THE LAST DAY of JUNE, and SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Today is another cool day. The temp is barely 19C/66F, and there's a stiff breeze into the bargain. Not that I mind, every day we don't swelter here is one day to the good, but still, I wonder - where the fishflies (Mayflies) are. Here it is, the last day of June, and other than a few hundred of them scattered over a couple of weeks, we're still waiting. And by we, I mostly mean the birds and fish and countless other small creatures who depend on nature's outrageous abundance of these winged protein packets. Where are the teeming hordes that coat the buildings and dim the nighttime signs in town? The annoying midges certainly came on time, and in the expected numbers, but what about the elegant, graceful Mayfiles?

Where are the wind-piled drifts of their short-lived fallen bodies in the parking lots? Why aren't they here in mind-stunning numbers like they do every summer in early-to-mid June? Are they coming late, or not at all? This past winter, we had more cold weather, and much more snow, than I recall from my mere four years of living here, and long-timers confirm it was a bad one, for this area. I remember the long hard freezes I experienced in Alberta always had farmers and ranchers rejoicing because the prolonged deep cold meant a reduction in the grasshopper and other pest populations. I wonder if that's going to happen here. Even if the fishflies do finally arrive, what about my personal favorites, the crickets and the fireflies?


It's already getting late in the season. I've seen discarded eggshells from the second brood of birds, and loose molted feathers stuck at angles in the lawn, like tiny quill pens. Today I put on my jacket and went out for a windy walk in the yard, and stopped to contemplate of the side of my neighbor's house, by the old trellis, where last fall I watched dozens of crickets burying their eggs in the sandy soil. Are you okay down there? I silently asked. Will there be choruses of crickets later this summer? And when the corn is shoulder high again, will there be myriad fireflies rising up from among the stalks to dance against the stars on hot summer nights? Only time and temperature will tell.

THE MORNING OF JUNE 6TH in HIGH COUNTRY (3,806 ft. elevation)

As you know, my BFF Sydney is visiting from Calgary. she's planning on going back on Monday...but I'm thinking she may want to change her plans and stay a little longer...or else maybe her hubby can meet her at the airport with a parka and boots (oh, I'm kidding, it will surely be gone before then!). My other dear friend and Tai Chi buddy, Nancy, sent me these photos of their place just west of the city. I'm guessing that some of the folks out that way are going to need to replace some bedding plants. That's what June, or any summer month for that matter, can bring in the foothills!

BIRDS AND BFFs

Thanks to all who commented about my mystery bird yesterday, and special thanks to Ruth, for the link. It was indeed a Ruddy Turnstone. I had temporarily lost my IDing mojo because I forgot one of the cardinal rules (pun intended) of birding: Just because you see a bird in a habitat or setting where it shouldn't be, doesn't mean it can't BE that bird. I never even considered that a shorebird like a Ruddy Turnstone (who should have been a several kilometers away at Point Pelee, poking around in the beach at the sandy Tip) would be in strolling through the grass in a public park, binging on midges like the starlings and grackles do. I can only add that this bird's Ruddy Turnstone plumage was a little mottled-looking, and not quite symmetrical on both sides of its body, and there have been a lot of strange birds and squirrels around here lately, but still...now that you've all added your expertise and I've seen more photos, I don't know how I missed this one!!


Tomorrow my BFF Sydney, whom I've mentioned here from time to time, is coming to visit for the week. The house is clean, everything is ready, and the cats have been admonished to be on their best behavior - to which they responded with those earnest attentive looks that translate as, "And will she be bringing food?" Sydney and I don't have any firm plans as yet; we'll kind of make it up as we go, but I wanted to let you know that I may not be posting very much over the week, and probably not visiting my blog friends as much either. I mean, catching up on everything back home in Alberta, shopping, going to the A&W vintage car cruise night, lunching at the restaurant with the outdoor koi pool, drinking Coronas and lime on the patio, solving the problems of the world...there's just an awful lot we need to accomplish! So I'll see you soon, my friends, take care one and all!




Photos top to bottom: Ruddy Turnstone, building in Black Diamond, Alberta, Leamington, Ontario sign.




Bonus Bird Link: http://www.clickondetroit.com/family/19620034/detail.html

WAITING FOR A SUMMER WIND

Today was overcast and chilly (+6C/42F) with a strong wind that lowered the temperature even further. The only consolation for me was that it was an offshore wind, so there were no deafening waves, and no sheets of spray whipped against my back windows to leave them gray and streaked. The back porch is what’s called a “Florida room” around here. It’s meant to be a 3-season room, closed off in winter with a sliding glass doorwall, but it can get too hot in there in the sticky days of mid-summer. It’s at its best on sunny days in late spring or early fall. That’s what I’m waiting for now. A day when the onshore breeze is just right, the waves are behaving themselves, and I can tilt the porch windows open wide and invite the beautiful day to come inside. These are the moments when my collection of wind bells and chimes gently sound, after months of silence.


In the east side of the porch there’s a Tibetan bell my friend Arlie brought me from a little store on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia that sells Buddhist supplies to the locals. There’s also a long, elegant windbell that Sydney brought me from Arcosanti, and a little frog bell I bought at a garden store in Alberta’s High Country. Tucked in the corner is a string of rusted metal turtles with a small-but-heavy bell from India at the very bottom. This used to hang outside on my deck in the foothills, and when the wind would begin to blow hard enough to ring this bell, I’d know it was time to go out and batten down a few things.



In the west corner is a pretty chime with stamped metal birds flying around a central tube, a Chinese chime made of old cash coins that were painted, now chipped and worn, and finally there’s the one silent hanging object in the room – a painted lantern made from a can with spiraling designs punched into it with an awl, held up by a cast iron monkey. There are a few other small chimes scattered around, including a tin fish on the south window. It’s a room full of memories of good times and good friends; always a pleasure to look at, even more wonderful to sit beneath and listen.

SINGING LIKE THE WIND

Most of my regular readers will have heard this before, but I rather recently moved here to the shores of Lake Erie. Before that I lived for a long time in western Canada, in the province of Alberta – both in the city of Calgary, and then in the foothills to the southwest. One of the many small towns that dot the area is Okotoks (OH-k’tokes). The name comes directly from the Blackfoot language, and means, literally, Big Rock. In the days before European people came to the area, the big rock that sits just a few miles west of the town was a prominent marker for the First Nations peoples, indicating the crossing-place of the river that is known today as the Sheep River (Rocky mountain bighorn sheep). The huge split rock formation is the world’s largest known glacial erratic, carried for who knows how long on the back of the last retreating ice age glacier, until the ice melted out from under it and left it stranded out in the open.
It’s fenced in now, to prevent people from climbing on it, or defacing it with graffiti, but I’ve been there several times before the fence, and stood there at the base and soaked up the ‘timeless’ feeling. Or maybe the feeling is more like a whole lot of time. You can’t help but wonder whose hands, over many thousands of years, have touched the same rock you are feeling under your palm. You can almost hear the drums and the singing.

Here is a video of my favorite pow wow singers, Northern Cree. Often, women will come and stand behind the drummers and sing on octave higher, as they do here. I love the sound all the voices make together. I can close my eyes and be back there on the open land with the wind whistling past my ears. Living on the lake is great, but the mountains and foothills remain my ‘spiritual home.’







Video from YT member aries32487
The photo is obviously an old one from before the fence, and I don't know the source, so I don't know who to credit.

AUTUMN (OSI)

LIGHT, SOURCE

as the summer sun leans
heavily towards equinox
setting further south evening
by evening
the last threads of the season
unravel the valley reveals its
true self, backlit quantum universe

golden strands drift
randomly through the trees
energy trails
of invisible spiderlings
and bright pinhole gnats
zoom and zag their photon paths
across the void
then the oxbow way down
in the pasture takes to light,
spells out a gleaming omega

the sun dips even further
catches me full in the eyes
blinded by this glory, in the split-
second it takes to raise my hand
I stop being the observer
and everything for that moment
ceases



Finally, after several days, I have my computer back. Now I am treating it a bit gingerly, as one does a family member who has just got up from sickbed. Anyway, I hope we (my computer and I) can get back to full-strength blogging now!

The passage of time in nature is a well-explored subject for me. One day I must go back over all the poems I’ve written and do a tally of the solstice, equinox and other cross-quarter references. The photo here is another shot of the view from my previous home in Alberta. The poem was written in response to the same view, only on a different autumn day, with different lighting.


For more poetry inspired by this prompt, visit One Single Impression

A NURSERY RHYME IN HIGH COUNTRY

When I lived in the Alberta foothills, for a short while I had a tipi. I bought the canvas cover from a tipi maker, and found another fellow who had the poles and the long rope. It took a while to find the right place for it. Even though I had ten and a half acres, most of it was mixed poplar and spruce. There were a few open pastures, but they were up on exposed hills and too windy. I finally decided on a spot that was not too open, with a stand of younger poplars to shelter it. I cleared the brush and mowed it down nicely (the biggest challenge was working out the amount of circular space needed (I bid mental adieu to most of my high school math a long time ago). Finally the day came to raise it for the first time. For help with that I had some friends come over who are from the Kawacatoose (Plains Cree) First Nation. We put the tipi up in the traditional Cree way, starting with three poles tied together at the top and then spread like a tripod, with the rest of that long rope hanging down where it could be anchored in the ground. Once the initial poles were ready, the remaining poles were laid in place, with the canvas hoisted on the last one. Once the cover had been tugged all around, the smoke flap was adjusted and everything was properly pegged. When it was all finished, my friends drummed and sang for the occasion. It was wonderful moment, hearing their voices and the drum outside on the land. I wondered when the last time might have been that the land had heard a song like that. Then we all went back to the house for a big brunch.

A tipi is such a beautiful structure. I loved seeing mine there through the trees when I was out walking. Some neighbors gave me a long piece of carpet they’d saved from their renos, to put down over the ground for more comfortable seating. It wasn’t down for very long before big rainstorm blew up, and because the ground had a little slope to it, the carpet got soaked. Now, what to do with a strip of wet carpet about four feet wide and 10 feet long? Hanging it over the nearby barbed-wire fence didn’t seem like a good idea, or easy. Then I remembered that long rope in the tipi center. I rigged the rope cross-wise between the poles like a clothesline, looped the carpet over it loosely, several times, and left the whole thing to dry. When I came back to check on it in a few days, it was completely dry and ready to go back on the ground. As I started to unloop it, I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye. I looked, but there was nothing there. I ducked under the rope and started unlooping from the other side. Fleeting movement again. Was there actually something there, or just my imagination? Maybe a mouse? I decided to find out, so I started unlooping faster, ducking, going around and around, always the movement stayed just out of sight. Finally I was down to the last loop, and as I gingerly parted the final fold, there they were, two lanky summer-brown weasels glaring up at me! I thought seeing me they would race off, but they stood their ground. They were not going to abandon their comfy newly acquired carpet home! So I stepped back and gave the carpet a gentle shake and used a couple of those seldom heard “discouraging” words*. That did it, and the weasels popped up over the rope and slide under the bottom of the tipi and back into the woods.

Afterwards, I had a good laugh envisioning what I must have looked like, circling around the hanging carpet, and then the weasels jumping out, just like in the children’s rhyme, “All around the cobbler’s bench the monkey chased the weasel” (that would be me…the monkey) and finally “pop” went the weasels! I looked up the rhyme, and found out it has several interpretations, going back to both 17th Century London, and also colonial America. The whole fascinating story is here at Wikipedia. But I like my High Country version better.

One final word about weasels. They are a particular favorite of mine, and so I have made it a point to stop using them when I’m being critical of someone (usually a politician). Weasels are elegant agile animals, and they can’t help it if we’ve taken their bodily dexterity and used it for our own pejorative purposes. In fact, I try to do the same for every critter whose name we use to disparage certain people (sloth, rat, pig, etc).

* from the old western song, Home On The Range – “Where seldom is heard a discouraging word.” If memory serves, the words I used were, “Sorry, but you can’t live in here…so git!”



PHOTO CREDITS

Thanks to Ross Chegwin, of Turner Valley, Alberta, for the summer weasel popping up from his truck tire.
Photo of winter weasel and tipi from Shutterstock.
My tipi was very similar to this, only without the border design along the bottom. The trees turned out not to be enough shelter against one especially fierce Chinook wind the following year, and the whole thing blew over and ripped in a few places. Unfortunately, I never got any photos of it before it blew down. There’s a happy ending, though. It was salvaged, repaired, and went on to a Sundance in Saskatchewan, and now it’s covering a sweatlodge.

STRANGE DAYS AT POINT PELEE

Keep in mind that I have only been living here a short while, so I definitely don’t know everything, but I have noticed a couple of curious things about my new residence. First of all, there are no chickadees! No chickadees at all!! By “chickadee” I’m referring to the black-capped species, which should be here in abundance, by my reckoning. Black-caps are the most widely distributed chickadee in North America, but with six other species on the continent, everyone will have at least one kind to enjoy. But not in my Postal Code! When I first arrived here from the Alberta foothills (where I had black-caps, boreals, and the cute little cranky-looking mountain chickadees) on the Summer Solstice of ’05, I assumed that as soon as I hung up a feeder, they would come. When the feeder didn’t bring them, I was sure they’d show up when the weather turned cold. Still no ‘dees – none at the seed feeder, none at the suet cage. And it has been that way the whole time. How odd, I thought, to be in such a famous birdwatching area, and have no chickadees; they're such a staple of the pasttime. Finally, I called the Ranger at the Point Pelee Visitor Centre. He said there were very few (like, 3 or 4!) in the Park, but in general, chickadees just hadn’t seemed to populate the area yet. But he assured me they were likely expanding their range, and would “get established eventually.” I certainly hope so!

Another thing I noticed is that there seems to be a real absence of scavengers. This totally surprises me. One of my favorite birds has always been the turkey vulture, ever since I saw my first one decades ago on a trip to Tampa. However, you don’t see them much in western Alberta. They tend to hang glide more on the eastern side, and on into Saskatchewan, so I was happy to see how plentiful they are here. Another plentiful thing here is roadkill: skunks, ‘possums, squirrels, and raccoons, plus a distressing number of free ranging cats (did see a small white-tail deer by the golf course once). All those critters, and still, in three years, I have yet to see a turkey vulture on the ground picking at anything. In fact, I don’t see anything hanging around the shoulders, trying to nab some lunch. In Alberta, roadkill comes in all sizes, from ground squirrels to moose, and nothing is ignored. Between the ravens, crows, magpies, eagles, and coyotes, a moose carcass can be half gone almost before the clean-up truck (the one with the winch!) can collect it. But here, a hapless raccoon can lie beside the yellow line until weather and passing cars reduce it from a fuzzy speed bump to a mere stain. I recently learned that opossums will sometimes scavenge, but upon reflection, I’ve never seen a dead ‘possum in the road lying next to an even deader squirrel… I don’t get it; a lot of valuable nutrition is going to waste. It just doesn’t seem in the nature of nature to do that. So – turkey vultures of Pelee, come to the buffet! Just watch out for the traffic, please.

Photo of black-capped chickadee and turkey vulture from Wikimedia Commons
Photo of mountain chickadee from Sshutterstock