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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