April 20, 2010

Leaving the forest today the sky was filled with Vaux Swifts. Their voices sound like their wingbeats look - a chittering across the sky.

April 12, 2010

A fragment of robin's egg, the interior marked with the erstwhile inhabitant's effort at escape.

Egg tooth: tooth or toothlike structure used by the young of many egg-laying species to break the shell of the egg and so escape from it at hatching. - Encyclopedia Britannica

Photo copyright 2010, C. M. Alexander

April 9, 2010

We were late to the forest today, arriving at the place where afternoon and evening meld in slanting light. We followed the crowtalk, up past the windfalls and north, back down the spine trail. Past the hemlock snags and the Barred Owl nest tree. Crow voices nattering back and forth on each side of us, then coalescing just out of sight amongst the trees. We cut back into the forest on a side path, one of the unofficial trails. Walked quickly, wanting to see what the crows had found.

This path bends through a bower of osoberry and masses of evergreen huckleberry. Bill can trot through unencumbered, but I instinctively protect my face as I push away the branches, turn my head to look down and to the side. And see this year's Trillium blossoms at my feet, just past ripe, glowing pink in slanted light.

Now. Nothing matters but this light- not politics, not the silly misunderstandings left at work, not the unanswered emails and the uneasy family relationships. Not the unchanged oil in the car, the laundry waiting to be brought in, the odd smell in the refrigerator, the incipient threat of bindweed pushing up to strangle the garden.

There is enough time for one picture and the light is gone. Bill whines. I hear the crows again. An owl retreats overhead.

Photo copyright 2010, C. M. Alexander

April 7, 2010

Windy. Three big trees down in the forest. We bushwacked through the detritus, the air around us redolent with rising sap.

April 6, 2010

I mark the year by the bits I find strewn along the footpaths. The pattern changes week to week. This week is marked by the acid green of wind blown Big-leaf Maple blossoms.

Light rising from the forest floor.

Photo copyright 2010, C. M. Alexander

April 2, 2010

Late Spring of 2009 brought drought, its effects further multiplied by a July of unknown heat. 104 on the hottest day, 95 in the house at 9pm. There is no air conditioning in this world of year-round woolen stockings. We retired to camp beds under the moon on the back porch, a fan blowing the mosquitoes away from our skin as we tried to sleep, woke sticky and annoyed and unrefreshed.

The forest wilted. Moss clung in brown clots on dehydrated branches. Lady Fern fainted, shriveled fronds melting into the forest duff, too dessicated to recover even when the rain came again. Too early to die. Not enough time to gather a year's nutrients from the summer light.

And yet. Nine months have passed. By both sides of the trail where you can look up to spy on the Bald Eagles' nest there are the first unmistakable green curls of Lady Fern fronds. Rising. Again.

Photo copyright 2010, C. M. Alexander