Snowy Run

I run so I don't run away.

Some days that's true. Most days it's only partly true. I don't know how I made it through the gray Ohio Valley winters before I ran. It was more difficult.

It gets dicey when our road ices up, and the township doesn't do a thing about it. The whole thing turns into a skating rink. And then, much as I need to get out, I have a deathly fear of breaking something and being sidelined.

Chet seems to share that fear. On this day I try three times, and three times I fail to get him to accompany me. He apologizes with ears pasted against his little grapefruit head, wide googly eyes. I am sorry, so sorry. But this is not fit weather for man or beast. I am staying home, swaddled in fleece, to wait for you. 

And he turns tail and heads for the house. His tracks, a picture of canine indecision.

He lowtails it to the house, stands on the porch and waits for me to plod back and let him in. Then watches me leave from the foyer window, his little black and white cowface forlorn but resolute. I won't beg anyone to come running with me. I don't beg anyone to do anything with me. I miss them, but I'm fine alone, too.

I go back out the driveway. Damn, I miss that red oak on snowy empty days, almost as much as I miss her on hot summer mornings. She left a hole in my heart when she fell.

On days like this when our road looks like this I pick my way over this horrible icy mess and

  run the main roads, on the wet salt and cinders. And as I go slowly along I think about how lucky I am to have these landscapes to consider. I think about how much they change day by day, month by month, season by season.

Here's late December.

And as unbelievable as it seems now, here's a Sunday in mid-September.

I didn't mean to plant myself in exactly the same spot. I just stand where the picture happens to be.

It all just blows me away. I wonder how I manage to stay inside for a minute on a sunny day in September. The answer is: I don't. I drink it all in as if it were life itself. Because it is.


As it looks now.

And at dawn in August.

But the cold winter air is life itself, too, and I have learned to appreciate its narrow gifts. December can't give the luscious fruit that September does, but it has its stark beauty. I could paint this scene, oh yes I could. Much more easily and effectively than I could produce a September scene.

The warm crimson of this barn against the silver gray hills, its weathered doors almost a continuation of the color and pattern of the forested hill behind...ohhh.

I have to bring a camera along now and then, especially when the new snow has fallen.

 A hayrake sits out, tines stirring snowflakes.

I decide to climb to an old country church and check out its cemetery. It's not just running, it's aesthetic exercise. Next time...gravestones, and a few more of my favorite things. Snowflakes on mittens and whiskers on kittens. Or something like that.

Half moon on one hand
Sun rising on the other
Twenty-two. Walking.
Ice so treacherous
It could snap bone, and with it
Close-kept sanity.

Birds, Barns, Cows and Gear

Here's a pile of gear--it's what Bill took with him every day on the bus. Mine was not much smaller. You can imagine what it's like stumbling around in the dark at 4 AM, making sure you have everything you'll need.

People look at our stacks of luggage in the airport, barely concealing their disdain for out excesses, and I want to say, "Hey! We're working here! It takes gear to show people good birds!"

Here's Ann Oliver's photo of me showing some folks their life Sprague's pipit.
But I don't say anything. I let them think all those suitcases hold my makeup, heels, creams, hairdryer, curling iron, gels, emollients, and diamond tennis bracelets, because that's certainly the impression I give, as dolled up and fabulous as I always am.


For instance, here's Bill using an iPod and speakers to try to bring a clicking yellow rail into view. Though everyone was patient and he tried for a very long time, the rails--and there were five or more--were content to click just out of sight. The day before, Bill and I had seen our life yellow rail in this spot as it lightfooted across the road right in front of our van! It ran, then flew, its body upright, its impossibly long toes dangling from greenish legs, then dropped into the marsh, never to be seen again. I still can't believe we saw a yellow rail, with no playback of its calls. It just appeared to us. I guess it was meant to be.

So because the birds sometimes hide, we amuse ourselves looking at other North Dakota life forms. I think these may be red Angus cattle. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. They look like Angus. Both red Angus and red Holsteins have finally gained favor after decades of culling because they were the "wrong" color.

People can be so arbitrary. And yet I have to admit that fawn-colored Boston terriers kind of bug me. They ought to be black or brindle red. Whatever these cattle are, they're certainly handsome mahogany red and rounded beasties.

North Dakota always inspires in Bill and me the most intense outbuilding envy. We have one outbuilding, the hardest-working four-car garage in Ohio. It is crammed to overflowing with two cars, four bikes, a lawn tractor, a Real Tractor, all my pots and potting soil, tools, bird houses, bird feeders, seed, feed of all descriptions, recycling...you can barely get to your car. So I dream of loading a few North Dakota granaries on a flatbed trailer and hauling them to Ohio, where they would probably promptly rot and fall down. But a girl can dream, can't she?

Two granaries, linked together to make a fabulous little conference room at Dakota Sun Gardens not far from Carrington.

And there are always the barns, the beautiful barns. I have my favorites, like this one with the licheny roof and the mostly gone paint.

I love this barn for its incredible beauty, but also because Say's phoebe's live here, and the grove behind it is just full of orioles and house wrens and bluebirds and yellowthroats. When I see these photos I hear their songs again. We take festivalgoers here for a hit of forest birds when they've seen enough grassland birds for awhile.

And what do the children do while we bird? They go adventuring (their own word for exploring). Liam makes sure they both have adventuring sticks, which makes them feel safer.

He packed their Ohio adventuring sticks in his luggage, and carried them all over North Dakota, and got them back to Ohio only to have Chet Baker chew them up when they were left on the lawn.

A stick on the lawn is fair game. Chewing sticks is a big part of my job.

And from Ann Oliver, who was there, some freshly baked comestibles at the Woodworth Diner. Mmm, mmm, good...

The fabulissimo Rhubarb Coffee Cake Square. It doesn't look that impressive, but oh my goodness it was delicious. Rumor has it that Lynne has a recipe. Hmmm, Linney? Wanna share this gooey goodness with the world?
One thing I can tell you: I am planting some rhubarb this fall. All the signs point to it.

I am excited. I get to stay home for a couple of weeks and paint now, in one of my favorite times of the year--late summer, when the insect music is an overwhelming swelling chorus, when everything is blooming its head off, when the hayrolls march across the fields and the bluebirds gather on the wires, when the warblers start slipping through the birches. Mmmm. See you around!

Tired Barns

I have borrowed from Robert Frost's "Birches" for the first two and a half lines. The rest is straight out of Whipple. I am moved by the primitive, elegiac beauty of tired barns. No one's making them any more, and I hope not to see the day they all have fallen down.

When I see barns lean to left and right
Along the lines of straighter, cleaner sheds
I like to think the years have granted them perspective
of a kind denied the newly-built.
A point of view, born of knowing
the things new sheds can never comprehend.
The bleat of a lamb, newly born
Left across the field by its foolish dam
The siding strains, calling back.
Afterbirth and greasepot
Rope, sweet hay, pigeon feathers
Carcass hanging, gleaming corn and chaffy oats.
What is kept in the galvanized shed?
A car, a lawnmower, cans and bottles
Tools and tires.

The wood barn leans over, listening
For hoofbeats, the cluck and slap of reins
Gentle belch of cowcud, new chicken peep
The rolling sigh of blue doves.