Archive for March, 2009
The gloves come off…..
And so begin the games of the weather gods. The temps are going to go down to 23 degrees tonight with that relentless March wind ushering them in. This is my warning to all the plant people on their way up and out of the soil; stay where you are. Things are going to get ugly.
Sightings
There were a lot of “firsts” today. First Sandhill Cranes overhead, flying in their convoluted circular pattern, calling all the while. Sometimes, flying thousands of feet up, they can be heard but never seen. It’ s maddening to hear them but never get the visual gratification
An appearance of a Snowy Egret on his way to somewhere was also the first this year. They seem vaguely prehistoric as well, their lazy wingbeats and ungainly lumbering through the sky a reminder that birds have been with us nearly forever.
The crows were busy this afternoon. I lost time for awhile, watching them leave a stand of oaks in their cloud of ten, racing to the sun and dropping by twos to the treetops again. Each pair chased one another and sometimes looked as if they were hitching rides, so close did they fly together. Females will be on eggs soon, so maybe they are enjoying the little time they have left to play before the work of nestlings begins in late April and early May. It is conceivable, however, that none of the ten I saw are a bonded and mating pair–each one could have been a member of an extended family group whose job it is to help raise young, but have none of their own. I also learned today that the crows are like humans in that one doesn’t bother waiting for another to finish talking before an answer, or possibly a different question, is given. I don’t know how they get anything decided when they can’t hear each other over all the yelling. Maybe their similarity to humans also includes the propensity our species has to hear ourselves talk and never listen to much. If I didn’t need a job that paid me money, I would take my currency in crow stories and follow them around all day. Working in a building seems an enormous waste of energy when time could be spent outside unraveling the mysteries of the local crows.
The rain is supposed to start again tonight. I don’t want to see any more rain until the soil is thawed and can absorb some of it. My yard is a mass of spongy puddles and the season of either being wet, muddy, or some combination of both has arrived. But I welcome the mess knowing that soon the world will begin its greening and Spring will be less fickle, choosing to stay for awhile.
Leavings
Kola tackles the river, June 2006 Last night’s river surveillance was disappointing but expected. The rain tally culminated in somewhere around three inches and two days of some form of precipitation alternating between misty drizzle and an onslaught of relentless pouring. The river needs someone to start bailing–the banks are long under water and what was 30 feet wide has swelled to a lake. This makes for interesting navigating for Kola, who prefers obstacles to scale and jump from. There is a maze of trees, some standing (the river now has overtaken the woods) and some fallen and twisted into enormous heaps, floating in a couple feet of water. I always hope for treasures (feathers, old deer bones) to be floating among the junk, but I’ve not come across anything yet. Milk jugs, plastic water bottles, fishing line, coconuts, pumpkins, and once a plastic bag filled with beans and a fully feathered dead chicken. Kola was giddy at the discovery of the bag and I let her investigate for too long before I figured out what was inside. Eventually she opened it and spilled overly swollen beans and very wet chicken on the bank, reveling in her prize. As much as I didn’t feel good about it, I had to give the whole mess a nudge back to its watery beginning to avoid her consuming every bit. I tried not to think about how such a weird package of goods ended up there in the first place. However, flotsam such as that is one of the mysteries of the river…..all the junk that comes downstream came from somewhere, but where? How far away? How long ago? Did the journey begin in here in Illinois or somewhere in Wisconsin? And who lost a coconut?
Some years, after the spring rains, the booty is more natural but just as strange. Last April, it was two beavers, one hung up on a log and expanded to the size of a small bear and the second floating among the bark and riverfoam. Within days it was dragged out and opened by the coyotes, I assume. Kola had a good bath in the mess, but the coyotes gave me a chance to do some impromptu (and smelly) surgery, which resulted in the skull being lugged home. It stayed on the patio table for further decompostion for a few days, but disappeared soon after. I was unhappy, to say the least. What would have been a beautiful addition to the home skull collection was stolen by someone…the coyotes were blamed, but Kola may know the real story.
She has a long-standing argument with the beavers, as do my husband and brother, but theirs is based on some bizarre fishing incidents. Kola just has a general complaint about them, which is seated in their refusal to move out of her way in the water as well as their uncanny tendency to disappear completely after an unnerving tail-slap. Lewis and Clark’s dog, Seaman, was bitten in the hind leg by a beaver and almost died from the injury–thus I am wary of allowing Kola to count coup on too many beavers.
Most days she is ready to go for a hike first thing in the morning, long before I am. At this time of year I wait until it’s as warm as it can possibly get–while it’s great to get the chance to see the coyotes and hear the birds singing their morning songs, 7am is not yet warm enough to enjoy it. As it gets warmer and eventually, hotter than hell, we choose to do our exploring as early in the day as possible. But for now, temperatures are still chilly in the mornings. In November, 30 degrees in the morning is a gift, but by March my tolerance has waned.
On that note, we’d better get to it. We’re burning daylight and there are still cooking and cleaning chores to be done after our walk. For now, we’re river-bound to unearth the offerings of the day.
"Cold and windy as hell…."
San Juan rainbow (with a little native cutthroat tossed in)taken and released March 7th
photo courtesy EJ Dvorak
So says my brother after a trip to the San Juan river in his neck of the woods, southwest Colorado. His weather at most times of the year is preferable to ours; sun almost every day of the year, winter temperatures rarely approximating our sub-zero wind chills, and cool nights even when the summer temps are high.
He and I have much the same rituals even with 1300 miles between us…..we visit our respective rivers, his the Animas and mine the Des Plaines, virtually every day. He goes to ply a few trout from the water, and I go to converse with the river and my hound. The differences between the two waters however, are enormous. The Animas is a churning, rumbling, insane torrent, while the Des Plaines is muddy, slow, and generally quiet. I have a hard time thinking at the Animas; I can’t seem to locate my thoughts over the roar of the water making its way over the rocks. I am sure EJ thinks a lot while coaxing his fish, but there must be a good measure of diligence involved. After ten years, he probably doesn’t even hear it anymore.
One day a few years ago, while stopped at a gas station with my kayak on the top of the Subie, a stranger commented that he couldn’t believe I was going to get into the “filthy” water of the Des Plaines river. I told him that the water was only the color of mud because the water flowed over mud. The quality of a watershed can be measured differently at different sites, but the stretch of river that I kayak and walk produces stoneflies, mayflies, caddis, as well as a number of other insects…..the presence of each being an indicator of the good health of the river. While most of the DP water runs over mud, there are sections with sandy and rocky floors, where the caddis and mayflies live until their day comes to float to the surface, ride the water until they’ve shed their shucks, and take wing. That’s when things get sketchy….if they make it out of the water (and often they do not) there are the cedar waxwings to deal with once in the air. But I’ll save that story for June, when it is more phenologically appropriate.
I am now thinking I would like to have EJ’s input here and see him share this with me, if only voicing his thoughts occasionally, but I am not holding out. He’s not a fan of stuff like this, I don’t think. I never was either, and am still not sure about it, but for one thing, it’s making my convoluted thoughts look a hell of a lot prettier. Vanity.
So this is my invitaion to you brother….we could merge our addled thoughts from each side of the Rockies and call it a conversation. What say you?
Mid-morning ramble
Day two of rain. The red-winged blackbirds are back–a single male appeared in my cottonwood last Monday. A friend tells me that the females should have arrived about a week before the males, but I saw nothing. If they were here, they never caught my attention. I noticed grackles yesterday morning, but have no idea if yesterday was their first day back or if they’ve been around awhile. I am not a grackle fan. The starlings (damn the starlings) have been relatively quiet all winter, but I can hear them imitating red-tails and blue-jays from their perch atop my chimney. Their voices are echoing down and into the house, and it’s making Wakan, our cockatiel, crazy. He seems to think they are talking to him, and maybe they are.
This morning I am thinking about when the insects will start hatching…..I am probably way ahead of myself as none of this is really Spring, just her rumblings. We are bound for more snow I am sure. So, message to all the insects: Stay where you are and wait another few weeks.
Last night while musing over the books to put in my profile list, I got to thinking that two books I love, The Geography of Childhood and Merle’s Door, are both better versions of books which made a lot of fuss upon their publication. Merle’s Door is the book John Grogan wishes
he had written, and The Geography of Childhood is the story of why children need the woods, but before/without all those children getting to have a disorder, as in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. When we were kids, all those other children, the ones who stayed inside for whatever reason, ( a multitude) were just the object of pity and it never occured to any of us that they might be irreparably damaged. Although, maybe they’re the ones who are now running corporations and making a billion dollars, while the rest of us are trying to figure out what the hell happened and why our checking accounts have such small balances. Here’s to the woods, and everything she keeps in her pocket.