Huginn/Muninn

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Unidentified fly roosting in a penstemon flower. September 1, 2009

The last time I posted, it was August.  August 18th, to be exact.  Meteorogically speaking, summer was on the wane, but from a practical standpoint it had really just started.  The temperatures behaved in a summerlike fashion for a few weeks and then either spring returned or fall came early, depending on which of these two chilly seasons you prefer.  I can’t remember everything of the last almost three months, but I know a few things.

The grape harvest in September was rather disappointing.  We pruned the vines too hard last winter and had far fewer grapes than we would have liked.  This was especially unhappy for Naomi, who had her eye on the grapes for jam purposes.  Mike harvested every last bunch when none of us were around, and sent all to the freezer for winter consumption.  By the end of the summer, however, we had strawberry jam, salsa, pickles, and tomatoes put up for the winter.  The only problem being that I gave away most of the jam and salsa before September.   Naomi’s larder, I believe  is yet full, as she was far more dedicated to farm-wifery than I and ended up with at least six varieties of jam and a lot of salsa, pickles, pasta sauce, applesauce, apple butter, as well as a whole mess of other canned and frozen goodies.

Hen of the Woods season has come and gone.  Mike was of the opinion that the season starts when we have a few cool nights followed by rain, but we determined that those conditions do not necessarily produce mushrooms.  The season was short and we never had the motherlode of fruit we have in past years.   We ate mushroom suppers two nights in a row, sent a bag to the freezer, a bag to friends, and that was it.

Goldfinches, who were just finishing raising their broods in August, are now elsewhere.  Robins flocked up, ate like crazy, and are mostly gone as well.  Red-Winged Blackbirds are still hanging around in limited numbers–they became vocal and numerous about a month ago, making me think it was spring again.  Each time I heard their trill, my brain said “Spring!”  and I was momentarily fooled.  I never realized how much I associated their song with late March.  I am happy they’ve quit their attempts to confuse me because it was a bummer.  Juncos are back from wherever it is they spent the summer.   Starlings, though they never left, are everywhere.  I don’t know what they do all summer, but they thankfully are absent from my yard until October, when they show up in the Cottonwood each morning  in very large numbers.   The Blue Jays, also non-migratory, are insane lately.  They appear in the tree out front by 7am and begin yelling like mad.  From inside the house, I interpret this yelling as “Bring us peanuts!” and do their bidding.  I don’t know what they are really going on about, but my translation is working so far.   They are smart enough to arrive before the crows and end up eating a pound of peanuts before I re-fill the dish when the crows do finally make their morning appearance.  Both jays and crows have been having their peanut meals in the front of the house for the last six weeks–probably not a good idea on my part.  Neighbors may not enjoy pulling into a cul-de-sac littered with crows.  There are seven of them all told;  they prowl the sidewalks and generally make themselves known. While six eat and goof around, the seventh perches as sentinel to watch out for everyone on the ground.  I’ve lost a lot of time on Saturdays watching them when I should be cleaning the house.

Trips have been taken, though sadly, none by me.  Mike has backpacked and fished in Canada, hunted dove somewhere downstate, taken Kola to South Dakota for pheasant, grouse, and prairie chicken,  gone to the farm for a deer.  The fish have been consumed, as have a good deal of the grouse, pheasant, and prairie chicken.  The doves will be eaten this evening, baked with cornbread dressing, roasted root vegetables, and morel sauce.  We are, however, venison-less so far this season.   Both Mike and the boy returned from trips to the farm empty-handed, and Mike has decided to take a few years off from deer, for reasons which remain his own.   This weekend husband, son, and dog head to the Champaign area for pheasant, and there has been talk of a January trip to Kansas for some upland bird, though I don’t remember which.  Pheasant are my least favorite eating bird, but their numbers seem most numerous and thus appear in our kitchen more often than the preferred grouse, woodcock, and prairie chicken.

The garden has been overhauled thanks to the efforts of Chris and Naomi.  After listening to my whining about the inefficiency and nightmarish quality of the vegetable garden, Chris drew up a plan to fix everything.  We spent a beautiful October day (when Mike was away gallivanting through South Dakota with Kola) working, and the result is beautiful and functional.   We put 25 cloves of garlic in one bed and have plans for the other beds–as soon as seed catalogs begin arriving in January I will start the mental planting.

I now feel like I have caught up, at least to a degree.  While I put a lot of thought into at least a dozen posts over the last ten weeks, the combination of work, family, dog, cooking, etc., made completion of anything nearly impossible.  I never meant to quit, but there were days when I really thought I would never get back.  Though things have not really calmed down, the slowly closing window of good weather does add a little time to each day.  For the next few months (realistically, more like six) I won’t be outside for hours except on the best of days.   For now, though, temperatures are still in the 50′s and the days of rain have stopped.  Most of the trees are bare save their fruit, the prairie has gone brown, and the sunsets have taken on their winter characteristics.  While summer sunsets are beautiful, nothing can compare to the way the evening sky looks in late fall and winter.  Maybe it is only the absence of color in the rest of the landscape which makes the winter sky so magical–matters not, though–it’s something to look forward to while we wait for whatever the rest of the season holds.

Snail shells September 2009

Great Horned Owl feather September 2009

Wild Grape September 2009

Damselfly September 2009

Unidentified caterpillar September 2009

Evil chipmunk on the porch October 2009

Brother crow making off with a peanut October 2009

When life releases its grip on me I’ll get back to Huginn-Muninn.  For now, everything is too crazy and I need a few weeks to catch up.  I hope there will be someone patient enough to stick around ’til then.

” What I would do for wisdom, ” I cried out as a young man.  Evidently not much.  Or so it seems.  Even on walks I follow the dog. –Jim Harrison, from Braided Creek ,  A Conversation in Poetry

Star Trails Above a Fire…

For all my whining about not having enough time to write during the last six months, I have done an abysmal job of keeping up the last six weeks.  Life has been busy, but time has not been a factor in my not posting; motivation, or rather timing and inspiration have been the culprit.  I’ve learned what most real writers have known for ages–that when the mood strikes everything must be stopped to favor the muse.  All summer the inspiration and the words have come in the middle of the night or in the middle of a walk.   I haven’t once  gotten up at 2am to answer the call; instead I have tried to tuck it all away until a more convenient time and thus found that it’s gone.  What flowed easily in the dead of night is like moving rocks the next day.  So I am left with a tangled mess of ideas, thoughts, and half written but ultimately abandoned essays on everything that I’ve encountered since the end of June.  I’m doing my best to squeegee the windows of my brain of the residue.  About all I have left are the pictures–and the best of them are not even mine, but ephemera’s.   Here they are.

The midnight view from our campfire, image courtesey of ephemera

A skimmer for Naomi to ID more precisely

Woodfern spores

Water strider

Unripened Spruce cone

Bolete

Juvenile Bald Eagle, courtesy of ephemera

Juvenile eagle hunting, courtesy of ephemera

Waterfall

Well, it’s happened earlier this year than most; the point at which summer resembles the dead of winter.  Ten days ago the temperatures struggled out of the 70′s, and today it’s supposed to be 92 degrees for the third day in a row.  The weather gods say this will continue until Saturday night.  Even as I became crabbier and hotter I fought the urge to seal myself off from the world and enjoy the A/C,  but succumbed Tuesday evening when it was still 80 degrees with humidity nearly as high.  These are the conditions which make me feel as if it’s February–I’m in the house, reluctant to go out, and waiting for something to change the weather.  I have a while to wait.  We usually are not faced with the “turn it on/tolerate it” question until late July or August.

This morning, as I write this, it’s 82 and ungodly humid. Going out to get the newspaper for a whopping 30 seconds was unpleasant and I was happy to get back into my bubble.    Now that I’m in here (where the temperature is closer to 70 with no humidity) I am stuck. The Red-Tailed hawk who has been hunting the yard from a fencepost lately may be here, but I won’t know.  The Downy woodpecker fledglings may have arrived with their mother to learn about eating suet and dodging the Cooper’s Hawk,  but again, I have no idea. Same goes for the Cedar Waxwing babies who come in the morning and stay all day to snatch insects and eat last year’s sumac berries.  I usually know when they’ve arrived because of the trill coming from the sumac forest on the fenceline, but this morning all I hear is the blast of air coming through the vents.  I’m wrapped in a sheath of cool and have disconnected from outside.  So, for all my complaining about humanity losing touch with the natural world in countless ways, I have joined the ranks.  And it’s making me almost as crabby as if I had no air conditioning to turn on.  Almost being the operative word.  When the air goes off, unfortunately later rather than sooner, I will treat outside as if it were April—I’ll have to reacquaint myself with the gardens and the pond, pull weeds and just sit for awhile to soak it all in.   A lot happens in four days (my estimated indoor sentence) and I am sure that there’ll be a great deal to do to make up after the exile finally ends.

The river is little respite —due to almost four inches of rain in a 24 hour period last week the banks are lost under a lot of water.  Kola and I can’t get anywhere near our usual spots—there is actually current running through the woods where there should be maturing Jewelweed and blooming Rugosa.  She and I usually get away from the main paths and into the thick of the river’s deer roads as soon as we can—it’s on the deer roads where we are free from other humans and are more able to participate in the nitty-gritty of what’s going on.  Nothing happens on the human paths—all the action is reserved for those who are willing to brave the mosquitoes and dodge the poison ivy along the narrow roads made by the deer and coyotes.  Right now I imagine the Cedar Waxwings have arrived in their familial droves and that there are young Kingfishers learning the way of the world from their parents, parading up and down the current from dawn till dusk.  Late June is when the Mayfly hatches really heat up as well.  Kola and I sit down wherever we see the most bird activity and spend a half hour reading the river.  Floating on the top, the mayflies struggle out of their shucks and are released into the air.   They’ve been relegated to the floor of the river for at least a year and possibly three, to finally emerge winged and gorgeous, with a precious day and night to dry, search for a mate, and lay eggs.  Their effort is more often than not rewarded with becoming a meal.   Waxwings are either patrolling the current or waiting in the overhanging branches for them, and they rarely miss.  I have become adept at differentiating between a bubble on the river’s surface and an emerging Mayfly—I try to follow my chosen fledgling along the water and follow it up into the air and to wherever it chooses to land, but 9 out of 10 are never allowed more than two seconds of flight before the birds get them.  So we move on, hopeful that there will be a bug or two who made it to dry on a tree trunk farther into the woods.  Therein lies the current problem; we can’t get to those trees right now because of the floods.  I suppose we could get there, but I’m not willing to wade in up to my chest.  The water is of a depth which is more reminiscent of  early May and is not receding at all—from one day to the next I am usually able to see the water line on the tree trunks  gaining a few inches each day.  There’s been no change in five days and it could be another two weeks before our paths are walkable again –and that estimate is assuming there’s no more rain ahead.   A bummer, to say the least. 

Thus, I will spend the day in here, where the air is numbing and tolerable, cleaning and reading and pretending that this is what I am supposed to do.  But I know better.  All the action is outside, but just as I did in February, I am ignoring it and waiting for the weather gods to comply with my narrow band of temperature tolerance.  I hope they’re listening to my pleas, but I am pretty sure they’re busy raising the humidity.

Naomi  (her link is to the left–if you’re not reading her blog every day, you should be) adds to rule #4 that ticks can also be killed purely for sport and not eaten.   I am not particularly wigged out by ticks, but she is, so I’ll allow the addition….she’s taught me a lot (like that morsel about mosquitoes) and deserves to have a little input. (My mom would also agree with her…she asked me the other day if there was a product in existence which would kill every tick in her yard.)

Also, anyone wanting to comment may again do so–due to the ridiculous number of spam comments I was getting every day, I upped my security settings awhile back.  Now I don’t get any spam but no-one comments either.  Thus, I lowered my security settings and readers will no longer be required to register to comment.

or, What did you do on your public lands today?

I imagine we all have different definitions of public land–how it should or should not be used, and what the rules ought to be when using it.   I have been going over my own personal definition and rule list all day.  If you have caveats I would be interested in knowing how they vary or diverge completely from my own.  You can leave your comments/lists at the end of this post–maybe it will turn out that our definitions are more similar than I think.  In the meantime here are my rules, in no particular order:

1.  No yelling/screaming/shouting.

2.  No cell phones.  No explanation needed.

3.  If you are a child, or just a really angry adult, no shaking of, hitting, or breaking saplings or trees.

4.  Don’t kill anything you don’t plan to eat.  This rule does not apply to mosquitoes, but only because I would be incapable of following it if it did.  We need mosquitoes–the males, anyway.  They are pollinators and don’t bite.  So try to only swat the ladies.

5.  Mind your gait; if you are a non-path follower, try not to step on the native plants–they have a hard enough time getting a foothold without being walked  on.

6.  No iPods.  Again, no explanation necessary.

So that’s it.  Not unreasonable, I think.  I believe the real rule makers (the suit and uniform wearers)  have lists longer and more stringent than mine;  for one, they don’t want you taking anything out–not dead herons, not good rocks, and certainly not mushrooms.  They probably don’t mind if you yell in the woods though.  All things considered I feel that my rules are more reasonable.

However, after an experience I had Monday afternoon along my favorite stretch of river, I find it necessary to add another rule.

7.  No sex.  Especially not the varieties which are illegal in some states.

Needless to say, my walk was ruined and my best beaver watching spot has been desecrated.   Enough said.

I realized the other day, as I was catching up on the blogs of two close friends, that their daily offerings are informational, concise, compelling, and very useful.  In contrast, I believe I may be subconsciously (until my epiphany earlier in the week, anyway) using this blog as my own personal lectern.  Though I have daily fantasies to the contrary, I am confident that I will never have a book published (possibly because I have not written one, but more likely because no manuscript editor would read more than a page or two) so I may be using this as a means to no end other than the forcing of my thoughts upon whoever is willing to read them.   This being said, I now will empty the contents of my head, which have actually been keeping me up at night.  I’ll call this a therapeutic endeavor and not an act of shameless vanity. Also, it should be noted that today is my birthday so I can talk about whatever I want, no matter how crazy it sounds.

Here we go…

The root of all the world’s problems are one of the following and sometimes both:

A)  One parent (assuming there are two) needs to stay home with children.  Being with your children is good for them, good for you, and makes for whole people somewhere down the road in adulthood.  This presupposes that home is safe and nurturing, obviously.  I know that this will piss someone off.  Maybe lots of people.   I am committed to it, but not discussing it further.  Can of worms, slippery slope, rock that needs no turning, etc.

B)  Disconnection from the land.  This is the big one, and it’ is likely that #1 would not be an issue of we paid more attention to this.

These two theories are literally my answers to everything, and though I am sure they are going to be ideas unpopular with a huge segment of the world, I am sticking to them.   Any problem, be it of a personal, economic, political, social, or spiritual nature can be remedied (or is caused by) either A or B.  I quietly (in my head) test them, offer them as solutions, try them out for their ability to hold water, and generally put them through my mental ringer every day.  As mentioned, problem/solution A will not be discussed, but here is my explanation for B…..

I will begin with mushrooms, which use a good deal of my mental energy at this time of year.  I’m still thinking about morels, but recently have added honey mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and coral mushrooms to my mental soup.  Mike and I spent a lot of time, as I mentioned in an earlier post, reading the mushrooms boards prior to going out on our own hunt.  We noticed that for the most part (I’m going to estimate this at about 95% of what we read) the people posting, sharing information, discussing a find, etc., were from more rural areas–that is to say they most often resided downstate and never in the counties bordering Chicago. The language they used in discussing their mushrooms was colloquial–there were dog peckers, tulips, and pheasant backs, to name a few.  No latin names.  No descriptions using botany or scientific language.   I love this.  I love that I don’t know what a dog pecker is, but people (or at least some of them) in Putnam County do.

The people doing the morel hunting and then leaving these online fungal messages for the rest of us got up early,took time off work,  braved the ticks and raspberries, the rain and wind,  took their children, followed old people, took new charges with them, and yet,  had a ball in the woods.  They appeared to look forward to the morel season each year and it seemed, based on what I read, that mushroom hunting is not the only outdoor ritual in which they participate.  They are gardeners, hunters, fishermen, campers, hikers,  plantsmen, and generally speaking, wanderers.  They have not lost their connection to the woods but have done everything they can to hold onto it, and I would bet a great deal of what they know came from their own people before them, who never thought about their land connection–primarily because it was such a part of them they didn’t even know it was there.  But why bother with all of this when morels can be gotten from a grocery store?

Eating locally is very big right now, at least among the people I know.  And whether or not the locavores want to admit it, their endeavor is a  completely primeval one.  This is one of the reasons I love it.  One of my favorite moments in life is the one where I can see the  thread between two worlds….the  modern behavior which can only be rooted in genetic memory.  Such as when Mike comes home from a week of hunting virtually oozing testosterone, possessing a strut and confidence that I find unnerving.   Or when the 3rd and 4th grade girls in my class spend their entire recess gathering up seed pods and fallen berries, or when the boys make mock war with each other, wielding any stick they can find.  Or the propensity of any child to find the best hiding spot outdoors–the one he can see out of but no one can see into.  Or the pure joy children find in eating out of a garden, off of a shrub or tree, or bettter yet, in the asking to eat something found outside that does not resemble any food they are familiar with.   I don’t believe these are  just games  children  like to play because they are fun, nor do I believe Mike is simply looking for attention from me after a week of being away.  In the case of children, I think (and hope) that these behaviors are the remnants  of days when our play eventually became our work.  And as far as Mike returning home as the sanguine, swaggering hunter….. this is no more than a man proud to provide food for his family and one full of the rush and energy of the hunt.  No matter that he is presenting me with harmless pheasant and quail and not a saber-toothed cat.

I could be wrong about all of this but I hope not.  This desire to eat locally is lodged in our DNA, I think, and I hope it is more than a fad.  If not a hard-wired part of us, then why else would there be so many people growing vegetables and fruit in home gardens, cultivating herbs in the winter, and leaving their dandelions in the lawn to toss into a salad?  Sure, gardening is enjoyable, but it’s also hard work.  There are a lot of people  doing their damndest to keep some of their food intake local in this way–I just wish it would move to the next level;  getting out into the woods and fields to find the less obvious edibles.    But before that happens, before the world leaves its quarter-acre of homegrown tomatoes and cukes to find wild garlic and Sumac for lemonade, the land connection issue  is going to have to be addressed.  We can’t find it if we don’t know where it grows, and we cannot ever know where it grows by simply reading about it.  What we need are more wanderers, more explorers, more aimless surveyors of the woods.  And maybe that day is coming, although probably not in my lifetime.  And if it were to happen, there would be a whole new set of problems….public land availability and having the power to forage on it being the first one which comes to mind.  But it’s a thought to play with and hope for.

In the meantime, while we wait for our tribal tendencies to fully reassert themselves and the tribes to embrace them, here’s to dog peckers.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.  –HD Thoreau

I’ve got no idea where to start.  It’s been so long since I have had a minute to spare that all the thoughts and ideas of the last few weeks have puddled in my brain and are now sort of lost there.  A few things do come to mind; I’ve quit worrying that Spring will turn around and leave–she seems to be here and does not plan any tricks like frost or freak snow.  I am also enjoying the fact that the point has been reached, phenologically speaking, when the leaves of our trees now almost completely obscure our neighbors.  We like our neighbors, but are constantly attempting to pretend that we are the only ones here.  Mike’s strategic tree planting, which made no sense to me fifteen years ago, now proves itself to be the work of  a man who truly understands optimism and long term thinking.

Last weekend was spent running around in the woods for two days.  I had huge plans and knew that 48 hours probably wouldn’t cover everything I wanted to get done and I was right.  I went equipped with bags to house the plants I was planning to dig for myself and friends, the camera pack stuffed, and a vague plan to get it all done somehow.  In the end, the only thing I truly devoted any time to was underfoot, hiding, and delicious.   It is Morel season in Illinois.

We started reading the mushroom boards online a few days before we left.  We scoured the posts for reports from the county where our land is located and found a few– hopes were high that our chosen weekend would be fruitful.  We would have gone whether or not the mushrooms were waiting for us asthe first weekend in May has proven in years past to be a busy one for morels as well as Barred Owls, so we go no matter what.   It is also one of the last times in the season when we can navigate the woods without a machete.  While the land is relatively pristine (very little garlic mustard, no buckthorn, no burdock) the roses and raspberries make the deer paths impassable for anyone but the deer after mid-May.  We do have other favorite times during the year to be there, but our May trip is the seminal event of the year.  The convergence of these two events, new Barred Owl families out and about together and morels popping up, is magical.  Morels and owls are both frustrating creatures, nonetheless.  They are elusive masters of camouflage; there one  second and gone the next.   While the owls can be found at most times of year with a little luck and a knowledge of their haunts, Morels are less cooperative. Their season is short and their numbers are determined by the usual factors–rain, soil temperature, and light conditions.

Morchella crassipes and Morchella esculenta, our two most commonly found species here, tend to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  Theories abound as to the best places to find them, with the most common being under dead elm and apple trees.  Recently burned areas are also a frequently cited indicator.  In our woods there are no apple trees or fires so the only thing we have to go on are the elms.  While a decaying elm does not always mean morels, the mushrooms we do find are almost always near them.     The frustrating part is that finding one mushroom is meaningless.  Before beginning morel hunting myself I always assumed that if I were lucky enough to find one it would invariably lead to a field of them….not so in Morel world.  One mushroom does not necessarily mean more mushrooms.  We very often come upon a 30 foot radius of elm bark littering the ground and fine one mushroom, sometimes two.   If conditions are right for two, then why aren’t there a hundred of them?   No idea.  We cut the two we find and move on to the next spot.  I do wonder if for every one we find there is at least another which we missed–they don’t pop up through the leaf litter all the time–sometimes they emerge rather horizontally and are completely obscured.  And very often they blend so seamlessly into the leaves of the last few years that they are simply not there.  I have to constantly remind my brain of what I am looking for and put a picture of it into my head–otherwise I don’t see anything but leaves and sticks.  Part of my problem also arises from the fact that the woods is the most ADD inducing place in  the world for me–especially after a long winter.  My mantra is “mushroom”, but my brain is seeing everything else and yelling it all into my ear….Jack in the Pulpit! Spring Beauty! Toad! Unknown flower! Big spider! Snake! Owl pellet!  Wild Ginger!  This may be nature’s way of making sure that I don’t get even a quarter of the morels out there.  Nature’s got nothing on Mike though…he is single minded, focused, and undistractible, a master of doing what he is supposed to be doing and nothing of what he’s not.  This annoys me.

The results of the two days of wandering were satisfactory if not astounding.  We ended up with a couple pounds of at least two species, some the size of soda cans, some more along the lines of quarters.  They were cut ( an indian friend has reminded me never to pull any plant or mushroom–this would be yanking out the hair of Mother Earth) and deposited into mesh bags, which hopefully  allows the scattering of  spores as we continue our woodswalk.  Once home Mike split and dried them for use throughout the year.  Our haul of this or any season will never keep us in Morels for a whole year–we share them with a close friend or two no matter how few we bring home and always use them sparingly all year, but we still run out by fall.   I sauteed some earlier this week with butter, an obscene amount of garlic, white wine, and cream and put the whole mess over whole-wheat pasta.  It was delicious though I felt it needed more mushrooms.  The things we wait a year for must be rationed and protected and never eaten mindlessly.  This leads me to the rant I have been mulling for a few weeks about local foods and the importance of foraging as a life-skill, but I am not foolish enough to assume anyone has time or desire to read another ten paragraphs.  I’ll save that diatribe for another morning.