Getting Outside
Getting Outside Saturday, and Falling in the Brook
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The other day, my usual morning walk, but my head full of people in offices in various corners of the country, all the work of the day to come, and maybe a little of writing. It had rained and things were slick and walked with the pace of my thoughts–too fast, really, and heedless. Normally it takes twenty minutes or so to notice that I’m in the woods. It’s a sudden moment, usually, looking up and thinking, Wow. The trees! The sky! The birds! And suddenly I’m there. (Exercise releases endorphins after about twenty vigorous minutes, so I’ve read, so no doubt we’re talking just another matter of getting high….) I stepped into the tiny chasm of Nina Brook, as I call it (after a teenage neighbor who passed away suddenly, sadly), stepped over the rocks at normal gate, no thought of moss and wet leaf and no transition, found myself on my back in the water. I held my head up so as not to go under, great surprise as the very cold water made its way through my clothes and to my skin. My arm was under me, so, along with keeping my head up, Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: A Rainy Day Haiku
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Getting Outside Saturday: When Bill and Dave Came to Doe Branch
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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A meeting of minds at Doe Branch.
Doe Branch Ink is a writers’ retreat in the Blue Ridge mountains north of Asheville, NC. Bill and Dave know the place and have left their mark on the writing lives of participants from around the country. Cocktail hour at Doe Branch is part of the fun, but the fun is serious when it comes to sharing work in progress, getting feedback on a tricky passage, or cuddling up with a hot cup of coffee at first light to get the night’s ideas on paper. Bill and Dave are inimitable, but we’ve seen the magic too of other accomplished writer-teachers working with their small groups, sharing inspiration, confidence and wisdom. And we’ve seen our guests leaving their new friends with Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: No Country for Waxwings
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Illegal to own, but not to photograph.
Yesterday morning I spotted Cedar Waxwings, not unusual, though I thought maybe they’d have left by now. And they seemed too big, too upright and sleek, a flock of ten or so, the cheerful tittering familiar, but one notch louder than you’d think. So I glassed ’em. In the binoculars, I saw they were Bohemian Waxwings, who will brighten our winter. Back early from parts north and hot on the fall berries. Maybe pickings were slim after a dry summer up tundra-wise. Later, a nice view of a broad-winged hawk lazing on the currents of heat rising from the fields, kind of late staying, this year (we haven’t even had close to a frost, which even just 20 years ago came regularly in late August. Not that I’m complaining). On this morning’s walk, evidence of their meeting: a pile of feathers around a log in the woods. It didn’t take long for CSI Farmington to figure it out. The secondary wing feathers here are about actual size, 2.5 to 3 inches in length. The blue-gray, the yellow tips, that’s Bohemian. Not a trace of bird, no feet, no beak, no bones, just feathers, very delicate, very soft to the touch. Illegal to possess, a good law, as the collection of feathers for hats at the turn of the last century nearly wiped out all kinds of species, hats with whole birds, some of them. So an index card, a photograph, and return all feathers to the scene of the crime. Which is no crime from the Broad-Winged Hawk’s point of view, but only a meal.
Getting Outside Saturday: Porcini in butter. (Photo Haiku # 457)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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King boletes from the morning walk
Getting Outside Saturday: Birthday Edition
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Ah, but the kids keep you young!
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They say it’s my birthday, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah! A year of no importance: 59. Next year, major party (“A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.” ~ Arnold Bennett ). This year, meh. I feel a lot like I’ve made it up the hill like the little train that could, crested the hill proudly, lingered a moment at the top, and now find myself plummeting down the other side at speeds unheard of, and no brakes! It’s all in the mind, my sister-in-law said this afternoon (she’s visiting with her lovely kids from Los Angeles). No, I replied, It’s all in the body! And I’ve got some new bumper stickers to counter all the pabulum about aging I’ve been hearing: Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Garlic Girl
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Garlic Girl
It’s the night before my “work” visit to Stoneledge Farm in Leeds, New York, and I’m in bed, wide awake, thinking about vampires. I’m going to spend the next day picking garlic, tons of it, and garlic makes me think of salsa, pesto, and, inevitably, a natural repellant for blood suckers. Instead of winding down, I’m wired, feel as if I’ve been popping chocolate-covered espresso beans. I feel like I did when I was a little kid—my body abuzz with anticipation—the night before a school trip. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Hog Island
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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A Hog Island lagoon
I had the good fortune this past week to be part of the first ever Damariscotta Lake Writers Conference, which is a conference for educators who write. I had the august title of Hog Island Lecturer. The conference took place at the Kennedy Learning Center at Camp Kieve, which is a gorgeous boys’ camp and adventure center (my words–they take those kids on amazing trips all around the state and out to sea). Hog Island is off of Damariscotta, and was once owned by Mabel Loomis Todd, the executor and editor of Emily Dickinson’s poems, also the illicit (as they would have said in those days) lover of Emily’s brother. The cabin that Mabel worked in is still there. Her daughter, Millicent Todd, continued the tradition. Later, the Audubon Society took over the property, 300 pristine acres of spruce-fir forest and rocky coast. They run programs there to this day, and have an osprey nest cam set up. We watched two new birds as they made tentative approaches to the edge of the nest and squawked when their mother flew in with snacks. A third had already fledged. See them live and in person here. Then we enjoyed a talk by Steve Kress, founder of Project Puffin, which has been working to restore puffin and other alcid populations on islands all along the Maine coast, including Hog. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Once More to the Lake
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Once More to the Lake
