Tag Archives: nature

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Opening Day

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May Day!  The first day of the season for Old World Wisconsin.  We were open to the public as well as conducting school tours.  In the German area, there was only one school of 68 students that came through.  In the Crossroads Village, they had 3 tours with students from 4 schools, one of which was a group of 8th graders from France.  I also had a single adult visitor, an adult couple, and a family with 3 children from Arizona come by.   In other words….PEOPLE.   Real, live people with stories and questions and backgrounds making connections.  This is living history, after all.  And I love it!  I had so much fun with the 3 kids from Arizona who shaped dough and pounded the froe to chop kindling, and smiled and talked the whole time.  They were enjoying themselves, and their parents were snapping pictures and asking questions.  They were learning and engaging in a very comfortable way…they were homeschooling.  I really like the small group interaction involved:  3 adults, 3 kids.  Very nice.  Somehow, when it’s a group of 21 kids and 3 chaperones, there’s almost more crowd control going on than learning.   Or so it appears.  I hope they learned something; I hope they were listening and paying attention to more than just their classmates and the instructions the chaperones were giving. 

So all of that went on in about an hour…and I had several more to kill.  The great thing is that I don’t feel any pressure to be super productive the whole time.  I chopped wood and carried water and washed dishes and tended the fire and sewed on my pin cushion and all of that good stuff, but then I sat down on the porch and watched a thirteen-striped ground squirrel scurry around the yard near the woodpile snarfing up dandelion seeds.  Just quietly, listening to the birds.  Minutes went by.  I felt the land around me and thought about the sense of time and energy that a tree feels when it’s “busy” growing.  The woods, the fields, the garden…they are living under the sky at a pace that is so different from us movers and shakers.  They feel the air, the light changes, rain falls, things happen and they respond, but they don’t “react”.  I want to learn more about that way of life.  How long can you “not react”?  It’s like practicing meditation.  Breathe and be.  Light changes, form changes.  Breathe and be.  Everything changes.  Breathe and be.  I think that’s what I’m learning from nature.  I am very happy to be spending more time outdoors.   

 

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Traveling Mercies

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Today’s poetry writing prompt is to write a travel poem about getting from Point A to Point B.  I took this with me as I walked with Steve to meet his mom for breakfast at a cafe on North Avenue.  Here’s what I came up with:

Suburban sidewalk, cement sanitation

Fighting blight from untidy dandelions

Writhing, withered stems polluted, poisoned

Preventing spreading superfluous seeds

 

Muddy raindrop crater-pocked parkway

Mini helicopter maples, twin neon confetti

Mossy black trunks, petal-splashed branches

Tinny worm smell, saturated iris-limp toilet paper

 

Hiking boots treading asphalt pathways

Longing for the purity beneath.

 

Yesterday’s rain has left a distinct damp chill over everything.  I miss the golden sun.  My mood is slow and overcast as well, but I think I’ve had an epiphany in the recent “relationship talks” we’ve been having.  A serious and positive epiphany, too complicated to explain.  I never knew that shock and denial could last four years and then drop in an instant.  I feel like a snail without her shell.  Perfect for crawling about a rain-soaked environment. 

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Close Up

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There are a million wonders along the path, many of them missed if you’re traveling too fast.  You have to slow down to catch life in close up.  Our culture resists this vigorously, of course.  So I choose to live differently than most.  I suppose this difference has been highlighted this week while I’ve been filling out government tax forms, listening to party politics and preparing to step back into the 19th century for my new job at Old World Wisconsin.  I am not trying to move “up and to the right” like the business graph.  I want to follow a different trajectory.  

This morning I’ve been reading some blogs written by women who are caring for their aging mothers through stages of dementia.  My father died two years ago from Alzheimer’s, but I was not a care-giver in his life because I live halfway across the country.  I was a care-giver to my husband who died 4 years ago from coronary artery disease, kidney failure and diabetes.  The perspective of life across different physical, mental and psychological ages intrigues me, and provides the inspiration for today’s poetry and photos.  The photos are again from our trip to Wyalusing State Park.  The first one was something Steve noticed as we walked.  “Look,” he said, “little teenaged Priscillas!”  He was looking into a stream where some water striders were sheltering between the rocks.  My mother used to refer to me as a water strider when I was in high school.  The poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo was to write a sonnet, 14 lines because today’s the 14th.  I did not attempt to compose anything with a more formal frame than that.  No iambic pentameter or rhyming scheme, just 14 lines.  So, here we go with the pictures and poetry!

Skimming the surface, supported by tension

Riding the tide of everyone’s angst

A mere shadow in the depths, a dimple of contrast

Slender legs splayed out, weightless, of no consequence

A teenaged water strider, this youngest daughter.

What rock will plunge her universe,

Reverse the level of her lens and fasten her,

Securely, where the current flows and tugs?

In the wet of things, completely drenched

Attending top and bottom feeders, gasping, flailing,

Always moving, face in the water with wide opened eyes

Until another metamorphosis, an aged knife,

Severs the lines and sets her adrift

Above the ripples once again, that much closer to the sky.

Dutchman's breeches

Shooting star

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Woodman & Woodland

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Steve and I had a wonderful adventure driving across the state and ended up at Wyalusing State Park, where the Wisconsin River dumps into the Mississippi.  The wind was stiff and the air was cold, but the skies were cloudless and the wildflowers plentiful.  It did get down to freezing overnight, but that didn’t bother us.  We woke up at about 5 a.m. because the moon was so bright and took our traditional night hike (without flashlights), cheeks burning from the cold. We burrowed back into the warmth of the tent, well-padded by every layer of clothing we brought and woke up a few hours later after the sun had begun to thaw things out.  We spent a lot of time talking about our relationship and our future and came back after only one night because our energy had shifted to getting things accomplished at home and starting new jobs on Monday.   Why?  So we can fashion a life that allows us to travel further and get away from city life for longer periods of time.

I took over one hundred photos and will dole them out in little batches.  Today’s photos are of Woodman, Wisconsin on the Wisconsin River, population 89 (in 2009).  I give Steve credit for spotting these storefronts on Main Street and doing a U-turn so that I could take pictures. 

We also spotted along this road, which parallels the Wisconsin river, 7 wild turkeys.  Yesterday was the beginning of the first week of spring turkey hunting.  I jumped out of the car to try to get a picture of 4 of them in a stubbly corn field, but they trotted away.  Yup, turkeys trot.  Seems like they enjoy a healthy population and plenty of habitat.  I don’t know if anyone still makes clothing from their feathers or if they’re featured on the menu at the local diner, but I do know that the WI Dep’t. of Natural Resources posts access to public hunting grounds all along the riverway.  We took one of those roads and got only so far in the car, then walked the rest of the way to the river.  How far?  This far.

 

So, that’s the first installment of pictures and the first part of our trip.  Now for the poetry.  While I’ve been away, the NaPoWriMo folks have posted 3 prompts.  I decided to simply take my pick today and chose a topic that suited my mood.  The following poem is based on “an experience of the 5 senses”.

Woodland Awakening

 

Within the heavy, smothering cocoon of cotton, wool and leather,

My limbs begin to shift and stir.

A sharp, fresh draft of cooler air snakes through the cracks in my massive nest.

My nostrils flare to greet it like a seal’s in sea ice portals.

The tease is smokey and crisp, like the promise of bacon,

Enticing me to surface. I blink my barely moistened eyes

And try to comprehend the letters, upside down and inside out,

Imprinted on my nylon tent.

The blue light brightens there, the shadows growing more defined,

As rapid-drumming woodpeckers and the two-note chickadee

Introduce a chorus of individual calls crisscrossing overhead.

The crackle from my dried-out throat is sadly put to shame.

My tongue lies limp and listless, longing for a bathe in good, strong coffee.

My will and my reluctant muscles begin a lazy conversation,

Ignoring the foregone conclusion.

Stay tuned for spelunking and sunsets yet to come!

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Happy Day

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Hallelujahs all around!  An all-inclusive Glory Be!  Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsikov  festival music with timpani and brass at breakfast.  It feels great to be alive, any day!  My Easter-oriented upbringing is always in the background, even though I’m facing Eastern lately.  May JOY be universal, however you find it.

Today’s poetry prompt for NaPoWriMo was simply to go outside with a notebook and perhaps a camera and write a poem.  So I did.  I didn’t go any further than 4 steps beyond my porch stairs, sat down beneath the maple tree, and opened up.  Miracles are all around.

Glorious ordinary wholly happy day

Treasure-hunting among the obvious

I shall not be in want

Fresh dandelions, wind-blown chimes

Bacon, my kitchen incense

Strawberries’ radiant red miracle

Greenery below, above; and vaulted space

A sanctuary innocent, unstained by shame

I call it Life.

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You’ve Heard of Purple Prose….

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…well, today I present: Purple Poetry.   The prompt for today’s National Poetry Writing Month post invites us to compose a piece based on a color.  I have to admit that my first response was to think of the goofy beatnik poetry in Ken Nordine’s Colors album, which Steve has.  “Yellow was in trouble…” and “Green can be a problem..”  If you’ve never heard these, you must.  They’re just too much fun!

So here’s my own word association dream on The Color Purple (no, don’t think of Alice Walker):

Twisting tendrils pulsing poison

Bloody Portuguese placenta

      birth marks and umbilicus

      bruises rhyme with purple wine

      capillary coupling

People eaters robed in splendor

Atmospheric skies at sunset

      mussels in deep, hazy rain

      eggplant mountains majesty

      purple cows and penitents

Pimpernel-ish violet babies

Lilac lavender suspension

     (dot, dot, dot) of disbelief.

And for the shutterbugs, some photos, too!

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What is Sacred?

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Today is a good day to ponder the sacred, to feel that aching quiet deep below the surface, to stay with it long enough to taste its bitter and its sweet.  Whatever form that takes.  I have spent years wrapped in one particular expression of that endeavor, but today, I tried a new one.  The NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) prompt for the day was a challenge to write a poem about an animal.  I knew immediately what animal that had to be for me: an animal that I’ve admired in different stages of my development, from my earliest memories to the present day.  One of my earliest posts was devoted to this animal, entitled “Nature’s great masterpeece…the only harmlesse great thing – John Donne”.  As I closed my eyes, opened my heart, and began to brainstorm various words and phrases, I realized that I was indeed pondering the sacred.  In order to invite you into that relationship, without influencing you too much, I will end my narrative here and simply share the photo and poem that arose and offer them as icons to stimulate your own thoughts.

Her skin was visible from outer space

     criss-crossed trails in the dry expanse

         seismic sections of caked mud

           pulsing with the rhythm of the magma core.

She walked as continental plates on tip-toe

      shuffling through the sanctuary of time

         in ponderous planetary procession

           chanting sighs that shook the stars.

She raised her tender tip

      a stroking, soothing, searching spirit

         a whisper enfleshed, intuitive, inquisitive

            and opened her sky portals, fringed with boughs

                so heaven could gaze freely down.

Her wisdom reigned in sacred skull,

      the holy archways gleaming

         until her desecration reduced

            to catacombs of dripping blood

                that mammoth cathedral.

The matriarchs lie raped in heaps

      across the countryside.

         No longer shall we place our heads

            on gentle, heaving breasts to feel

                the wide embrace of a universe.

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BOINNNNNG!!!

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As we were walking off in the rain to meet his mom for breakfast, Steve made this sound of spring….boinnng!  I thought that would make a good title for a post. I admit that I am a sound effects gal.   It comes with being an actor of sorts and a singer.  Ever notice how most guys do use sound effects at least occasionally in their conversation, but women do less often?  Maybe it’s not really ladylike, but I get more animated as I get more comfortable with the people around me.  I enjoy hamming it up.  I’ve been posting some pretty serious stuff because I have a lot of that in me, too, but lately, I’ve been itching to burst out with something creative and lively.   I am ready to engage in some collaboration, but I’ve been frustrated in my recent attempts with voice students and job interviews (still waiting to hear from Old World Wisconsin).  I’ve found something to try, though….a poetry challenge!

That’s right, folks, the NaPoWriMo challenge is about to begin on April 1!  This is the National Poetry Writing Month challenge: a poem a day for 30 days.  I once self-published a booklet of poems and sold 50 copies at my church’s gift shop, all proceeds going to charity.  One of my poems got published in The Living Church magazine, though I got no payment for it.  My religious poetry tried to be very serious.  Nowadays I write rhyming greeting card poetry for Steve’s aunt, just because she lights up so generously when I do.  I’m curious to see how I might respond to the prompts offered by the challenge organizers.  It’ll be another way to discover who I am, and possibly there will be a collaborative element as I post and receive comments.  My father used to write very amusing little rhymes in Valentines and birthday cards for me and my kids.  I loved getting those in the mail!  I miss that.  Perhaps some of that joy will spring up with this endeavor in April.  Also, it’ll be fun to try to illustrate my posts with photographs to match. 

What do you do when you hunger for creative collaboration?  (…besides what the birds & bees are doing 😉 , which is very satisfying as well!)

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A Jury of My Piers

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Those solitary places where great expanses spread to absorb thoughts, dreams and other venturings of consciousness always appeal to me.  They feel accepting and safe.

An appropriate physical place to house a mood is often hard to find.  I think that’s one thing that keeps me exploring.  I keep my favorites locked in my memory and go back to them by closing my eyes.  This is how I try to listen to myself, I suppose.  Before I face any jury, I want to know my own story.

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Nature’s Neighborhoods

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I completed another training session at the Wehr Nature Center today.  We learned about different habitats from a kindergarten perspective.  Food, Water, Shelter and Space contribute to the supportive habitat that living organisms need.  We talk about the animals and birds who live in the Wetland, Woodland, and Grassland areas surrounding the nature center.  The kids meet the live animals that live in the building and then go out on the trails to explore.  I have so much to learn!  I don’t have any problem imagining the curiosity of the young and the excitement of discovery.  Here’s a sample of what I found today:

Scilla siberica scattered all along the wooded trails by the pond. 

Spring beauty

The wetland wildlife is really interesting to me.  There are beavers and muskrats and mink around, but they don’t pose for pictures very often.  We see their tracks and traces and homes, though.  The turtles do sometimes pose nicely.  They keep their distance by staying in the pond, so they don’t rush away as readily.

Painted turtles looking for warmth

Yesterday, when I didn’t have my camera, we found a baby turtle in the stream bed.  It was only the size of a silver dollar.  Today, though, I found a biggie.  The snapping turtle.  This mud monster has very powerful jaws.  No teeth, but it is reputed to be able to snap a broom handle in half. 

Unfortunately, my camera is just the point and shoot kind with a standard zoom lens.  The snapping turtle looked like a boulder out there on the log, with a painted turtle a respectful distance away.  I looked through my binoculars to convince myself that yes, that was a turtle, with its front legs and head down in the water, keeping its shell balanced.

Kids get a thrill from anything with an “Ewwww!” factor, and skunk cabbage provides the right stuff.  It looks weird, and it stinks.  I broke off a leaf and passed it around.  It’s more earthy and green veggie-smelling than actual skunk spray, but it is reminiscent of that unforgettable odor. 

I had the most fun today with our American Toad, whom we call Savannah.  She has two special tricks: she walks and she eats.  Well, a toad doesn’t hop; it kind of waddles.  And Savannah is FAT.  She also puffs herself out to look more threatening.  Her movement is just comical to me.  She doesn’t see very well, so she has to eat food that is moving.  We feed her live crickets.  I didn’t get a photo of her today, but I did get down on the floor on my belly to watch her, like a 4-year old would.  That picture is in my mind instead. 

If I could have another life, I would choose to be David Attenborough.  The Nature Neighborhoods he got to explore absolutely overwhelm me.  I am in awe of a common toad, and he’s paddling around with platypuses!  Comparisons don’t matter, actually.  Everything is spectacular when you pay attention.