Soooooo – I was going to write about a book I thought I would have finished reading by now, but life and a knitting project intervened. Sneak preview for all you Richard Powers fans out there: he scored again. Get on the library wait list for “Playground.” Very much worth it. I will report more anon. What to do for a placeholder in the meantime?
As it turned out, Greg Olear published a W.B.Yeats poem yesterday in his newsletterPrevail. I could not think of a more prescient description of our very own situation here before November 5th. I had to look up Helicon – a mountain in Greece, praised for two springs that sustained the muses in Greek mythology – and calumny – malicious false accusation or slander. Yeats’ ire was likely directed at the religious factions in Ireland, our’s is most certainly applied to whom the descriptions below match best: those averse to learning, open to slander, masters of fantastic falsehoods and opposed to anything that diverges from white supremacist norms….
The Leaders Of The Crowd
THEY must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song. How can they know Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no Solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
But before we start this week with dismay, let’s look at those beautiful owls that simply sat next to my path in the woods, looking at me while I was looking at them. Bliss.
Now I must go back to the novel, dying to know how it ends…
Music is a reference to W.B.Yeats as well…a bit strange, and quite enticing.
I was walking on a dike towards the Columbia river, water levels so low that the geese rested on sand banks in the middle of the sidearm.
Drought had emptied the ponds of all water, colored the landscape with muted browns.
(The brown center is usually a lake)
Leaves of the cottonwoods all silvery in the bright light, mustard yellow on the ground once shed, echoing the lichen.
A few familiars, a harrier hawk, herons and deer, a fearless kestrel advertising the location, an egret flying in search of water. It was hot and it was still, only some isolated chants of geese formations carrying across the meadows, stark light, air shimmering.
If you can’t walk with me through a strangely out-of-season October landscape, find a comfortable spot to sit and read a very long poem. It contains worlds. Cyclic worlds of destruction, worlds of renewal, worlds of despair and ultimately resilience.
It also contains lines that describe perfectly what I experienced yesterday, “summer after summer has ended, … the low hills shine, ochre and fire, even the fields shine… a sun that could be the August sun … a day like a day in summer, exceptionally still.”
I have not been exactly a fan of poet Louise Glück who won the Nobel Prize in 2020, and died this week a year ago. For me, her biting wit too often veered into cruelty. Yet I do see why the Nobel committee awarded Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” She describes the core of coping with trauma regardless of what it was or whom it affected: a person, a people, a planet. There is indeed a universality to the processes she describes, understands and accepts, with a few recommendations toward action or acceptance thrown in.
Having written last week about Kintsugi as a ceramic art form addressing trauma, I thought we might be challenged by looking at poetry that shares some of that approach. Laying bare the scars, acknowledging the irreversibility to a prior state of being, but finding beauty in acknowledgment – there with gold dust as a means of emphasis, here with determined words that claim an untouchable core.
The poem I chose for that purpose is called October. It was written in 2002 as a response to the World Trade Center bombing, and published in Averno in 2006. Lago d’Averno is the name of a deep crater lake near Naples, Italy, thought to be the gateway to the underworld by the Romans. The volume contains several poems describing the myth of Persephone and her cyclical return to earth, with imagery alternating between the destructive world of Hades where she has to reside, and the fruitful world of earth where she is permitted to return to her mother, Demeter, and makes things grow, for periods of time.
22 years later, the poem fits with a world gone mad, whether with personal loss, or the ravages of war, the lure of fascism, or the fears brought on by nature shedding all reserve – through pandemics, or catastrophic changes in climate that lead to the disasters we are now experiencing. It alludes to fear, memory distortion, experienced harm and a refusal to give in to despair, even when we have to acknowledge that we cannot turn to the earth and the planets to rescue us.
Here is my spontaneous take (and you might want to read the poem below first, so I make at least a semblance of sense…):
The first section describes disorientation, a shifting and uncertainty of where the narrator is in time, a loss of a sense of hearing or the ability to decipher meaning. It alludes to pointlessness in trying to anchor herself, no more grasp on reality. It mentions a better, more fertile past where we believed in growing things, in good outcomes. It is a jumble of confusion. Wasn’t life supposed to have a happy ending?
The second section has the narrator reemerge with a strong mind, one that is tested and wary, observing, able to discern that the violence of trauma changed her, harmed a body in ways that cannot be reversed, but a mind now clearly assessing the world that is. Nature is still around, like a bit player, observed but not able to intervene.
Section 3 is given to memory. Remnants of beauty, succor in nature, a world beckoning you to be part of it. Reminiscence makes way to acknowledgment that life can bring pain worse than death. An inkling of defiance, not a submissive nod to saying good bye. So many amazing things to list.
Section 4 starts – for me – to deliver the goods. The poet acknowledges how horrid things have become, how fall (after trauma) contains so much more loss than spring, but she starts to add up what still exists: ideals still burn in us, like a fever or a second heart, music remains, though changed, perceptions are sharpened.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”
Majestic. Painful. A core of us remains intact, despite the horrors, indestructible.
The fifth section reminds us that there is still work to do, work that can be done, and that we are not alone in all of this, whether in collective grief or through collective action.
And lastly, section six seems to sink into the depth of defeat, acknowledging the destruction of a barren earth, no longer nurturing, no longer an option to act as a rescuer. But then the moon appears, with the last lines referring to beauty and friendship. There is no illusion that the moon will do what the earth can no longer, but the concepts of beauty and friendship counteract hopelessness, suggesting there are still forms of connection.
Like in real trauma work, the alternations of drowning and lift-up, of cycling between hope and despair, of past and future orientation, allow us to spiral upwards on our own path towards healing.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love.”
Maybe it’s privilege. Maybe it’s grace. Maybe it’s simple grit, refusing to give up.
I’ll cling as long as I want to, trauma be damned. I’m not forfeiting hope either, let me tell you. There is still too much work to do. (And I hope I’m not eating my words after the election. Then again, remember what Persephone and Demeter, central figures in the Eleusinian Mysteries, promised true believers: a happy afterlife. Looks like we have one final shot…)
October
1. Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn’t Frank just slip on the ice, didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted didn’t the night end, didn’t the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn’t my body rescued, wasn’t it safe didn’t the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn’t they just end, wasn’t the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren’t the seeds planted, didn’t vines climb the south wall I can’t hear your voice for the wind’s cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can’t change what it is— didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth safe when it was planted didn’t we plant the seeds, weren’t we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested?
2. Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me. Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away— You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again. A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer. It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested. Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned. Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you.
3. Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window. Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner. Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters. I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems. What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.
4. The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared. The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them. This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn. Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste. So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart. The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances. You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared. A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.
5. It is true there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use. I am at work, though I am silent. The bland misery of the world bounds us on either side, an alley lined with trees; we are companions here, not speaking, each with his own thoughts; behind the trees, iron gates of the private houses, the shuttered rooms somehow deserted, abandoned, as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception— At the intersection, ornamental lights of the season. I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against the same world: you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel.
6. The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror. My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation. Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
Hot. Again. I spend the mornings watching the birds upstairs, on the balcony and in surrounding trees. Nuthatches, a young finch, flocks of fluff ball bushtits and the familiar band tailed pigeons all make a daily appearance, happy for the water dish.
Later I’ll move to the cooler (daylight) basement to hang out on the couch and unapologetically watch movies, junk and otherwise. The perks of retirement.
I blame my fried brain for all the recent fare I liked for little reason, but the truth is I would have liked it anyhow. I’m a sucker for delicious trash, as you all know.
What fits that description to a tee is Netflix’s new show A Perfect Couple, a star studded mystery that reviewers called “profoundly unserious in all the best ways.” The Who dunnit element of an Agatha Christie-like country-estate dinner- party murder (can you tell my brain is hot with all these haphazardly placed dashes?) soon recedes in the background when the spotlight falls on what rich people all do to keep up appearances.
An icy matriarch, Nicole Kidman is half of that perfect couple, botoxed into porcelain doll – existence, with a cemented cascade of hair to match, emphasized by delft and wedgewood blue outfits. Her husband is a drug addled lecher, whose pregnant mistress is the murder victim. Multiple children, partners, (Dakota Fanning shines)and house guest complete the assembly of outrageously overdrawn character, romping through the beauty of Nantucket Island. One wonders during this search for the culprit, how many real sins we are exposed to, besides murder, given that there are so many of them spoofed. The sin of binging, in my case.
Also over the top, but growing on you after a few episodes, is the British black comedy Kaos, a retelling of Greek Myths supplanted into modern times. It is equal parts trying hard and exceedingly clever, star studded as well, with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, Nabhaan Rizwan as a ravishing Dionysius and Billie Piper as a perfectly cast Cassandra. Someone, I swear, tried to reference as many famous film makers as possible in the visuals, from Antonio, to Bergman, to Eisenstein. I had a blast.
If you like historical dramas with a twist, I was quite taken by The Serpent Queen, featured on Amazon. It is a retelling of Catherine de Medici’s role in France’s politics, her steady rise to power from Italian orphan to queen consort to regent in lieu of her under-age son. The acting shines for both the young Catherine (Liv Hill) and the old one (Samantha Morton), with a super strong cast surrounding them.
Visually it is a feast. Narratively, it tends to cast one of the most scheming women in history into a role that demands empathy for her plight, and understanding for her cruel moves. It does so with dishonesty via omission – the rise to her ultimate power, we are told, rests on her desire to protect a France free of religious compulsion, inclusive to both Catholics and Protestants (in contrast to her daughter in law, Bloody Mary, known for her persecution of Protestants.)
The series, however, conveniently ends with the coronation of Catherine’s second son (and her regency,) before she herself becomes the killers of the Huguenots, one of the most heinous religious persecutions in history. Oh well, artistic license, I gather, extending to the decision to underscore the period costume drama with utterly modern music. Somehow it all worked.
And there is always Season 2, relying on our forgetfulness of Season 1, I suppose.
Walk with me. Midmorning in the wetlands before the heat rises once again. Yellow meadows, blue skies, make me think suddenly of Ukraine and guilt-infused gratitude rises that here I have the luxury of peaceful meanderings, when others fight for their life. This week has been hard, with all the news in our own country as well, and the inability to decide on what might be the right path forward. When did we even last think about Ukraine, or Gaza for that matter, with our national horror show unfolding?
I chose this walk to leave politics behind me, just watch the birds, but can’t easily let go of so much I read across the last days. Here is a remarkable piece on J.D.Vance from a year ago, that might raise the stakes, if that is even possible. Ukraine will be left in the dust. Well, focus, Heuer. You came out here to recharge, not ruminate.
The bugs are out. So are the bees, legs thickly coated with pollen.
Finches waking up and breakfasting on early elderberries. Bushtits prefer mites on the oak leaves. A pair of kestrels hanging out. Bald eagle observing from on high.
Closer to the water, with slowly drying ponds, hungry nutria. Kingfisher high on his perch. Turtle taking a sun bath.
Some late ducklings, lots of shore birds, the killdeer looking like s/he has a glass eye.
Herons and egrets everywhere, eying each other, herding the geese until some fly off in annoyance.
And then, out of the blue sky, come the pelicans, diving down right in front of me, circling me, eventually coming to rest in the water and starting to preen. These infrequent sightings still make my heart race. In a good way, in this instance.
Gratitude descends. About nature. About the privilege to have access to it and the mobility to enjoy it. About a world in which so, so many people engage in trying to preserve it.
Here are words by William Stafford from over 60 years ago:
Let’s all try to meet the rage without with the wing within.
(PS: Mine is not the Selasphorous humming bird – those are red. It’s the plain Rufous.)
Since today was easy on the eyes and brain, music is going to be a bit more demanding. Truly interesting, though. A compilation of electronic music by Peruvian composers between the mid 60s and 80s.
Walk with me. Be warned, though, you need to bring your ear plugs. I, of course, had no clue that they would be needed. The one day last week that I was able to hike was also the day that the Oregon International Airshow opened. Officially it started in the evening, but planes were already practicing during the day, low in the skies over Hillsboro where I happened to make my way through the wetlands.
The noise was deafening, and since I didn’t know then that the air show was slated, my thoughts went immediately to images of training for war, or some kind of emergency. Catastrophic thinking seems to be on a hair trigger these days. I wonder why.
I have written fairly recently about the soundscape of war and its long lasting psychological implications, for people living through war and suffering from PTSD. (Link for new readers, below). So, today I’ll just be looking at the positive side of things and share with you the sights. It will distract me from the fact that only 20% or so of all Oregonians voted, and the candidates I favored were, with few exceptions, not elected. Apathy sure enables the march towards less progressive times.
Here is a link to a video from the airshow that provides a bit of the noise that visitors experience. I was immediately underneath the planes at the time during practice, as you can see from the photographs.
The rest of nature’s sounds were drowned out, particularly the soft twittering from the songbirds and swallows who I had come to photograph.
It was so beautiful to watch them loop around before they went into the nesting sites, or met with their mates on top of them, that I soon forgot the distraction and focused on shimmering cerulean blues and teals and whites instead.
Flora was ready to compete, pink swaths of mallows coloring the meadow, pink valerian (sea foam) dotting the grass, and pink bleeding hearts hiding in the underbrush. Coral bells just about to blush.
Mystery Pink
Bright yellow popped up here and there, with common toadflax, buttercups and thapsias.
There were blue lupines, purplish blue wild irises, and camassia.
Whites everywhere, a perfect match to the white clouds above, the white of the arrowheads, the blackberry blossoms, the cowslip, the dog roses in large clusters, you name it.
Piercy’s poem captures it to perfection, even though we are still in May, not June and the lilies still hesitant. The mood was matched – as long as you kept your hands over your ears, plugging them with your fingers.
A friend sent a poem this week that had me thinking ever since. I was riveted by the way it palpably conveys loss, the way it captures how pain can suddenly emerge in the most mundane situations, and the way it contains phrases that are incredibly well forged, “a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature sound.”
There Are Plenty of Angels, She Said in the LADIES
in the rest area LADIES on the road to Terre Haute. Plenty of angels, she said again. But not one, I’ve heard, not a single one will mission to the fade as it does to the darkness. A stall door latched. Her bag got hung. Seen that sign, back west a ways? The one on the warehouse, in a movie marquee? Blessed Hope, it says. Blessed Hope, she said. It’s meant to be a sign from heaven, but hope’s, I’d say, more a human invention, like freeways, she said. Funny word, she said. They call ’em highways when you pay to ride ’em. Mama’s buried off one in Missouri. Had her forty years and forty days on earth. And the day we did it was a noisy day, all out-o’-doors like a day at the beach: the tearin’ down sounds of the sun and the wind, clouds and trees, grass and stones, a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature sound. Mother never did care much for nature. Enjoyed a sunset well enough Those shameless ones like colored candy, those ones can look like wall-to-wall in a Cineplex foyer: pinks and purples, reds, she said. It was so noisy, anyway, that day even the birds shut up for once. Or got their singin’ drownded out. But I could hear when the box hit bottom: Get on with it, is what it sounded like to me— She had dried her hands on a paper towel— I’m done here.
From The Paris Review, Issue no. 129 (Winter 1993)
I experienced a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature view a few weeks ago, and was thinking that my own mother and paternal grandfather loved nature, as do my children and now the next generation who partook in the views of that day. Somehow that shared affinity softens loss, since you can always recall the joyful moments when you were inseparably linked in awe.
That morning we drove from Altadena, CA north into the San Gabriel mountains. Clouds of lifting mist weaved in and out of the valleys, giving the scenery a mysterious, fairy-tale look.
Ceanothus covered the hills in differing shades of blue, occasionally punctuated by yellow tree poppies that looked like sun confetti.
Our goal was the Bear Divide, a location on the Pacific Flyway, the north-south migratory route that connects Alaska to Patagonia for innumerable migratory birds. The San Gabriels provide both rest and food for the flocks, who tend to seek the specific passage way at the location that we drove to.
The corridor which allows passage at relatively high altitudes, was discovered by chance in the spring of 2016. Brought to the attention of the folks at the Moore Lab at Occidental College, a systematic monitoring of the migratory flocks started soon after. (Everything I learned, including the statistics, I found here.) In 2023 they counted 53,511 birds of 140 species from February to May, (the return trip for the birds seems to happen somewhere else) with some mornings as many as 20.000 birds recorded. The sheer variety is stunning.
The lab uses the help of citizen scientists, local birdwatchers and volunteers, to help with the observations. As it turned out, we chanced on a group of volunteers with the USFS who were netting and banding birds the very morning we arrived.
The nets are erected in the mornings and inspected every thirty minutes. They catch birds without harming them, who are then banded with a very light metal ring around a leg that provides numbers for scientists all over the world to report on flight routes, durations, survival.
The data reveal helpful information about birds’ responses to changes in environmental conditions and ecological shifts across the world. If that made me feel good, something else lifted my soul even more: seeing son and toddler rejoice beyond the sheer fascination with the procedures, sensing their appreciation of the world around us (if only lifting every single pebble or bug on the path as behooves a 14 month-old) reminded me of my own happiness during nature walks with my mother or my Opa. Little is lost. Much lives on.
Orange crowned warbler
Highway restrooms: I no longer fear you! When hope is met, who cares if it’s a human invention!
Music today from the Bowerbird Collective. The video alone is worth it.
Frankly, I’m torn between my desire to report on a magical place, and my longing for just sitting here and let it all sink in. I am currently staying at an old ranch house, hand-built from sandstone boulders, filled with art by the Armenian immigrant Jirayr Zorthian (1911-2004,) who built it many, many decades ago.
It is located high up in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, reachable via a one-lane, potholed, hairpin-curved dirt road. Driving it down and up once a day is enough to get your adrenalin flowing. Except that levels are high already from the sheer beauty that surrounds you, the house nestled among olive-, eucalyptus-, and palm trees, old oaks and oleander bushes, overlooking Los Angeles in the distance.
It is one of many dwellings on a multi-acres compound that is populated by people who have decided to (mostly) live off the land, many of whom remind me of my own hippie days in the late 60s. You wander amongst trailers, make-shift living arrangements, a communal kitchen, laundry and store, multiple workshops for wood and metal working, and large vegetable gardens.
There is live stock, some of which is roaming freely and becoming my occasional visitors. In fact my 14 month-old granddaughter now consistently makes goat noises when she sees me, having seen them at my place. Old goat, indeed. Happy old goat.
The toddler might as well hoot, since the owls are singing me to sleep every night, the minute the sun goes down, three different species telling by their call, a pair of Northern pygmy owls among them, with their eerie staccato whistling. It is cold up here when the wind blows and dusty, likely hot in the summer. As with every ancient house, some windows don’t open, some don’t close, and there is a resident raccoon in the ceiling, which I have come to expect – every one of my extended California trips had one seeking proximity in the walls of my rooms. True story! (I also hasten to add the wonderful folks here are in the process of chasing it out. As I said, old house, many access points.)
The creativity of Jirayr Zorthian who build up this land, and whose son and granddaughter are currently managing the rentals for concerts, meetings, weddings and lodgers to bring in some funds – and most importantly continue his legacy of celebration of art – is evident wherever you look. PBS had a comprehensive account of the history of the artist and the place he imprinted, calling it a 48 acre art junk yard, in case you are curious. He worked as a muralist, murals which can be found among others at the Pentagon. He partied with the best of them, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Charlie Parker, Segovia, Richard Feynman, and many more included, and in his last years allowed people to deposit junk on the property, which his descendants are still trying to get rid off, 20 years after his death.
The house itself is filled with paintings, drawings, prints and small cultural tableaux made from found objects. I’ve been here over a week now and still discover new details every morning. The outside walls that surround the house flank walking paths or little hidden patios, overflowing with objects cemented into the field stones, with a recurring theme of insulators. They come in all sizes, shapes, materials like glass and ceramics, likely collected obsessively since there is not a single view, anywhere, that does not include one or more of these things that are used on telephone polls and wires.
I have been photographing them in all lights and times of day, hoping there will be some creative spark to use them for montages. I feel insulated here, protected from the horrors and sorrows of the world as long as a I stay away from my computer. Insulated from the internally imposed push towards accomplishing something, going to museums, writing reviews. I have literally not done anything other than soaking up nature, and glowing from the joy that is my family here.
Oh, and of course, I have photographed birds. They visit, morning and evening, on the surrounding car wrecks transformed into installations, and the juxtaposition of nature and man-made, rusty objects has been a thrill. They land on artificial trees, blossoming with, what else, insulators. They take birdbaths in discarded bowls and hubcaps. Finches, warblers, mocking birds, hummingbirds, ravens, hawks, sparrows, acorn woodpeckers, you name them.
I can imagine that it is not easy to live in the shadow of such a larger-than-life figure as Zorthian. Not easy to make it in a community that forever changes with people coming and going, with laws restricting the ability to capitalize on the land, an initial lack of experience with animal husbandry or food farming, changing climate conditions and unreliable sources of income to carry a group of committed tenants. As a house guest I reap all the benefits of the beauty, without the cost of the conditions that come with this unusual place. But I can see the absolute thrill of being part of a legacy, of driving (art)history forwards, of maintaining an actual and spiritual independence from the norms that society tries to impose on us all. This place is infused with purpose as well as levity, peacefulness as well as stimulation. I think it conveys, for those who maintain it, a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, a social embeddedness. So important in times of experienced isolation and societal division. For those who visit: a true gift of insulation from the rest of our lives.
Here is one of the prior ranch visitors, Segovia, playing Bach. Then again, I could have chosen Charlie Parker…. but it felt like a sublime day.
You have to be on the lookout – otherwise you miss all the action!
Going: yours truly, driving to L.A. for the next month or so. Dispatches are in the cards, but not on a regular basis! I am hoping for a few Art on the Road adventures, though.
Coming: spring.
At least that’s what it looked and felt like yesterday near the Columbia river when the sun finally broke through, and little puffy clouds made the sky delectable.
Lots of kestrels,
other birds pairing up, or calling for mates
Buds and first shoots emerging,
and the landscape on the cusp of exploding into color, with a few saturated spots already showing off.
Hard to imagine California can beat that. But then again…… stay tuned.
Since I didn’t burden your brain with much text today, we might as well stretch it with some unusual music from Australia. The album title translates as Now; the singer is one of few remaining Butchulla songmen, singing in their endangered aboriginal language.
Today is International Women’s Day. I should probably be writing something about the rights women fought for, gained, have threatened and lost. About women in Gaza who lose more than just whatever rights remain to them, losing their families or even their lives. The women in Afghanistan who no longer have access to education, much less choices to thrive in anything other than the domestic sphere, if there. The women of America whose reproductive rights and bodily freedom are under an ongoing assault. And then we are faced with a reply to the SOTU address by a Republican Senator from Alabama, who sits at her kitchen table (where women belong ?) with a cross studded with diamonds around her neck (in case you forget the goal to make this into a Christian nation after all), all drama queen, stage whispering with fake tears in her eyes, how” illegal” immigrants are murdering our wives and daughters, painting a picture that might as well have come right out of The Handmaid’s Tale.) One might wonder how someone who says sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman, is encouraging Americans to vote for a convicted sexual predator.
For the sake of sanity – yours as well as mine – I will instead write about the most glorious sights I encountered this week, providing some diversion from our political reality. Some 40 minutes north of Portland, in the state of Washington, runs the Lewis river, emptying into the Columbia which in turn joins the Pacific. At this time of year there are runs of smelt that make their way from the ocean, up the rivers, to their spawning grounds. These small fish from the family Osmeridae live most of their lives in the sea, and when I consulted wikipedia to learn more of them I encountered this: smelt tastes like smelt. Good to know.
The runs vary in size, with climate change making a large, negative impact already. Across the last years, recreational fishing for them in many regions of the Pacific Northwest was severely regulated, they were so scarce. This year the Fish and Wildlife Administration offered people permits for their dipping nets that were only open for a couple of single days.
The bald eagles who congregate at the confluence of the rivers benefit, of course, when they don’t have to compete with fishermen for the increasingly smaller number of prey. The sight was spectacular. In a landscape straight out of a 17th century Flemish painting, they congregate on trees by the hundreds. A steady coming and going, dipping in the water, then hanging out with their lunch on various snags or branches.
Many of them circling higher than I had ever seen them. I first thought those were vultures, joining the feast, but no, all eagles, many of them juvenile who still have brown feathers instead of the symbolic white heads and tail feathers. Lots of courtship acrobatics in the air, with males and females, mating for life, eventually tumbling down in pirouettes, gripping each other’s talons before landing for the fun to begin.
To see the most amazing close up shots, done with professional equipment that I cannot match, by a nature photographer, Mike Schultz, who really stands out, look here. The pictures are from 2021, when the smelt run was bigger than today.
Images by Mike Schultz
My equipment might not live up to these standards, but my enthusiasm sure did. Standing in sunshine, if cool, listening to the sounds of these birds, as well as the sea lions joining the hunt, my heart simply lifted. There was no pretense, no play acting, no hidden agenda, no political manipulation – just nature doing what it does, surviving the day, planning for future generations and protecting them, being in the moment, rising.
A gift.
Music today is Chopin’s Heroic, dedicated to all women who are, having no other choice. And fitting for the eagles as well…..
