Saturday night, went to Seahurst Park for the night creatures beach walk. The crusted stones; the wet dark sand, rippled water climbing to our feet under the lamps and flashlights as we walked. About thirty people present; assorted children; ten "beach naturalists" trained by the Seattle Aquarium. We walked with lights glowing, patches of dark people surrounding central burning lamps, in rings of illumination dotted across the beach.
The rocks covered in enormous barnacles. One of them, the elephant barnacle, looked so like an elephant that before I even knew its name I said, "It looks like an elephant." Fist-sized, protruding from the rock, its hard sharp snout poking into the damp open air. When we touched it, it clamped up tighter, lifting its strange nose closer to the top of the round opening of its tent-like covering.
Crabs in the sand, hunkered down, crouching as we came close. Empty moon snail shells; an occasional hermit crab's claws and staring frightened eyes from within the curve of a shell. The lovely smell of salt in the cold humid air. A wet, decaying scent, the firm sand underfoot taking our prints.
Worms draped about among the barnacles, long snot-textured black slimy thin things that looked like they couldn't be alive. A tiny gunnel, smaller than my pinky finger: a blackish-grey eel-like fish perched between crusts on the rock. It had a little eel's face and staring eyes.
Water creeping into my hiking boots. A Dungeness crab moulting against a rock, the extraodinarily large body beside the ridiculously small hull still dangling from its front. Under a rock, the tiny shore crabs, gray and square, scuttling rapidly into the sand. Anemones, green spotted blobs with a smear of pink where they'd retracted their tentacles, a clamped rosy mouth waiting to sprout a thousand impossible tentacle-arms like a medusa or a monster. We found one lying in the water, opened, and its tentacles adhered stickily to our fingers as we touched them. "They're injecting poison into you; that's what you're feeling," explained our naturalist. We cringed and withdrew.
What else? Strange chitons, like brown growths on the rock with furred edges. Then, after our walk, gathering at the firepit, sitting around it drinking coffee spiked with cocoa mix, and listening to the leader naturalists tell Indian folk tales. The story of how the animals brought fire to the humans in the beginning - Coyote and Crow and Chipmunk, with Chipmunk's long white stripes down his back where the witch guardians' claws scraped down his back when they nearly caught him as he fled. The tale of Salmon-Boy, who became a salmon and lived among the salmon people, then returned to his human people only long enough to teach them all he knew. When, in spring, the salmon returned along the river, he recognized his soul among them in an ancient, exhausted fish, so pale and worn he could almost see through it. So he thrust his spear into it, and at that moment, he died. His people sent his body out to sea, floating, to rejoin his animal people.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Fremont News
The only news stand in Fremont is going out of business - my favorite one, on Fremont Avenue. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of place. Usually, a cashier with multiple piercings sits at the front counter, bent over some magazine or another. Further in, the rabbit hole seems to burrow into its space among the shops. Magazines crowd the stands, turning their colorful faces outward. I usually haunt the poetry journal section, but nearer the front, newspapers also breath their papery gray scent into the air. At the back, a cheerful scatter of postcards, greeting cards, journals and other miscellaneous paraphenalia decorates the walls.
It is typically anachronistic of me to be entering print journalism now, when all of print media seems at the edge of total collapse, like a tired, wan old giant out of some fairy story. I told the cashier how sorry I was to learn they're going out of business. He, a sharp-faced, tall gnome with a bristly blond beard and spikey blond hair, looked at me with brilliant blue eyes and said, "Me too!"
We talked awhile. The internet, he said. Competition, he said. 100 foreign-language newspapers we used to carry, he said, down to eight, now. They're one of the last news stands in Seattle, with one surviving shop on Broadway; Bulldog, the University news stand, once had a Broadway branch, but they closed that, and now only have their little shop on University Ave - the Ave, as students say.
I don't know how people can give up the scent, the feel, of a solid book or newspaper or magazine in their hands. There's such spectacular romance to print. The internet sucks the life out of literature, consumes the reality of it, and turns its texture to a sort of evanescent pillar of air, substanceless.
"For me, it's heartbreaking," said my thin-faced elf, leaning down to me where I stood a step lower than him.
Me too.
It is typically anachronistic of me to be entering print journalism now, when all of print media seems at the edge of total collapse, like a tired, wan old giant out of some fairy story. I told the cashier how sorry I was to learn they're going out of business. He, a sharp-faced, tall gnome with a bristly blond beard and spikey blond hair, looked at me with brilliant blue eyes and said, "Me too!"
We talked awhile. The internet, he said. Competition, he said. 100 foreign-language newspapers we used to carry, he said, down to eight, now. They're one of the last news stands in Seattle, with one surviving shop on Broadway; Bulldog, the University news stand, once had a Broadway branch, but they closed that, and now only have their little shop on University Ave - the Ave, as students say.
I don't know how people can give up the scent, the feel, of a solid book or newspaper or magazine in their hands. There's such spectacular romance to print. The internet sucks the life out of literature, consumes the reality of it, and turns its texture to a sort of evanescent pillar of air, substanceless.
"For me, it's heartbreaking," said my thin-faced elf, leaning down to me where I stood a step lower than him.
Me too.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Birthday guests
The tiny bushtits gather every morning among the oblong yellow leaves and thin branches outside our kitchen window. They make a miniature, merry band of thieves, small as grey gnats. They're the same color as the rain. Ignoring me completely as they explore, their nubby beaks poking from round faces, they hang upside-down on their twig legs. A flock of elves.
Meanwhile, I sit at the kitchen table, writing articles. A big bouquet of roses, interspersed with clustered white pinks and crowned by irises, leans over my laptop as I type. I bought it for Paul's birthday. I also made us a steaming white bean soup for a birthday dinner, speckled with shredded parmesan, served with wine and bread and a leafy salad.
Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A book of verse, a flask of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enow.
-Omar Kayyam
Three weeks ago, an Anna's hummingbird visited me here, just in time for my own birthday. She sat on a twig in her green coat, complete with shimmering lapels, her jaunty beak thrusting upward like a sword. Hummingbirds live here in Washington State year round, according to my Sibley's guide to birds.
So we have our little army of visiting winged creatures, even here in the center of town. Perched above the city like this among the tree branches, level with neighboring rooftops in the rain, I feel separate and magical. Cold grey autumn has settled in, and its tiny pilgrims keep coming by.
Meanwhile, I sit at the kitchen table, writing articles. A big bouquet of roses, interspersed with clustered white pinks and crowned by irises, leans over my laptop as I type. I bought it for Paul's birthday. I also made us a steaming white bean soup for a birthday dinner, speckled with shredded parmesan, served with wine and bread and a leafy salad.
Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A book of verse, a flask of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enow.
-Omar Kayyam
Three weeks ago, an Anna's hummingbird visited me here, just in time for my own birthday. She sat on a twig in her green coat, complete with shimmering lapels, her jaunty beak thrusting upward like a sword. Hummingbirds live here in Washington State year round, according to my Sibley's guide to birds.
So we have our little army of visiting winged creatures, even here in the center of town. Perched above the city like this among the tree branches, level with neighboring rooftops in the rain, I feel separate and magical. Cold grey autumn has settled in, and its tiny pilgrims keep coming by.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
elegy for September
Now that I've lived here a month, the idea of pining after unreachable blackberries seems as ridiculous as the time the sunlight on Point Reyes shocked me after a night of rain.
September passed in a wash of sunlight. For a few days, here and there, Seattle lived up to its reputation and sat morosely in a chill drizzle. But so far, for the most part, the expected winter rains have held off.
I ate up all the sunlight that I could, walking to Gasworks Park every couple of days, and filling my palms with the blackberries that grow here like weeds. Fat, purple blackberries so ripe they nearly melted off the branches. They stained my fingers and the white bowl I poured them into when I brought a shirt-full of them home, one afternoon.
Under Aurora Bridge the water glittered as the sun sank down, slowly turning the sky gold, then pink, then quiet purple. The skyscrapers of Seattle's downtown hold the light longer than the low green hills where white houses cluster into neighborhoods. They glow a lavendar-tinged gold: straightbacked, flatfaced, a blind and shining gaze over the water.
Now, October's begun at last. Delicious October, the month of leaves, of the early slow death that brings no grief. October with its garish melancholy. It delights me.
September passed in a wash of sunlight. For a few days, here and there, Seattle lived up to its reputation and sat morosely in a chill drizzle. But so far, for the most part, the expected winter rains have held off.
I ate up all the sunlight that I could, walking to Gasworks Park every couple of days, and filling my palms with the blackberries that grow here like weeds. Fat, purple blackberries so ripe they nearly melted off the branches. They stained my fingers and the white bowl I poured them into when I brought a shirt-full of them home, one afternoon.
Under Aurora Bridge the water glittered as the sun sank down, slowly turning the sky gold, then pink, then quiet purple. The skyscrapers of Seattle's downtown hold the light longer than the low green hills where white houses cluster into neighborhoods. They glow a lavendar-tinged gold: straightbacked, flatfaced, a blind and shining gaze over the water.
Now, October's begun at last. Delicious October, the month of leaves, of the early slow death that brings no grief. October with its garish melancholy. It delights me.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
This parched flatland
Aug. 30, 2006
Badlands. Spires of rock, the green and grey siltstones and ribbons of shale. The mounds of red and yellow paleosol.
Everywhere the lunar surroundings, the climbing towers, the thin cliff faces.
Junipers clustered in the narrow valleys; and then, beyond, the flat prairie, cut by rock. Plateaus of green amid the sliced, eroded landscape.
Bison dark and hunched on the green landscape below. The upper plain, where prairie dogs stood straight as reeds, or rested in yoga pose, rounded bodies relaxed atop their burrows with small feet sticking out. From time to time they kicked back their little squirreline heads and yelped out shrill reasonless calls, paws outstretched, resting on their black-tipped short tails.
The road wound up through the strange rock formations. Around each bend a new landscape, a series of wrinkled hills like elephant's feet, or stacked spires like icing. All ashen grey, cut by long, even red-beds, which formed recognizable and perfectly flat lines stretching across the shattered landscape.
A few pronghorns; horned larks; a brown thrasher among the junipers. Turkey vultures floating above the backbone of the hills.
And sunlight, evening light gradually dropping down, clear and still and quiet, with the prairie wind blowing harsh against the car doors as we paused, and drove on, and paused again, to look out from under our bucket hats at the lonely, fierce landscape.
Now I'm here in the motel room outside Rapid City. Remembering the day, snippets of it -- like the tiny tumbledown gas station with its gutted atmosphere. "Hilltop," it was called; it looked as though it had been bombed; a faded sign with peeling paint proclaimed a mostly effaced welcome; canvas covered the interiors of the windows, and the sidedoors were broken and abandoned. The signs over the gas pumps flapped in a hot, dry wind. I entered with trepidation.
But within, the shelves were cheerfully stocked, and a middle-aged woman sat placidly reading at the cash register, and offered me a friendly hello. Outside, the wind shoved the door shut so hard it was tough to open. "Oh, about once a week," said the woman mildly, when I asked how often it was so windy.
"Hilltop" formed a mere mound above the surrounding flat, commanding a view of the dried landscape, that has suffered record drought, this summer.
South Dakota - this is it, this parched flatland, cut by the abrupt crumples and valleys of the Badlands.
Badlands. Spires of rock, the green and grey siltstones and ribbons of shale. The mounds of red and yellow paleosol.
Everywhere the lunar surroundings, the climbing towers, the thin cliff faces.
Junipers clustered in the narrow valleys; and then, beyond, the flat prairie, cut by rock. Plateaus of green amid the sliced, eroded landscape.
Bison dark and hunched on the green landscape below. The upper plain, where prairie dogs stood straight as reeds, or rested in yoga pose, rounded bodies relaxed atop their burrows with small feet sticking out. From time to time they kicked back their little squirreline heads and yelped out shrill reasonless calls, paws outstretched, resting on their black-tipped short tails.
The road wound up through the strange rock formations. Around each bend a new landscape, a series of wrinkled hills like elephant's feet, or stacked spires like icing. All ashen grey, cut by long, even red-beds, which formed recognizable and perfectly flat lines stretching across the shattered landscape.
A few pronghorns; horned larks; a brown thrasher among the junipers. Turkey vultures floating above the backbone of the hills.
And sunlight, evening light gradually dropping down, clear and still and quiet, with the prairie wind blowing harsh against the car doors as we paused, and drove on, and paused again, to look out from under our bucket hats at the lonely, fierce landscape.
Now I'm here in the motel room outside Rapid City. Remembering the day, snippets of it -- like the tiny tumbledown gas station with its gutted atmosphere. "Hilltop," it was called; it looked as though it had been bombed; a faded sign with peeling paint proclaimed a mostly effaced welcome; canvas covered the interiors of the windows, and the sidedoors were broken and abandoned. The signs over the gas pumps flapped in a hot, dry wind. I entered with trepidation.
But within, the shelves were cheerfully stocked, and a middle-aged woman sat placidly reading at the cash register, and offered me a friendly hello. Outside, the wind shoved the door shut so hard it was tough to open. "Oh, about once a week," said the woman mildly, when I asked how often it was so windy.
"Hilltop" formed a mere mound above the surrounding flat, commanding a view of the dried landscape, that has suffered record drought, this summer.
South Dakota - this is it, this parched flatland, cut by the abrupt crumples and valleys of the Badlands.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Westward to Seattle
Our new apartment, just north of the center of Fremont, Seattle, perches two stories above the street on the windowed west side, overlooking a steep hillslope. On the east side, the building's pushed into the hill, so that the door to that side opens one story below ground level, and one must mount stairs to reach the parking lot. Along the third, south side, our apartment's windows look out on the upwards slope. Trees and thick, spiny blackberry bushes grow there, and deeply colored ripe blackberries tempt the eye, mostly beyond reach, or outside windowscreens that do not open.
I walked around the building today, to see if I could scale the southeast fence that would have allowed access to the blackberries. Vines overgrow the access, alongside signs that proclaim "DO NOT TRESPASS". I would, though, if it weren't for my knee, injured playing ultimate earlier this summer. Perhaps Paul will crawl over for me.
We arrived here last Wednesday after a cross-country drive, stopping in the Badlands, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Yellowstone, and the Cascades in Washington. We saw wildlife: bison walking along the road in the prairieland of Custer State Park, flanking our car. We sat motionless and breathless as that vast bulk of animals passed - twenty of them or so, with calves. The bull brought up the rear, ruffed by dark brown fur, his head hanging enormous on that hump-shouldered frame, his eyes deep-set and calm.
In Yellowstone, on the steep slopes of Dunraven Pass, we stopped amid a traffic jam. Fifty onlookers crowded the narrow pass, binoculars or long-lensed cameras pressed to their eyes. A mama black bear and two cubs wandered just below, no further than 100 meters from us, wandering the steep pine woodlands in search of pinecones. One baby, about as big as a - a what? a coffee table? a golden retriever? so hard to define that rotund bulk of childish fur, black, endearing and playful with nose and ears sticking out - stopped atop a boulder with a big cone between his paws, chewing on it with the gleeful, unselfconscious and awkward delight of childhood. The mama flopped on her back awhile to relax and scratch her chest.
And then the wolf, who lay in spotting-scope range, barely visible in the shadows of the scraggly trees in the prairie down the hill. We waited until at last he rose. After a moment's stately retreat, he turned, and I had an instant's glimpse of his grey profile, tongue lolling, body rangy and lean. Then he vanished up the hill, where, onlookers told me, the rest of his pack waited. Patient watchers had seen the whole pack earlier in the morning, both pups and adults, but Paul and I arrived only ten minutes too late to spot them.
We spent two and a half days in Yellowstone, camping at the crowded but relaxed campsites in the cold nights. In the days, we took walks through the backcountry - past an alpine lake where gilled salamanders swam, up the slopes of Mt. Washburn, and along the heat-soaked canyon of the Yellowstone River below Tower Falls. Around us, the yellow and white and red rocks - the osprey sailing and screaming - the pines clinging to their cones and their stiff needles in the dry weather. One evening, we began a walk along the top of the canyon. But a dry and ominous fog swept in, reminiscent of smog and smelling of ash: the lingering breath of a forest fire in the northeast of Yellowstone. We had to turn back, since we didn't know where the fire was until we asked a waitress about it back at Roosevelt Lodge.
I should mention, too, the geysers and pools. Bright waters, blue and green, surreal and smoking, covered in fog. The bursting mud-pits, bubbling and spitting, as though some beast lay uneasily sleeping beneath. Dragon's Mouth Spring, exhaling hot steam with a dragon-like roar. Fountain Geyser, which enthusiastically and impressively spouted a huge tower water for minutes on end, repeatedly splashing us where we stood on the walkway. It stood near little Jet, which spat water from small but artistic calcite spouts. And Grand Prismatic Pool, deep and shrouded, blue and red like a baleful eye, its rainbow of colors reflected in the fog overlying it.
Now, after the last of the journey through leaning mountains, after our picnic along the cliffs beside the shining Madison River rippling over the rocks, and after the cool moist stillness of the mossed Cascades, I sit in the sunlight in our living room. And it's time for dinner, so I'll bring this entry to a close.
I walked around the building today, to see if I could scale the southeast fence that would have allowed access to the blackberries. Vines overgrow the access, alongside signs that proclaim "DO NOT TRESPASS". I would, though, if it weren't for my knee, injured playing ultimate earlier this summer. Perhaps Paul will crawl over for me.
We arrived here last Wednesday after a cross-country drive, stopping in the Badlands, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Yellowstone, and the Cascades in Washington. We saw wildlife: bison walking along the road in the prairieland of Custer State Park, flanking our car. We sat motionless and breathless as that vast bulk of animals passed - twenty of them or so, with calves. The bull brought up the rear, ruffed by dark brown fur, his head hanging enormous on that hump-shouldered frame, his eyes deep-set and calm.
In Yellowstone, on the steep slopes of Dunraven Pass, we stopped amid a traffic jam. Fifty onlookers crowded the narrow pass, binoculars or long-lensed cameras pressed to their eyes. A mama black bear and two cubs wandered just below, no further than 100 meters from us, wandering the steep pine woodlands in search of pinecones. One baby, about as big as a - a what? a coffee table? a golden retriever? so hard to define that rotund bulk of childish fur, black, endearing and playful with nose and ears sticking out - stopped atop a boulder with a big cone between his paws, chewing on it with the gleeful, unselfconscious and awkward delight of childhood. The mama flopped on her back awhile to relax and scratch her chest.
And then the wolf, who lay in spotting-scope range, barely visible in the shadows of the scraggly trees in the prairie down the hill. We waited until at last he rose. After a moment's stately retreat, he turned, and I had an instant's glimpse of his grey profile, tongue lolling, body rangy and lean. Then he vanished up the hill, where, onlookers told me, the rest of his pack waited. Patient watchers had seen the whole pack earlier in the morning, both pups and adults, but Paul and I arrived only ten minutes too late to spot them.
We spent two and a half days in Yellowstone, camping at the crowded but relaxed campsites in the cold nights. In the days, we took walks through the backcountry - past an alpine lake where gilled salamanders swam, up the slopes of Mt. Washburn, and along the heat-soaked canyon of the Yellowstone River below Tower Falls. Around us, the yellow and white and red rocks - the osprey sailing and screaming - the pines clinging to their cones and their stiff needles in the dry weather. One evening, we began a walk along the top of the canyon. But a dry and ominous fog swept in, reminiscent of smog and smelling of ash: the lingering breath of a forest fire in the northeast of Yellowstone. We had to turn back, since we didn't know where the fire was until we asked a waitress about it back at Roosevelt Lodge.
I should mention, too, the geysers and pools. Bright waters, blue and green, surreal and smoking, covered in fog. The bursting mud-pits, bubbling and spitting, as though some beast lay uneasily sleeping beneath. Dragon's Mouth Spring, exhaling hot steam with a dragon-like roar. Fountain Geyser, which enthusiastically and impressively spouted a huge tower water for minutes on end, repeatedly splashing us where we stood on the walkway. It stood near little Jet, which spat water from small but artistic calcite spouts. And Grand Prismatic Pool, deep and shrouded, blue and red like a baleful eye, its rainbow of colors reflected in the fog overlying it.
Now, after the last of the journey through leaning mountains, after our picnic along the cliffs beside the shining Madison River rippling over the rocks, and after the cool moist stillness of the mossed Cascades, I sit in the sunlight in our living room. And it's time for dinner, so I'll bring this entry to a close.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
British scrapbook
The Lakes
Today the grace of the fells. Mist rising from the valleys in torn sheets, a steady rain. The cave at Ryland Water, the vast arc of it, angles of shale protruding from the ceiling and the walls of its interior. The dimness in its inner reaches, water dripping from above, the pool of dank water at the entrance.
Bluebells in carpet over the hills and in the forest, where vast, thick trees wound their roots through eroding soil, contorted hands holding the landscape together. A solitary flowering rhododendron on the hill, glowing white, contrasting to the straight pines behind it black with water. We walked, rain slowly soaking us through, breathing in the wet England air. Paused, at one point when the road met us, at a small bus stop, temporary shelter under concrete on a bench, where we had a cup of tea from the flask and blocks of gingerbread from Grasmere. Attracted amused stares from within passing cars as we sat soddenly with our plastic mugs.
Outside, now, a fog hangs over the dark fields. The owls stopped calling when I went out - the near ones, at least - far off, the clear whinny of a different type of owl continued to softly ornament the night. But I found one nonetheless, a pale smudge in my torchlight, high up and indistinct in a tree.
The creek behind our tent talks quietly. The low bleat of a mother sheep sounds over the higher one of her lamb. Paul's soft breathing purrs in the night.
This countryside is calm and yet magical, here in the Lake District. The fields roll out tamely, the town sits quaint (an American word, objects Paul) and cozy by the lake. Flowers bloom in the flowerboxes. But the surrounding rock lifts fiercely into these severe flanking fells. The lake lies black and secretive, as though cloaking an Arthurian legend. The woodlands hold their still and separate enchantment, conjured into silence on a secret they would speak. The heights are umber and dull red, the lakeshores rocky. A heathery yellow-flowered bush clings to the slopes and banks in hardy tangles.
And so I crawl back into the inner room of the tent, from this enclosed awning where I sit now in a camp chair and write. I close my eyes among the night sounds. I listen to their promises, their voices, murmuring their spells and incantations, speaking to me softly of my dreams.
~
Coniston Old Man, the destination of today. We hiked up on the footpath past the dry stone walls; paused for coffee by a little glittering creek among the grass and low trees. In the lower country, we passed cottages and small farms, the path wending up through the green lowlands. Sycamores and feathery pines leaned up above us, greening with spring.
The mountain itself had windy, bare slopes, covered in grass, with slate bedrock thrusting up. I wrote:
We walked with I- and L-, Paul's parents, and L- kept us going at a good clip, though with frequent stops for tea and coffee from the thermoses of hot water, and for banana cake and sandwiches and flapjacks and chocolate biscuits. Most of the time, though, she marched a little ways ahead of us, her body compact and economical in blue slacks and boots, two aluminum walking sticks keeping her steady.
Boulders and talus on the slopes, the bigger ones "like a giant had thrown them downslope as a game," said Paul; the streams on the far side of the summit tumbling down a steeper slope and making little waterfalls in the brilliantly sunny day. Our vista from the top more clear, said Paul, than he'd ever seen it. I- gloated, pointed out various landmarks at distance - the nuclear power plant, the miniature Eiffel Tower lookalike on the point going out to sea. I- likes details, and chattered all while I walked near him, a running commentary on technical, local, and cultural curiosities.
We thumped on down the steep mountainside. The ground, either hummocked grass or broken rock, took concentration to navigate. We descending to Levers Tarn, pausing at the dam for tea and cake and crisps. Below, the streams gathered together beside a still-working mine, glinting greenish with the copper in the water, the stream boulders stained white. Sheep browsed and bleated alongside.
Down in the farm fields, Paul and I stopped to search for a woodpecker on a knoll of trees: several enormous ancient beeches among a stand of slimmer, though still mature and elegant, other trees. The woodpecker's hammering had rung out over the fields, arresting another couple on the path, passers by. "That's not too common, is it?" said the fellow, as he stopped us to point out the sound. So Paul and I went chasing, with my binoculars. On the knoll itself, the woodpecker went silent when we approached, and remained stubbornly so, except once, briefly, to tease us. We could not find it.
A few details: Coniston Old Man, 803 meters. The yellow-flowered bush that grows abundant on the lower slopes and by Coniston water: gorse, otherwise known as furze, whose flowers have an odor reminiscent of coconut. The English robin: sings like a song sparrow or a goldfinch, a rapid, varied bubbling and chattering call. Very territorial, L- tells me. A few of them peered at us with sprightly eyes from perches on the wire fences as we came back to camp.
~
Yorkshire
Slugs and snails. Of various sizes, though the most impressive ones are the black slugs, as long as my palm and as thick as my pinky finger, shiny and ribbed; as well as the largest snails, big colorful knots of spiraled shell, the muscular beasts within slinking with determination along the leaves. Both are abundant here. A constant commentary of "look out! slug" or "another one" accompanied our walk along the muddy footpath, our boots sliding as we made our way with deep descending forest on one side and the grassy farm fields on the other. They thrive on the wet that is among this country's most fundamental features.
Meanwhile, out over the fields, pheasants, their creaking grate call periodically screeching into the grey afternoon air. And sheep, of course, dotting the slopes of the hills, and their voices carrying up - low bleats of the ewes, and the higher replies of their lambs.
We wended through the fields and through woodland, dipping and rising with the countryside, and dropping down at last to the hedgerow lined farm road. Then spent a few hours at the Rivaulx Abbey. Ancient stone, great arches high overhead, a construction from the 1100's, a half-unbelievable feat.
Then slugs and snails again. And a pint, at the pub.
~
Wales
The hills rose about us to either side as we made our way down the footpath, that ran through the cut alongside a brook and a marsh. We passed through a tangled forest, mossy, dark and littered with dank, fallen trees. Mirkwood. Near the sea the landscape opened again - open coastal heath in the fading evening, and a wooden gate. "Do not feed or approach the ponies," it read. "Welsh mountain ponies are chosen for this area especially for their hardy nature, and they thrive on the coastal grasses that make up their diet. Their grazing helps maintain the native coastal vegetation in a natural way."
Their heads rose up at the hilltop as we walked on, three proud necks, then four, then a group of them, pacing along the path. We walked up the hillside, following.
And such a landscape they led us to. Cliffs down to the sea, cloaked by flowers. Deep inlets, wave-cut caves into the flat planes of shale. We trailed the ponies along the footpath, watching them groom each other, vie for dominance, and canter through the heath, their hooves pounding. The sea crawled into the gaps between the cliffs, dark and greenish and white with surf. The farther promontories of the peninsula hulked round and dim in the humid air.
Night followed slowly on, sinking down over the rise; a scattered twinkling of lights briefly visible of the far town. Then we walked back along the footpath as the moon rose. It left a long white streak on the water, illuminating a path to us from a great jutting rock in the sea, as though an ancient civilization had designed it - to measure this day of the calendar, this Welsh spring, this darkening moment by the surf and by the tossing, thundering sprytes of the Welsh ponies.
We descended into the dim, leaving behind that lonely landscape. The bats flitted on over us, and we moved into a deep heavy dusk, between the trees that swallowed us again.
Today the grace of the fells. Mist rising from the valleys in torn sheets, a steady rain. The cave at Ryland Water, the vast arc of it, angles of shale protruding from the ceiling and the walls of its interior. The dimness in its inner reaches, water dripping from above, the pool of dank water at the entrance.
Bluebells in carpet over the hills and in the forest, where vast, thick trees wound their roots through eroding soil, contorted hands holding the landscape together. A solitary flowering rhododendron on the hill, glowing white, contrasting to the straight pines behind it black with water. We walked, rain slowly soaking us through, breathing in the wet England air. Paused, at one point when the road met us, at a small bus stop, temporary shelter under concrete on a bench, where we had a cup of tea from the flask and blocks of gingerbread from Grasmere. Attracted amused stares from within passing cars as we sat soddenly with our plastic mugs.
Outside, now, a fog hangs over the dark fields. The owls stopped calling when I went out - the near ones, at least - far off, the clear whinny of a different type of owl continued to softly ornament the night. But I found one nonetheless, a pale smudge in my torchlight, high up and indistinct in a tree.
The creek behind our tent talks quietly. The low bleat of a mother sheep sounds over the higher one of her lamb. Paul's soft breathing purrs in the night.
This countryside is calm and yet magical, here in the Lake District. The fields roll out tamely, the town sits quaint (an American word, objects Paul) and cozy by the lake. Flowers bloom in the flowerboxes. But the surrounding rock lifts fiercely into these severe flanking fells. The lake lies black and secretive, as though cloaking an Arthurian legend. The woodlands hold their still and separate enchantment, conjured into silence on a secret they would speak. The heights are umber and dull red, the lakeshores rocky. A heathery yellow-flowered bush clings to the slopes and banks in hardy tangles.
And so I crawl back into the inner room of the tent, from this enclosed awning where I sit now in a camp chair and write. I close my eyes among the night sounds. I listen to their promises, their voices, murmuring their spells and incantations, speaking to me softly of my dreams.
Coniston Old Man, the destination of today. We hiked up on the footpath past the dry stone walls; paused for coffee by a little glittering creek among the grass and low trees. In the lower country, we passed cottages and small farms, the path wending up through the green lowlands. Sycamores and feathery pines leaned up above us, greening with spring.
The mountain itself had windy, bare slopes, covered in grass, with slate bedrock thrusting up. I wrote:
Climbing Old Man Coniston, Lake District, England
Green slopes cut by chattering streams, the flat planes of bedrock slate jutting up among uneven hills
Very few trees here at altitude, except in the stream cuts, though these are stunted and wizened from wind.
Goatswater Tarn - small dark blue lake surrounded by steep talus-covered slopes. Looming over the far slope: Dow Crag (see photos)
We walked with I- and L-, Paul's parents, and L- kept us going at a good clip, though with frequent stops for tea and coffee from the thermoses of hot water, and for banana cake and sandwiches and flapjacks and chocolate biscuits. Most of the time, though, she marched a little ways ahead of us, her body compact and economical in blue slacks and boots, two aluminum walking sticks keeping her steady.
Boulders and talus on the slopes, the bigger ones "like a giant had thrown them downslope as a game," said Paul; the streams on the far side of the summit tumbling down a steeper slope and making little waterfalls in the brilliantly sunny day. Our vista from the top more clear, said Paul, than he'd ever seen it. I- gloated, pointed out various landmarks at distance - the nuclear power plant, the miniature Eiffel Tower lookalike on the point going out to sea. I- likes details, and chattered all while I walked near him, a running commentary on technical, local, and cultural curiosities.
We thumped on down the steep mountainside. The ground, either hummocked grass or broken rock, took concentration to navigate. We descending to Levers Tarn, pausing at the dam for tea and cake and crisps. Below, the streams gathered together beside a still-working mine, glinting greenish with the copper in the water, the stream boulders stained white. Sheep browsed and bleated alongside.
Down in the farm fields, Paul and I stopped to search for a woodpecker on a knoll of trees: several enormous ancient beeches among a stand of slimmer, though still mature and elegant, other trees. The woodpecker's hammering had rung out over the fields, arresting another couple on the path, passers by. "That's not too common, is it?" said the fellow, as he stopped us to point out the sound. So Paul and I went chasing, with my binoculars. On the knoll itself, the woodpecker went silent when we approached, and remained stubbornly so, except once, briefly, to tease us. We could not find it.
A few details: Coniston Old Man, 803 meters. The yellow-flowered bush that grows abundant on the lower slopes and by Coniston water: gorse, otherwise known as furze, whose flowers have an odor reminiscent of coconut. The English robin: sings like a song sparrow or a goldfinch, a rapid, varied bubbling and chattering call. Very territorial, L- tells me. A few of them peered at us with sprightly eyes from perches on the wire fences as we came back to camp.
Yorkshire
Slugs and snails. Of various sizes, though the most impressive ones are the black slugs, as long as my palm and as thick as my pinky finger, shiny and ribbed; as well as the largest snails, big colorful knots of spiraled shell, the muscular beasts within slinking with determination along the leaves. Both are abundant here. A constant commentary of "look out! slug" or "another one" accompanied our walk along the muddy footpath, our boots sliding as we made our way with deep descending forest on one side and the grassy farm fields on the other. They thrive on the wet that is among this country's most fundamental features.
Meanwhile, out over the fields, pheasants, their creaking grate call periodically screeching into the grey afternoon air. And sheep, of course, dotting the slopes of the hills, and their voices carrying up - low bleats of the ewes, and the higher replies of their lambs.
We wended through the fields and through woodland, dipping and rising with the countryside, and dropping down at last to the hedgerow lined farm road. Then spent a few hours at the Rivaulx Abbey. Ancient stone, great arches high overhead, a construction from the 1100's, a half-unbelievable feat.
Then slugs and snails again. And a pint, at the pub.
Wales
The hills rose about us to either side as we made our way down the footpath, that ran through the cut alongside a brook and a marsh. We passed through a tangled forest, mossy, dark and littered with dank, fallen trees. Mirkwood. Near the sea the landscape opened again - open coastal heath in the fading evening, and a wooden gate. "Do not feed or approach the ponies," it read. "Welsh mountain ponies are chosen for this area especially for their hardy nature, and they thrive on the coastal grasses that make up their diet. Their grazing helps maintain the native coastal vegetation in a natural way."
Their heads rose up at the hilltop as we walked on, three proud necks, then four, then a group of them, pacing along the path. We walked up the hillside, following.
And such a landscape they led us to. Cliffs down to the sea, cloaked by flowers. Deep inlets, wave-cut caves into the flat planes of shale. We trailed the ponies along the footpath, watching them groom each other, vie for dominance, and canter through the heath, their hooves pounding. The sea crawled into the gaps between the cliffs, dark and greenish and white with surf. The farther promontories of the peninsula hulked round and dim in the humid air.
Night followed slowly on, sinking down over the rise; a scattered twinkling of lights briefly visible of the far town. Then we walked back along the footpath as the moon rose. It left a long white streak on the water, illuminating a path to us from a great jutting rock in the sea, as though an ancient civilization had designed it - to measure this day of the calendar, this Welsh spring, this darkening moment by the surf and by the tossing, thundering sprytes of the Welsh ponies.
We descended into the dim, leaving behind that lonely landscape. The bats flitted on over us, and we moved into a deep heavy dusk, between the trees that swallowed us again.
Friday, April 14, 2006
News Haven and Nursery Rhymes
What is it about putting all your papers in filing cabinets that makes you feel like your whole brain has been reorganized, neatly slipped into colorful folders? Tax time has come and gone in a far more forgiving fashion than expected. Life is slowly becoming more organized.
New Haven. The city's gray today. Outside our apartment, past the the yellow-flowered curtains hanging at the windows, the leaves are just budding on the maples. The Planned Parenthood office, where protesters like to hang out on the curb Saturday mornings until the police show up, sits squarely in red brick above the parking lot across the street. Later, I might walk down to Koffee, the warm, quirky coffee shop with the big window, its scraggly cement-and-grass-floored backyard decorated by perky parch benches amid the fire escapes of adjoining buildings.
It's just the right size, this city - for me, at least. Big enough to be interesting, with pubs and shops and the newsy, tiny News Haven magazine store crammed in at street level, awaiting discovery. The graceful buildings of Yale campus lift above the streets in arches and Gothic spires. Yet it's also small enough to be manageable. I can walk anywhere in town. On foot in the opposite direction from the city center, I can visit East Rock Park, a woodland crisscrossed by paths and by a river that runs along the foot of the vast red cliff. Redtails nest there on the rocks, woodpeckers drum loudly on the beeches and the pines, and the first kinglets and warblers of spring have begun to appear.
The other day, in fact, I went birdwatching with the New Haven Birding Club in East Rock. We trudged through the rainy morning, spotting two wood ducks, a black-crowned night-heron, pine warblers, kinglets, hooded mergansers and a brown creeper, among the usual assortment of chickadees, titmice, downies, hairies, and the red-bellied woodpeckers that are far more common here than in New Hampshire. White-throated and song sparrows hopped about in the brush, and we even saw a richly russet fox sparrow, mussed and damp in the drizzle. A winter wren made an instant's appearance, long enough to show its jocular, fat and cocky miniscule outline.
After we birded, we took up shovels and shears to help with trail maintenance. I was wet and cold, and so I chose to help shovel, replacing earth in the center of the paths from the sides. Soon I warmed up, shedding hat, shedding gloves and jacket, wiping wet sticky hair away from my cheek with a muddy hand. A good morning.
Speaking of birding, this is one of the finest bird sites I've ever seen, administered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
The Birds of North America Online
What else is happening? Last night, I got interested in nursery rhymes - I happened to be singing Itsy Bitsy Spider, and started thinking about why it's lasted so long through time. First, of course, there's the diction:
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Went up the water spout
Down came the rain and
Washed the spider out!
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain,
And Itsy Bitsy Spider
Went up the spout again.
All those T's, B's, P's and Sp's make for some very noisy and emphatic diction - even, and possibly especially, if you chant the rhyme instead of sing it. Perfect for boisterous, shouting children.
Also, I think there's something universal about its message. The itsy, cute little critter, the sudden hard luck, our pity on its behalf - and then its brave return when fortune smiles on it again. Everyone can understand and be pleased with that.
Finally, of course, there's the associated hand motions, always fun. Like tickling a little kid. Or tickling Paul, as the case might be.
I found this website on nursery rhymes, including the macabre Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosies and the more playfully odd Humpty Dumpty:
Nursery Rhymes on BBC's H2G2
It includes the following delightful commentary:
Indeed, just what is it that makes some nursery rhymes seem rather sinister? Why did the makers of the seminal and utterly spooky British TV series Sapphire and Steel make frequent use of the nursery rhyme? We often think of eerie little music boxes playing spindly nursery rhyme-type tunes in horror films. But why? There's something almost Freudian about the way these invasive melodies can cause the hairs on the back of the neck to rise.
...It's the ability of nursery rhymes to allude to things, their elliptical nature, that makes them so fascinating. They share a lot in common with the Japanese Haiku format. Less structured, perhaps, than their Japanese cousins, they nonetheless contain within them tiny sparks which ignite our imagination. Perhaps Sapphire and Steel were right, perhaps nursery rhymes do have certain strange powers. Often they are evocative, like sudden flashes of colour, or like fleeting memories that bubble up unbidden. Nursery rhymes mysteriously breeze in and out of our lives, a bit like we breeze in and out of life itself.
And I think I'll leave today's entry at that.
New Haven. The city's gray today. Outside our apartment, past the the yellow-flowered curtains hanging at the windows, the leaves are just budding on the maples. The Planned Parenthood office, where protesters like to hang out on the curb Saturday mornings until the police show up, sits squarely in red brick above the parking lot across the street. Later, I might walk down to Koffee, the warm, quirky coffee shop with the big window, its scraggly cement-and-grass-floored backyard decorated by perky parch benches amid the fire escapes of adjoining buildings.
It's just the right size, this city - for me, at least. Big enough to be interesting, with pubs and shops and the newsy, tiny News Haven magazine store crammed in at street level, awaiting discovery. The graceful buildings of Yale campus lift above the streets in arches and Gothic spires. Yet it's also small enough to be manageable. I can walk anywhere in town. On foot in the opposite direction from the city center, I can visit East Rock Park, a woodland crisscrossed by paths and by a river that runs along the foot of the vast red cliff. Redtails nest there on the rocks, woodpeckers drum loudly on the beeches and the pines, and the first kinglets and warblers of spring have begun to appear.
The other day, in fact, I went birdwatching with the New Haven Birding Club in East Rock. We trudged through the rainy morning, spotting two wood ducks, a black-crowned night-heron, pine warblers, kinglets, hooded mergansers and a brown creeper, among the usual assortment of chickadees, titmice, downies, hairies, and the red-bellied woodpeckers that are far more common here than in New Hampshire. White-throated and song sparrows hopped about in the brush, and we even saw a richly russet fox sparrow, mussed and damp in the drizzle. A winter wren made an instant's appearance, long enough to show its jocular, fat and cocky miniscule outline.
After we birded, we took up shovels and shears to help with trail maintenance. I was wet and cold, and so I chose to help shovel, replacing earth in the center of the paths from the sides. Soon I warmed up, shedding hat, shedding gloves and jacket, wiping wet sticky hair away from my cheek with a muddy hand. A good morning.
Speaking of birding, this is one of the finest bird sites I've ever seen, administered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
The Birds of North America Online
What else is happening? Last night, I got interested in nursery rhymes - I happened to be singing Itsy Bitsy Spider, and started thinking about why it's lasted so long through time. First, of course, there's the diction:
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Went up the water spout
Down came the rain and
Washed the spider out!
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain,
And Itsy Bitsy Spider
Went up the spout again.
All those T's, B's, P's and Sp's make for some very noisy and emphatic diction - even, and possibly especially, if you chant the rhyme instead of sing it. Perfect for boisterous, shouting children.
Also, I think there's something universal about its message. The itsy, cute little critter, the sudden hard luck, our pity on its behalf - and then its brave return when fortune smiles on it again. Everyone can understand and be pleased with that.
Finally, of course, there's the associated hand motions, always fun. Like tickling a little kid. Or tickling Paul, as the case might be.
I found this website on nursery rhymes, including the macabre Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosies and the more playfully odd Humpty Dumpty:
Nursery Rhymes on BBC's H2G2
It includes the following delightful commentary:
Indeed, just what is it that makes some nursery rhymes seem rather sinister? Why did the makers of the seminal and utterly spooky British TV series Sapphire and Steel make frequent use of the nursery rhyme? We often think of eerie little music boxes playing spindly nursery rhyme-type tunes in horror films. But why? There's something almost Freudian about the way these invasive melodies can cause the hairs on the back of the neck to rise.
...It's the ability of nursery rhymes to allude to things, their elliptical nature, that makes them so fascinating. They share a lot in common with the Japanese Haiku format. Less structured, perhaps, than their Japanese cousins, they nonetheless contain within them tiny sparks which ignite our imagination. Perhaps Sapphire and Steel were right, perhaps nursery rhymes do have certain strange powers. Often they are evocative, like sudden flashes of colour, or like fleeting memories that bubble up unbidden. Nursery rhymes mysteriously breeze in and out of our lives, a bit like we breeze in and out of life itself.
And I think I'll leave today's entry at that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)