Higgins

Medusa Head Plate

I know that the title of this blog would lead you to believe that I am only going to focus on being outside with my dog... but my life does go beyond that, and so, my blog will as well.

Besides, today should be recorded. At precisely 3:30 in the afternoon today, Worcester Massachusetts

lost one of the coolest things it possessed. Higgins Armory closed forever today. It had survived 83 years as a private collection of arms and armor. John Higgins, an industrialist in the early 1900's started collecting armor on his many trips to Europe. He created and sustained both the building and the collection. When he died he left the museum $17,000 to continue displaying his collection. This really wasn't a lot of money, but through creative means, the trusties (his children among them) found ways to stretch that initial money into over 80 years of presentation. All of the pieces are now going to be displayed at the Worcester Art Museum. For those familiar with WAM, what is now the library will be the entire collection of arms and armor. They intend to make the entire collection visible at all times to visitors.

I couldn't let the place close without one final visit. Our whole family set out this morning and got

there about ten minutes before the museum opened. As you can see, and as we certainly expected, there was a line. But it moved fast enough and soon we were through the think wooden doors that lead into the Great Hall. I love the Great Hall. It is just as it should be,  two stories tall with barrel vaulted ceilings and a rose window at one end. I remember going there when I was little. I thought we were going to have to drive all day to go there. The place hasn't changed a whole lot. The collection, I believe, is now static. The good thing about museums, is that the collection is always the collection: A dagger and sheath from 700 BCE is still from 700 BCE, it is just a tiny bit older than when I saw it the first time.

There is something special about the middle ages. I know it has been nearly romanticized to death, but hell even the word "romanticized" stems from that time period. The Arthurian Romances (a name given them because of their association with Rome and then redefined into our modern understanding of romance because of the chivalry and lustiness present within Arthurian Legends) reached into who I am, and really the whole world, and found that part of us that valued chivalry and honor, strength

and purity of spirit and purpose. I still have a collection of his tales given to me by my first girlfriend tucked nicely in my library. Suits of Armor are really far more than protective technology, they symbolize, through tales sung by bards and passed down through Oral tradition to audiences of peasants and royalty alike, the true mettle of the human spirit. Beowulf did fight Grendel and the dragons deep under the thick water of a black and poison pond, but also found himself questioning the fate of a world that was slowly turning away from superstition and toward religion. Arthur's true glory wasn't in his might as a warrior, but in his undying spirit and thirst for a justice tempered by mercy embodied in his sword Excalibur. Legend states that his messianic return to Britain waits for them to turn toward the type of purity in justice that he offered.

I understand why John Higgins wanted to collect these pieces. Yes he was a steel worker, and I am sure that on the surface the artistry of the process appealed to him, but I think we go there to feel a bit of Arthur's presence again.

the "Bilbo" Blade

The place is filled with Viking weapons, knights' swords with their own names (like Bilbo! If this sword weren't encased in glass I don't know if I would have been able to resist touching it ... waiting... hoping that that blade would start to glow blue.) armor that was made as much for beauty as it was for self-preservation. Even the wood working is so foreign and at the same time familiar.

I will miss you, breezy, silver building.
Goodbye to Higgins Armory. May the ghosts of the knights that once inhabited those suits of armor still walk your halls.
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why I follow coyotes

You went to a library. It was a new one, but a very old one, in the middle of some old New England town. It was made of brick, or of stone. It was weathered and you touched the outside walls by instinct, just to see if they would crumble a bit in your hand. The doors creaked when you walked in and the Librarian, who was old, hunched, wearing those glasses with the little chains attached to the sides so they wouldn't fall too far if they were to suicidally attempt to jump off of her face, looked up at you slightly annoyed, leaving you with that pleasant feeling of slight intrusion. You walked past her and past the new part of the library that was sadly made of metal and bolts and wandered up the stairs that were railed with thick wooden rails. The steps curved their way upward toward the older part of the library. There were long-unused fireplaces threateningly placed precariously close to the old, dented wooden shelves that held the low-traffic books about things like the history of various neighboring towns and about the architectural significance of a selection of buildings in Boston. You could smell these books. You walked down an aisle that was a little too close to your shoulders and found a green, high-backed seat, sitted crookedly across from another fireplace that had forgotten its purpose a hundred years ago and you sat, because honestly, who could resist it? The chair felt good and a little hard in spots. In front of you rested a smaller shelf of books that was inset in the wall, hidden behind a little sliding glass door. One book was a history of the library itself, and because the aisle completely hid you from view, you reached out and tried to slide the little glass door aside. And it slid. You waited a second, glanced up and around you, because that what burglers do on TV and you picked up the book. 

A small click sounded somewhere behind you. You felt it more than heard it as it resonated through the wooden frame of the green high-backed chair. You noticed now, that the book was previously resting on a small platform that had raised ever so slightly when you picked up the book. You turned to try to look behind you and noticed that one of the wooden panels in the wall, about three feet high, sat slightly ajar. 

"Oh God," you thought as a feeling that was born of every Hardy Boy novel and Scooby Doo episode you ever saw welled up in your chest. 

And you went in.

This is why I follow coyote trails. They lead places, places that only the coyotes know about, and I want to

go there too. I walked this morning with Chauc, down roads that I have jogged on and walked well over hundreds of times. The winter illuminates things that are hidden in the leaves of the other seasons. Snow collects in the spaces and is tramped down by things that travel during the cold months. I have passed by this trail innumerable times, but I noticed it today. So I went in, because honestly, who could resist it? After it's initial opening in the brush, the trial wound its way,through a dense little pine forest that carpeted the floor with brown needles that must somehow generate their own heat, they always seem to be void of snow, and then through closely grouped pillars of young birch trees. The snow here had faded away from the path, but the coyotes had travelled here a lot and the snow had packed down to a white-emblazoned trail that cut clearly through the woods. I didn't walk far, maybe a quarter of a mile, and the path crossed over an old stone wall. The woods opened up and out to the wetlands and a promontory made entirely of discarded rocks left there by a farmer that had run out of land to line them up into walls on. The rock-island was probably no larger than fifteen feet across and was tucked into a small bay in the wetland. To the left, past a beaver hut that met all three of the real-estate "L's", the way opened up to a view of blowing grass and ice, to the right the way was completely enclosed in massive looming Hemlocks. I was alone and in a place of beauty.

I know where this is, and apart from the coyotes and an occasional deer, I think I may be the only one who does. 

Tolkien knew this feeling well, in his Lothlorians, and Lewis, and Thoreau. There is beauty hidden just out of sight, and it remains the property of those who seek it out. 

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remnant

"Winter remnant" is the term for those elements of a plant that are left bereft of apparent life throughout the long stretches of winter here in New England.  It's such a thick word, "remnant": what remains. A sign that something existed here before. It is a brittle word. Something that you could crush with your hands and slowly grind to powder. It implies that something has left. That what has

been is now vacant, excepting the evidence that it was here previously. It is a grey-brown word. A hard word. A word that follows death, and yet, at least with these plants, that is not at all true. The plants are still here, and they certainly haven't died. Their root system lies just beneath my feet, lying dormant. "Dormant" is a much better word. It implies that life is waiting.

I wonder if death is true. 

I wonder if dormancy is a much more proper term. 

If we are to inform ourselves using the only true evidence of life: the world around us, death, at least in this massive family of plants, is at most temporary, and at least, untrue. 

Rutland State Park is full of winter remnant. The world this morning, except for Chaucer, Henry,

Myself, and a small group of Cardinals and Blue jays, was for all appearances...gone past. Waiting silently. Henry laughed when I told him that the only thing moving in the park this morning was the river. He told me that Chaucer, who has been kept inside by how dark the early mornings are before I go to work, was certainly not still. He was running, frantically trying to "remark" all of the old marking places that his scent used to dominate.

The frogs are dug deep into muck and tucked soundly into deep pockets of broken bark, body temperatures lowered to between 45 and 49 degrees. Grey Tree Frogs freeze rock hard in the winter. If you were to pick one up, it would feel exactly like a stone. 

Waiting. 

Painted turtles sleep down deep in the muddy world at the bottom of ponds. Bears hibernate.

Squirrels are in their nests. Chipmunks lie several feet underground in hordes of collected acorns and nuts. The world is just waiting to come back to life.

This morning I thought that I might take a lesson from the plants. I might choose to look at life through the seasons and allow myself to believe that maybe death isn't final... nothing in life suggests that it is. 

Maybe "dormancy" is a better word. 

It implies waiting. 

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Persimmon Pudding with Rum Pomegrenate Glaze

When one lives with a Henry (my super inquisitive, obnoxiously smart, nine year old) one is pushed into the far edges of culture and human experience. I know more, vicariously collecting knowledge through Henry's explorations, about jellyfish than any adult should. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Comic books... no. Not even close. I am now asked daily, in fact just now again from a little pajama clad Henry flitting around the living room in pajama bottoms, about my favorite X-man, Marvel, D.C. Nation, Pokemon...etc figures, and the normal ones just won't do. No, I am carried into the deep recesses of the archives of long dead heroes. The ones that only appeared in a couple of comics back in the 60's.

Holidays are not immune to his influence. Thanksgiving is now partially an exploration of early American and British exile culture. We can not make pumpkin pie. We must dig through the resources of fringe websites, and literary journals scouring site archives of sites like Old Sturbridge Village, looking for legitimate recipes that the early settlers did eat. And then, we must attempt to make those recipes. We must try to emulate a fireplace oven and find or simulate archaic cooking tools to make legitimate our efforts at Thanksgiving meal.

It really isn't as bad as all that.

Actually, its pretty fun. Hard sometimes, but definitely fun. Yesterday (and today's) effort was Persimmon Pudding. This isn't a pudding as we know it today. These puddings are from the mid 1700's and were popular among the British citizens both in the homeland and in the colonies. Earlier forms of these steamed puddings involved meat and some sort of grain for use as a binder. Sailors would boil their rations in this way much of time. Blood sausage and other "sausages" were made this way. Eventually, all of the blood... meat... and other savory things were phased out and what remains is the desert puddings. Even these are slowly being lost to the modern definition of pudding.

Steamed puddings are really super super moist breads that develop deep flavors through the carmelization of sugars in what amounts to hours of steaming.  They generally involve some sort of fruit and grain along with other preserved ingredients. This specific pudding also has those amazing Thanksgiving spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, etc) and has a spice cake quality. Like many old world deserts, it isn't overly sweet, so it benefits from some sort of glaze.

I used, and adapted a recipe that Henry and I found in the Old Sturbridge Village document archives. Here is the version that we came up with:

Pudding:
1 stick of butter
1 cup white sugar
4 ripe (These really need to be ripe. They should feel a bit like a water balloon) persimmons
1 Tbs Rum
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of baking soda
2 table spoons of hot water
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 capful of real vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/2 a cup of walnuts
1 cup of dried cranberries

Glaze:
1/2 Tbs Butter (melted)
1 1/2 cups of confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon of Rum
1 to 2 Tbs of milk

1 pomegranate (taken apart and juiced... reserve 1/2 cup of unbroken pips (those little red juicy guys))
1/4 cup of sugar

Directions

Cream the Butter and sugar in a stand mixer. Peel and seed the persimmons. This is a deceptively easy and messy task if your persimmons are truly ripe. Just cut the things in half and squeeze the pulp into a bowl. Pull out the seeds (they're about as big as Lima beans... so not easy to miss). Dump the pulp into a food processor and process until the fiber break down a bit. Just a few good pulses should do. In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs, combine with the pulp, rum, and the baking soda slurry (combine the warm water and the baking soda).  Add this to the creamed butter and sugar, alternating with the flour, while the mixer is running on medium slow. Let the mixer run for about five minutes or so. While it's mixing, in a bowl, combine the vanilla, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, walnuts and cranberries. After the mixer has run for five minutes, add the spice/nut mix to the bowl and run the mixer on slow just to combine it all.

So... I don't have a pudding mold. Nor, will I be buying one anytime soon. But, I did have a bundt cake  mold, which is almost like a pudding mold. The big deal here, is whatever you choose to use, it should have a hole in the middle. I don't think that the thing will set if you were to just try to boil it in a mixing bowl. So, bundt cake pan. Take the pan and butter the heck out of it. This is going to want to stick, so it really needs to be well buttered. Pudding molds have tops that clamp down tight so they can steam without taking on water. I decided to try just using tinfoil, and it seemed to work well. Butter a sheet of tinfoil just like the bundt cake pan. Poor the batter into the pan and then put the tinfoil on the top of the pan, making sure to get a really tight seal along the edge of the pan. The pan I used was one of those coated jobbies so things release easily, and it had a nice lip around the edge. I think I lucked out a couple of times there. The lip made it easy to really crimp the tinfoil around the edge, creating a nice seal. Find a big pot. Mine had to be really big... actually I used a lobster pot that we had down stairs. Put the bundt cake pan in the pot and then fill the big pot with water until it reaches half way up the sides of the bundt cake pan. I took special care here not to let the water get on the tinfoil... I don't know why, it just didn't seem like that would be a good thing.

Get the water boiling and immediately reduce it to a slow simmer. Put a cover on the big pot and simmer this thing for a full two hours. No lie... two hours. You might want to make sure periodically that the water hasn't evaporated. Mine didn't. I did have to make several adjustments throughout the steaming to maintain a slow simmer though. At the end, peel a bit of the tinfoil back (yes I did burn myself here, I was good about the tinfoil, but I didn't expect the steam inside the pudding mold to get me when I peeled the tinfoil back) and stick a skewer in. It should come out clean.

This next bit is tough. Reseal the tinfoil and somehow, get the the bundt cake pan out of the big pan... not gonna lie here... this was pretty hard. I ended up carefully using a couple of kitchen towels and quickly, got the edge of the thing and picked it up.

Take the tinfoil off and let the pan sit and cool for another hour. Make sure it isn't warm anymore when you attempt to take take it out. I took a plate and put it over the of the bundt cake pan and then inverted the whole thing. It just came right out nicely for me. When the pudding is nice and cool (I did this this morning) make the icing.

The icing is nice and easy. Combine the butter, vanilla, rum and 1 Tbs of milk. Mix it with a fork until it is combined. If you want it to be thinner, just keep adding a little bit of milk until it gets to the consistency you want. I actually made mine a bit too thin. Spoon it over the top of the pudding and let it run down the sides.

Take the pomegranate pips and crush them in between two mixing bowls fitted inside of each other. (see the picture). Press down and pour the juice out. Mix them up and press again, do this as many times as you can. Take the juice and in a small pot combine it with the sugar. Simmer it down until a stripe that you make with your finger stays on the back of a wooden spoon. It will seem a bit liquidy, but when you let it cool it will get syrupy. I let it cool till it reached about room temperature in another little mixing bowl. Put the reserved pomegranate pips along the top and sides of the pudding, and then drizzle the pomegranate syrup lightly along the top. Take care not to completely overrun the icing. I then took the excess syrup and poured some of it on the pomegranate pips on the outside edge of the pudding.

That's about it. I'll tell you how it tasted after tonight's Thanksgiving meal. Did I tell you that I love Thanksgiving? I love Thanksgiving.

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Eye of Newt

Eye of newt, and toe of frog

Wing of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind worm's sting

Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a Hell-broth, boil and bubble

Shakespeare doesn't normally show up on my morning walks, but He did this morning. These are one of my favorite little guys in the fall. They are really around all year long, but the heat and undergrowth keeps them hidden under logs and such. In the fall, they start to show up, brazenly walking along the dirt roads of Rutland State Park. They can be brazen too... because they're poisonous. There really aren't too many poisonous animals in New England, but these guys are. They are pretty special little guys actually. Several myths, other than Shakespeare's nice archaic addition, exist surrounding salamanders. One is that they are oblivious to fire. This probably comes from the fact that they live in wet logs... which may repel the heat of a fire for a while. When the fire finally gets too hot, the salamander leaves and crawls (hopefully) out of the fire. Also, they tend to be brightly colored or spotted with bright colors. This little guy certainly is.

The Eastern Red Spotted Newt. This is it's land phase, and when they're in their land phase, they're called an even more ethereal-greek, Narniac, Harry-Potterish sounding name, an Eft. Sounds like they should be hanging out with Mr. Tumnus. I know they're poisonous, but it certainly doesn't stop me from picking them up every time I see one. There is something about their little feet... I don't know... just so cute! They don't bite, like a snake, and even if they did I would be fine. The poison isn't in their saliva, it comes out of their skin when they are attacked. That's one of the reasons that they are so brightly colored when in their land phase. If a naive Robin were to take one for a meal, he would probably not forget the stomach problems he would have after. No more bright orange salamanders for him. When the EFT is in either of its water phases, it is green with a yellow or orangeish belly. The bright  red spots on its back remain. 

They live a pretty long life, upward of 15 to 25 (one actually lived in containment for 25) years. The first few years they live in the water, they are an undeveloped juvenile. They then move to their land phase and can stay on land for seven years. When they are fully adults and ready to mate, they move back to the water and live out their days there. 

Shakespeare's witches in Macbeth weren't far off in their potion making. I mean they are poisonous, and if they really needed an eyeball to make the thing especially piquant, then a newt would probably be a good choice. They can grow them back. Newts have a layer of cells hugging close to their "rods and cones" called a retinal pigment epithelium. This is pretty much a series of stem cells that convert new growing cells into those necessary to grow the whole thing back. Scientists are obviously picking out their eyes by the hundreds and harvesting the cells. Actually, they are being contained in a nice building in Rensselaer, New York.  

I don't pick out their eyeballs. I just think they are about the cutest thing you could probably pick up in New England in the fall. 

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Blue Fairies

Ever try to catch a fairy? It's actually not that hard. They move pretty slow, but trying to take a picture of one in the air, well that is a different story altogether.

They are out there. Sky blue, sitting on a little cloud of fluff, drifting slowly here and there. They are tiny little guys. Most of the time I see them in the fall. I remember being visited by them when I was waiting for the bus at my neighbor's house. We would get a little bit ahead of them, (they move pretty slowly) and cup our hands around their forward trajectory. Inevitably, they would fly right into our hands and happily land for a little while. They aren't picky or timid. It seems that their lives are pretty carefree.

So... what are they. Well, they go by a couple common names, some of which are "fairy flies", "angel flies", and for the less romantic, "fluff bugs." The real name for these girls is "Eriosomatinae." Broken apart and translated roughly, it means "Wool Body."  Leave it to latin for taking all of the fun out of things.  This is a Woolly Aphid. Bright blue and tiny, they are really aphids. They suck the juice out of plants and exude this syrupy liquid called "honey dew" (I wonder if "Honey Dew Donuts" realizes they are named after aphid excrement.) This liquid is like gold in the insect world. Ants guard farms of green aphids... (really, they milk them like cows) and drink the honey dew. Wasps flock to the stuff and can even become a hazard to humans because they gather in such numbers.

The Woolly Aphids are the only aphids to surreptitiously float around like in the picture. The others seem much more down to earth and serious about their eating and exuding. Woolly aphids have another gland that exudes a wax-like substance that makes up the little cloud of fluff that they wear like a skirt. It is thought that the wax might provide some sort of protection from predators (no one likes a mouthful of wax), or it might help them to float about as they do. A sub-type of the Woolly Aphid, the Apple Woolly Aphid, can present a problem to farmers as they gather in great numbers to suck the juice from apple trees. Together, their fluff looks like some sort of mold, a form of camouflage that may be another way the wax protects the aphids. Whatever the reasons, they are striking in their tiny appearance. Fragile and sweet, oddly feminine, they are a little magical and unassuming presence in the early Autumn.

fragile

Sometimes, Henry wakes up early like me. It's usually a bit after me and a bit before everyone else wakes up. He wanders... truly wanders... down stairs, pajama clad, and finds me wherever I am sitting. He pays no respect to what I am doing, whether its reading, or writing, or eating and he worms his way through whatever is in my hands and sits on my lap. He says "Good morning Dad." And I am compelled, by the severe realization that whatever I am doing is practically meaningless compared to what has just wandered in, to put whatever it is that I am doing down and to hold the silly mop-headed boy that has come looking for me.

He asks me what I like almost constantly. A comparison of two things "Dad, who's better, Iron man or Mysterio?" and I do my best to answer, and he then, if he agrees, smiles and says "Yeah I think so too." or if he disagrees "Yeah.. I think so too." Henry is at this magical age where what I do is good. My God....I can't begin to tell you what this is doing to me. I live my life wishing I were somewhere away from everyone and Henry and Nora are  taking me in as their own.

I miss my kids when they go to bed. Five minutes after they have quieted, I wish they were still up. That isn't to say that they can't get on my nerves... certainly their bickering and constant demands of equality wear on me. But it doesn't matter. I just want them near me. I want all of the chaos and craziness of their lives intermixed with mine. It's dangerous... maybe even more than that... but I want Henry's adoration. I know it is an age... a growing stage... but to be the epicenter of someone's life to that degree, to have that much gravity assigned to me, is amazing, especially in the form of this little boy with legs too long and unruly hair that looks better left alone than combed, with eyes that look directly into mine and hands that wind their way through whatever I previously thought was important and into my beard and hair. I understand solitude and crave that simplicity... but to be needed is beyond that. To be needed in this way is to find that your place in this world is not your place at all...

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color and time

I was walking with Henry last week and he said that he felt bad for Chaucer because he can only see in black and white. I shot back a quick reply that dogs rely far more on scent than on vision and that their sense of smell is far better than ours. Since then, I have been thinking about Henry's point. When I take Chaucer out in the mornings for his walk, he immediately runs around the same spots and smells them and marks them. I would dare to say... and I have paid attention... that Chaucer is 90% smell when he goes outside and explores. I don't think he pays much attention to his sense of sight at all.

What would it be like to have that sensitive a sense of smell... how would it change things for us. I thought a lot about it this morning and I think it would effect almost everything... even our sense of time. Every morning when I take Chauc out he gets all crazy in the car before we get to RSP. Whininglike crazy.  He goes out, not only to walk, but to greet a world of things that as far as I am concerned, aren't there anymore. It doesn't matter to him though. He is scenting and leaving scent in a blur of really what amounts to time travel. Think of it like this. What if, when we went outside, a remnant of everyone that was there for that past few days was still left... like a world of ghosts. Not only would that serve as a record of who has passed, but as a way of communication with what is going to come.  We live a very "in the moment" existence. Sight is a split second input, either I am there or I am not. Smell, for Chaucer is much slower. His world of reception opens up a world of communication that is all but invisible to us. I go out hoping to see a coyote, or a bear, or deer every morning. Chaucer "sees" them all every morning. Every time we walk, they are there. And they are saying things to him. The closest that I can get to relating what it must be like for him is to say that things are leaving notes for him. But this, I think, may be a far lesser comparison. If our sense of sight is sharp, Chaucer's sense of smell is vivid. He may see in black and white, but his sense of smell transcends time. He would see us as trapped in a moment whereas he can "see" for weeks.

Our eyes take in this bouncing light that travels so fast. If I turned on a very powerful flashlight (and could bend that beam of light to hug the earth) it would take that beam of light 0.1344 seconds to get back to me; much less than a blink of an eye. Powerful.. and amazing that our eyes can take in these blazing fast currents of energy. We live in the moment... the second... the nanosecond. It is no wonder we are so caught up in time's passing... it flashes and dies in the faint of a breath, constantly. Chaucer's world may not be like this at all. Not just the remnant of things remain for Chauc, but in a way, the

things themselves. If he isn't relying on this bouncing light to tell him that things are here or gone, then perhaps to his senses, they are still there. Sight must seem a fickle and impermanent thing to someone who "sees" far into the past everywhere they go. I see the bird flash yellow and its gone. Chaucer "sees" the bird, and where it came from and where it goes all in one moment... all together... the same existence. Time is blurred and the world is more full of things present.

He is sitting in our house now. His place... and he knows it is his because he is literally filling the place with himself. Territories must be so strong to him. If a bear has passed and marked an area once, his presence in that place is less... if he has done so more than once, many times maybe, he is more in the place. There is more of him there.

I think Henry, that Chaucer is not one to be felt sorry for. Maybe it is us, in our frantically changing world that is missing out on a existence filled to overflowing with life and meaning.

by threads

This morning was one of those foggy mornings... honestly, we've only had a couple of them this

spring. The park was filled with dew-laden spiderwebs. It is amazing just how many there are... in some places on the forest floor, there were two or three every square foot. I can't imagine how many flies there would be without the counter balance of all of these little predators out there eating them up.


The webs were beautiful. I took a few pictures and am just going to post them.

Blue Herons

Most of what you see outside is small. Well... those things that actively move about anyways. Birds scoot through the brush around me; rabbits occasionally bounce across the road ahead; mice... slugs... beetles... small things. There are a few things that are bigger than me out there, and I have seen them on occasion, however, of the bigger things that appear, the blue herons are by far the most common. They,

like me, are crotchety old things and don't take kindly to being interrupted. Unlike me, they are also beautiful.

I found a Blue Heron's flight feather once when I was canoeing through a marsh. It was about a foot and a half long, and steel blue-grey. Really beautiful. These are big birds. And they are killing machines. This morning, as I walked by a man fishing unsuccessfully in the park, there was a Heron, about fifty feet away having the opposite experience. It is no wonder that these Herons are so common. They stilt themselves above the water on poles and wait for whatever is unlucky enough to swim below them to come by. Then, with a swift thrust of their rapier like beak, they stab the thing

through and swallow it whole. They eat frog and fish and snakes and all of those things that are so common in wetlands. They have it down to such a science ,that it is a wonder that there aren't a bunch of overweight waterbirds lounging around our swamps.



They are graceful things in movement and appearance only. Their call is something akin to a Buick crashing into a garbage truck. It is metallic and grating. I bet the dinosaurs sounded like Blue Herons before they ate things. They don't generally stay long when I walk past them. This one stayed just long enough to catch and eat a catfish ( I wonder how they deal with their barbs?). I do love to see them, especially in their nesting places. They build massive nests in the tops of dead trees in wetlands. The overall effect is something out of

science fiction. Long spindly towers holding bulbous shaped houses at the top with stooped shouldered, thin legged beings astride them. It seems like they are even more abundant now than ever and I rarely walk without seeing them fly away from me at their first sight of my moving down the road.

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mornings

I know that I go off a lot about the morning. This blog hasn't really seen a lot of it, but in my old blog, I think I may have beaten my audience to death with it. Still... there is something magical about the mornings. It isn't only the time of day that makes it special, althoughit certainly does play a part of it. It is also that I am out there nearly completely by myself. I have rarely seen someone out in the park on a weekday morning at sunrise.

I don't have to talk to anyone. Have you ever gone a day without talking. How about this, have you ever gone a day without considering someone interacting with you? It is a beautiful thing to be in the

moment and not pulled from it by someone else's feelings. Yes, sharing experiences is nice, however, there is a world that only happens in your mind. To ignore those things is to live a more shallow existence. The mornings are space for me to just be. Sometimes, I walk with my eyes closed and let the sounds of the earth waking up around me carry me forward.

There are a couple magical times of day. I was reading an article about national geographic photographers and it stated that many of them won't even go out to take any sort of picture if it isn't morning or evening. The sun lengthens the shadows of the trees and the sunlight lights the air golden. The mornings have one thing over the evenings: They are mine. The evenings are my family's. Even now, as I am typing this, I can hear Henry and Nora practicing piano downstairs with Jenny. (and I am having subtle guilt feelings about taking this time to write) In the morning, they are completely unaware that I have even left the house. Sleeping, silently... oblivious, and the world is mine without guilt... freedom for an hour or two every morning.

Fishermen head out early in the morning to catch their basketfulls. There is a reason for this. The world

is wild in the mornings. Animals are out and what was Rutland State Park, a plot of land run by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, is now run by the coyotes and bears. The world is theirs until we wake up. Every morning I walk into their territory, and they are there... shocked at my intrusion. If I can leave our world for a little each morning and step into theirs, I am that much more fulfilled.

The air is cool and the black flies are still too cold to fly. It is nothing but peace and stillness. The river sometimes sends tendrils of fog into the air, spiraling up and out. The route I walk sometimes leads me into banks of fog that hug the curves of the Ware River. Eventually the road climbs higher and I am left walking above clouds of steam and fog so dense that it feels like I am flying above cloud level. It is a crystalline, ethereal world, filled with newness and just a tiny piece of Nature's wild... and in the morning, it is mine.
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marbles

There is something magical about marbles. It is no wonder that kids have developed games around having them. Little jewels with names like Cat's Eyes and Oxbloods. Henry is in cub scouts and they are going for their "marbles" belt loop. Jenny is the den leader, and this particular meeting no one showed. Not, like you might think, because they were working on their "marbles" belt loop, but because Baseball has started, and much of the troop is consumed. So, we reclined in the soft grass in Rutland Center and let the kids play for a while.

Boy Scouts is a good time. Sometimes, and in some circumstances, I think that it is bent toward adults being melancholy toward the "old times." For example, there is a marble belt loop... but I have not seen any video game belt loop, as sacrilegious sounding as that may be. Essentially, they are the same thing though.

I know that this entry isn't exactly about walking with Chauc... but I have decided that this "long term" blog can be about daily experience as well. I am missing writing about my family. So... marbles and cub scouts and so on.

I was a boyscout. I made to "life" and then quit... ironic I know. I honestly wish that I hadn't quit, but my life was such a ball of confusion back then, that it is a wonder that I was functioning at all. In fact, thinking back, I really was barely making through. Still, life scout... one away from Eagle. I do wish that I had toughed it out. I am thinking about becoming a Webelo leader when Henry progresses to that level. I like scouting. There is something so pleasing about making rank and getting belt loops and badges based on what you know. I think that that same appeal applies to the military as well. Work hard and make rank. It is a nice way of doing things. Plus, in scouting, you get to wear your knowledge right there on your belt. It would be very interesting if this were applied to adulthood. We could walk through life and just see those of us that had special skills, or were more skilled than others. What would your belt loops be in? It's fun to think about... maybe I will use that as a writing prompt for my students. What would mine be? Writing? Teaching? Grilling? (I grilled one heck of a leg of lamb yesterday 3 hours of indirect heat!). Could we have badges for personality traits: Patience?  It is fun to think about.
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What we cannot see

I broke from my usual ritual. When the weather warms, I head out to Rietta Ranch in the morning before church in search of books for my class. I woke up at 7:03 this morning, just in time for Rietta, and decided that that wouldn't do. I needed a little less commotion. So, much to my dog's unrestrained joy, I decided to head off to the park. Rutland State Park is kind of crappy on the weekends, in that, there are people there. Sometimes, if I am especially early, I can avoid any one... or as I like to call it... contamination. In truth, there were only two people there, and they were kind of nice. They were somewhere from a city (I can always tell) and they were smoking. I wasn't super thrilled to see them, but they wanted advice on where to fish and I am full of that kind of advice. We talked, they gave Chaucer a part of a "slim jim," praised him for being such a good dog, and we left.

The sun is rising earlier and earlier. This means several things, the fog is lifting in the park earlier, the birds are waking from their rest earlier (that early bird gets the worm thing... I think it may be a farce. There are no birds around sometimes when I get out there. They are still snuggling away in their nests. Robins maybe... that's about it. Now, the sun is taking it's full effect and the air is filled with song. I know them all, or at least enough to know when I don't know one. I closed my eyes for a good long time while I was sitting on an especially comfortable rock this morning. The songs filled the air, and the cold weather subsided around me. The red-winged blackbirds are out and their huge guffaws fill the wetlands. Often in the summer and spring, when I get out of my car to start my hike, I slam the back door shut after letting Chauc out and a wood cock starts his whumping call in return. I can only assume that he thinks that the thump of my back door is the beginning of another wood cock trying to call for him. I remember hearing their call ( they make it by flapping their wings against their chest and fluffing up their chest feathers) when I was young and thinking that someone was starting a tractor in the neighborhood. Thump thump thump.

As I was walking, I heard a new song and hunted it down. It was this little Rufus sided Towhee. He sat at the top his tree singing to the morning. I decided to walk through the fields, as they are still low enough to navigate without too much risk of ticks. My shoes got wet, but the good thing about shoes is that they dry eventually. Chaucer loves these fields. His running is normally relegated to the straight

and narrow of the roads in RSP. Once he is in an open field he takes full advantage of his freedom and flies across the grass. We walked this way for around 45 minutes and then decided to head back to be in time for worship practice at church. ( I lead worship for my church). On our way back we stopped by the two smoking fisherman that we left earlier. They smiled and told me to look in the bucket. They had three nice size brook trout swimming around in the tepid water. I may end up not walking once or twice during the week and just fishing for an hour or two before work. I have often said that trout is the only animal that I can see in its unadulterated state and immediately begin to salivate. They were beautiful. All in all a good morning, and all this before anyone in my house was awake.

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seek adventure

Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures. 

     Henry David Thoreau

I have been thinking on this. The first time I heard the quote was on an old friend's facebook page, a couple of years ago. I think that that's what inspired me to look into Thoreau's works. I won't lie and say that each page holds staggering truths for me... but some of them do, and his mentality and the attitude he has toward life click deep down with how I feel. Central Massachusetts, as I am sure it is with other places around the country, did not heed Thoreau's many warnings. We are a growing, work focused community with mini-mansions popping up ten feet from each other all around town. We base our success on what kind of car we drive... Is it a Volvo? An Escalade? Are you part of a "good" neighborhood? At times, I truly wonder how I ended up here. I have lived in places that weren't like this at all. I lived only a few miles away, in Western Mass, where a person's success was not nearly measured by their car and house. Some of the most amazing Professors tooled around in beat up mini-cars and lived in 50's style ranchs. Still, at least in Rutland, there are woods... real woods... that are deep and still. Thank God.

There are a couple of sentiments in the quote above that have almost completely lost their meaning. 

"Free from care."
 Lets all just stop and think about being "free from care." When Thoreau said it, he actually meant it. Don't hinder yourselves with houses. Don't tie yourselves down with burden. Travel where you want, when you want for the purpose you want. Keep life simple and live care free. I am so far away from living free from care. My life is a series of rebounding off of worries and struggling to remain floating in a sea of obligations. I know, because I know the difference. I have a rare and beautiful opportunity to glimpse just a small window into what Thoreau was talking about. I have summer vacation. It isn't complete... not nearly. But when school ends, so does my job. True, I am not paid during the summer. True, I still have every other obligation and financial burden to uphold. And yet, when that last class ends... there is an amazing transformation that takes place in me. It takes a couple of weeks, but I start to feel.... free. Light. Everything slows down and the days open up in front of me. It is a gift that I am not willing to let go of for social pressure. I still have obligations, but I see greater obligation to being with my kids in a real and purposeful way, and to teaching them that life, in responsibility alone, should be devoted to finance. Everything else, which is most of everything, should be devoted to their souls. And I mean no cliche' in that.

"Adventure." 
I was walking this morning and I saw what I thought was a black bear hunched over in the brush beside the road. My heart rate went up... I slowed my pace, brought up my camera, but it was only a "bear-shaped stump." Later, I did manage to sneak up on this blue heron though. It got me thinking about adventure. In our nearly completely explored world, it

has become, for most, only a quaint idea that can be relegated to a "Disney World" like experience. Everything is manicured and taken care of. Our big surprises now come in the form of scripted reality TV shows that expose for the public the drama of someone's overly archetypal lifestyle. Is that really all there is? Is there more out there for us? Do we have to do our rock climbing in Gyms that have rubberized plastic handholds and nothing at the top of the cliff? I am not speaking as one condescending from great heights here. I am speaking as one searching for that spark of reality... real life. I think it may come down to a matter of time. We don't have a lot of it, so we are hesitant to gamble it on something that may be fruitless. With our two or three weeks of precious vacation time, we find ourselves funneled into vacations that get to the main point. We go to Paris to visit the Eiffel Tower. We don't have time to wander the streets of its suburbs, because we need to get in and out in such a short time. Even on a daily basis... this rush propels us forward. right down to our relationships... who has time to go over a friend's house for no reason at all... just to be there. We are missing something in our rush. Obligation has taken hold and we are frantically throwing our lives on its altar. This, I think, is Thoreau's chiefest warning... at least in the beginning of his master work "Walden." Simplify simplify and head out "free from care before the dawn...................... and seek adventures. 

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surrounded

The porcupine was back today. It was only Chaucer and I walking, Henry decided to stay home because he woke up with a headache, so I was able to walk right up to it and snap some pictures before Chaucer drove it into the woods and up a tree. My little walk took on its usual inward tone and I was able to walk in silence (which I love). I do miss Henry's little voice and ample conversation though. I saw the first blue bird of the season. Flashes of blue in the tree branches. As I was walking I noticed that there was a stone wall, way across the river on what now is something of an island in the middle of marsh. It got me thinking about the past. I am surrounded by the past, and not just my past, but all of ours. Einstein was right to consider it into our dimensions. It is everywhere. Rutland State Park is a poignant

reminder of this. The park used to be a prison surrounded by far reaching farms and remnants of that are littered among the woods and fields of the park. Henry and I found a massive, too big to fit into a picture and not the one pictured above, stone structure yesterday. It must have been a bridge over the river, or the makings of a dam. The boulders were the size of me. The entire thing was at least three times my hieght. These boulders must have been put there by hand, or horse... horse and hand, because there was no access to the work. The trees had grown all around, and even on it. This land was manicured and worked hundreds of years ago. The fields that this porcupine combs for food are remnants of prisoners working them for vegetables and pasture.

In New England we are surrounded by the lasting tributes to the hard working people who settled the land we live on. Stone walls are everywhere. They ribbon over the land in front of and in back of my house and each of the houses on my road, each of the roads in my town, the surrounding towns and counties in our state and throughout New England. It is only in the cities that they have vanished. Made up of stones that were pulled out of the earth by hand and plow, they are as poignant a reminder as the famed Easter Island effigies. It is only because we are surrounded by them with such frequency that they are ignored as historical markers. When this land was tamed, they were made.

In some ways, I feel a sense of guilt when I look out of  my window. The difficulty they faced in farming this land must have been staggering. Some of these stone walls cut through swampland in the park and climb the steepest of the hills that I walk on. They line each road and sometimes reach

far over my head. Each rock pulled out of ground to be made usable for agriculture by someone's hand and placed on the outskirts of their effort. A lasting symbol of their frustration. I am building a firewood shed this weekend. I cleared out the ground in front of it and under the tangle of prickers were these stones. I don't think that they had "grown" there on their own. There is an enormous boulder next to where I am building, and I think they were piled next to it by someone looking to get rid of them. I decided to add some of them to the stone wall in front of my house. I pulled 10 of them out and placed them by wheelbarrow into the sparser parts of the wall in front of my house. I couldn't help but think of whoever it was that had done this before me and the steel like strength they must have had to build this stretch of wall. Miles long.

We stand on the shoulders of hard men and women. Their effort has shaped where we live and really who we are. We are taught of their determination in school and movies are continually made because of  the wonder of their strength. It is impossible to escape. We are their descendants and heirs to the results of their toil. To live on top of that without acknowledging their work would be callous. And to not allow their work ethic to at least shape our own, may be the folly of what we ourselves are building.

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little worlds

Henry and I have been walking every morning with Chaucer into Rutland State Park during this April vacation. It is very different walking with Henry. He brings with him his own presence... a light and indomitable... and chatty presence. As we were walking we found a little, hanging piece of moss. I thought to myself, this moss has it's own presence, sitting here, waiting for God knows what. We all live within our own little worlds, and as we bring each of them into intersection with each other, things get bounced around, pushed away, or sometimes they merge.
This one tiny piece of moss has a whole family of cells devoted solely to the life of the moss. Endless arrays of microorganisms might take their homes there. Insects: midges, mosquitoes, fruit flies, ants, aphids, myriad lives may take up residence here. And I calmly and callously pick it up and look into it without seeing anything at all. My life intersects with an enormous amount of other worlds as I walk through the park. Some take high offense, like the blue

herons that immediately take to the air as they see me on the road, and others seem not to mind at all. It's these intersections and the randomness of it all that packs the excitement of exploration full of meaning. This is why those early explorers pushed into the woods, and still why men encase themselves in steel and air and drop into the sightless depths of the ocean. I choose to meet these worlds in the relative wild of the park and not in the mall where these interactions take on another flavor entirely.

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