Ruby of the pines

I think it always bears repeating that there's more to NJ than chemical plants and turnpikes; lots of people couldn't imagine the 1.1 million acre federally protected, mostly undeveloped preserve that lies between Philly and Atlantic City. If you can't believe that there's such a place in NJ, a place filled mostly with pitch pines and oaks, with only a few paved roads, then maybe a trip to the Pine Barrens is worth considering. Prepare to be amazed.

What an extraordinary sight: pinkish cranberries floating mid-harvest atop small lakes of blue water, surrounded by nothing but evergreens and oaks, under the bluest of blue autumn skies. Picture perfect, I think.

The cranberry has become one of NJ's most important crops and the Pine Barrens are the perfect place for them to be grown commercially; the area has all the essentials for cranberries to flourish: acidic soil, sand, and plentiful unpolluted water.

I'll ramble on some another day about how those rubies are harvested, but for now I'm just moved by how pretty some parts of NJ can be.

;-)

(There's no turnpike here.)

Let your hair down

I'm hearing this song even in my sleep lately.

;-)

That magical muck

The mudflats of the tidal marshes of Sandy Hook Bay or any of the brackish creeks closer to home exhale a sharp, salty smell at low tide. Some might call it rank or putrid, but to me it smells like home. I know very well the wealth of fidgety creatures that lay exposed at low tide in that slick, smelly mud.

Very few of us have the good fortune to live as adults in the same places we knew so intimately as children. Set me in some other landscape, one of rolling hills or towering evergreen woodlands, and I can imagine myself reeling and disoriented, wondering from which direction the scent of salt water will come.

The landscape of one's childhood is all magic and heart. For me, that magic is more about the smell of seaweed than of hay. It comes from knowing where the masses of swallows will gather in late summer or when to find scoters and scaup playing at the edge of the sea or which stand of beach plum produces every year regardless of the vagaries of weather.

This deep intimacy with a place is learned slowly; little bits of wisdom accumulated by observing the rhythms of days and years until one's fluent with the language of a place. Anywhere else I'd miss the clamor of laughing gulls and the fall bloom of the groundsel tree, the hiss of wind across the dunes and the greening of the cordgrass in late spring. I'd miss the presence of the sea and the smell of that magical muck as the tide shrinks.

What intimate details do you recall from the landscape you grew up in? Things that only a child could know... maybe it's the sweet scent of honeysuckle, the glow of tamaracks in fall, a pale moon in the desert, or the taste of windfall apples... tell me what you remember and long for.

;-)

Where have I seen this?

I'm still a little traumatized by the whole experience...

Time for a tease

Susan's counter thingy says that the Cape May Weekend is just 15 days away and I hear that Lynne has already started packing and KatDoc is saving quarters for all the tolls on the Parkway... and I'm resisting the urge to visit ahead of the rest of the flock.

I'd really like to go now while it's still warmish and the Monarchs and Buckeyes are moving through. I'm sure Bunker Pond is still full of egrets and that there's plenty of Peregrines soaring past the lucky people crowded in the shadow of the lighthouse and Merlins cruising low over the dunes in the late afternoon. Have a peak at some of the most recent numbers here.

Rather than that, I'll think I'll probably spend the next couple weekends wandering around the Pine Barrens. October is a great month to visit and there's lots to see and do with the beginning of the cranberry harvest there.

I just got distracted with the duck numbers in that Cape May link, sorry.

Girls... you've got to find time to visit the Seawatch at Avalon while you're here... it's such a spectacle! I remember standing out in the pouring rain on Friday of last year's weekend, wondering why you all weren't there with me to witness the tens of thousands of scoters flying past in the fog and rain. It was just unbelievable and very wet.

;-)

Something else we should all look forward to is more goofy pics of Susan playing in the surf. Though I suspect I may instead have my camera trained on Lynne as she dips her toes in the Atlantic for the first time.

So girls... what's on your to-do-in-Cape May-lists?

Heather, you still in? John? Patrick? Patrick's away on his honeymoon... what am I thinking?

;-)

Monday Bunny

Forget this... where's the pie?

Thank God we don't have to do that

"It's anticipation. Hope, you know. You're always hoping to catch more fish, hoping to make a living, you know. And that's what keeps people going. That, and not having to go up the road... I watch all the commuters, computerized people. They have their coffee and their briefcase or their computer, they stand in line waiting for the ferry or the bus. And some guy's fallen sick, there's a space, you know, like birds on a wire. I said, "My God, no matter how bad it gets, thank God we don't have to do that, you know."

--Richard Nelson, a fisherman with the Belford Seafood Cooperative

I found this quote from a local fisherman reprinted last weekend at the seaport museum and thought it worth sharing. Most people in this area that make any kind of money have to go to NYC to do it; they have the big houses, fancy cars and all the problems that come along with that lifestyle. I wonder how they'd feel knowing the clammers feel sorry for them.

;-)

Skywatch Friday

As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sailboats and cormorants in the harbor at Keyport NJ

Autumn comes to the shore with an apologetic smile. Neither the sky nor the sea has even been as blue as on an October day. Before the winds tatter and strip the trees they first tidy up the sky, pushing the dust and pollen of summer somewhere off to the edge of the world. The sun no longer warms as much, the days are shrinking, another summer is slipping away.

Have a great weekend and visit here for more Skywatch posts.

Tickling the ivories

So far as I know, my mom's piano - my piano, still sits in the garage of the house I grew up in. Something else we didn't have the heart to throw away after my dad died and we sold the place.

It was a battered old upright even when I first began tinkering at it. The paint was chipped and fading, keys stuck and it was perpetually out of tune, most probably because it sat in the damp basement.

The basement was a good place for a piano student though, as it had a door that kept anyone unstairs from hearing me practice. My brother's drum set was down there too, but the door did nothing to muffle the sound of his banging. I don't guess piano practice is painful to listen to, except for the constant repetition, compared with say, the clarinet, which I gave up in favor of the piano. I was pretty bad on the clarinet; good at making those awful squeaky sounds, but not much else.

I took lessons for a number of years; I already knew how to read music fairly well, but then had to learn to read two clefs at once and cooordinate my eyes and hands to play both parts at the same time. It amazes me that anyone ever learns to do it; it's that hard. I never could seem to practice enough to satisfy my very strict teacher and never did learn to play much beyond a simple version of Beethoven's Moonlight Serenade. Eventually I stopped going to lessons, probably because of some boy...

My brother Brian seems to have the most musical talent of the bunch of us; if you think of drumming as requiring musical talent, that is. He plays the trumpet like my dad did, and the guitar some and thinks he can sing, too. What always got me though, was the way he could sit down in front of that piano and play songs just by ear. His fingers were in all the wrong places and he mostly jabbed at the keys, but he could play real music as opposed to those silly songs I had to practice or those awful scale exercises meant to improve my technique.

What about you - did your parents send you for instrument lessons? Do you still play? Like me, maybe you wish you'd stuck with it?

I'm still determined to teach myself the tinwhistle. Though it does sort of remind me of the squeakiness of a clarinet. Worse, so far.

;-)

Something else you'll never see...

Now... I'm thinking those 3 on the right are Yellowlegs, but I'm pretty bad with shorebirds otherwise...

;-)

Duck on a stick

Can you name it?

(Not that you're likely to ever see anything like this in real life, but...)

Just ducky

I'll let you all in on a little secret, so long as you promise not to take too great an advantage from it:

Ducks are the way to my heart.

Stand with me beside the bay on a freezing winter day, face streaked with tears from the biting wind, ducks bobbing in the distance and you'll have found a friend for life.

If it's June and there are no ducks to be had in NJ, find an excuse to be in ND and coast with me along deserted roads, bordered by great puddles filled with all manner of breeding ducks and I'll think you the best birding-buddy a person could find.

And if it's late September, when only the earliest of Northern Pintails can be found on some secret shallow marsh, go with me to the decoy show and let me anticipate the arrival of my most favorite class of birds.

Humor me as I agonize over which decoy I'll bring home.

Try not to be too impatient with me as my questions elicit yet another story about how an ex-insurance broker came to carve shorebirds and paint lighthouses in his retirement. Or how another came to copy the great carvers who made their living from decoys in the days of market-gunning.

Don't be embarrassed when I (too loudly) compare the antique animal traps at the taxidermist's "display" to barbarian torture devices. Be proud, in fact, that I don't back down from his smart-ass response to overhearing my comment.

This is a decoy and gunning show, remember.

And I'm a duck-watching, tree-hugging, dirt-loving fool.

For all that pains me about it, there is almost nothing that I don't love about the heritage this show represents. Historically an impoverished area of the state, the baymen who made their living there did so in cycles, commercial fishermen in season and boat builders or electricians or decoy carvers in winter. Cranberry and blueberry harvesters or chicken farmers on the side.

Collectible decoys are an artifact of tools that have outlived their usefulness. The draw for me is the workmanship; the finest of floating sculpture that was designed to be tossed in salt water and into the line of fire. Gone, mostly, are the days when decoys were used to lure ducks and shorebirds to the hunter's gun and then on to restaurants or the millinery trade.

The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act put an end to the commercial hunting of wild birds and so we're left with a piece of history. A piece of that heritage remains in the decoy, more sophisticated now than the early carvings meant just to evoke the likeness of a bird and thereby bring the real thing into the sights of a hunter's gun.

Of course it's those primitive-style decoys that I prefer. I think it must be partly because they remind me of the way I experience ducks as a birder; old style decoys are all about field marks: cheek patches and tail shape and bill color. There's no time to see the fine-feather detail on the flanks of a Bufflehead as they bob like little rubber ducks in the frozen bay, anyway. Too much detail distracts my eye, makes me keenly aware that what I'm seeing is, after all, a decoy.

The Ocean County Decoy and Gunning Show continues tomorrow in Tuckerton.

Legacies

I can not:
sew
cook
decorate
match shoes to bag
make small talk
say goodbye
show interest
at baby showers

I can not stop:
looking back
pushing away
keeping secrets
being late
trying too hard
pretending
it doesn't matter

I can:
laugh in spite of myself
(most often at myself)
wonder
be honest
be happy
be vulnerable
see love and loss
without fear

- - - - - - - - - - -

There are days when I feel like I'm writing the same blog post, over and over, but with different words. And I wonder if you all notice?

;-)

(Blogging as free therapy)

There's some tangential relationship here to this post, I think.

What has me thinking about my mom tonight, some thirty years later, I'm not sure. Probably it has to do with this lady I work with; there's something about her and the way she carries herself in the hallway at the office. There's times when I catch sight of her; really, it's the sound of her shoes that reminds me of my mother - something inexplicable and familiar.

Weird.

A tree of your own

A favorite to share from Hal Borland:

Everybody should own a tree at this time of year. Or a valley full of trees, or a whole hillside. Not legally, in the formal way of "Know all men..." and "heirs and assigns" written on a paper, but in the way that one comes to own a tree by seeing it at the turn of the road, or down the street, or in a park, and watching it day after day, and seeing color come to its leaves. That way it is your tree whenever you choose to pass that way, and neither fence nor title can take it away from you. And it will be yours as long as you remember.

Red maples are beautiful trees to own that way. They color early and the color steadily deepens. Find one that turns mingled gold and crimson and you have a tree of wonders, for you never know whether another day will bring more gold or more rubies. It will be a great treasure in any case. And a sour gum is a thrilling tree to own, for its reds and oranges are like those of no other tree that grows. A dogwood, too, is one to consider, for it not only rouges itself with some of the warmest reds in the woodland; it decks itself with berry clusters that outstay the leaves, if the squirrels are not too industrious. Or you may choose the sassafras, and cherish the choice until all the leaves are fallen. For the sassafras is like a golden flame with all the warmth of orange and red and even purple mingled in. No fire that ever leaped on a hearth had the warmth of color that glows in a sassafras on an October hilltop.

Take your choice among these and many others. Make one your own, and know Autumn in a tree that not even the birds can possess more fully. It's yours for the finding, and the keeping in your memory.

The pic is of a tree that I like to think of as my own, one I keep track of. I'm not sure what kind it is, as I don't think I've ever seen it with leaves; I'll have to pay a visit this weekend before it disrobes itself again for the winter.

Jayne's meme

1. How many songs are on your iPod?
1348 and lots of those are bird songs (frog calls will be added soon!)

2. What music would you want played at your funeral?
I don't think I want a funeral.

3. What magazines do you have subscriptions to?
Vanity Fair and that's just piling up lately.

4. What is your favorite scent?
Fracas by Piguet

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it?
It would take me a long time to spend that much money on myself; it would be wasted on me and just sit in the bank.

6. What is your theme song?
Lately it feels like Alanis Morissette's "Ironic"

7. Do you trust easily?
Probably not, but I'm one of those people who likes just about everyone.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think?
Definitely a thinker, but I'm trying to get out of the habit of that so much.

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?
Hmm...

10. Do you have a good body-image?
(Laugh) Yeah, it's great.

;-)

11. Is being tagged fun?
It is usually, yeah.

12. If you had more hours in the day, how would you spend that time?
I'm up half the night as is, I really couldn't handle any more hours in the day!

13. What have you been seriously addicted to lately?
Mindlessly staring at the ocean.

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
No one tagged me, but I stole this from Jayne and she's really sweet and kind.

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?
Ray LaMontagne's "Hannah"; that fiddle just grabs my ear and sticks.

16. What’s your favorite item of clothing?
Jeans, jeans, jeans.

17. Do you think Rice Crispies are yummy?
Ick, no.

18. If you had $100 to give away, who would you give it to?
I know lots of people who need way more than $100. Off the top of my head, there's a disabled vet who needs money for a security deposit on a new place. I'd really like to find that money for him.

19. What items could you not go without during the day?
Coffee. Music. Carmex. A window to look out.

20. What should you be doing right now?
I should be at the Y or at least thinking about going...

And yes, you're tagged!

;-)

One more look

I don't have a name yet and I'm not saying where I came from.

If only they could talk, right?

The DH covers for animal control nights and weekends and generally is smart enough to not ever mention anything about stray bunnies to me. Someone had called about this white bunny that was in their yard for a couple days...

You know how the rest went, but at least try to picture me resisting those blue eyes.

I'm guessing someone dumped her outside because that's what mean people do.

Isn't she pretty?

And a plain white bunny...

... makes five. Again. Five is my limit. Somehow I can't ever seem to be without five bunnies for very long.

Anyway so, she's pretty dirty as she's been roaming the neighborhood for a while, but she's eating and thumping up a storm.

I've always wanted a red-eyed white bunny, but I had visions of a big 'ole Harvey-type bunny. Her eyes are the palest of blue and her ears remind me of the inside of a seashell...

:-)

More pics on a day I won't need to use a flash on those sensitive eyes.

The blink of an eye

While I was up in North Jersey on Friday to visit the hawkwatch site, I took a stroll around the campus of the college where I did my undergraduate degree.

When I was a student there it was still just a college and not a university like it is today. That change is mostly superficial, I guess, yet I went there fully expecting that I wouldn't recognize the place for all the new buildings that have been constructed since I graduated. I was happy to find that the core of the campus was unchanged and that the feel of the place was the same to me. It does feel much more grown-up somehow, though, with a cafe attached to the library, a diner right on campus and its very own train station.

I spent an hour or so sitting on the familiar benches outside Partridge Hall, which used to house the Department of Spanish and Italian, where I spent the majority of my days for those four years. It was only twenty years ago this month that I started there as a freshman, after all.

Cripes! Where did twenty years go?

In the blink of an eye...

I'd started college as a Political Science major, of all things, but mostly C's and a D or two (plus the riot act from my dad) convinced me that Poly Sci most probably wasn't where my talents were.

How exactly I ended up as a Spanish Translation major is less clear in my memory, but I suppose I might have been influenced by the mission-style architecture of the campus, or my Spanish-born uncle, or more probably that I mostly always got A's in Spanish without very much difficulty.

;-)

Anyway... Spanish was a good fit for me. Not as easy one, as Montclair State is blessed with a diverse population and an excellent faculty that hardly ever cut me any slack as the only non-native speaker in most of my classes. One of my professors often 'complimented' me on my 'creative' use of the language, in fact.

;-)

I never was able to make a living doing the type of translation work I love - literary translation - nor was the year spent doing legal and medical translations very lucrative, but I think I've been lucky since then to be able to make use of my undergraduate degree in most all of the jobs I've held over the years. That's probably more than can be said for my friends who stuck with Political Science.

Of course I'm denying the fact that I had to get a graduate degree to be able to make any real money (as if!) but that's another story, anyway.

It was nice to spend a couple hours there and see myself 18 again with the whole world for my imagining.

Fields of gold

The open fields glowing with goldenrod and the wooded trails of Tatum Park were the backdrop to Monmouth County Audubon's first field trip of the season this morning. This late summer flower, together with the asters, keeps the honeybees in business now and the sight of it will be a welcome memory to anyone walking these same fields come the dark days of December.

Our group of twelve enjoyed the restless voices of Robins and Catbirds in the woods, had a nice look at a Cooper's Hawk gliding through a swarm of Tree Swallows high overhead and had a demonstration from our field trip leader of the explosive seed dispersal technique of jewelweed after a brief glimpse at a hummingbird feeding among its flowers.

We ended our walk puzzling over the identity of a quickly departing flycatcher while a fawn of the year emerged from the jewelweed and goldenrod at our feet. Two Common Yellowthroats and a Downy Woodpecker were found feeding in the same area. While there didn't seem to be many birds present today, the warm sun and all that goldenrod made up for the lack of migrants.

Skywatching for hawks

I know it's a Raven, but it's the best bird pic I got today during a couple hours spent at the Montclair Hawkwatch. The hawkwatch site is NJ Audubon's smallest sanctuary and the second oldest continuous- running hawkwatch in the country, second only to Hawk Mountain in Pa.

Finding hawks at a ridge site, as opposed to a coastal watch like Sandy Hook or Cape May, is really difficult and requires a lot of patience and much better eyesight than I have. We were looking at speck birds for most of the day! I did get to see a few kettles of Broadwings way up in the clouds (yesterday they counted 4437 Broadwings), some Osprey and Sharpies, a couple Kestrals and had a nice look at a Peregrine.

We had to be glad for all those clouds in the sky cause they gave us landmarks to help locate the birds soaring high above. A fun day, but I prefer coastal hawkwatching that doesn't require quite as much imagination!

I met this guy there who has some fantastic hawk pics on his Flickr site.

Visit here for more Friday Skywatch posts.