Talking to the Neighbors

As I continue to recover from surgery and shingles, feeling around to find my strength and wellness again, I'm slowly upping my hours and miles back to something that feels normal. I try to surpass 10,000 steps per day. It feels so good to cover some ground again. I'm not sure when running is going to feel right again. Hoping it will. Ankles hurt all the time. Not sure what that's about.

For now, I'm in hiking boots, slogging through mud and over tussocks.

If the morning is fair, which it all too rarely is, I hurry out to catch the sunrise. 

I can never capture it to my satisfaction, but trying is fun. There's the corner oak that marks the east 40 on our property. 

If I capture the land, the clouds suffer. 

If I capture the clouds, the land suffers. Still, digital phone cameras are worlds better than my little film Pentax and Canon AE-1 used to be. Dawn's always a challenge. 

On my way out to the sunrise I stop to see Ellen, or what's left of her. She's still lying in the field where the coy-wolves dragged her, the same one where she fell. Just a ribcage, a spine, a leg and a hoof. 

She'll be gone with the first hay cut, just some hard bits of bone in a hayroll somewhere.

This is why I need Buffy, Flag and Pinky. I need them like I need breakfast and hot tea.

I need these wide landscapes and softly smiling skies.

And oh, I need the sun, the shadows. It's been behind gray blankets for far too long. My friend Scott called them "dryer lint skies." Just about as inspiring as dryer lint, too.

But on a sunny morning, well, anything's possible. My brain works a lot better.

The base of an oak reminds me of a mountain slope with trees creeping up to timberline. You look at a distant mountain in the West, and you can't believe how tiny the huge trees look, straggling up its flanks. You try to imagine walking out there. That's what this oak bole brought to mind.

The bark of another oak, a fresh amazement. How can the code for this corky structure be contained in the DNA of cells? How does it form so characteristically by species, into perfect runnels and ridges?

Set back from the new fenceline is a row of old posts, relics. Someone strung them with barbed wire while they were living trees, and the wire cut faces in them as they struggled to grow around it. I saw a moai god, come to Ohio. Rapalachian cow scratcher. 

I'm delighted to see the neighbors coming up out of the woods.

I haven't met them here this time of day.

The lone Holstein heifer takes herself a good scratch on the log god. Looks like he's saying Ooh Ooh Ooh.

I can see much of it is worn smooth from such daily attention. This is why I can't put bluebird boxes up in cow pastures. They'd get scratched and leaned and pushed right down.

This little Hereford bull calf is so adorable in his heavy fur coat. 

And I'm charmed by the markings on this one. Look at her bib, the spot between neck and breast; the particolored ears. Cattle are dead easy to tell apart at first glance. Whitetails, not so much. 

You can look at her stance and see something's going on here. She arches her back and cuts a luxuriant fart, doing her part to add to the world's methane.

In the woods, another little sprite pauses to look back at me. 

A smart person won't fall in love with beef cattle. Happy to be dumb then, blundering my way through others' hayfields, hanging on their fencelines, talking to the neighbors.

Evening at French Creek

Paddling French Creek, I had a wildlife show unfolding all the time.


A little yellow-rumped warbler dawdled around on a black willow overhead, showing me its buttery badonkadonk. Also puttering around in the gallery forest: bay-breasted and magnolia warblers, white-eyed vireos, Carolina wrens, blue jays, flickers and robins.

I found a lovely painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) who seemed not to fear me at all

and a musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus) who was so alarmed at my approach that he tipped off his basking perch on a dead tulip limb, landed on his back and scrabbled frantically over and into the water. See that pointy nose and rounded dome of a shell? That's a stinkpot. I like them. I'm sure that in Buck's book they're good for nothing (see below).

When I'd done the entire perimeter of the embayment, almost a three-hour paddle, I was about to turn for the boatlaunch when I saw some animals on the shore. The cutest little grulla pony with a smeared strip of a blaze came up to check me out. I don't think she'd seen a one-man canoe before, and the waving paddles intrigued her. She blew and stamped like a deer. The cow with the moon and stars on her flank was less intrigued, and turned her back on me.

Finally it was time to turn for home. There was a man fishing on the boat launch, and he moved his lines so I could cruise in. When I finally came close enough to see, his face broke into a smile. "Oh! A pretty woman!" he said. He grabbed the bow of my canoe and pulled me in so I wouldn't get my feet wet getting out. What a nice man. We talked for a bit and he said, "I like to come down here. It's peaceful. I lost my wife exactly four years and nine months ago today."

"Not that you're counting, huh?"

"What?"

"I said, you're still counting, huh?"

"Yeah. You count for awhile."

His name was Buck and he quickly added that he felt lucky because he had two grown children and two grandchildren living nearby, and they were "the light of my life."

He seemed lonely and he knew a lot about this place so I decided to hang out with him for awhile. I learned from him that there are both soft-shelled (Good for nothing! Can't even eat 'em!) and hard-shelled (snapping) turtles in the embayment. That there are channel cats upward of 40 lb. here. Muskellunge too. He showed me a lure he'd had for 30 years, all beat up, almost broken, that's been his best muskie lure. I told him I'd hit three huge carp with the canoe in the shallowest part of the embayment, and they were big enough to rock the boat. Durn carp. I told him about the drake wood duck I'd heard stumbling through the leaves on a steep slope above the water. I figured he had been looking for acorns and beechnuts until I scared him into flight. I had thought I was hearing a turkey because it sounded like a biped, but it sounded too clumsy for a turkey, so I waited on it and darned if it wasn't a duck walking through the leaves!

Buck said he always brings an extra rod and reel in case someone comes down and feels like fishing for awhile with him. And there it lay, ready to go. I felt bad leaving him, he was interesting and sweet and I didn't even mind his cigarette smoke that much. He asked me why I was carrying my stuff and canoe way up to the car, why didn't I just back the car down the ramp and pick it up? I told him I don't like backing down a steep ramp when I can't see what's behind me and I don't mind carrying everything because it was only two trips and the canoe only weighs 28 pounds and could he tell me why a man always needs to tell a woman a better way to do things? At that he laughed and said "I guess we do, don't we?"

I told him I'd be back again, and that I'd be glad to see him, and I think he'll be glad to see me, too.