Return of the Peepers

I have made my way down to Dean's Fork, tracking animals all the way. As I hit the dirt road I hear from upstream an enormous chorus of spring peepers, so many that I can hardly believe my ears. So instead of turning downstream, as I have for the last six months, I head up. 

I head toward the beaver pond, which had all but dried up when I saw it last fall. 

And what a sight met my wondering eyes. The pond was full. As full as I'd ever seen it. 

The dam had been completely rebuilt to its original 2009 height, with an interesting angle to it that I'd not seen before. I stood and gaped. 

I let my eyes run over that miraculous expanse of water. Sweet, deep, muddy water. 

And I heard a splash and gurgle.

And the architect of it all, the higher intelligence I so adore, swam slowly toward me. 

I stood behind some trees, trying to melt into them, but it was clear he saw me.  His head was high. His nose was searching for my scent.

And it was equally clear he did not fear me. Twice he made a circuit of the pond, passing close, looking right at me.

It was an honor I neither expected nor deserved, but I gave thanks just the same.

And whispered to him not to be so trusting of men.

The beaver was back. The beaver? I don't know. A beaver was back. And the dam had been completely restored. I could not believe it.

 How I wish I could impart just a molecule of the wonder and joy Dean's Fork brings me, to the soulless loser who destroyed that beaver dam.  But I know that there is no redemption for one so callous. You might as well appeal to a tornado to spare something in its path.  And, I'm told by our wildlife officer, there's no legal recourse when no law enforcement agent is present to witness his vandalism. To see it all come back despite his worst attempt has been a fragile, trembling victory. I will never again be able to visit without a preamble of anguish, for wondering whether he'd have gotten to it first.  Loving this place as deeply as I do, knowing that dreck-for-brains is bent on its destruction, is like living with a big old boot hanging by a frayed thread over your head, ready to drop at any time.

Extend that metaphor, now, to include the men in white pickups; the dump trucks and tankers and flatbeds strapped tight with pipe that now hurtle along our winding roads: the oil and gas development going on in our shale-rich region. Last summer, all Dean's Fork was strung with orange spaghetti--extension cords running to seismic testing instrumentation for its entire 3.5 mile length. For all I know, they've marked off some or all of it for destruction and drilling. I suppose I could find out, but I don't want to know. At this point, knowing might kill me. I just don't want to know. 

I've spent four solid days writing this series of posts. Along with "They're Drilling My Forest," they have been among the most difficult I've ever had to write.  But I have to write them. I won't get another deep breath if I don't. The story of the Dean's Fork beaver pond has become a song cycle for me. I feel I have to tell it all--the beautiful, the magical, the mystical and the horrible--to try to convey what this place means to me. What it means to live in tired old, lovely old, beat up old Appalachian Ohio at the height of its seventh oil exploration boom. What it means to be deeply invested in a place whose inestimable beauty and diversity might not survive the new and more avid attentions of the men in white trucks. Compared to the destructive power of Protege Energy, the creep who blew up this beaver dam is a mosquito.

Listen to those wood thrushes sing, and replace that with the roar of a drill rig. That's what we're up against.

 My complex relationship with this place has been an object lesson to cherish the moment and the setting and the people around me right now, for I can never know when all will be brought to nothing. I have no steadying constant in my life I can rely on to sustain me save the love of the land. One can only draw so much strength from within. There must be input, and I get that from the land.

Is it any wonder I sing out day after day, season after season, about all that is still here, alive, thriving, and good? 

I sing like a goddamned bird.

 Like a heavenly chorus of spring peepers. Who better to celebrate the return of light and life, leaf and love, and water, life-giving water, than these permeable beings** of water, mud and air?

            

**A poem given to me by my lovely and loving friend Donna. I've borrowed Ms. Tibbett's word, because it's perfect. As is this poem, perfect for this post, which is all about wonder at the fact that, despite humanity's best efforts to crush them, spring peepers and beavers are

Still Here Softened by a glass or two of Cabernet, I left my neighbors’ crowded table, our bursts of laughter, and dour conversation about man and his dangerous antics in our only world, and went to the kitchen for more bread. There, through the window, a sweep of damp air and wild spring calls of peepers and wood frogs rushed in like the Holy Ghost and made me pause. Their piercing chorus of voices mixed into such a deep soup of sound that one frog was indistinguishable from another. And for one long moment I was held there in the world’s big hands, and everything that mattered was evening with its early, scattered stars, the fragile smell of daffodils and boggy water, and the mating calls of a population of those finely-tuned, permeable animals (indicators of the Earth’s well-being) so much older than we are, that have survived ice ages and the shifting of continental plates, but are now disappearing — though still here thriving in woods beyond my neighbor’s lawn in this hollow where we are all clinging to the slippery edge of wildness, where I was allowed a rush of such sweetness and grief, those fraternal twins who are born in us again and again, though perhaps not forever, singing whether or not we listen. Elizabeth Tibbetts First published in the Beloit Poetry Journal As printed in Science and Conservation of Vernal Pools in Northeastern North America: Ecology and Conservation of Seasonal Wetlands in Northeastern North America, by Aram J. K. Calhoun, August 2007

Spring on the Old Farm

April 10--the day in 1994 my Dear Old Dad, or DOD for short, finally got free of his lymphoma-wracked earthly body and took off to fly with the hawks (and hurl a few down at me). Every year, I try to do something life-affirming on that day, something that he'd enjoy. Often it's potting up the bonsais, or planting the peas, turning some rows in the garden, or poking around an old farmstead. How about that last one? Let's go to the Becker farm!

It's not every day you see falcate orangetips mating. These jittery little bugs are among my favorite first butterflies of spring, right in there with the (increasingly scarce) mourning cloak and much more common spring azure. I thrill to the incandescent satsuma orange of their wingtips, and will them to settle, which they virtually never do.

But this trio was preoccupied and let me get close with my little phone camera. Out of focus, but it gives you that orange flash. Two males are trying to mate with the same female.

She's not having it, though, and wants to hang with just one.

Male left, female right (larger abdomen).

While they're engrossed, I get to appreciate the checkered border of those lovely fairy wings. 

Like a race flag! No wonder they never sit still unless en flagrante delicto.

And the delicately marbled undersides! Who knew? Wow, what a treat. Thank you for making more FAOT's.

Falcate orangetips, or FAOT's as I write in my notes, using a shorthand adapted from bird bander lingo, use the early cresses and rockets (mustards) as their broodplants. You'll see them flying low and bouncily along meadow borders and roadsides. 

The other one out early around here is the cabbage white. I snuck up on this one, hoping it would be a West Virginia white, but the dark patch on the wingtip and little dots on the forewing say cabbage.

This cabbage white is feeding on deadnettle, a creeping Eurasian plant that turns fallow bean and cornfields into a haze of purple this time of year. It's a lovely phenomenon from a bad weed. Its major virtue is that, like all mints, it's pretty easy to pull up.

It was a dreary gray day in what seems like an endless string of them, but I knew that would make the forsythia positively sing, so I decided to head up to the Becker farm to see that.

We passed the Toothless Lady. You may remember the white woman's slip that somehow got caught on a nail after a windstorm. I had plans to get it down and try it on. Alas.

When it finally slipped down low enough that I was able to reach it with a long stick, it was so thoroughly tangled around several nails that I had little hope of getting it. I tried, but it was anchored there for the ages. 

The wind has torn and tattered it until it's no more than a bunch of bandages, hardly fit to wrap a mummy. There will be no ghost slip selfies from me!

I still find it beautiful, and enjoy photographing it in changing light.

I could be wrong, but that warm russet color in the wood might indicate that The Toothless Lady was built of Osage orange. I have it on good authority that her attendant, a small toolshed to the south, is built of that wood. And the protected parts of it are that same beautiful orange color. For that alone, she should be an historic treasure. Not too many Osage oranges around that are big enough to saw into lumber any more. That, and the fact that I love her so. I hereby propose Historic Treasure status for many tumbledown buildings and trees on my routes. Things Zick Loves. Thou Shalt Not Cut or Destroy.

Out the back of the same barn, there is a trail of old clothes stringing down the poison ivy vines. This puzzled me momentarily, until by scanning carefully with binoculars I figured out that they issue from a squirrel's nest at the eave.  That squirrel's been busy, raiding the boxes I would love to look through, but will never be able to reach, thanks to the barn's utterly rotted floors. I am imagining the vintage clothing, chewed through by mice, sorted by squirrels, and crapped upon by 'coons.

Their colors remind me of the Buddhist prayer flags that fly in the Himalayas, starting out red, yellow, blue and white, then fading to gentle pastels.

Whipple Prayer Flags. Squirrel prayers.

The Toothless Lady continues to delight me in all the oddest and best ways. I fervently hope I am not around when she's finally torn down.  There would be rending of garments and tearing of hair.

We forged on to the farmstead.

I'm not sure what colors Chet can see, but he sure gave the big forsythia a long look. I was interested to see that the farm's caretakers, while letting the house slowly deliquesce in a squirrelly mess, decided to trim the drooping wands off the bottom of one of the forsythias this winter. Chet used to crawl under the cave they made to cool down on hot summer days. Sometimes I'd throw a cup of cool well water over his back before he flopped down. 

I walked a circle around the farmhouse, looking for flowers growing unseen. It was too early for the wild red columbine someone transplanted there years ago, but I did find a bit of hawk down caught on a grass tip and blowing in the crazy April wind. 

A little calling card from DOD. I'd bet it was redtail down, being sparkly white like that.

Then I went to see the pheasant-eye narcissus that are growing a little down over the hill. A telephone pole always spoils my composition, but I shoot anyway.

Spirea, or bridal wreath, was just going crazy in the hedge.

Chet went out into the lawn to graze like a miniature Angus x Hereford. Standing there like a cow.

Spirea makes a rather loose, messy hedge, but oh! is it beautiful in spring.

And back of the house, an old peach was blooming as it fell. Here's to blooming as you fall.

On our way home, we stopped to examine a sofa someone had left on the corner. Why would you do this? Hoping someone will like it well enough to lug it home with them? Not wanting to pay dump fees? 

I'll be curious to see if it's still there, three days later (I don't get out much).
Update: Someone hauled it away! Amazeballs.

We stopped to greet the new cattle at the Harris farm. This mama looked at me like I was dropped from Venus. That's how I knew she'd never lived here. That, and I didn't recognize her.  She has a very nice angel on her chest.

Her fat little girlcalf (look at that potchy brisket! That quadruple calf-chin!) looks as much like a sheep as any calf I've ever seen. Slitty eyes. So, so fat. Mama must make good milk. I'll be anxious to see the regular crowd come back from their winter quarters. I miss them. I heard a rumor that Bully will be sold, or perhaps already has. I hope it's not true. I'd miss his marcelled hair and his white-ringed ears, and the way he would oooof at me when I came up to the fence, then let me touch his always-wet pebbled leather nose. I'm still hoping to see him this spring.

Bully, July 2015

And of course I'm anxious to see Spotify and see if her new calf has The Triangle. They always make my day. 

These are the rhythms of rural life, the growings up, the fallings down and the yearly coming around.
Happy Free Spirit Day, DOD.

Spring Pops!

Oh, how I love these showery, flowery days. 

when the rainbow ends in a pot of gold. 

The Forsythia has gone by now, all green leaves and laggard blossoms. When it goes, the roses grow. I cut them back early this year, and they're beginning to bounce back from the horrible winter of 2013. Worried that I've finally lost Rio Samba, but I worry that every single spring, and she always surprises me.

Sometimes the rainbow ends on a real pot of gold. That would be Chet Baker.

I don't know that he's a pot of gold. He's a pot of somethin'. I've been reading some news stories lately about how people get a little squirt of oxytocin, the "love hormone," when they gaze into their dog's eyes. And the dog gets a little squirt too, and they both feel all gooey and good.

I call Chet Baker "Oxytocin Ocean."

The spring sky is pregnant mostly all the time. These stunning ranked Stratocumulus undulatus were much better in person.

I adore spring and fall for their dramatic light. You must run out quickly to catch it when it happens.

Our ancient pear, busting out with a rainbow chaser.

I cannot stay inside on days like this. Come on, Chet. Let's go!

In the driveway bluebird box, the first two treasures.

I go to visit my girlfriends, just putting on their spring formals, dancing in anticipation.

In the Hendershot box, two more. As I write, she's begun incubating with the third egg on April 18. I see her little face peeking out every time I go by. I get Easter eggs all summer long.

And even though nobody's there to appreciate it but me, the old farmstead is abloom, alight with white spirea, pink peaches and quince, gold forsythia, narcissus and daffodils.

The living legacy of settlers long gone blooms on.

I dream of living here, so far away from everything. Not in this house, though. I'd leave it to the squirrels and raccoons and rat snakes. 

Too bad about the dang telephone pole. I like this angle, though, with the pheasant's eye narcissus smelling so sweet, the golden forsythia growing wild in back.

On this day it was so warm I caught myself in an accidental upside-down selfie without my shirt. Sports bra's good enough for a 70-degree day and deserted dirt roads. My favorite kind.

Everywhere, American shad lights up the forest with its white candles. Where's Waldo? The tiny black dot on up ahead.

And a minuscule red eft crosses a gravel road. The smallest I've ever found. This photo is about life size.
I carried him the way he was headed, to a damp ditch. The Deus ex Machina he'll tell his little larval kids about, the hand that reached down from the sky to sweep him to safety.

Who knows how far he's already come, and how far he'll travel this year?

 He's looking for something. Someplace different than where he's been. I don't know how I see them, but I seem to run into them all the time.  Maybe because we're both on a quest.

But no great big benevolent hand is going to pick me up and carry me across. I have to get there all by myself.

Why Now, Flowers?

Everything's bustin' out. The redbud is out full. The forest is a haze of filmy green and rust and red. Deep within, newly arrived hooded warblers, ovenbirds and wood thrushes are singing. The birches are suddenly leafing and hanging in yellow catkins. I've started sneezing. It's spring in southeast Ohio!

And it is DELICIOUS.

And it's high summer in the greenhouse. I could have used a few of these blossoms in November! December! January! Why now, flowers?

I call this Abutilon "Sportin' Life," for its fabulous sport branch that makes yellow and sometimes pied flowers. Wahoo! what a lucky chance brought me this plant. I bought it at the end of the season last summer and carried it over in the greenhouse. One thing I've learned about abutilons (sometimes called flowering maples) is that they lurve having their heads cut off. Cut off their heads and they grow 20 more and bust out in blossoms. Quickly, too. 

Fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt" is goin' coo-coo. I need to divide it soon, get my shade garden going! With the more intense sunlight, it's getting darker foliage and flowers. Yum. What a wonderful, giving plant it is. Keeps blooming all winter long, and goes nuts outside, getting up to 3' tall if you give it enough room in its planter.

Quite the show of reds in gerania. I will be looking for my favorite variegated salmon "Frank Headly" this spring. I miss him so. He died in the big freeze two Novembers ago.

Oh the Path. You are going to kill me when those big fat buds open to 7" saucers all at once. You know that, though. I can hear you snickering. Planning my demise. I spent an hour staring at other Cajun hibiscus hybrids on Logee's website the other day. Lusting after them. But they are big plants. Really big plants. And they're aphid magnets. But ohh. I'm telling you if they were fragrant I'd be doomed. I'd have to build a bigger greenhouse.

I thought I'd be eco-friendly and buy wooden plant markers. I wrote on them in Sharpie marker and the damn things just rotted. Too eco-friendly if you ask me. Now I have no idea what my little mini gerania are called any more because I can't read the names.  I'll have to rename them. How about "Sadie?"

There's my beautiful variegated agave from Lori on the right. She sent it to me in the mail after the greenhouse freeze. 

Best part? The lettuce, tomatoes, tomatillos, and cucamelons are up! Wahoo! Now I wish I'd planted them earlier. Not January 19, but a couple of weeks earlier. Ah well. I got to it as soon as I could. Yes, I used wooden markers here, but I only need to be able to read them long enough to plant them out. May 5 or so. Going to plant some "Blue Point" zinnias soon. But they grow so fast I know I'll be sorry if I plant them too soon.

That ravishing cool pink geranium is a dwarf called "Rosina Read." I've had her for probably 15 years. Obviously pretty cold-tolerant, since she lives on the floor of the greenhouse. Gerania love a hot day and a cold night, and she gets that.

Why now, flowers? Because spring is the time for happy overload.

Bring it on. I've been starved for color. But a color junkie never gets enough.

Blobs and The Meaning of Life

I'm kind of a linear person. I can't do one thing until I've finished the first thing. So when I have a lot of irons in the fire I go a little nuts. Right now, I'm trying to finish my new book. The whole manuscript and all the paintings are due April 15. Tax Day. The same day Phoebe's FAFSA is also due. 

I don't like all that coming due the same day, but it is what it is. If I didn't have deadlines, I wouldn't have two books and a third on the way. 

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." --Douglas Adams

So I've been trying to finish my book and I make great progress each day, sometimes writing a couple thousand words, but there is a lot still to do.

And then there's the blog, for which I post three times a week. 

The last time I was trying to finish a book, in spring 2011, I cut down from five posts a week to three. It makes my head spin to think about putting out five posts a week. Before that, I posted every dang day for many years. Seven posts a week.

I remember writing this whole long apologetic thing about how I just can't do five posts a week any more. Gaaah. Apologizing for cutting back to three? Zick. Give it a rest. 

Spring's coming on and I have all this fabulous stuff from Costa Rica needing to be shared. But the brink of spring is just such a wonderful time. I love it so, when everything is waking up. Beginning.

The ditches, suddenly full of blobs of protoplasm and promise.

Spring peeper eggs, wood frog eggs, mountain chorus frog eggs.

I can't tell them apart. I just know these are one or all of the three.

Feel free to correct me. Lots of people do. When you do three posts a week you're wrong a lot. Ha. I crack myself up.

I love seeing all those little embryos, beginning. I bless them as I walk by, like some kind of hillbilly St. Francis. Live long and prosper, little blastocyst.

On this 70-degree day from heaven, the ditches and puddles were full of red-spotted newts!

I usually see newts in small ponds, so it was a surprise to see them carrying on in puddles as if they were trying out being frogs. 

I love the sinuous, croclike way they walk, patrolling the silty bottom, looking for what? Other newts, probably, this being the end of March. It seemed to me that these creatures were not fully metamorphosed from red eft phase.  First off, they were walking on the bottom, not propelling themselves fishlike with finned tails. Their feet weren't webbed; their tails lacked the large laterally flattened fins. Furthermore, I didn't see the big gonads hanging down like I do on adult males. 

They seemed to be in transition to adulthood, and with it a fully aquatic form. They were tweeners. Teen efts. 

This one, the eftiest of them all. I felt privileged to be in on this interim event. Perhaps that's why they were hanging in small puddles, to get the feel of being aquatic before committing to pond life. Renting before buying. 

Also in the puddles were mystery blobs. So many mysteries, so little Science Chimp gray matter left.

It's all going to the book, friends. I stared for awhile. I knew what this was. It just wasn't coming up. 

So I poked it and sniffed. Very, very soft. No discernible odor, not even of fermentation. So not animal in origin.

 Ah. Finally the meaning of the mystery blob's brainlike pattern seeped through to my brainlike organ. Color was wrong, but I knew who'd thrown it there.

I looked up.

And across the road.

The distinctive arched branches and orangeish bark of the Osage orange.

These babies had been in the drink since October. No wonder they were gooshy and red.

"Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost."--Henry James

Chet and I proceeded down to the terminus of our run, the beautiful shaly passage of Dean's Fork I love most.

The turkeys love it, too. 

The stream was too wide for me to jump across, but I liked watching Bacon dig the cool water. I wish I could drink wherever I go, like he does. If I could, we could run forever.

The old gristmill I loved so, collapsed in the same June 29, 2012 derecho that took my Garden Pod. 

I'll never get over having this gristmill fall down.  But there's still a barn there I can love. The gristmill used to be my destination. Now it's the stream, the black barn, the surprise teen efts. The road itself.

Nothing stays the same. Nothing is permanent. Only change can be depended on. People will come and go in our lives.

 I'm trying hard to let loose of it all.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." --Joseph Campbell