The 12 day of the first month of the year of Emergence

We have another and new guest at my local "Ornithological Diner and Seed Bar".  Yesterday, a lucky day, a pine warbler visited the food station and photography bait place.  Always a bit interesting to have a new addition. 

These guys are fairly common, but I have never seen one this close and with such identifiable markings. 

It's just a postcard type of shot and I hope he/she comes back so I can get some character shots.

Here are a couple more of the same critter.

One Eleven Eleven......................of the year of Emergence

1-11-11

Got to wait till November for the next one!

It's our lucky day to celebrate!

Soon as we get out from under all the ice!

Thank ya Lord!

ONE TEN ELEVEN--------------The year of Emergence

We had a snow, freezing rain, sleet and slush event today.

I was going to go out and make it a photo op event as well.  Shoot, I've done that for years and really didn't want to get wet or cold.  And certainly did not want to spend the day avoiding people who thought their cars were toboggans.

So I stayed inside and played with my backyard buddies.

You know------------Bait them and they will come.  I'll probably have more success tomorrow after it stops doing whatever it's doing outside right now.  I think it's freezing rain.  The above is, what else but a Carolina Wren.  He must have gotten out of the garage somehow.  At least that's where I see them often, a friendly little bird.  Has a tail that sticks straight up when nervous.

This Brown Trasher thought the feeding platform was a great place to sit.

And like you, we have dozens of White Throated Sparrows.  But, I like their coloration.  I'll try again tomorrow.

The 9th day already of the first month of the year of Emergence

"LOOK WEST YOUNG MAN"

"Go West, young man," Indiana newspaper writer John Soule's 1851 advice, would be popularized by Horace Greeley and serve as the mantra for nineteenth Century American migration.  Continuing the trend of westward expansion to the Appalachian Mountains in the eighteenth century, United States citizens as well as immigrants would migrate all the way to the Pacific Ocean by the mid-nineteenth century.


Well last night we"Looked West".  Watched a decent sunset on Lake Murray.  It was low forties and felt cold to me although I knew it really wasn't.  Only a couple of wispy clouds marked the sky as the sun slipped over the horizon.  The island was the only object in the image other than a very orange sun.  Fortunately, it decided to come again this morning on the other side of our world.

Twenty seven this morning and it looks like some weather in Texas is headed our way.  They talk about an ice storm here tonight late and tomorrow.  Maybe I'll get some photo ops to share tomorrow.  Our prayers go out to those folks in Arizona.  For the rest of us, please don't make something political of the actions of a deranged nut job that starts shooting at people.  Nuff said.

The 8th day of the first month of the year of Emergence

A lot of writers write things called the "Road back to (insert appropriate place or memory here)."   I know I fall into that trap or at least want to.  I had an email from a friend of mine who is a member of the "Deuces, One Eyed Jacks and Boat Ride Club" yesterday.  He is actually one of the founders of the club and we were discussing an article that reminded us of fishing in New Jersey when we were kids.

Now this would have been in the later sixties in the last century. For those of you in Rio Linda that would be the 1960's.   At any rate we all went to a middle income grade school called Wilson School, situated in a middle to upper income town of around 21,000 called Westfield, NJ.  Until we got our driver's licenses at the age of 17, our mode of transportation was "Buster Browns" or those thin tired English bikes.  I remember my first bike.............it was total freedom!  Man I had wheels!  And I took advantage of it.

No, well we aren't that old, at least not yet.  We had something that looked a little less fancy than what one would today loosely call a racing bike.

Of course we never wore helmets.  We were indestructible don't you know.  I am sure that my parents along with all my buddies parents got to know each other with constant phone calls just looking for their kids.  I know my parents did, God Bless um.  "Where the hell is he now?"  And we would be gone most Saturdays and parts of Sundays to Lord knows where.

With the added wheels we traveled in packs of anywhere from two to six depending what was going on. Not a gang mind you, but just friends that like to do things together.   If we were going fishing, only a couple of the guys would participate.  If we were going bow hunting, then all six might show up.  Again, not a gang because we were all budding sportsman and quasi athletes at school.  Clean cut kids from middle class families.  Even at that it still is a wonder that a) we did not kill ourselves or someone else with the bows and arrows, or b) weren't arrested for what today would be called terrorism.  This was and is a suburban town with not too much open space.  We "Hunted" in people's back yards for God's sake, shooting at anything that moved.  Just imagine that today.  It would make at least the local news if not national.

For my NJ buds, we fished the Rahway River for trout either in Cranford or along Rt. 22.  We hiked and camped out (illegally of course) in the Watchung mountains, in a park were it was illegal to do that. That park was also where we went when we had cars and needed a place to park with one's girlfriend (again amazing that we weren't arrested).  A good friend (not in the club) tells the story of a camping trip to said park.  He and two others were going to do an overnight.  You know with campfire, tents, and such.  Well around 11:00 pm it started to rain hard and they go soaked.   One walked to a pay phone and called his father to come and pick them up.  Well the father and another father figured to teach the kids a lesson and waited until around two in the morning to go after them.   They parked in a parking space, two men alone, two am, in the rain and waiting for their kids.  Of courses a cop came along and tapped on the window of the father's car.  These two guys were executives in New York City and were caught together in a car where kids went to park with girlfriends.  Needless to say, a lot of explaining happened.  Fortunately the bedraggled kids came out of the woods to support the father's story.  Good thing that!

 We fished bass in another park with a lake called Echo.  We shot our bows at a target range out along the Rahway River on Rte.  22.  Some club had set it up like a golf course and when they weren't using it, we were.  We also ice skated and played pickup games of ice hockey at the Echo Lake Country Club-----13th hole.  Our Wilson school pick up baseball team were destined to stick together throughout High School and we were pretty good.  Not state champs or anything like that and not all of us were first string.  That team was also the beginning of Little League in Westfield.  We put together the informal playground league which was the forerunner.  One of us would call a bud at another playground and it would be game on! I think there were three or four playground teams around such and Franklin and Lincoln schools.

We also skated at Mindawaskin Park in town, where we met other class mates, from the other side of town.  It was amazing what those bikes did for us.  The miles travelled would probably astonish even ourselves if we had been smart enough to measure them.  We never killed much with our bows and arrows but did catch fish just about wherever we went.  Most of them turned out to be inedible because of the water we caught them it, but all in all it was a good grounding.  In total, it was a very fortunate way to grow up!  We were blessed.

The sixth day of the first month of the year of Emergence

THE ROAD BACK TO HALFMOON RIDGE

Fifty years ago, when I was in college, a young fellow I knew told me his story.   In a sense he told how he would return to is roots.   He went to class part time and into the mountains to hunt full time.  He was more avid about his avocation than his vocation of school work. He ultimately did make it through  college, gaining two degrees along the way.  I suspect that he put what he learned in to woods to far better use than which he learned in the classroom.

Education takes a number of paths, and the road to Halfmoon was far more enticing than Biological Chemistry or Keynesian economics.  The former consuming a disproportionate amount of time compared with what his father was paying the University to accomplish.

Halfmoon Ridge was about twenty miles from the University and part of a larger and longer Appalachian chain running roughly from southwest to northeast.  This particular ridge overlooked an abandoned farm. A farm which must have been totally isolated back when the mules and plows were working the ground. 

Now, the fields were grass and sprouted with occasional volunteer cedar trees that bore witness to the poor quality of the unworked ground.

The buildings show the neglect of not too recent use, but provide a protected spot to park the car and get out of the way of the increasingly cooler fall winds.  The lower fields contain an abundance of small game in the form of rabbits and a very occasional pheasant.  The edges contain more species such as squirrels, grouse, turkey and deer.  A myriad of songbirds grace both the lowland and the ridge alike.   Most of this game thrives in the mixed hardwoods and scattered pines of the hillside.  Acorns or mast  provide the wooded critters with a staple meal.  Mountain laurel on the mid level of the ridge and wild rose at the lower levels give the animals places to hide and the ridge top serves as a hideaway of last resort.

The white tail deer is the most sought after larger game animal in the area.  Our friend was no exception to the fever of this fall sport.  Most businesses closed on opening day and schools somehow found a way to have a vacation day as well.  While the rest of us were either studying or playing in the fraternities, he would be backed up to some old oak tree waiting for his chance.  The bigger the better, although I suspect that the kill was not what his effort was all about.

In the dark of a predawn opening day, just getting to where he felt the deer would go to hide was as treacherous as any of the pledge assignments at the fraternity.  Footing on his personal, long traveled, trail up to the ridge was fairly easy during the day. However the walk is a little dicey in the pitch black before first light. 

The small stream in the fields around the old house and barns must have provided the original owners with drinking water for themselves and their stock.  Now it was now simply something else to step over.  The little flow of water in the fall was multiplied in the spring, when melting snow on the ridge mixed with the little springs on the hillside.  Further up the stream he, knew that he would have to contend with a small frozen waterfall which made the normally rocky hillside even for difficult to climb.

He was a small, but not a frail fellow.  Stood about five foot eight inches and was light of frame.  Strong for a person his size, particularly in the legs which carried him up and down these low mountains almost on a daily basis.

  He chose to make his stand just below the top of Halfmoon so that his profile would not be too evident against the cold, grey morning of the skyline.  He would put his back to an old tree which at the higher elevations still showed evidence of last night's flurries.  He had scraped all the snow and leaf litter around the bottom of the tree away so that his feet would make no noise as he moved. 

Dawn had still not broken when he took his seat to wait out the deer that he knew were moving around in the fields below.  He also knew that the other deer hunters of opening day would be moving around those fields, taking their place in various stands.  He was depending upon that competition from below to drive the deer to higher ground.

He told me that you could not believe the sounds of a breaking sun.  As soon as the monochromatic blacks and greys begin to change to color, the woodland creatures start to stir.  A squirrel can sound like a freight train when no other sound is afoot.  They run, jump and scrape or dig through the litter as if it were their own playground.  And it is!  He was still enough that a chickadee to land on the toe his boot only to realize the mistake before tearing off to some more secluded branch.

As dawn began, a shot rang out in a distant valley and he knew that the game was on.  The men who arrived and parked beside his car at the old barn were now making their presence felt and the woods seemed alive.

The bobcat that he had seen the previous spring while Turkey hunting streaked along a dead fall before taking the top of the ridge.  Crows were busily screaming at a owl that was late getting back to his roost.  And a commotion was forming at the bottom of the little cut in the ridge before him.  The deer had been alerted to all the human movement and were headed to their sanctuary on the top of the ridge.

Just under the top of Halfmoon is the place they felt the most secure and where they bed down during the day.  That was their last area of hope.  Just as he thought.  A smile formed on his lined face as a dozen or more does scrambled up the hill.  They would spend the rest of the day trading back and forth on the ridge depending upon the human activity that had invaded their space.  There was a fat four-point buck in the group.  Not a trophy by any means, but fine fare on the supper table.  He let them pass.  Maybe a larger buck would show. 

The deer stopped just below the top of the ridge on a parallel with the hunter and began to settle down.  Nervous, but more relaxed as they began to nibble some of the acorns which had fallen.  One doe came very close.  So close that in fact as she stuck her head around his tree and they were literally face to face.  He told me all he could do to keep from laughing at her expression of total surprise was to say, "Good morning my lady!"  He was so still that she wheeled immediately for the top of the ridge, but only ran a few yards.   She looked back totally perplexed but never left the area.

A bigger buck never made an appearance and after an hour or so and he decided that backstraps for dinner sounded just fine. He killed the four point cleanly with one shot.  The last deer he would ever kill.

                 ______________________________________________________________

I can attest to the veracity of this story.  The story occurred in Centre County, Pennsylvania on a fictitious Ridge called Halfmoon.  The photos were made in Tennessee in the Great Smokies.

THE SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR OF EMERGENCE

"THE YEAR OF EMERGENCE"

It is the second of January in the year of 2011,  the year of "emergence!"

 

It took me a couple of days to find an image worthy of a new year.  A year where I hope we don't drag old misfortunes into the new.  A year of promise and perhaps a time to become a bit more optimistic as things begin to "emerge".

This morning the fog on the Riverwalk, along the Congaree River, was a little heavier than that of the first day.  I wanted to depict emergence, like a Phoenix rising?  Well, this morning the weather cooperated and one could actually watch the fog rolling up the river from some marsh in the lowlands.  A marsh previously heated by warmer weather, followed snow a week ago, and now warmer again.  Yesterday we broached seventy degrees, but the water and ground temperatures must have been cooler, because the conditions favored a deep fog.

Early in my walk of about three miles this morning, everything was quiet.  Nothing moving on the river nor in the short woods along each shoreline.  Then the fog began to move and things started to get going.  Emerging if you will.

The lonely and haunting call of a Canada goose in flight has part north woods and part panic hidden within the sound.  But the deep "Craaaaaaaaaaaaaank, Craaaaank ",  the sound of Michner's Chesapeake Bay blue heron, is perhaps in answer to the geese.........."Silly geese, my food is right here!"

Once I slipped from the woods, the sight of the Gervais Street bridge between West Columbia and downtown Columbia rose slowly above the fog.

With all this emerging going on, I decided that I had better get back to work.

  There are 363 days left for this old worm to emerge into a beautiful butterfly!  What chya think the chances of that are?  The Lottery is at 290 million too.  Yep!

I took 96 photos this morning and it was an utter delight to be alone, in the fog, and working at perfecting my art.  I can only wish  the same moments of solitude for you in the coming year.