There are things I want to remember

sunrise:  5:25

I noticed that there were multiple versions of beauty in the round this morning, from the orbs in the sky to the fruits of the Earth.

There are things I want to remember, moments of transcendance or elation that I want to hold in my heart and mind.

Yesterday evening I was out walking the dogs, whose nudging had finally pestered me away from the computer for their evening stroll.  I was preoccupied by the thoughts in my head, the talk I've been working on for next week about my sunrise year.

As I rounded the northeast corner of the back field at the bottom of the hill, the beauty of my surroundings finally reached my brain. A host of dragonflies was crossing and circling and hovering over the meadow, silhouetted against a sunset sky.  Their aeronautical acrobatics made for a dazzling air show, and the setting was exquisite.

I desperately wished for my camera, or my phone, some way to capture the scene.  We are so determined these days to package and transmit every notable (and every dull) incident in our lives even in the moment of their occurrence, and I am not immune to the inclination.  But the result, I think, can be that we disable our memory.

Snapping a photo or tweeting a thought can offer a great shared experience, but it enables the distracted brain.  The event has been recorded; our work is done.  We can go back to that preoccupied musing over the talk we're giving next week and clear the impression from our mind.

I had no instrument of recording, but I was stirred by this moment of dragonflies, suspended between a field of goldenrod and the pink and azure sky canvas of a summer sunset.  I stopped walking.  I stood and watched for a while, and tried to give it time to sink in.

There are things I want to remember.

life's full circle is around us every day

sunrise:  4:54 am

I am reflecting these days on the divergent experiences offered through contact with the natural world.

Our bird expertise is growing bit by bit, partially thanks to a very entertaining app on J's smartphone called "iBird."  Part of our motivation is to figure out who is making such a racket outside our windows every morning.  We've identified all kinds of backyard birds by song and plumage.  J also finally spotted baby ducks on our pond.  He caught them briefly just before mama duck led them into the thickest reeds for protection.

In other outdoor news, the other day J and I each came home from separate excursions with turtle in hand.  Mine was a big old painted turtle, very effectively protecting himself from me and the dogs.

J's was the tiniest snapping turtle I've ever seen.  His belly covering was only partially formed - it was hard in the center, but all around his tiny, prehistoric legs the skin was still soft and supple.  It reminded me of the fontanelle on the head of a human baby.

While watching the turtles, we also witnessed the tenacious efforts of a red squirrel, determined to get to our bird feeder.  He was fearless - about 8 feet away from us and the dogs, but seemed to know somehow that he had a manageable escape route.

That same day, J had seen a beaver, several blue herons, an adult eagle and several immature eagles while canoeing on the Souadabscook River.

The natural world is charmingly filled with promise:  new life, perpetual regeneration, protectiveness, perseverance, survival, and beauty.

********

We spent an afternoon hip deep in the muck of our pond recently, to do some clearing of cattails.  We both came out with leeches attached, which pretty much ruined the experience for me.  J kept at it, however, and wandered into the mother lode of leeches.  Most (but not all) were miniscule, but determined to find open wounds and feed off of him.  We removed about 40.  Seriously.

Not far from where I found the painted turtle, my little hound Guster caught and shook a baby groundhog right in front of me, before I could stop him.  I shrieked at him to stop, but I was too late.  The little critter was still moving, but devastated; I will spare you the details.  I had to end his suffering as fast as I could.  It was a task way out of my comfort zone, but the clarity of what was right outweighed my squeamishness.  Very sad.  Guster, on the other hand, was elated with triumphant pride.

The natural world is full of parasites, violence, suffering, and death.

********

Amongst my family and friends this last month, there has been a new pregnancy, a couple of new babies, and a new job.  There was also a tragic suicide.

The whole package is all around us every day - caring and killing, exuberance and despair, bloodsucking and enriching, sunup and sundown, birth and death.  Somehow, we have to carry on in the full acceptance of everything.  Perhaps we can learn something by observing how life's spectrum plays out all around us every day with such equanimity.

skirting Katahdin - it's all about the journey

June 15th sunrise:  4:49
**earliest sunrise of 2012**

On June 15th, a friend and I set out to climb Mt. Katahdin just before dawn.  It's a long day - about 2 hours to drive to the base trail, 9-11 hours of hiking, and 2 hours home.

We have both been up the mountain a few times before (she many more times than I), so it is familiar territory.  G said to me as we were driving that she considered doing a smaller hike, but there is something incomparable in Mt. Katahdin.  Many people hike this formidable mountain of granite as a kind of pilgrimage, a spiritual act, a quest-completion kind of thing.  She felt like that was what she needed, so off we went on this quintessential sunny June day in Maine.


We parked at the Roaring Brook campground.  From there it's a little over 3 miles to Chimney Pond, then another 2 miles or so UP to the summit at Baxter Peak.

We met a number of people on the trail -- a man with his elderly dad; large groups with multi-day packs; one guy with no pack or water of any kind that we could see; a group of lovely young people dressed in (I think) Mennonite clothing - the women with head scarves, long cotton dresses, daypacks and hiking boots, the men with suspenders and buttoned shirts, and binoculars! trying to spot a magnolia warbler.

About halfway to Chimney Pond, which sits dramatically in a bowl at the base of Katahdin, G came to the conclusion that her quest for the day might not include the hike to the summit.  The inner drive that had been pushing her through recent trials was part of what pushed her to drive through this challenging hike.  But as she tramped forward up and over the rocky trail, the exhaustion that she'd been staving off for so long finally found its way to the surface.  An indefatigable woman, G is also dependably realistic.  This was no time to push herself further.

She was apologetic.  "I can't believe I made you get up at 4:00 in the morning."  But I was utterly content.  There was something wonderfully liberating about being on the trail with the specter of the summit lifted away.  We could contentedly gaze upon the great mountain from afar, and appreciate it thoroughly.

At Chimney Pond we had a chat with an exceedingly pleasant park ranger.

"Are you heading up?" he asked.
"Well, we were going to, but we're too tired.  Not today."
"Well, if you're not out of gas, there are a couple of really lovely side trails you could check out..."


Usually, when people come to Katahdin, they have eyes only for Baxter peak, the highest summit.  It is a bear of a climb.  My 50-something-year-old body generally takes almost a week to recover.  But there are so many side trails and little viewpoint destinations that people never see as a result.

The ranger directed us to Blueberry Knoll, an extra loop that would add about 1.7 miles to our descent.  I had heard of, but never seen Blueberry Knoll.  It was awesome -- here is the view.  A new prospect overlooking Katahdin, which is awe-inspiring from any angle.

Then, when we got to the base of the trail, I shed my pack at the car and hiked the .3 mile jaunt over to Sandy Pond, which our ranger friend had called "the moosiest place in the park."  Sure enough, it was as advertised.   I watched this big guy dip his head in and out of the water several times before I turned back, and saw a deer along the way.

It was a new and delightful way to enjoy Mt. Katahdin - as a backdrop to a beautiful day.

I was taken by the wording on a plaque near the Chimney Pond ranger station.  It's a tribute to Leroy Dudley, a long-time park ranger in Baxter, and it includes the phrases "genial philosophy, kindly ways,  and droll tales..."  It strikes me that THAT is the kind of attitude inspired by the surroundings out there in the untamed woods of Maine - blackflies notwithstanding.  I can think of no worthier words to have on a commemorative plaque, and they were inspired by someone's connection to the world outdoors.

The fact is, G and I had a superb day of hiking.  No distant signs of man-made development, serene brooks and streams, twittering birds, flowering ground cover - bunchberries and trillium, sunshine filtering through the leafy canopy, the awesome sight of Katahdin standing sentry nearby, and no pressure to do any more than we felt like doing.  Just out there, in the middle of it all.  Summit not included.  A worthy pilgrimage.

moonrise, moonset

sunrise:  6:11

Last night I watched the full moon rise out of a cloud over our neighbors' house.  A golden sliver of glow emerged and resolved into that perfect lunar globe of light - so beautiful.  I was in need of some sky beauty, having just crawled through one of those days where I felt shackled in a paralysis of apathy.   Knowing that the full moon sets in the morning, right around sunrise, I decided I would get up and say goodbye to the moon today.

Even when a glorious sunny day is in store, the Penobscot River, just to the east of our property, often creates a ribbon of fog in the morning which creeps up into bordering fields like ours.  The sunrise wasn't visible, but I got some great shots of the morning moon, sinking out of my view as it rises over someone else's eastern horizon, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

Capturing the moon on film has always been a challenge for me, but it's a labor of love.  The moon captivates me.  Sometimes the best photos of the moon (and the sun) are photos of its reflection, which proved true today.

quality time in the real world

sunrise:  5:24

Although May opened with an exceptionally lovely day yesterday, I still built a fire, and we had a visible frost this morning.  Even now, I love the fresh chill in the air, truth be told.  Maine is the place for me.

This weekend has been another first in this new world of no children in the home.  J is away on a canoe trip, and I've been alone in the house for several days - for the first time in 17 years.  There was one other weekend since motherhood when it happened.  J took a year off while I went to school full time, and one weekend he took the four kids off on a trip while I stayed home to study. 

Pretty astonishing that I haven't been in that situation more often, but there it is.  The only time it really strikes me is at night, but the dogs are very companionable, and it has been okay. 

It is interesting in the context of an email exchange amongst our family yesterday, about technology and togetherness.  It sprang from an article:  (Quality Time - Redefined).   The debate continues about just how detrimental our perpetually plugged in society is to interpersonal relationships  Although I recognize many merits in the information stream available to us, and I even see how it aids connections between people who are far away from each other geographically, I think it is a pernicious crutch in many other ways.

First - we forget how to be alone.  Without any human presence, people tend to panic.  They turn on a TV, make a phone call, get on email or the internet.  As a result, there are parts of our brain that are lying fallow - those creative, innovative, inventive parts that find something to do with idle time. 

Second - we forget how to be together.  Yes, in many ways it can be far more peaceful to sit in companionship with one's family as each takes part in his or her personal electronic experience.  There are moments of pleasant sharing.  "Cool!  I got 1000 points!"  "Wow - look at this picture!"  But that is a watered-down version of togetherness, the effortless kind.  We figure each other out far more effectively, even if it hurts a little, by working through a conversation, or a card game, or one of those excruciating board game battles (that reveals a bit our own family style, I confess). 

Third - this is a world of trees and dirt and rocks and other animals.  If we never stub our toe on a rock, or scrape our arms climbing a tree, or get muddy on a leafy hill, or pick up a frog from a pond, or feel cold in the winter or hot and sweaty in the summer grass, or hear the long, uninterrupted orchestra of wind in trees and singing birds for a full hour -- then we have forgotten how to live in the world that we live in.  That feels like a dangerous skill to lose.

**extra note - just read the news of Bin Laden's death, and I feel obliged to make mention of it.  It is a strangely unsettling feeling to experience such a rush of...joy? relief? satisfaction?...upon hearing of someone's death.  Nevertheless, he was a living representation of the worst kind of fear and hatred.  I hope his death will mean some diminishment in those insidious poisons in the world.  I was grateful and proud of our nation's dignity when I read that his body is being treated with the respect proscribed by his religion.

the smell of snow

sunrise:  7:00

...the smell of snow.

One would think I'd have noticed such a thing before, some time during 50 years of winters.  But it felt like a brand new discovery this week.

Surely during childhood, when my face was periodically buried in the snow, either by mishap or some mischief maker, I must have experienced the smell of snow.  I certainly knew the taste.  When my own children were small, I became reacquainted with the taste of snow.  "Eat 'no!" was one of my youngest daughter's earliest phrases.   Eat snow - she loved it.  So I had to try it too, and then I remembered that taste, kind of minerally, almost metallic, light, fresh, more distinct than you would imagine.

Some time during this past week, while snowshoeing around the back fields (what an amazing year for snow excursions!), I was suddenly struck by the scent, wafting through the air over acres of whiteness. It was instantly familiar, because it was the scent version of the taste of snow.  It had never occurred to me that one could smell snow, but there it was.  So I had to taste it too, for confirmation.  There is plenty of it to go around.

I wonder if my year of daily connecting to the outdoors has enhanced my observational aptitudes...?  I'd like to imagine it's true.

***********

Writing has become a daily activity in my life, as I hoped would happen.  I have taken on a second book project.  My biggest challenge now is to finish.  A 700 word weekly column is one thing; to finish a book is an entirely different challenge.  I seem to be good at starting, but haven't managed to see a book through to completion.  I am working on seeing it happen, in my mind's eye.  Then I have to see it happen on my computer screen.