eagle

this morning the alarm went off at 5. funny thing is, we were all four already awake. the sky outside was a color that doesn't exist anywhere during the day, a little difficult to look at. 52 degrees. the dogs pretty much went right back to sleep, but the sweetie and i got ourselves into the car and drove three or four miles down to the east branch delaware.

it was cold enough to feel the air hit your insides when you breathe and i was surprised to find the water warmer than the air. we stood in the water and cast and reeled, cast and reeled. i've recently noticed i like fishing. it's not so much the catching part. the sweetie likes that. he catches them, too. but i like standing out in the water, looking around at the mountains and the rocks and all. i like the repetitive casting and reeling. i like the not talking and the sounds the birds and water make together. so while the sweetie focuses on reeling in the fish, i wander around, look at the sky, watch the tadpoles.

and then i saw it. "look! an eagle!" i yelled and pointed. the sweetie looked up. "that's not an eagle. that's a heron." oh. it had a white head. it had gray wings. it was big. and i wanted it to be an eagle. everyone around here blathers on about all the eagles they see all the time. like they're stray cats or something. although i know it isn't possible, i watch every day from my old lady rocking chair, expecting an eagle to come flying down the road. i already said i know it isn't possible. so the sweetie says it's not an eagle. and then two seconds later i yelled, "look! an eagle!" and he looked. and evidently (according to the sweetie, who tends toward factual information) while he looked i said about seventeen other sentences, each with the word "eagle" in it. it is an eagle. wow. that's really an eagle. it is an eagle, right? eagle. eagle.

it was. not more than a few seconds behind a great blue heron, it came sailing around the river bend and followed it upstream, right over us. and i was too stupefied to get my camera. i've never seen an eagle flying around in the wild before. it was certainly worth the early morning. we also saw two deer, one of which i thought was a bear. i am working on my animal identification skills.

for kevin, where the fish go

pepacton reservoir during drought. it looks like "former site of olive" may be taking back a little. this is on the way to d.e.p. fishing










the road to nowhere on pepacton reservoir, a d.e.p. site, where you can walk right down into the fish on a road that used to go to one of the towns that's still under there.



pepacton reservoir, just before a large storm came through and slightly before some jerk asked if we caught anything. when we said no, he snorted, "how could you not catch anything down there?" well, jerkweed, maybe i wasn't trying very hard. or maybe i'm really bad at fishing. feel better about yourself?





pepacton reservoir from shore because we do not have a boat. when we get one, it will not be able to leave pepacton reservoir because the d.e.p. says so.

fishing on esopus creek off 28 near allaben, state land











fishing on esopus creek off 28 near allaben, state land, the other direction

along delaware and ulster rail bed trail, where there are many fishing streams, but also a pleasant walk with scenery enjoyable by nonfishers, even small children.









d.e.p. fishing site on route 10 near south kortright.

trans am acres. just past the above fishing site. i do not believe the d.e.p. is in any way connected with this.










d.e.p. fishing site on east branch delaware near margaretville. that's the remains of an old bridge abutment.

knitting on east branch delaware, a d.e.p. fishing site, not zoned for knitting at all















nests under bridge over east branch delaware, a d.e.p. fishing site. the birds living here have a deal with the d.e.p. and do not require a permit to fish.

happy anniversary

to the new supernatural nephew's parents.

the magnificent exploding max

max fell out of bed. at 4:40 this morning, i awoke to a thump. it's the sort of thump that lets you know a medium sized dog has landed on his back from a few feet up. the thump wasn't on my side of the bed, so i woke the sweetie, who insisted max just jumped down to get a drink. now, max is gearing up for his sweet sixteen this fall and he's not the jumper he used to be. back in brooklyn, we have little steps so he and guthrie can get up and down from the bed without breaking those short little legs they insist on having. here, we lift the old guy up and down by hand, the way they did it in the olden days. max won't jump down himself. instead, he'll put himself very near my head and will cry a sad, horrible cry for as long as it takes to wake me and let me know he needs to get down. this does not work with the sweetie as he could sleep through an explosion, so max doesn't bother.

so it was no surprise to me when we turned on the light and max didn't look quite right. well, max has never really looked quite right, but this was different. we've noticed he's going deaf and we've also noticed sometimes he stares off into space for a while. none of this has really changed him all that much. if anything, he's been more wonderful in his ancientness. but when i reached down to pick him up he snapped at me. this made me think he broke something in his fall. all his bones are about the same age, so it could have been any of them, but he was standing when the snapping occurred, so i figured it wasn't a leg, back or head bone. probably a rib. scary. ribs are always snapping off, puncturing lungs and other horrible things. we saw this a few weeks back on deadliest catch, and if it can happen to a ship captain, it can happen to max. the sweetie insisted he was fine until the snapping turned his way. then, suddenly, he came to the conclusion, based on all he'd seen, that max fell out of bed.

which meant that in the still dark morning we all four (guthrie is a worrier and needed to be right up next to max) went downstairs (max had no trouble here, which really narrowed down the possible bones he'd broken) where the sweetie took max out for a walk because nobody could sleep. this meant guthrie stood inside with me worrying up a storm. he is, after all, my dog. when everyone was back inside we continued to look at max's grumpy side. this particular side harbors many of his old dog bumps. you will remember from a few posts ago we had to have a particularly hideous bump removed from one of max's back toes. and a few years back, while he was under for something else, we had one removed from his back, right in the prime pet zone. so this side, his grumpy side, was grumpy far before he fell out of bed.

and what we found when we examined the horrible side of max is that one of his awful old dog bumps had been torn out by the roots. we did not find the actual bump, which we suspect might be somewhere inside max. it's best not thinking about that sort of thing. what this means is that max had a gaping hole in his side the size of a pencil eraser that went right into him. we are, at this point, pretty well able to deal with any sort of external grotesqueness max can create. and now that we weren't worried one of his ribs had leapt off it's mooring and skewered a lung or two, everything was fine. max was still in a lot of pain and feeling pretty stupid for falling out of bed while gnawing off one of his bumps. we waited for daylight. then we waited for the drugstore to open. the sweetie went to get a bandage and other max repair items. we hoisted him into the kitchen sink (his least favorite place in the house) to bathe off what looked like a tunnel into max. then we wrapped him up like a fighter with taped ribs.

for the first fifteen minutes, he was so humiliated, he just sat, staring into space. i reminded him whose fault all this was and what time the sweetie and i got up to investigate all this drama. i let him know guthrie had stood by him, staring, clueless for hours. suddenly he recovered. he has five or six bumps left right now, but he can only reach two. i'm sure he'll be dramatic when the time comes.

freaks and monsters

disclaimer: don't get yourself all riled up about the word "freak". go to the coney island freak show and learn a little something about difference if you're snarling right now.

yesterday i spoke to the first supernatural nephew. i had called his mom to ask about shipping some mysterious chocolate and then there he was.

what's your favorite animal? he asked. now, i know my favorite animal is the bat. there's nothing better, nothing more fantastic, but i paused, scanning my brain, because i wanted him to be impressed. i wanted him to be proud of my choice. i went with bat. he seemed pleased. i asked about his favorite and it's a pterodactyl. he hesitated first, asking if it could be extinct. i said extinct would be fine because i know how he loves the dinosaurs. good. then his favorite is definitely pterodactyl. he likes the way they're able (in his way of seeing things) to fake out larger, land-bound predators by swooping away at the last minute. he laughed just thinking about it. he said pterodactyls would laugh, too, yelling down taunts to the carnivores snapping below them. secretly, i was thrilled because we'd chosen the same animal. okay, not really the same animal, but kindred creatures. freaks. irregulars. it is his ability to recognize and celebrate rarity and strangeness that i hear most in these calls. the nephew and i love the churkendooses.

for those of you who don't know, the churkendoose is the barnyard version of the "it takes a village to raise a child" story. it seems one day the ladyfowl at the farm notice an egg all by itself. it doesn't belong to any of them, but each takes a turn sitting on it. all that sitting somehow infuses the little birdlet with characteristics from all the mamas involved. the hatched bird is a freak. spectacular and gifted, a little bit like everyone but not entirely like anyone. misfit. but every one of those bird mamas saw her own kind in the little freak. that's the moral of the story, i suppose. that even the strangest among us has a little bit of us. but what i got from it as a kid is that everyone loves the strange kid.

there will be more phone calls. the nephew lives half a country away and we don't see each other much. he changes quickly and i can't keep up with what wildness swirls into his head but he reports on bits of it from time to time. i know there will be more questions and i'm ready. i have not forsaken my beloved bat, but there are more loves than one in the animal world. i have a whole list of animals he'll like to meet. platypus. wallaby. axolotl. but those are pedestrian. those are easy. i've gone to schreber's fantastic beasts for the serious stuff. malayan stink badger.klipspringer. fossa. crab-eating fox. african chevrotain. greater grison. babirusa.

gunpowder pinhole

warning: this is too long to be one entry. you know how little kids see something exciting and then tell you about it in meandering, stream of consciousness? proceed at your own risk. loads of photos toward the end.

disclaimer: polaroid pinhole photos were rephotographed on a digital camera and downloaded. editing was hasty.

those of you who have been visiting a while will remember the very first post, about "arkville holiday", a confusing little wonder involving firemen, bbq, fireworks and santa all on the 27th of december. well, i don't mean to alarm you, but that's not the only time of year we get a fireworks combo. that's right. the fourth of july, done up margaretville style, is not to be sneezed at. and, of course, there are firemen. and bbq, though santa was nowhere to be seen. in his place there's a no joke, bona fide carnival.

here's the deal. the carnival busts loose on the first. we went over to the field behind the a&p around dark. there were clusters of folks milling around brightly lit rides, none of which seemed to be going. that was not a problem. most everybody was deeply involved in some sort of carnival food- cotton candy, funnel cakes, fried vegetables, lemonade, sausage and peppers. a few were trying to win things at those games of skill. the prizes were impressive. almost nothing was a cartoon character. this sort of thing repeats itself until friday, when the entire town takes off from work in anticipation of the day's festivities. starting with the flea market. now, the flea market is a lot like most. it's outside on a field between arkville and margaretville, sort of across from the local hospital. it has plenty of folding tables full of stuff like twenty year old used hair mousse and lots of broken kitchen utensils. and farm implements. and wagon wheels. the local army navy place has a little booth, complete with a display of guns "not for sale". heh. but on the fourth of july, the flea market transforms. it takes on a level of seriousness and excitement that truly makes it worth taking a day off to see. so we did.

generally, folks park at a pull out on the side of route 28, with space for maybe ten cars. but on this special day, cars were lined up along both sides of the road, parked in the lot of a semi-defunct restaurant and even on the grass near the edge of the market. we walked over to the first "booth", which was mostly a bunch of junk lying on the grass. the folks at the flea market appear to have limited marketing and display skills. this doesn't matter when you're selling stuff for a buck, but when you slap a $300 sticker on a rusted saw, you better make it look pretty. and they don't. but back to the first booth. junk on the ground. and then the puzzles. 33 jigsaw puzzles, all assembled, lying on the ground. i'm not joking. mostly outdoor scenes. village scenes. at first i thought they were mounted on something and meant to be used as art. nope. just put together for folks to look at. that way you can see all the pieces are there and you can see what you get in the end. brilliant. disturbing.

there was a table near the middle with an old microscope. it sat on a wooden board next to some other lab looking equipment and had a $25 tag on it. i might have mentioned before my love of microscopes and my need to have old, busted up junk all scattered around. it was a raggedy, dusty mess. the sweetie wasn't too sure. he loves the old, busted up junk as well, but in this new house, he likes his busted up junk a little nicer than what we've had in the past. the thing about the sweetie is, no matter how raggedy an object is, if it has working mechanical parts and he can fix it up and get it going, he can be convinced that we need it. he was. so i forked over my $25 and it was at this moment i realized the microscope was mounted on a board and the strange little machine next to it was coming home, too. this, for me, is the equivalent of spying a dollar on the street and realizing it's a five while picking it up. i was worried someone would find out what we had before we escaped with it. we got it home where i freed both machines from the board and shined them up a bit. the sweetie got things working and in no time at all we'll be gazing at pond water and fly wings under the thing.

but i forgot about the firemen. the margaretville firemen do not have brooks bbq cater their field days. they make their own. on the lot across from the a&p there was a mile long grill with several firemen tending half chickens and there were some folks standing at little booths scattered randomly (and with no clear indication of what's going on) over this parking lot and on into the park behind the grocery. i think we counted five places to buy chicken, none of which said anything even resembling "hey, buy chicken here!". but it doesn't matter. if you want the chicken, you'll find it. and for $7.50, these folks will slap half a chicken in a styrofoam box and toss in a roll and two sides (i got beans for both mine). i have been known to be squeamish about food, but for some reason, seeing the guy grab a half chicken out of a large cardboard box covered with tin foil didn't stop me from digging in on the walk across the street.yes, before we sat down i was chewing on chicken in the street. and there will me more again today. they are not joking around with this whole field days thing. judging from the amount of folks i saw gnawing on half chickens, margaretville firemen will be able to buy a whole new set of trucks. perhaps they will sell the old ones at the flea market. i know someone who needs one.

but we still aren't to the main event. the fireworks. now, we live about a mile from margaretville, just down the road on route 28 and we hopped in the car around 9 for the 9:30 show. we knew to expect something pretty swanky from the arkville holiday experience and we wanted to get a good seat. we did not understand the event at all. we underestimated everything. we turned right off our own road onto 28 and within a few yards we saw cars parked along the side. some folks were walking along the dark road toward margaretville and the a&p while others were just sitting in lawn chairs in the backs of trucks or on the ground between cars. the flea market grounds were packed and the little rise where the hospital sits was covered with families on blankets. like times square on new year's eve. i'm not exaggerating. except without any of the nastiness. no yelling. no honking. and our car was going forward. confusing. we decided to go for it. we kept driving, taking a right into margaretville, crossing the river and going past the a&p. and we drove up into town. now, margaretville is like many small towns. it's small. once you get off the main street it's just houses and churches and sidewalks. so we drove toward the back end of town, which is pretty much four blocks from the front end, and we parked. we didnt' really know where things would be so we followed the stream of folks with lawn chairs and blankets. we had our own blanket and a couple of cameras with a tripod. this will be important later. the trail led us to an alley up behind the big trucks the carnival people live in. there were plastic lawn chairs scattered near the side doors of the trucks, but everything else was shut up tight against the mass of townfolks. we kept walking.

and then the road went right up to a roped off clearing with every human being for fifty miles packed in. this is where i mention i'm not so good with crowds. i know i've spent the last ten years in nyc. still, not good with crowds. but fireworks is a whole other kettle of fish, so we pressed on. there was a little open space on the ground right at the edge of the road and we plopped our stuff down. a woman and a young girl were selling glow sticks, which we clearly needed. they're still glowing this morning. we faced ourselves the direction everyone else was facing and the dark finally got serious. we were looking at a small rise where a tiny building with the sign "margaretville water dept." on it hunched down. when i say tiny, think shed. from behind margaretville water dept. it started. fireworks like you only read about. and, just like at arkville holiday, they echo off the mountains in crazy ways. you can feel them exploding in your insides. and we had managed to wander into front row center seating. the sweetie took photos with the digital camera, long exposures with brilliant color. i had the pinhole camera on a tripod, exposing the film for a minute or more. the whole explosion thing lasted at least 30 minutes, during which time if you craned your neck you could see a terrifying red cloud just behind the margaretville water dept. sinsiter. perfect.

after the fireworks we went strolling around the carnival, looking for places to set up the pinhole camera. we found plenty. and each time, some fortysomething guy, kid in tow, would look at us shyly for a minute, then ask, "is that a... a... pinhole camera or something?" in the manner of a ten year old boy with a crush. yes. it is. although i'm not prone to generalizations, especially those about men or women, i feel comfortable saying men of a certain age get all stupid over cameras they don't have, especially if they hearken back to something from their youth. i'd show the photos and they'd ask more questions. one guy had a child who is, i'm sure, in regular contact with the original supernatural nephew. he was keenly interested in cameras and had his own digital at home. he looked at the photos, gazed at the camera (at seven, he could already recognize the beauty in a simple, functional object- clearly a superpower) and cried, "that's exactly the camera i've been wanting!" of course it is. a wooden camera with no lens and a polaroid back. the very camera. so i agreed with him. his dad laughed and said they'd maybe try an oatmeal box pinhole. but i figure if you're buying a seven year old digital cameras, you've got the cash to buy him something really beautiful. something that will not be easy. something without a viewfinder, so he will have to find his own way. something that will require him to be very still and count, maybe as high as 300. that kid needs a camera like mine for real. the way he doesn't yet know he needs fireworks. and carnival rides. and chicken made by firemen.

front porch

the chairs are finished. i have managed several hours a day (it's okay. you can be impressed) in my rocking chair on the porch. before anyone gets all critical, i spend my remaining time hiking, gardening, picking up rocks scattered all over the yard, mowing and dealing with small but energetic dogs. i get my exercise. but at least one hour during the day and usually several every evening around dusk, i sit in my rocker, sip some sort of beverage (tea, bourbon, hot chocolate- it gets cool here at night), breathe air that smells like the summer when i was eleven and knit pants for the supernatural or peruse our library of geekdom.

when we bought the house, we immediately furnished it with a field guide to wildflowers (north american), catskill region waterfall guide (where we found that nice trail featured in an earlier post), peterson field guide to eastern trees, and the national audubon society field guide to birds- eastern region. this is because once you become a homeowner, a landowner, you have to know what's on your land. and around it. and i do. mostly i use the books in my secret feuds with the tree guy. he does not know about these feuds. he says the trees in our fence row are chinese elms and i know they're rock elms, mostly because of the drooping lower branches. he says the woodpeckers destroying said rock elms are downy woodpeckers when they're clearly yellow bellied sapsuckers. i win these arguments entirely in my mind. the field guides are vindication enough. the tree guy is so nice i don't have the heart to fight him for real. although i would clearly kick his butt. but this is what i do. i sit on the porch and look around and need to grab a book every few minutes to establish my surroundings. biblical folk say god let adam name everything. i want to know everything's name.

like the hummingbird i saw the other night. i thought that would be tough. they're tiny and it was nearly dark when the thing zipped over to the tiger lilies (who were in the process of closing up for the night) and pranced around. i was secretly hoping it would get stuck in a closing lily, but those things are pretty quick. by the way, the fireflies were all around the lilies, too, and i was begging them to fly into a lily and light up. they absolutely refused, although one did hover just above a lily and set the whole thing ablaze. but the hummingbird. the hummingbird, indeed. tiny. dusk. impossible to identify. except, according to national audubon society, the ruby throated hummingbird (archilochus colubris, of the family trochilidae) is the only one living its frantic little life around here. good. because i have no idea how many centimeters the thing was or the color of its undercarriage. generally, the folks at audubon are pretty straighforward with their descriptions of voice, habitat, nesting and range. but not with this little critter. check this out: "nesting: 2 white eggs in a woven nest of plant down held together with spider silk and covered with lichens. nest is saddled to the branch of a tree." holy cow. just put a few line breaks in there and you've got yourself something sassy enough for a high school poetry journal. the thing is, the language is pretty, but i'm thinking, "how do they get the spider silk?" i know they're small and i know they're fast, but come on. you're telling me a bird with that sort of amped up personality can abscond with a spider web and then manage to use it successfully to cobble together a hobbit nest?

they're so sleek and shiny and small, the hummingbirds. thank goodness for bats. fat, fuzzy, disheveled looking. it's the bats i really love. since i was a kid. they're such a brilliant package. mammal. nocturnal. flying. sleeping upside down in caves. and then the echolocation thing. seriously? one animal got all that? cows must be pretty annoyed. regular birds, too. not me. i couldn't take all that responsibility. i'm nearly overwhelmed just taking it all in from my rocking chair.