Remembering Hannah--Dean's Fork Walk 2

I looked back down where I'd been and reveled at the stripe of sunlight still illuminating Hannah's old pasture. That big cut log to the left is where I saw her last, on my birthday in July, 2016. That image is burned into my mind. That was a day the animals came to me, too. Three skunks and Hannah.  They know.

There was nothing like this moment, and it was one of those rare times when the camera captured exactly how it felt to be met, accompanied, as darkness was falling. That was the last time I saw Hannah. I understand she's gone to live with five other horses. So maybe that's good, better for her. But Dean's Fork just isn't the same without the spirit of this perfectly made, cool little Appaloosa. I loved it so much when she'd come walking out to meet me, and accompany me a few hundred yards down the road before turning back to her preferred pasture.

 

A redtail screamed and circled overhead. They always make me smile, because I'm wondering if DOD sent them. At this point I'd have been perfectly content with all I'd seen and been able to shoot. But I heard footsteps in the leaf litter, and the fattest of all possums came walking down, crossed the road, climbed down into the streambank and up the other side, and kept going.

 

He was a good-looking boar possum, had most of his tender ears (frost tends to bite them ragged); had his whole tail and all his fur.

  

He crossed Hannah's pasture and kept walking. I bet he knows where all the persimmon trees are.

 

And up the next slope he went, a possum with a purpose.

 

 

I wasn't dead sure who left these. Maybe a bobcat, maybe a fox. Hybrid poop, with the short squarish segments of a cat, and the long hairy taper of a canid.

 

In November, you begin to treasure the last colored leaves. You look for the contrast between them and the brown background, and revel in the blue sky while it's here.

  

I got down to the black barn, and the magic portal that let me inside last time I was there had been tied delicately shut with blue twine. Oh. 

As much as I'd enjoyed snooping around in there, I was glad to think that someone was trying to keep the barn uninvaded. 

 

I stuck my iPhone's eye up to a crack and got in that way.

 I never tire of the slashes of light that come through open barn siding. I know I'll paint this phenomenon someday, maybe when I have to sit still for awhile. Like, getting over something, or letting something heal.  I feel compelled to move as much as I can while I still can. 

 

Everything was still in place, including the giant black mound of bat guano that makes me smile every time I see it. That's a LOTTA BATS. Or a few, pooping for a very long time. Either way, it's a beautiful thing, at least to me.

Back out in the sunlight, I found more tracks from the good-sized coy-wolf that had made the exact same walk I was making, just a few hours earlier. He'd have to do for my canine companion. Unseen, like most of my companions these days.

New England Sojourn, Bonus Bird Messengers

My trip through New England, December 1-10, was a beautiful getaway. I got to meet amazing new friends and hang out with old friends and family. 

Avian veterinarian extraordinaire Robert Giddings, DVM, 

Charlie Macaw's vet and my dear friend.

 He drove more than 2 hours to see me, 2 hours back. So grateful!

Me and Leo Kulinski, deerstalker/photographer/woodsman at White Memorial Conservation Center. 

I spread the Baby Birds gospel to to a several hundred people in three talks in Litchfield, CT, Westerly, RI and Salem, MA.

It was so beautiful to be in Litchfield again. I was gobsmacked by the simple majesty of the white New England churches. Their window glass all wavy, they've been there forever, monuments to faith and love and caring of the parishoners.

Of course, I looked in the windows to see the pews, and got totally distracted by the reflection of the trees and homes, and the sky holes of the windows on the opposite side, and the clouds, then the apparent holes in the fabric of the Universe. And I don't drink or smoke or take anything...looking is more than enough.

While I was preparing for my talk in the empty Carriage House at White Memorial Conservation Center, two ravens flew by, honking sonorously. My head snapped up; I did the mental calculation of how long it would take me to race outside to see them; knew they'd be long gone. I became still and simply savored their honks, a halloo from Great North, a "You go girl!" from these higher beings of humor, intelligence, mystery and magic.

The talk went great. The ravens had sprinkled their fairy dust over the Carriage House and everyone assembled there.

We filled the Carriage House at White Memorial Conservation Center on a Saturday afternoon! What a thrill!

I was delighted to find a new friend in the dynamic, articulate and impossibly talented Gerri Griswold, Director of Administration and Development for White Memorial Conservation Center. She moves so fast I had to scrounge a picture of her, and now she's in Iceland for the 46th time, leading a tour for her company, Krummi Travel. Krummi is Icelandic for "raven."

Nice mount there GG. You like taxidermy?

We hit it off so well we started talking about going to Iceland together. Maybe taking a small group along. And as if to reinforce a great idea, three medium-sized particolored Arctic birds fluttered up from practically underfoot as we made our way along the path to White Memorial's headquarters.  One paused briefly on the most Icelandic-looking boulder it could find.

Gerri and I looked at each other, and we just knew it was a sign that we should do this.

I got these shots of my first snow bunting of 2016 with my iPhone!! I didn't bring my big rig on this trip because I had literally no room in the art and book-crammed car for it. And I kicked myself about a dozen times. I'll never come back to New England without it. Place is lousy with great birds. I'll carry it on my lap if I have to.

Perhaps I'll find myself in Iceland, if the Little People who sent these beautiful messengers have anything to say about it. Pretty neat trick, that, a cosmic nudge.

Speaking of messengers, this is Gerri's darling Lab mix Bradley, with his toy, Corn. 

Those of you who know Liam know that his familiar when he was a baby was also named Corn. Oh my gosh! I flashed back, bigtime. Oh I miss that sometimes sweet, sometimes tart, roundish baby boy.

Corn was a gray and faded shadow of his former self by the time Liam lost him. Thank God Corn was there for that first haircut in Gene's Barber Shop and Rumor Parlor down on Third Street. 

 Corn is long gone, lost, and no one knows where. Liam turned up without his takealong famililar one afternoon and when we asked where Corn was he pointed and answered, "Behind you."

We never figured out what that meant, and Liam didn't either. We offered New Corn and Corn III as backup, but they didn't smell funky and they just weren't right, and that was the end of the relationship. 

Bradley, on the other hand, knows where his toys are, knows all his toys by name, and will go get them for you. And he does not tear them to smithereens, the way Chet Baker does.

I met several noble, hard-working and excellent dogs on this trip, and Bradley was one of them. We connected! What a shiny beautiful gem he is, and he saves his mamma Gerri every day, just like Chet Baker saves me.

 Looking back on this year and all it's held, I'm proud to have ended it with a bang. Twenty-two Baby Birds talks delivered,  one major show of the original artwork at the Museum of American Bird Art, two pop-up shows of the art in this last New England swing, and around a thousand copies of Baby Birds sold out of my studio mailroom. I did not sit on my hands in 2016. Nor do I plan to in 2017. 

I went through my iCalendar the other day and made a list of the significant events in the year. It's a good exercise, to review it all, to see what you accomplished (Baby Birds published and promoted, two great trips to New England, a transformational trip to Sedona with Shila, ten days guiding in Costa Rica and 14 in South Africa, Liam driving, Phoebe in San Diego and Panama)  and what you simply survived (four root canals, four crowns,  cooking for 60, Chet's deafness, Ellen's murder, oil and gas decimation of a beloved forest...I could go on) And you realize that you're pretty tough; that you never once sat down to do nothing; that you used every moment and sought out the sunrises and sunsets, star conjunctions and moonrises, and plunged into it all with a wide open heart, breasting the waves even as some rolled you under.

Coming soon: Another fabulous dog who crossed my path and worked his way into my heart. 

Happy New Year, y'all. I hope yours is filled with the people you love, and the delicious anticipation of new potential in 2017.

Bird Messengers, Wading Dog, November Sun

Beauty lives at the same farm as the mini's, but she's in a different pasture. Every time I post a photo of her people chide me on her grooming. Walp, sorry, but I don't run with currycombs, and don't plan to. I shoots 'em as I sees 'em. Besides, Beauty's shy. I'm very lucky to be able to stroke her nose. Most of the time we just talk. I try to shoot photos over the fence.  It's easier said than done. This one came out well, made me laugh.

Chet and I forge on. The green is unreal. So vibrant, it's almost fake. I pull out my little pad and write a haiku couplet about it.

November's sharp green
Lies false on the bottomland
Like so much spilled paint
All around is gray
And the dry russet leaves who
Knew when to let go

We decide to go up a road that's flanked by a little run, as they call the creeks around here. It's very warm, 70's, and Chet wants to wade. I absolutely adore sitting on a sun-warmed rock and watching him walk spraddle-legged through the pools. Ker-plink, ker-plank, ker-plonk.

 

He's not much for swimming, but he sure likes to wade.

 

He goes up and down the streambed, obviously enjoying the different depths, lapping a taste from each pool.

He goes under the bridge, and rainbows spill over the abutment.

That's about how I feel right now--bathed in rainbows. In a tee-shirt on a 70 degree day in November in the Mid-Ohio Valley, infamous for its dreary cloudbound winters.

 

Such a magnificent doggeh. The lower I crouch, the more magnificent he becomes.

He enjoys being photographed. Good thing, that. I swear he smiles for me.

On our way back to the car I am musing that I haven't heard from my Dear Old Dad in a little while. I figure he's busy with Mom, who joined him last January. I am thinking about them and it suddenly hits me that Mom, Dad and their first child Donny are together at last. Tears of joy start in my eyes at the thought. I can feel their joy. I don't know why I'm thinking about this now, but when I'm moving for hours, I get a free-associative thought process that I can't attain sitting at a desk. I just empty my skull out of all the trivia and noise and let better things take precedence. I'm thinking about their reunion when a red-shouldered hawk silently launches from a dead stub just off my left shoulder. It flies on a long oblique angle right across the road in front of me, and I have time to get my binoculars on it. I trace it well into the woods, where it flares its beautiful zebra-striped tail and lands again, obscured. I see it settle its wings and can tell it's going to sit there for awhile.

I'm absolutely breathless with the synchrony, wiping my eyes so I can see better. Couldn't have a better message from Dad than that spontaneous thought, followed by a hawk messenger--the first species he ever used to contact me. I lower the binoculars and in my sightline in the creek just ahead are some heavy ripples. They could only come from a mammal, swimming. Will it be muskrat, beaver, otter? An enormous black mink loops out from the cut bank, swimming, its furry tail floating atop the water. I haven't seen a mink in years. And this is such a fine big animal. Its fur is espresso brown shading to black, and so shiny! I watch it through binoculars as it swims upstream, climbs out on a log, shakes like a small, lithe dog, and bounds through the dying vegetation on the streambank. I don't follow, because I don't want to disturb it, or introduce Chet Baker to a new animal, a tussle with whom he is likely to lose.

This is the creek where the mink swam by. It looks pretty tamed down, surrounded by hayfields, but a mink lives there, and I saw it.

I come home full of stories like this and it's so hard to tell them. The words just tumble out and I don't make sense even to myself, much less to Liam and Bill. All these random animal sightings, these unbidden thoughts about loved ones long gone. It all makes sense to me while it's happening, but it doesn't translate well into conversation.

"So how was your day?"

"Great! I saw some clouded sulfurs that made me think of Mom and Dad and Donny all being together again, and then this red-shoulder came shooting across right in front of me, and I'm sure it was Dad, and then there was this mink that he must have wanted to show me!"

I can say, "I saw a tree that looked like a magic hand shooting cloud webs!" but without a photo, what would that mean?

So it's nice to sit down, throw a lasso around all that, and write it for you, in a way someone might understand. Maybe even me.