dishwasher if I have anything to say about it. And I do.

I also find a porcelain flower arrangement that has become an apt catcher for bat guano. I see where they've been hanging on the wall above. You can see more pellets in the background. I smile very broadly at this discovery.  Accompanied, by some of my favorite people.  This little knickknack I leave in its place. It's just too good there, brimful of bat-bockie.

I'm so struck by the verdant spring green and sun outside, in contrast to the gloom within. My iPhone does a wonderful job with the light, where my Canon would quail and fail to capture any of it.

I turn a corner and find a gunfight going on. I'm betting on Yellow Guy.

I absolutely love the evidence left by other curious explorers before me. 

And I love the scenes. Every window, a painting: shouting spring and whispering decay.

Colonial motifs were very popular in the 1960's and early 1970's. I grew up with colonial motifs. 

But the layers go back further, to the pale posy times of the 1930's.  I adore peely wallpaper, this stratified record of popular taste through the decades.

Moved to go outside**, I wander amongst the plantings. Pheasant eye narcissus is going nuts, having multiplied itself a thousand times over.

**family joke

This shot says it all. What once was, what is no more, and what persists. Still, they persist.

 And the souvenirs I bring home: my Princess Anne Inn tumbler, two spice bottles (one still full of very fragrant powdered cloves, which I throw out); one missing its lid, to use as a vase for Baby Moon narcissus from Murr. And a keepsake block from the Nelsonville (Ohio) Block factory. I have one at home, but it's broken in half. This one weighs in at a whoppin' 8.5 pounds, twice the weight of your average brick. It's my new doorstop, and the broken one has been demoted to paperweight.

You have to bring something home, right DOD? Otherwise it'll all go when the fire department burns the place down, or it collapses in on its wonderful self. It sure has been fun exploring this abandoned house with you, on April 10, 2017. I'll lift a tumbler to you tonight.