Seeing With New Eyes

Sunny day. Meeting two bluebirds who know us. That's about as good as it gets here in winter. Chet and I forge on. I can tell it's going to be an epic run. It already has been.

This landscape sets me free. We climb atop what I call Butterflyweed Hill and look back up the road toward home. I like getting different perspectives on this land I think I know. What does it look like from there? What about from there?  Let's see. I like living in a place where nobody seems to mind my doing that. If they asked, I'd tell them I was working. This is my work, noticing what's here, appreciating it, sharing it. It's just that it isn't a paying job in the conventional sense.

They've all seen me dozens of times, and know I'm harmless. Most people probably think I'm nuts, being out in all kinds of weather with my little dog. There's that crazy lady who jogs, climbs hills, looks around, takes pictures. Wonder what she does with all those pictures?

Nuffin'. 

We pass a car which turns out to be a 1968 Chevelle (Chevy Malibu with a different trim package). I learn all this from my friends Paul and Dirk, and confirm it with a look at the nameplate on the back. Truth told, I just like its lines, and the way the rust works with the white and the colors of the field around. It reminds me of an impala, not a Chevy Impala, but the African animal, with its rust to white countershading.

We move on, and the next person we meet is Coco. 

She is a perfect lady. She's the dog I told you about, who was abandoned on our county road. Mr. G. took her in and she's had three litters and made him $3,000 by his account. But he says he wouldn't take a million dollars for her. She is a wonderful dog. Also a member of the No Collar Club, I see. She lives on a busy county road where the cars fly, and she's got the sense to avoid them.  That right there tells you a lot about her.

Chet behaves himself around her, which speaks volumes about her manners and dignity.  An intact female, and he doesn't even get fresh with her. Go figure. She commands respect.

His shaved patch from the run-in with the German shepherd shines, and I wonder if he barged into her and surprised her on one of his conquests, if Coco would bite him, too. These are the chances we take when we live our lives and run the roads. We could sit home, growing plumper by the day, but we choose to move instead, to vary our view as we grow plumper by the day anyway. In a flurry of weirdness on Chet's birthday post, the one where he gets beat up by a German shepherd, one commenter wrote that she felt "very sorry for Chet," having a careless owner like me. Well, please don't waste any time feeling very sorry for this dog. He lives a fully interactive life as an athlete who gets to explore and run miles every day over new terrain. He is not a piece of inert animal furniture, leashed, fenced, overfed and cosseted like so many house pets.  Every day he has a choice as to whether to accompany me, and he gives me two paws up.

I love him for that. I wonder what I would do if I had a dog who could say no to a good run. And then I remember that we make our dogs who they are, and I feel better.

Done with Chet, Coco comes over to get some kisses on her sweet fuzzy nose from me.  I like Chet's pugnacious little bunnyface shadow, cast on Coco's satiny mocha-latte flank. Her skin slides all around on her ample frame, quite a contrast to tight-muscled, tight-coupled, drumlike little Chet.

We are in a hurry to get to the Waxler Church before the morning rays of sun get too high. I cannot wait to see it on a sunny day. I've never been there on a sunny day.

Ohhh. Even better than I'd dreamt. I'm so glad I've hurried and gotten here by 8 AM. The bounce light from the ground warmly illuminating the belfry, the sun coming through its windows, the way the skylight blues its shadowed side. Wow. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. This church calls me, all its people call to me across the miles. I find myself wondering how it looks in every light regime, and wanting to be there for each one. 

I love how someone has decorated the Booths' stone for Christmas, and I wonder if the little toy trucks were there before. There is so much I notice each time I come here, and wonder how I missed before. 

I find our neighbor Gayle's stone, realizing with a start that the recently turned ground where I stand (and instinctively jump aside) has yet to cover over with grass. The crabgrass covers first, of course, followed by the perennial grass. I should have noticed that. I used to talk with him as he mowed the fields, and I was at his funeral. It was there I first heard a recording of Vince Gill singing "Go Rest High On That Mountain." How had I never heard that song? How had I never seen this fresh-turned earth or Gayle's stone before?

Visiting this quiet churchyard is so much like entering the woods, picking up on things you've never seen or, more correctly, have never noticed.  It's like hearing a beautiful song that everyone else seems to know and love for the very first time, and wondering how it eluded you. 

I walk around in a state of wonder at all I've missed.

These Bluebirds Know Me

December 28 was a stunning, crystal blue day in the upper 40's here in southeast Ohio. I had commitments all afternoon, but by God I was going to get out, so I set out on my run at 7:45 AM before it got warm. Now that Clarence the bus driver has retired, and I don't have to (or rather, can't) meet him at the cemetery for my morning story at 7:20, I can choose any time of day to run. So I often wait until the sun peeks out, if it's going to, or until it warms up, if it will, or until it stops raining, if it pleases the weather gods.

My agenda this morning was to make it to Waxler Church, two miles distant, while the early morning sun was hitting the building and the stones. I couldn't wait to see the transformation. I'd only viewed it in gloomy weather, and it was so beautiful then.

I kept hitting delays. The first delay was a row of a dozen (a dozen!!) eastern bluebirds, lined neatly up on a powerline at the corner of my township road and the county road. Oh, what a beautiful sight. When I see a whole bunch of bluebirds, I love to speculate whom amongst them might have been raised in one of my 25 nest boxes. Of course I generally speculate that at some point I've touched every one of them in my nest checks, and if I do say so myself, that's a fair speculation. I've had these boxes up since the mid 90's, and they crank almost 100 fledglings out each season. I probably started with the great-great-great-great grandparents of these birds, and I'd bet that every one of them has seen my face peering in at them throughout the first two weeks of its life, poor creatures. Kind of a neat thought.

So I peered up at these bluebirds, loath to frighten them by trotting by, yet wanting to get to the church on time for the sun which I knew would be blasting through its old panes in a very short time. I stopped and gazed up at them, making them nervous, and a few made little sorties out from the wire. They didn't want to leave the flock, but they didn't like being stared at, either.

 I shot a few pictures of this fine lineup, a dozen bits of pure beauty and song and life, the first such gathering I'd seen this winter.  And I slowly and respectfully started toward them, hoping to pass by without frightening them. They looked so cozy, lined up in the sun.

But of course, no bluebird in its right mind is going to sit while a woman and a dog pass right beneath it. It's got to fly. And sure enough, the flock lifted off when we got uncomfortably close. Well, most of the flock.

All but two. Two females. 

Who sat calmly looking down at us, this scary human and her predatory black animal. 

Hello there, Elsa! Hi, sweet Ida!!

Hi Zickmama! Hi Chet!

They never flew. We had quite a chat. I told them I was glad to see them, told them I hoped they'd catch back up with the flock, asked them to come visit me soon. You know where I live, darling girls! The rest of the flock had long disappeared over the horizon, voicing alarm calls, but Elsa and Ida sat tight and watched us until we were out of sight. If you don't know the story, you can find out how I obtained and finished raising these orphaned bluebirds here. 

Or you can simply peruse the July archives

and the August archives from 2013. Many baby bluebird posts there.

Seeing them and realizing who they were was a moment. 

It was so very good to see them again.

Empirical evidence only, of course. I have no bands or gizmos with which to prove my theory that these two unaccountably tame birds had been hand-raised. But both my head and my heart point to that.

We ran on.

And the song of the bluebird was upon the land, the first time I'd heard them singing all winter. A lone cardinal chimed in, and together they lifted my heart.

Getting Out, Every Day

I'd miss so much if I didn't get out every day. Yes, we have to bundle up a bit, but the winter landscapes are so worth it. Baker and I are about to go out now, in fact, after waiting half the day for the sun to come out and melt off the ice.

The recent fronts passing through dumped a lot of rain on us, followed by snow. When it's rainy, our road turns to mud, and running with Chet means I have to bathe him immediately upon returning. It's a drag. So we drive to one of the paved roads where we won't get so muddy.

We've been running this one a lot lately.

We've found a couple more leaf stencils from the 2013 fall line painting to admire. When Chet sees me hunkered down photographing one, he moves in to improve the view. He always improves the view.

I find a pile of logs that I call "Oh no you don't." It's meant to keep cattle from squeezing under the barbed wire fence in a low spot. The deer start such ruts and the cattle follow suit. About all the Warrens can do is build the rut back up with wood. Resetting the posts is the path to madness.

Skies have been glowery almost all the time. Standing at this spot, though, I heard a call from a red-headed woodpecker who's spending the winter on this road.  Every once in a while I am lucky enough to see it when it changes trees, this banner of black, white and red churning through the gray trunks. I first heard it in October and I've heard or seen it four times since. Now my runs on this road are the stuff of pilgrimage, hoping to have another encounter with a bird I can never see enough.

I heard a red-head

not far from here. Its call punched

a smile in the clouds