Sometimes I read something about people I have never heard of before and I spontaneously think: wouldn’t it be cool to meet that person? This was certainly true when I encountered the article below, describing Lotte Geeven, a Dutch artist who is passionate about making a concert out of samples of singing sand collected from around the world. The idea alone is ingenious – focussing an audience’s attention on sound that is natural by source (and rare) but now delivered in manufactured fashion – however she plans to do that.

The preparation for such an undertaking involves figuring out where these sands can be found, how people can be approached to send them, and of course how to re-create the sound once the sand is in your possession.

If you click on the short video embedded in the article you can see the process first hand – how she writes to strangers, how they respond, how so much depends on simple kindness and willingness to do the unusual for the sake of art.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artist-crowdsourcing-sand-around-world-recreate-sound-singing-deserts-180966966/

For the mechanically inclined, here are some sketches of her “instruments.”

 https://hyperallergic.com/394661/lotte-geeven-sand-machines/

Here is a sound sample from our own “backyard,” sand dunes in Death Valley who sing during the summer (at 118 degrees…)

Here they are in Liwa (UAE) close to Saudi Arabia

You can find them in China, Mongolia, Scotland (apparently…) and you can find stand-ins at the beach and the Portland Zoo.

The sands there don’t sing, but I needed photographs for this blog so the elephants’ play ground came in handy. When I went there last week to take these pictures I happened to be in time for the elephant training/feeding session. Thus you get a bonus picture of an elephant’s mouth in all its pink detail….

Maybe singing elephants are next.

She doesn’t think so…. 

Yesterday I posted photographs of painted birds – today I feel inclined to share the real thing. I can never decide which season is the best for photographing birds – so I probably will talk about them for every single one, starting with fall. In fall you have the color of the leaves and berries that spectacularly offsets the shape of the birds.

The light is relatively low at the times they are feeding allowing for better shots.

Some trees are almost bare already from the summer drought or have few leaves left after the onset of the rain, allowing for good viewing.

There is much we can do to help them through the winter – or, as the case may be, we should do little in terms of cleaning up the yards…..http://www.audubon.org/news/to-help-birds-winter-go-easy-fall-yard-work

There is, alas, less we can do for the migrating birds, which are now arriving or gathering in large groups to take flight towards warmer climes. They are killed by the millions from hitting TV and radio towers, and up to one billion birds die each year from flying into windows in urban areas.

The link below describes an interesting study that also looks at the consequences of light – mostly urban, industrial-strength light, that disorients birds enough to loose their migrating paths. On my walks I frequently see signs in neighborhood backyards calling for lights out in the city. I now understand why.

Here are some of the migrating birds you can see in these October/November weeks – geese, cranes, swans, red-winged blackbirds,pintail ducks and snowy egrets.

http://www.audubon.org/news/9-awesome-facts-about-bird-migration

When I walk the fields surrounded by their calls I feel a mix of extreme gratitude to be so close to nature, and equally strong longing that I could just take off with them. There is something so unbound, so untethered about the whole migration, never mind that it is a dangerous travel, and really preprogrammed into your genes, not exactly “free.”

This surgery shortened week is devoted to cheerful passions and preoccupations. For me, birds belong in the former category, graffiti in the latter.

So when I saw this article in last week’s NYT I had to grin – been there, done that, as today’s photographs will confirm. Here is the link to the NYT, click on the picture.

The article is about a fabulous project: painting and spray painting the hundreds of bird illustration by John James Audubon, a pioneering ornithologist, onto surfaces where they can be admired daily. The bird murals are spread across Harlem and Washington Heights, and number so far between 70 and 80 (of an intended 314…) – many more than when I visited in March 2016 trying to scout them out without a serious map.

Audubon was an extraordinary man. His life reads like an adventure novel written by someone like Jules Verne, Daphne du Maurier or Alexandre Dumas, tropical islands, slave mistresses and nursemaids, escape from the Napoleonic Wars, travel with Native American tribes, changing names and nationality, included. He traveled more in his time, on horseback and sailboats across the continents and between them, than most people I know in our own century. He was into birds from the get go and throughout his life which had twists and turns he pursued knowledge about them and painted them all. Reading about him, even on Wikipedia, makes you dizzy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon

The National Audubon Society was founded in honor of this adventurer, naturalist and artist in 1896, with President Roosevelt creating the first national wildlife refuge in 1903. Here is an overview of the history – (including the bit of proper Boston ladies trying to get women to boycott wearing hats with feathers as to protect the birds….)

http://www.audubon.org/about/history-audubon-and-waterbird-conservation

And the next link gives up-to-date info on the Audubon Mural Project.  http://www.audubon.org/amp

Just have to get back to NY, don’t I?

Regular readers are familiar with my obsession with Sauvies Island. It is one of my favorite spots to photograph, or, more importantly, to be. I regularly visit to air out my soul.

Since this week’s blog is devoted to recent encounters, I will report on last Thursday’s meeting with unfettered joy – a sunny Rosh Hashana stroll on Sauvie. I went there to walk and contemplate, so the photographs are incidental; in any case Portland has an uncrowned king of Sauvies Island photography, Ron Cronin.  Check out his work – the variety of landscapes and seasons he captures are unparalleled ( and that is saying a lot in a town that is teeming with talented and devoted nature photographers. http://www.augengallery.com/Artists/cronin.html

Here is one of Ron’s images that someone smart at the art museum added to the collection.

PAM has diverse paintings of Sauvie as well: I can think of Charles McKim’s 1920 landscape painting Sauvie Island

Sauvie Island

and Percy Manser’s Fall Trees near Water, 1928.  

Henk Pander has done multiple water colors over the years there, of which this is one of my favorites.

The funny thing is, I could lead you to the exact views represented by these paintings if you give me a day and pack your rain gear…. little has changed in almost 100 years. Somehow that contributes to the sense of being in some totally authentic landscape, something not marred and something shared with other artists.

I walked the Oaks Island trail last week, a 5 k round that will close by the end of the month until late April, to protect migrating birds and nesting waterfowl. The puppy thought he had landed in paradise, chasing those swallows and eventually flushing out a gaggle of geese – unclear who was more startled, the birds or the bird dog.

The grass was golden, the waters calm, and the trees washed free of the accumulated dust after the recent rains. The red-winged blackbirds gorged on the occasional drifts of wild seeded sunflowers and the herons did not disturb the peace with their squawking voices.

And here they were: the sandhill cranes announced themselves from afar with their cries, then flew by in formation, returning from wherever they travel to for a winter’s rest. My favorite birds this time of year.

“Sandhill Cranes give loud, rattling bugle calls, each lasting a couple of seconds and often strung together. They can be heard up to 2.5 miles away and are given on the ground as well as in flight, when the flock may be very high and hard to see. They also give moans, hisses, gooselike honks, and snoring sounds. Chicks give trills and purrs.” I think the Cornell Lab of Ornithology got positively poetic in their choice of adjectives…. if you push the sound button on the lower end of the attached link, you get to hear them.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/sandhill_crane/sounds

I was trilling and purring for the rest of the week – that is until the German election results came in….

I am often astonished when I think about the variety of experiences in my daily life. So I thought this week, instead of writing depressing warnings about losing our soul as a nation, I’ll talk about what happens around here or in my wanderings in general. There is always something surprising.

Let’s start with revisiting a standing date I’ve described before: once a week I walk at Oaks Bottom with a dear friend and wizard of technical gadgets – which comes in handy as you will see when the story unfolds.

As I described Oaks Bottom before – it is a wildlife sanctuary located between a small amusement part and a strangely decorated crematorium.

To get from one to the other you have to pass through a dark tunnel – a satisfyingly cheesy metaphor for any old Tuesday morning.

You walk through meadows,

then wooded paths, along a lake that sports diverse wildlife depending on the time of year and amount of water.

Herons congregate here, owls nest here, young explorers abound,

and the homeless camp out here, occasionally rounded up by the authorities followed by volunteer garbage collectors.

And of course, selfie-takers – can’t avoid them, even in the woods, standing on unsafe surfaces.

Once you come across the lake you walk back on a bike path that parallels train tracks. In the winter Santa Claus is known to run that track with a steam engine decorated with reindeer and filled with the squealing short set. Not being run over by bikes poses a kind of challenge for people and dogs alike, but the views are worth it: the Willamette river can be glimpsed through the trees, all manner of nautical traffic, and the misty clouds over the West hills.

This week the hike was punctuated by cries for help. A disoriented, disheveled, bend-over man who could barely walk implored us to call 911. He had lost his way in the woods, fallen, lost his glasses and, by the wet looks of his clothes and the laceration on his face, had spent the night on the ground. He was on the other side of a fence and another hiker joined us to stabilize him. My cell promptly had no connection, but the hiker reached the police. My friend, thinking on her feet, knew how to drop a pin on our location on her phone, and so when the two of us walked the mile or so to meet the ambulance people at the street access, she could direct them where to go, wheeled stretcher and all. I hope it worked out for the guy.

I know for myself, that I was ashamed for my hesitation when first approaching him: the idea it might be some raving drug addict or some such came to mind way too fast. Not sure I would have stopped if I had been on my own. More proof, if needed, of how our humanity is affected by issues of social injustice.

My archives are full of photographs of this place. But I thought it would be a nice challenge to document the narrative with photos taken on just one visit there, last Saturday.

Yesterday I mentioned the dog(days) of summer; today it’s going to be the birds you saw flying around over these last many months: ospreys.

I like everything about them. They are fearless, they are willing to let you come (relatively) close, they have an interesting way of adapting to current conditions. They usually lay three eggs that both parents tend to but that hatch not all at once. The staggering of chicks ensures that one is bigger than the two others and if there is a food shortage it will make it sure it is fed first. That way during times of scarcity only one bird will survive in an environment that can only carry that load. If there’s plenty then all three will thrive and fledge into a world that has food and room for all of them.

A world, that is, that is not poisoned by chemicals. Ospreys were threatened because commonly used agricultural pesticides thinned their eggshells and hampered reproductive strength. They have now come back in force because of tight regulations that protected the species, and many involved naturalists who built osprey “gardens” – platforms in the landscape where they tend to their nests out of harm’s way. In Portland you can find them reliably on Sauvie Island and at the Tualatin River Wildlife Preserve, the two places where the photographs were taken.

The links below show a video of these fishhawks  and an article that discusses the results of protectionist measures. And I quote gleefully from the NYT: For myself, I also love ospreys because they give me a chance to remind the Republicans who generally own seaside real estate (and covet ospreys) that these birds are a living reminder of how well government regulation can work. We saved ospreys not just through laws regulating pesticides and protecting migratory birds, but also through the Clean Water Act of 1972, which turned the Connecticut River, and many others, from an open cesspool to a precious natural and recreational resource.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/osprey

Ospreys are considered a type of eagle in many Native American tribes, and are accorded the same respect bald and golden eagles are. In coastal tribes where ospreys are most commonly seen, they sometimes play ‘police’ or guardian roles in traditional legends, and seeing one is sometimes considered to be a warning of danger to come – or so tells me the Native American Legends website. http://www.native-languages.org/legends-osprey.htm

Well, I don’t need warnings of dangers to come, am well aware of them as it is – all I have to do is look at may laundry drying outside sprinkled with ash that is falling from our skies as a result of the forest fires.

Not sure what I cherish more – getting a surprise gift from a semi-anonymous source (a thousand thanks to B’s BFF)….) or reading said gift, which turns out to make me laugh out loud while learning.

The book, written by Mark Forsyth, is called Etymologicon – A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. More of a spiraling, tumbling, somersaulting romp through numerous languages of the world, if you ask me. It helped distract me from yesterday’s news of yet another cruel and despicable presidential act – the rescinding of DACA. I spare you my cynical thoughts and instead share with you what I now learned about the roots of the word cynicism.

Loosely quoted: “The Cynics were a school of ancient greek philosophy, founded by Antisthenes and made famous by Diogenes. Cynic meant doglike. Diogenes taught and debated at a gymnasium called Cynosarge, Gymnasium of the White Dog, because a white dog had once defaced a sacrifice there, running away with a piece of meat. Diogenes, not being a native Athenian, was forced to teach at this Dog’s Gymnasiusm, which is how one hungry and ownerless canine gave his name to a whole philosophical movement. A fun litte result of this is that any cynical female is, etymologically speaking, a bitch.”

And speaking of dogs, it sure feels like the dog days, although they only last through mid – August, that hot, oppressive part of late summer. I now learn that people thought that Sirius, the Dog star, second brightest in the sky after the sun, combined its light with the sun for added heat (it cannot be seen during late summer when it rises and sets at the same time as the sun.) Sirius means scorching in Greek – and the only thing I know of these days that enjoys this heat is the sunflower……