Getting Outside
Where’s Billdo?
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Treasure Map
Today, Juliet and Elysia and I hand the keys over to the housesitter, shake hands with the chickens, hug the dog, and head off to Costa Rica. I’ve been before and enjoyed both rainforest and dry-forest so much that I vowed to go back. Then, I was inland; then I stayed at biological research stations (and took a course on teaching in the tropics). This trip we’ll be on the Pacific Ocean, two different stops, and staying in lodges. The first is on the Osa Peninsula (that elegant Continue reading →
Dummy Downhill
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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In my ongoing coverage of small town events, I can’t forget to offer a glimpse of the annual Dummy Downhill race at Titcomb Hill, the terrific little ski area here in Farmington. It’s a community treasure, not three miles from our house. Various endowments fund free downhill lessons, free cross-country lessons, free racing lessons, a kids’ race team (F.A.S.T: Farmington Area Ski Team). Little wonder that the Mount Blue High School are state ski champs more often than not, and this year once again. The lodge is a simple barn of a building with volunteer-staffed snack bar. The hill is steep enough for some fun, big enough for a number of trails, and sports a Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Ice Out
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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2012: Very Early, Very Gentle
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Ice out on the Temple might come slowly, weeks of warming temperatures, stream slowly emerging, easily swallowing all the melt, or it might come all at once—a day’s work after hard rain. It’s an equinoctial event, coming generally within a week either way of the equinox. After an all-night downpour, the ice we’ve admired all winter, the ice we’ve come to regard as permanent, starts to float. Guessing it’s imminent, one rushes down there in the morning, early. At the bend in the path, one sees that the Dairyman’s lowest field is full of water. More rain than one thought? So to the bluff and lookout, where one sees it: a muddy river flowing over the ice. And though this kind of overflow may have happened in a thaw back in February, this time it’s different, this time the ice is lifting on the voluminous flow, folding and breaking in huge slow movements, damming the stream just enough to flood the low parts of the field. Continue reading →
R.I.P. Mighty Waddles: A First-Class Rooster
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Movies
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Click above [>] to hear Mighty crow, and to see him strut his stuff.
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Our beloved rooster, Mighty, a handsome barred rock, has died. He started life as a chick among chicks, but slipped on newspaper bedding (we didn’t realize that newspaper is too slick for chicks), damaging his feet early on. And then, we noticed, he was far smaller than the other birds. We babied him, thought him a girl. Elysia named him Carmen, as he sang a lot more than the others. About the time the pullets began laying their first eggs, we noticed that Carmen was growing. Soon, he was the biggest bird in the yard, half again as large as everyone else. He grew a magnificent plume of a tail. And he grew spurs at his ankles. And with those sharp thorns he came after us when we went to tend the coop. With them, he held the dog, Baila, at bay. He mated with the pullets, frequently, a process that looked like a stomping and a squashing, but which is known in ornithology circles as a cloacal kiss. His carriage was erect. His wattles were elegant, but froze some in winter. The feathers of his neck were subtly layered in black and white. He was a one-man op-art painting. Elysia renamed him Mighty Waddles: that foot injury. Soon, however, he was merely Mighty. First to the food! Last out the door! Irritable as my Continue reading →
Rare Mystery Bird Identified
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Bohemian Waxwings: Easy I.D., But a Rarer Bird Awaits
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This morning on my daily rounds a flock of about two dozen Bohemian Waxwings followed me for more than a mile, flying in various factions from tree to tree, for a while stopping to sip at a break in the ice, Temple Stream. The sky was very, very blue. The birds are almost blue, but gray, with beautiful yellow tail tips and yellow in their wings (the sealing wax of their name, I guess). Baila the dog took a drink in the freshly exposed current, and by all signs you’d guess the date was March 20, not February 20. We walked on the ice, like breaking glass, all these layers and shelves and store windows, noisy. In the alders ahead I spotted a bird. I looked the other way so as to misdirect Baila, who obliged, tearing around the corner smashing chalices. And put the binooculars to my eyes. Small movements. A lot of black . Some yellow. Large, a little bigger than a Robin. I flipped through the indexes in my head–nothing. If I’d been in Montana, in summer, maybe a yellow-headed blackbird, but no, no. Casually I crept closer. And closer yet. The bird paid no mind, but kept up its subtle swinging movements. Closer. Still impossible to identify. Closer, Baila returning with a great crashing. Brave bird didn’t move. Closer. And if you click READ THE REST, you’ll see what it was. Amazing, rare, and clearly a wayward denizen of the upstream backyards. Continue reading →
Our Best American Essays: Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Our Best American Essays
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Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine
by Bill Roorbach
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“Hard work,” says Dicky Butts, and we haven’t even started yet.
. “Get wet today,” says Truman Lock. He pulls his greying beard, squints out over the bay. The blast of an offshore wind (strong enough to blow the boat and its no-lights trailer halfway into the oncoming lane as we made the drive over) is piling whitecaps, spraying their tops, Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: It’s All About Ice
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Rain, freeze, drain, sag, leaf.
We’ve had little snow, a certain amount of melting, cold nights. The stream is an ice-way, strange beauty abounding. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Winter Color
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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On my winter way there’s white, there’s black, and there’s every shade of gray between. But here and there a splash of color, or a subtle nod. Continue reading →
Happy New Year from Bill and Dave’s
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Rough skating in 2012?
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Happy New Year! Elysia and I were out till all hours dancing with twenty or thirty kids who are all suddenly huge and take up a lot more room on the dance floor than in years past. There were parents involved, too (Elysia says, Uh, Dad, there were parents going nuts on the dance floor!), and great costumes. We slept this morning till all hours, too! Juliet is in NYC to look after her dad and see the Dark Star New Year’s Eve show. 2012 sounds like the future to me, who wrote 1998 on a check a few weeks ago. After a breakfast of chocolate-chip pancakes, Elysia and I ventured out wrapped for cold weather, but found it mild. The stream was frozen last week, but a Continue reading →
Back on the Cape: An Elemental Interlude
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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My Favorite Tree (from a bit earlier in the year)
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I am taking my first true break in a year and a half and I have to say I am loving it. Eating a lot, walking the dogs through the deserted summer camp near Slough Pond, sleeping a good nine hours, not checking the internet (much), reading Hadley the adventure book I wrote and gave her for Christmas. And, while it may not go with the rest, drinking beer while staring up Continue reading →
