Blue sky and night rain

The night rain pattering on my window heralds, according to the weather report, some wintry weather with its attendant traffic jams, school closings, panicked grocery store crowds, etc.

I'm not thinking or worrying about any of that. I am just enjoying the soothing sound that will very shortly lull me to sleep.

The day began with clear skies; as the dogs and I walked out of the house I looked up to see dissolving pale white contrails from the day's earliest flights.

A crow flapped into my line of sight and landed in a neighbor's big honey locust, gripping a piece of food in its talons. It pecked away for a few moments before a brother crow -- showing off the species' thieving DNA -- swooped in and stole the morsel. I think it was a pizza crust. Victim crow clucked harshly and hopped to another branch and I watched their black shapes bob against that pale, but still saturated, December-blue sky.

We walked on and I noticed in a protected area by a neighbor's house, right at the entrance to the park, a forsythia bush that had been fooled by the warm fall weather into pushing out a few bright yellow flowers. They were frozen, but even in their limp shape their color stood out against the red brick wall behind them. I have seen this before. A few years ago, in the street level parking lot behind the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland, some ornamental cherry trees lining a sidewalk had decided it was time to bloom, although it was only February. I couldn't resist. I snipped a few branches on our way out and took them home to enjoy in a vase. It was such a tiny thrill to find them there, warm rose centers and pink-white petals, blooming in the February gray.

We pushed on through the park, dogs sniffing, me listening and watching. As we headed down the slope that leads over a little bridge, one of my neighbors' kids was walking up, headed to the middle school on the other side.

He is so cute, I don't know his name but he is very serious, very earnest and quite intelligent. He was wearing a jacket covered by the ubiquitous kid backpack and a cap with the earflaps pulled down and carrying a banjo in a black case.

Holli and Twist pulled toward him and he asked if we were members of the greyhound society. He has asked me this before, so to make things easy, I just said yes. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of braces and said: "Apparently they are enticed by the alluring scent of my banjo. I have to bring it today for a sound project." And, I didn't quiet get this part, but then he added, "and to prove to some doctors (?) that, yes, there are still people who play the banjo."

I wanted to tell him about Steve Martin, but figured there would be too much explanation involved, for which I did not have time. So I just smiled and then he said: "Well! Enjoy the rest of your walk!" And turned to head up to school.

I had to smile, a big smile. I wonder what it is like to be so young and so smart? So.... almost grownup. He can't be in more than fourth grade or so, but so droll and composed!

Thanks for the smile, sweetheart. You topped off a lovely morning walk that engaged nearly all of my senses. And the memory of you has me smiling again as I listen to the rain against my window.

Hawk with squirrel

I can't imagine what it was like to live without dogs and without a park just steps from my door.

If I did not live by a park, I never would have learned to recognize the beautiful shagbark hickory, or the gorgeous flowers of the tulip poplar.

In the winter, Carl and I love to sit in the living room and look out over the dense black spread of tree canopy across the street, sometimes covered with snow, sometimes so black against a deep, deep sapphire gray evening sky, sometimes lit by lightning.

I love that the dogs and I can wander in and kick dry leaves, listen to the sounds of jays, nuthatches, thrushes, owls, woodpeckers and yes, crows, because the even the raucous caws of crows tell a story.

I love that water from somewhere deep underground makes a permanent, tiny little stream at one end of the park, just a drizzle really, from the top of one treed slope down to the bottom. It's barely there, now, because it is so covered in leaves, but the flow still ripples, creating a tiny pool that the dogs like to lap from.

I love the contrast between the traffic that zips along the street, always rushing, oblivious and too fast to a destination, and the life in the park, equally oblivious but somehow more ... purposeful?

On Thursday, the dogs and I walked down into the park and immediately off to my left a motion caught my attention. I turned and into my full field of vision a hawk lifted up, a small creature in its talons. Off it flapped, but not too far and I thought if we walked quietly enough we might get close enough to see what it had caught.

Then I heard what sounded like, very far away, a baby crying. It wasn't though, of course not.

Also to my left, in a bare tree, was a squirrel, looking down at us and quietly making that chattering sound that angry squirrels make. Except it was not a rat-a-tat chatter, it was more like the single notes, repeated slowly, over and over.

The squirrel saw us, flipped head up quickly and dived into a hole in the tree. The head poked out and watched us, now silent.

I had to wonder if the small creature had seen its companion taken by the hawk, which we saw, again, lift up from the leaf litter with a lifeless shape in its grip, and flap away to another end of the park.

Another hawk glided behind it.

I though about how days start and end, with the expectation that life will continue on as normal, uneventful. Thankfully, most days, it does.

We continued on our way, kicking the dry leaves and smelling the cinnamon scent of fall.

Looking forward to snow

Yes, it's true. I want snow.

I have been coming around to fall as my life heads in that direction itself. There is nothing more deeply, brilliantly azure than the afternoon sky of a fall day in Western Pennsylvania.

The reds and golds of dying leaves are even more vivid for having, as they assemble in a flyaway carpet on the ground, the rich smell of cinnamon and nutmeg.

The slanting light of a low sun warms less powerfully than the rays of mid July, yet the light feels just as good on your skin.

All that said, I am lookig forward to the quiet of snow. I want how it muffles sound and sparkles in the sunlight. I want it because the noise of the snowplows is a background hum, like the buzz of a lawnmower on a summer afternoon.

Right now, now, my back yard is decorated with leaves. The pin oak on the slope likes to hold to a few, even, through the winter, and sprinkle them down in the spring. They get raked up a few times in the fall and dumped under the rhododendrons. In the spring, they get raked into the garden beds and blanketed with mulch.

I like the contrast of the gold and brown leaves against the grass, still green. And I enjoy kicking my feet through piles of leaves, listening to them rustle. Twist has been known to fearlessly wade into a pile of leaves and jump five feet in the air because something in said pile startled her greyhound brain. Snow never startles her though. She loves it an dives right in.

The leaf-filled picture is from the park by my house.

And yes, shortly after first snow, I will be looking forward to spring.

Humble Pie

OK, before we get to tonight's subject matter, can I (and I am sure I write for so many!) just say how utterly exhausted I am by having to join a site seemingly every time I want information on the Web? This is where the Internet will fail. I have index cards, thickly covered with scribbled user names and passwords, that are my online life. What if I ever lose them? (Reason for rant: Found an old friend on Spoke. Can I just email her from there? No, have to join, download Outlook, blah blah. Joined, then remembered. I have Heidi's phone number. Easy. Pick up phone. Dial. Talk. Or leave message.)

Screw you, Spoke and all your ilk!

Oh, and my password?

Its: p29rsdfanr9q9qq8ds87t233s;vjss/fldgnqhzh;a/rmtrgaroty.

In case anyone asks.

Deep breaths.

What was driven home to me in India, and which I did not address nearly enough, was, and is, an awareness of the poverty of my knowledge about the history of the rest of the world. I did mention it briefly in an earlier post, and have found, now that I am back, I have a real interest and desire to learn India's history.

But it isn't just travel that opens your eyes to your own ignorance. It takes only a bit of observation of the world around you.

One example. Dogs and I are walking this evening, and, now that the days are longer, we dally, to make up for all those short strolls in the dead of winter. A miniscule glint of spring-leaf green, swaying, catches my eyes as we enter the park. Hanging by an invisible thread is an iridescent, tiny caterpillar, trying, I think, to pull itself up along this invisible thread, swaying all the while in the most delicate breath of a breeze. 

This creature curls and pulls itself up, again and again, then stops, seemingly exhausted. Being human, I stop to watch (eyeglasses resting down at the bottom of my nose). Then, again being human, I interfere. I pick up a small twig and touch it to the green swayer.

No. Get away, its body language says. I drop the twig, watch for a few more moments and the girls (most patient beasts!) and I walk away, leaving this beautiful small creation to its task.

What was this little creature and what was it doing? I have no idea, and multiply that by so much and the sum is both awe-inspiring and embarrassing. More math: Multiply me by billions and you have a sum that must be quite a negative number for our planet. The beasts and the bugs live only as nature programs them. They have no greed, lust or passion. Only an imperative to continue on. Blessedly, they have no capacity for questioning it.

And here we are, living among these survivors, not questioning, but demanding accommodation. With our wonderful brains, I would think that we would be the ones who could accommodate our habits to our planet-mates.

If you've read along this far, you might appreciate this article by Leon Kreitzman that appeared recently in The New York Times. He (much as I dislike the word) deconstructs how warming changes the food chain from bottom to top, in a very small section of it.

Observe and report. If we all pay more attention, perhaps we all will take more care.