fantastique ms. fox

since i wrote last (long delay for one lousy reason: the infection is back, and one lovely reason: my three fabulous brothers, john, doug & scott, came to stay for a long weekend/short week but whichever, it wasn't long enough), i have seen a good sized red fox go trotting by on the opposite bank. even with no binocs i saw the white tip of its tail and its black trimmed ears, wearing those stylish black leggings, a snappy dresser.

marty thinks it was looking for goose eggs to eat. he has noticed the farm geese are so dumb they often lay their eggs close to the water during low tide so the river moves them, breaks them, disappears them as soon as it starts rising. this happens twice a day, geese, are you listening? since foxes eat just about anything, river-scrambled eggs, in such abundance, must be a delicious easy treat. kind of like how we feel about about fiddleheads, also in season.

there are many animals i admire, adore or am dazzled by. foxes are high on the lists, especially the admiration list. they are kicky, nimble, nervy, intense, smart in both senses of the word and self-contained. but i think they breed only because they have to, poor dears. in all the photos i looked at, their babies are beyond adorable but those mothers were a hot mess as my friend rose likes to say - all scraggly, worn out and emaciated, clearly not having a drop of fun.

so i guess there are always trade-offs. whereas i have thrived on mothering, a fox looks happier and certainly more sleek, well-nourished and dapper when child-free. life as a kit seems like the peak experience for a fox. i watched three little guys race around on a friend's lawn on one of my first visits to this part of maine maybe ten years ago. they were positively giddy in the early morning sun, leaping around, jumping on each other, rolling and tumbling, biting and squealing. hopefully their mom, who wasn't visible, was getting a well-deserved rest nearby.

afterthought~ if there is reincarnation and if we get at least one go round as an animal and if we get to choose, i think i might prefer to come back as an otter.

sightings

a few days ago i spotted a lumbering black animal on the bank far up the river. even at such a distance i could tell it was big. my heart did a little leap as i pictured a bear. it was definitely large and black. when marty went to the window he couldn't tell either but he thought from its tail it was a dog. or a wolf, we both guessed out loud, knowing that though rare there are black wolves. but the binocs held the truth: a bernese mountain dog. still, a part of me held fast to a bear-wolf hybrid. which, i know, are REALLY rare.

and today marty said just for a moment he thought he saw an orca near the bridge. it was dark and huge and seemed to be moving with purpose. it turned out to be a tree. still i sympathize with that little leap, that flicker of hope or optimism, because you just never know. i've seen what i thought were coyotes, foxes, wolves, mountain lions, seals, otters, dolphins, eagles, osprey...and sometimes they actually were.

it helps me understand the loch ness monster, the abominable snowman and u.f.o's too. personally i haven't "seen" those myself, probably because i don't really care or wish to (plus i've never been to scotland). i wonder if some people are more inclined to see what we want to, what we desire, in nature, or in other people. i'd rather err on the side of reading too much kindness in somebody or a fox where there's only a cat or a seal when it's only a buoy and risk being embarrassed or disappointed than miss out on the happiness and thrill of the momentarily possible.

homecoming

on monday sam, my hero, sighted a great blue heron as it arrived at low tide. i watched him checking it out with the binocs, though we didn't really need them. it is very tall and depending on the light looks teal or blue gray. what little grass there is is still so short it stands out brightly, vividly.

today marty saw it near the smaller bridge, on our side of the river. i'm wondering if it's the same one from last year, who lived around here until the late fall. i'm not sure how to figure that out or if it really matters but i'm curious. i don't feel possessive about this heron, or any heron - they are so self-contained and self-assured you can tell they belong only to themselves. perhaps you could say the same about the mallards but somehow it's different; i do, presumptuously, affectionately, feel they are ours, whereas great blues are their own, i just know that.

i'm always happy to see the ducks and the geese when they appear but there is a thrill, a certain excitement, that comes with each visitation from a heron; it's never ordinary. i knew there were several poems of mary oliver's concerning herons and found the one i wanted quite easily though i hadn't read it in a long time. i'm so glad the heron has returned; has it?

Circles

In the morning the blue heron is busy
stepping, slowly, around the edge of the
pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded
against his body, fit so neatly they
make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise
into the air, a great surprise. Also
he carries so lightly the terrible sword-beak. Then
he is gone over the trees.

I am so happy to be alive in this world
I would like to live forever, but I am
content not to. Seeing what I have seen
has filled me; believing what I believe
has filled me.

The first words of this page are
hardly thought of when the bird
circles back over the trees; it floats down
like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light
coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:
maybe it is or it isn’t the same bird- maybe it’s
the first one’s child, or the child of its child.
What I mean is, our deliverance from Time
and the continuance, if we only steward them well,
of earthly things. So maybe it’s myself still standing here, or
someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and
filled with praise.

-Mary Oliver

bringing the outdoors in (always something to think twice about)

the marsh is busy today! already four or five days have gone by out there and it's only 3:00. at dawn there was a brilliant pink sunrise, then the sun and all shades of clouds came and went in various combinations, turning the water from slate to green to blue and back again. now there is a fierce and chilly wind more reminiscent of february but looking for all the world like a bright summer's day otherwise.

and so many birds! the gulls keep coming, gathered at the water's edge staring intently but no one seems to be eating anything; i have no idea what they're up to. at least 60 of them by now, a veritable convocation. the usual four suspects from the huge flock of farm geese were back for a while until our resident male mallard chased them off the island. he is one feisty duck that guy; he has no patience with any interlopers whether giant goose or tiny bufflehead. he is also giving his wife no rest. if there are no ducklings soon it won't be for lack of effort.

i worry about those ducklings. last year one made it - we didn't move here in time to know how many they started with. we named her "baby" and she stuck with her parental units, ronny and foxy, until about a month ago. she was being courted by a young guy marty named elvis - he trailed behind the family of three for maybe six weeks, then one day we realized baby and elvis had moved out, presumably to their own grassy apartment somewhere nearby.

when we had ducks in freestone i had to bring the hatchlings inside until they started to fledge lest the owls and minks have them as snacks. this made the laundry room a super messy nursery for the entire spring and summer and put a rather significant damper on my affection for the little darlings, especially by august. marty promised me that once the weather got colder they would instinctively know to stop fertilizing their eggs - not to worry, he said, "this is how mother nature practices birth control."

yet a lovely late afternoon that october stands out in my mind like it was yesterday. i was lounging on the bed with an iced tea and a riveting mystery on one of those rare and precious occasions when i had managed to bribe the 12 year old from next door into entertaining the kids downstairs so i could sneak away and take a secret break, something they would never have allowed, no matter how happy they were, if they suspected i was enjoying myself without them.

it was into this blissful interlude that i heard marty come up the stairs, home from work. how nice, i thought, he's coming to say hello and compare days. but what was all that peeping?? sheepishly he stood before me overflowing with ducklings, ducklings in his pockets, ducklings in his shirt, ducklings everywhere. they really are very cute, no question. but i had finally gotten the laundry room scrubbed out and that sour ducky smell banished. poor marty was clearly abashed and said apologetically, yet still wanting to retain his standing as mr. nature, "i guess this must be what they mean when they refer to 'a late hatch'."

right after we got them settled into a large cardboard box with a pie pan of water and a pyrex dish of feed - you can picture how long it takes for eight baby ducks to turn their capacious fully outfitted new home into a goopy mucky permanent mess (that would be under 10 seconds if you weren't sure) - i immediately made an emergency after hours call to amy, the head of sam's pre-school, and said in my most optimistic, outdoor voice, have i got an educational project for you!

fortunately amy is still speaking to me, in fact we are good friends to this day. but unlike the geese there is no lesson here, no moral to the story. after that long smelly spring, summer - and fall - there were many more inundations of ducks and ducklings in our life. we learned nothing. no sanity bell ever went off while wandering through the feed store, the poultry barn at the sonoma county fair in california or the mofga common ground fair in maine.

obviously ducks are labor intensive and noisy; above all though ducks are hilarious and make us happy. no doubt if the marsh hadn't come with its own pair of mallards we would have found some somehow, somewhere, because we are suckers for ducks.

green water, white geese

early this morning the river was a deep dark satiny green. gliding by on the outgoing tide were four geese, three a shining white so stately and elegant that for a moment i thought they might be swans; the caboose was gray and buff and kept disappearing like camouflage. they climbed out of the water on the other side and stood facing me, the white ones reflected in the green water like crisp sails. they all ambled under the five enormous firs that stand side by side along the bank between the river and the hill. then one by one they stepped back into the current and floated out of sight.

they leave behind a silver trail, a sparkling wake that follows each of them for a long distance, like jets in the summer sky. such flowing graceful beauty, it cannot be denied, from such cranky, hard scrabble creatures. we always wanted geese in freestone but stopped just short each time temptation arose, having young children and knowing how irascible and combative they can be. looking back i am impressed by this rare common sense and restraint on our part; there was far too little of that when it came to acquiring dogs, cats, goats, lambs, rabbits, chickens, ducks- just about any kind of animal, whether feathered or furry. and apart from the eggs we never ate anyone in the backyard so it was a lot of care and expense for the pleasure of their company.

just now the gang of four has deigned to come aground right out front, nibbling their way across the flats under our windows at low tide. they are just so cool, from a distance. they remind me of the really popular girls in elementary school. out on the playground their jump rope or hopscotch looked like the most fun, until i got persuaded to join them - once lured in i didn't like how they treated me or worse how they treated other, even less popular kids. in time i learned to screen them out of my peripheral vision, their tantalizing laughter and perfectly timed twirling didn't deliver as promised close up, wasn't worth the inevitable zingers, biting remarks, and sarcastic little digs, the hurt feelings or painful embarrassment. an important life lesson though if it's what led to being able to resist the siren song of a box full of goslings all those times at the feed store.

deepening tides

From The Book Of Hours: Love Poems to God
By Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
So that what no one has dared to wish for
May for once spring clear
Without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
But this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
No forcing and no holding back,
The way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
These deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
Streaming through widening channels
Into the open sea.

Little Journeys II

note: as promised my brother john wrote about his weekly date with spouse pam to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, in grand rapids where we all grew up and where, of the six of us, he still lives. this week they went to chicago so no garden visit, and last week i didn't post his note because i was sick so here it is now:

We have had beautiful weather of late and today it's supposed to reach 73 degrees. On Monday night we had the most magnificent "Harvest Moon" although being spring I'm not sure that's what it's called. It was huge and aglow and sitting low on the horizon. Was hoping to see it again last night but it must have grown so large it fell from the sky. Maybe it will be back shortly.

The gardens were full of life - from the families who came to see the butterflies in the Tropical Conservatory to the muskrats busily motoring around the large pond to the geese and ducks fending for their nests - it was quite exhilarating. It was also interesting to see the "controlled burn" areas designed to clear the old ground growth while adding nutrients and new opportunities for healthy new growth. They explained it much better than I can.

"It was a wonderful visit - exciting to see so many signs of spring. I really enjoy reading duckdreams and have shared it with others. Can't wait to experience the river and marsh first hand. Love, John

like wheat that springeth green

our tidal flats are covered in spartina, various kinds of marsh grass which all died and turned brown as the dirt months back. lately i think i've seen little patches of green here and there on the river banks at low tide. so far marty thinks not. so we bicker. he is fun to quibble with. we both have an overarching desire to be right about everything. we make lots of bets going back to the beginning of time. he almost always wins because he is very smart and has an excellent poker face. so i owe him two million dollars. but he owes me six million because i know when to up the ante.

easter morning. as a child this was my favorite day of the year. from steketees department store in downtown grand rapids: new dress, new anklets trimmed in lace, new hat with satin ribbon, new gloves. i observed that my mom wore white gloves decades longer than most women of her generation thus so did her daughters. when my parents went to italy my mother bought me a pair of gloves in florence made of the softest white leather and stitched with tiny exquisite rosebuds. they remain among my best loved possessions of all time. my sister terry and i got gardenia corsages- they smelled so good it made me want to cry.

after the easter egg hunt we went to church. from third grade on i sang in one of the four choirs. one year the combined choirs performed the hallelujah chorus. forty children robed in red were all lined up in front on the chancel steps in the huge sanctuary. behind us was a bank of lilies the size of a station wagon. their imposing scent made my eyes water and nose run. the anthem built to its glorious crescendo and came to its surprising, thrilling moment of silence just as i sneezed. i was mortified. of course i didn't do it on purpose but you'd never convince minister of music mr. beverly howerton. it ruined the recording he was planning to sell so the adult choir could tour in europe. his stony glare could freeze your heart. i felt like mac in yertle the turtle.

after church we went somewhere wonderful for lunch with my grandparents. so many rituals and traditions. most of all i remember the music. haunting, hopeful, exhilarating, overwhelming beauty on the edge of unbearable sorrow. death is real and you can't undo it but love is enduring. loss will tear you apart yet you are never abandoned or completely alone. sadness hurts to the bone, nonetheless something lifts you with its beating wings.

my core theology didn't come from sunday school, sermons, books, religious education or seminary. it came from memorizing and singing hymns, anthems, great choral works, sacred music; the notes and the words working their way down deep.


Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

jubilation on the marsh

everything is singing! gulls, geese, ducks, crows, song birds and indoors theo our little parrot. marty rearranged the bedroom furniture this morning so now i am facing the river and can see even more. many windows are flung open. the tide is coming in and the water is a deep, sparkling sapphire, the greens greener, the browns more buff, the sky a soft baby blue. a light breeze is dancing with the trees. a gem of a day.

my best friends came in the same week, rosemary started it off with godson allen, and susan completed the happiness. my cup runneth over. this also helped to offset the misery of a pain filled infection coming back.

all of a sudden it has gotten very still, very quiet out there, like a lazy summer afternoon when all you can hear are the boats or cars and the hum of the very air itself. the marsh is taking its afternoon nap. i think i will follow suit.