Category Archives: Wanderings

Travels with the flock, Wanderings, Whatever

Making room

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This whole packing thing just defeats me. I start out well, but end up tossing things in the bag with little rhyme or reason. An added challenge is that I’m taking only a carry-on bag in an effort to avoid any more airport hell than is absolutely necessary. Then consider that I have no real idea what the weather will be like and that I can’t decide which camera stuff I want with me most.

Anyway, I’d mostly given up and decided that I’d live without whatever it is that won’t fit in that silly little bag. Except I remembered that I’d forgotten the raincoat. And the couple gifts I want to bring along for The Flock. And the DVD that Heather sent ages ago for me to share with them. And…

You get the idea!

There’s no way the laptop will fit, so I’ve written a couple blog posts ahead so there’ll be something here to entertain you until I can convince someone to let me use their laptop to post. If you don’t see anything new for a while, it probably means that everyone left their laptops at home thinking they’d borrow someone else’s. Or that we’re so far in the mountains that there’s no internet service.

😉

It promises to be a great time. There’ll be stories and photos, eventually. Enjoy the waiting along with me.

Now back to that darn suitcase…

Birds, Travels with the flock, Wanderings

Are we there yet?

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*gasp*

*checks calendar*

The New River Birding and Nature Festival is just around the corner!

*rummages through pile of papers to find plane tickets*

*looks askance at very small suitcase*

*mentally juggles space requirements of clean clothes versus camera gear*

*wonders if farmhouse has a washing machine and linens and wireless*

*maid service, maybe?*

*briefly considers pre-writing blog posts but decides most everyone who reads this blog will be in W. Va. too*

*panics*

Please tell me someone of us, someone responsible, HAS IT ALL UNDER CONTROL AND TAKEN CARE OF.

😉

Cause me… my plans extend only about as far as getting myself there. I’m thinking of it as something like the first day of summer vacation. Remember how that felt? You’re ten or twelve maybe, and school’s out and the world is stretching itself out into one long basking day after another. Maybe your dad’s driving the family station wagon to the beach house with his one arm hanging out the window, drumming his fingers on the car door.

I see myself sitting in the backseat (as the youngest, I always got stuck in the back), sitting on one folded leg to get a little height so I can be the first one to see the ocean as we go over the bridge. We’re getting there, but I’m trying not to throw up from too much excitement and too much time in the backseat.

Only this time, the air won’t suddenly begin to smell like salt and it won’t be the ocean I’m aching to catch a glimpse of. Instead there’ll be mountains and it’ll be Mary or Susan or Lynne (or one of the dozen-or-so others) that I’ll be trying to spot first.

It’ll be the heart of the day and the sky will be huge and blue. There’ll be laughter. And birds singing, beckoning us into the woods. There’ll be plenty of time, time enough to squander on pure silliness and the joys of friendship.

That last part may be a mixture of fiction and dream and desire, but I’m anchoring myself there. It’s an idea I have inside me. The beach from my childhood that I keep walking on; the summer I keep longing for. That group of friends that belong only to summers past; the ones we built sandcastles and dreams and forts at the pool club with, the ones we watched pack up the family car and go back to real life until next summer.

Pastimes, Seasons, Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

Bloodroot

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Books say improbable things about Bloodroot like that it blooms in colonies and that its seeds are spread around the forest by ants.

If the ants were doing their job, Bloodroot would be easier to find. The woods would be carpeted with it, like they are with Spring Beauties and Squill, now.

As it is, I have to get my knees muddy searching for it. If the forest faeries are feeling a need for amusement, they’ll send a couple teenagers along the path to find me butt-up and nose-down in the shady leaf mold.

Pride and decorum be damned, there’s only so many spring days to find Bloodroot. I’m glad to have enjoyed it for another year.

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Jetty treats

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I met MevetS (fellow NJ Audubon volunteer) and his photography group this morning at Barnegat Light. Aside from some equipment envy on my part, it didn’t feel much different than any other bird walk.

Bird geeks.

Camera geek

😉

Not much difference, huh?

Other than the lighthouse, the main draw at Barnegat Light is the sea ducks. The problem is the birds like to hang out way at the end of this jetty along the inlet. Scary stuff! If you haven’t already seen the link at Patrick’s blog, have a look at this story of a local birder who recently fell and was trapped out there in his quest for pics of the eiders that frequent the inlet.

Most people walk the jetty like it’s nothing, but I’m normally a trembling mess. I was ready to refuse outright today and walk along the sand, but went ahead anyway and found it okay. Maybe cause the rocks were dry and it wasn’t freezing cold. The birds make the walk worth it… nestled among the rocks are pretty harlequins and the inlet offered close looks at common loons in breeding plumage and courting oldsquaw.

Way out at the very tip, the jetty boulders were squirming with purple sandpipers… little dark birds that I like nearly as much as sanderlings.

Have a look at Steve’s pics from today… wow. (Camera envy.)

Seasons, Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

Beyond to spring

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I met the moveable feast of Spring a bit ahead of schedule; found it spread with sun among the mountains and laughed at my urge to escape the last bitter days of a too long winter.

Where shade lies deep in hilly woodlands, trilliums were hurried to bloom in the unseasonable heat of an early March day.

Patches of bluets frosted the early green of grass at our feet and tempted the eye of passing butterflies.

Among the leaf mold on rocky hillsides we found hepatica blooming and the promise of dogtooth violets in the dampness alongside the river.

Lush ferns and mosses trailside hinted at the beauty that’ll come later when the mountain laurel and rhododendron bloom above them.

With any luck, I’ll find these same beauties closer to home in a couple weeks, with the same wonder and hope in my heart, reaching still for something beyond.

Spring… have you wandered to find it yet?

😉

Snapshots, Wanderings

An old wolf

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With silver-frosted muzzle and eyes hazy with age, an old wolf lives out his days captive to the benevolence of his more robust packmates.

At sixteen or so, this one was among the oldest of the wolves at the Lakota Preserve and had been ousted from his position as Alpha in another pack. The fight very nearly killed him, or would have, had it not been for his caretakers who’d had his throat sewn back together and his blinded eye tended to. He was relocated to a different pen with another, gentler, pack where he’s been accepted in his new submissive role.

Despite his submissiveness with the other members of the pack, he was quite confident and unaffraid with people, yet tame enough to be hand fed biscuits through the fence.

Diminished though they may be by captivity and I believe they must be, this is the wolf – the symbol of wildness for many. In them we see something unrestrained and noble, something ancient and fear-inducing. Much of that mystery is reduced, I think, by the high chain link separating us, but some is still there in the aloofness they carry with them, even as they submit themselves to our wide eyes.

Snapshots, Wanderings

The kissing wolves

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How quickly a kiss can turn…

into something not so sweet.

😉

There was surprisingly little outward agression within the packs, but like any happy family, each member knows their place. Mostly they seemed to communicate with their bodies; their posture, their eyes, the subtle showing of teeth.

Sort of like any of us before coffee in the morning.

I’ve read that this *kissing* among wolves is a left-over submissive behavior, a relic of their puppy days begging to be fed. A behavior that we witness in our couch-potato dogs, still. These two were siblings, if I remember correctly, and both seemed to relish the mouth to mouth contact.

Snapshots, Wanderings

A chorus

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It began low and melodious, a sorrowful song carried on the wind from somewhere out of sight. Whatever signal started it was lost to me, though I’d been hoping I’d be lucky enough to hear a sing-along among the wolves while I was there visiting.

I first remember hearing a raven cronking overhead and laughing in delight at the novelty of that sound as I stood among a group of wolves. There are places where that occurs naturally, but NJ isn’t one of those places. Quickly the sorrowful sound of one wolf became a haunting and surreal song, something like being inside a fire horn or a train whistle, as the urge to join the chorus traveled from one wolf to the next. The sound surrounded me and gave me goosebumps!

This particular wolf, Black Star was his name, I think, was the most wolfish-looking of them all – always very wild and fierce – except when he began to howl, then he looked comical as he contorted his mouth to suit his trademark song. His voice was the loudest and most dissonant… his song rising and falling as part of the symphony.