January 31: Tulips

Last day of January. We're entering the heart of winter. Apart from bundling up and enjoying outdoor snow activities as much as I can, another thing that helps stave off cabin fever is an indulgence in fresh flowers. This time of year, I'm unable to resist the colorful bunches of tulips that beckon just inside Hannaford's sliding doors. Orange, yellow, red, purple--the colors exhale a warm breath throughout my house to offset the whites and greys outside our windows.

While my outdoor garden has been reduced to dry stalks sticking above the snow, indoors the tight buds of tulips slowly open their petals to reveal the sensual beauty of each blossom's secret center, something Georgia O'Keefe might have painted. 

In a few months, after the snow melts and the air warms enough that I can rake off my flower beds, green spears of tulip leaves will poke up through the leaf litter, one of the first signs of incipient spring. But for now, the simple pleasure of my store-bought beauties will see me through. 

Red hothouse tulip,

your heart's an exploding star

to melt winter's blues.

January 30: Dance

Tonight was the Snow Ball, a benefit dance party at the Rockport Opera House to benefit the Ragged Mountain redevelopment project. Music was provided by The Awesome, an 80s cover band--perfect for the diverse crowd moving and shaking on the dance floor. Having grown up in the 80s, I feel kind of proprietary about the music--this was the stuff we used to dance to in the high school gym way back when, when it mattered who danced with whom. Now, older and supposedly wiser, I went with two women friends and we danced unselfconsciously wherever we happened to be, with whomever happened to be near us for almost the entire evening. My legs are sore, and my throat is hoarse from yelling back and forth above the music, but I also know I smiled so much my face hurts and had a great time letting loose. And I wasn't even dressed in 80s attire like many were--that off-the-shoulder Flashdance look, the slouchy boots, the leg warmers, teased hair in hair clips... Ah, the good old days.

It's funny how when you hear stuff you grew up with, music you forgot you even knew, it all comes rushing back to you--the words, the thrill of hearing that favorite song, the whole tone of an angst-ridden decade of one's life. Reminiscing with some people I went to high school with, we all seemed a little surprised by how much we enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It was certainly helped by the fact that half the town was crowded into the room, dancing, almost everyone there knowing everyone else and sharing with wild abandon this one winter night together. It's fitting in a cheesy 80s way, I think, to say something about the bonding power of music, especially rocking' music like the Talking Heads, Devo, and Madonna, songs that you can't help but move to. Everyone Wang Chung-ed, burned down the house, whipped it good, wore their sunglasses at night, and wanted to rule the world with whole-hearted enthusiasm. Several people said that our community needs to do something like this more often. As Whitney Houston (and The Awesome) sang, "Hey, I wanna dance with somebody, I wanna feel the heat with somebody..." Tonight a bunch of people thrashed around and sweated and smiled together, and it felt like a true community event. (And after, when we opened that door to step out into the 12 degree evening, I think it was the first time all day that cold slap in the face actually felt good.)

Winter dance party--
a packed hall, 80s music.
I was once sixteen.

January 29: The Moon and Mars

Although the moon isn't quite full, it's a breath-taking spectacle rising tonight, big white beaming face peeking over the craggy edge of Mount Battie. Earlier I had learned that the moon and Mars were in conjunction--very close to each other--and that apparently this was the closest we'd be to Mars all year. So after dark I drove into town so I could see them shining above the harbor. As I drove past the mountain, the moon shone against a clear, cold backdrop of deep blue sky, framed by the lacing silhouettes of tree branches, Orion tilted sideways above. And just to the left, Mars, a small, red, unblinking eye. From our perspective, of course, the moon is the largest planet we see, but here on Earth we've often judged wrongly our place in the solar system, let alone the universe.

It's hard to avoid the symbolism of Mars as the god of war. We're a country at war, though we tend to forget that sometimes. In that regard, too, it's all a matter of perspective. From my comfortable life here in coastal Maine, I have the luxury to gaze upon the faces of Mars and Moon, to write a little poem. Elsewhere, I know, it's not like this, and to many, the moon right now must seem like an unresponsive god, bright and full while so much pain and grief and hunger exists around them.

Full moon outshines Mars.
Ignoring distant beauty,
here below--war, grief.

January 28: Morning Crow

After several nights of sleeping poorly, this morning I was finally able to sleep in. At least until my cat, apparently alarmed that I was not following my usual morning ritual, jumped up on the bed and meowed repeatedly. When that didn't get me up, she then began attacking things on my nightstand. I put a stop to that with a pillow, and she eventually settled in to do what cats do best: sleep.

But just as I was beginning to blissfully drift back into gentle slumber myself, a crow started up outside the bedroom window with a low, gutteral "caw, caw, caw," repeated about ten times. Then another came flying in, cawing on a slightly different pitch. Then there were three. Three crows can make a real racket. I could hear the jays joining in, too, so I figured there must be something out there upsetting them, like a hawk or owl or cat. So then I had to get up. Some people need black coffee to wake them up, I just need a flock of loud black birds. Out the window, I couldn't pick out anything among the tangle of branches but the silhouettes of crows and jays, and a pair of squirrels chasing each other around a tree trunk. Were the corvids morally offended by the squirrels' amorous frivolity? When one crow settled onto the neighbor's lawn to aimlessly poke around in the grass, I figured whatever had stirred them up couldn't be that important. But it had gotten me out of bed, at least.

As I type, they're back, one in the same tree as before, renewing their cawing brigade up and down the river's foamy path. Now six or seven crows have flashed into view above the water, all diving at something. With that level of activity, I'd expect to see an eagle, at least, but I think it might be all about food. They seem to be chasing one of their own, who has either found something edible or committed a crow transgression.

And now the plot thickens--a black-and-white cat that I've never seen before just emerged from behind our shed. Was it a cat after all? But the crows ignore the cat, occupied by something upriver. Who can fathom the mysteries of what goes on in a crow's mind? A perfect bird nerd activity for me would be to spend the whole day in my backyard Twittering about the crows' activities.

Counting crows this morning has reminded me of the traditional fortune-telling poem. This is how I learned it:

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

three for a wedding, four for a birth,

five for silver, six for gold,

seven for a secret never to be told.

But I just Googled it and found a longer version:

One for sorrow, two for joy,

three for a girl, four for a boy,

five for silver, six for gold,

seven for a secret never to be told,

eight for a wish, nine for a kiss,

ten for a time of joyous bliss.

However many crows are out there right now, they're certainly harboring a secret that they'll never tell me, at least until I learn to speak Crow. You never really know what they're up to.

Awakened by crows,
I ponder their dark secrets,
their strange augury.

January 27: Mom's Otter

My mother called me today to tell me that there was an otter on the river. She said I should write about it in my blog. "But I didn't see it," I told her. "You did. Why don't you write about it?" "I don't know how to write a haiku," she said, despite being the one of the only people I know who reads this blog every single day. (Hey, if your own mother doesn't read your blog, who will? So I'm not complaining.) I explained to her the basic rule: 5-7-5. A little while later she called back with her poem, and I realized that I had forgotten the part about it being 5, 7, and 5 syllables for the haiku's three lines:

Sleek and shiny fur gliding,
nose forward, body trailed by a vee.
Otter owns the winter river.

But I actually like the idea of a haiku composed of 5, 7 and 5 words--a fun variation on the theme. Nice poem, Mom.

I talked to her again this evening, and she said she hadn't read my blog yet. I said I hadn't written it yet. "Write about the otter," she said again. "But," I countered, "you already did."

Photo courtesy of Hal Korber/Pennsylvania Game Commission

Although I didn't see the otter, and my mother has already written a poem about it, I am in fact now inspired to write a few words about otters. My family has seen them several times on the Megunticook River, most often in winter when we've observed them up on the ice eating fish. They're bigger animals than you expect, and powerful--in the same family as weasels and wolverines--but also the most playful. I've come across long snow slides on banks in the northern woods, which the otters had obviously used repeatedly. They are tireless players. At the Seattle aquarium, which features both sea and river otters, I stood transfixed for at least an hour in front of each tank, amazed at the creatures' non-stop, rollicking energy. To top it off, my sister's married name is van Otterloo, which has, of course, led to the discovery of much otter-related paraphernalia. So we're kind of into otters in my family. Hence, I think, my mother's insistence. And sometimes it doesn't hurt to do what your mother wants. (But because this one's about otters, it's a little silly.)

I ought to have seen
my mother's swimming otter--
might have inspired me.

January 26: Flood

I woke this morning to the sound of rain dripping off the eaves and ringing against the propane tanks right outside the bedroom window. Looking out that window, I was struck first by what a morass of snow, mud, dead leaves, and branches our backyard has become thanks to this torrential downpour combined with gale winds. But at least we're up on a bluff. Part of our neighbors' yard is in the river's floodplain, and the mighty Megunticook was running high today. The normally placid waterway had swollen to fill its banks and was dramatically spilling over its edges. A visible side-stream had carved its own course through the remnant snow in our neighbor's yard. Outside, the river roared wild and fresh in my ears. Crows, the only visible birds, seemed invigorated by all this water action.

Later, I learned that my parents were dealing with their own water issues. Thanks to a leaky foundation and a power outage that caused the sump pump to shut off, they had been up all night dealing with a flooding basement. My mother sounded exhausted. Mentally multiplying what she had contended with by a factor of 1,000, I think I got a tiny glimpse into what it must be like for those who live in a true flood zone, like along the Missouri or Mississippi. At least my parents' efforts hadn't involved sandbags, watermarks 6 feet up the wall, or simply getting washed away. And as my mother put it, their problem was literally nothing compared to what the people in post-earthquake Haiti are dealing with right now. It helps to look at what seems like a domestic crisis with a global perspective. But that doesn't mean you can ease up your efforts with the water vacuum.

Driving past the Goose River Golf Course in Rockport this afternoon, I was a bit in awe of how much of it was underwater. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought those sodden lowlands were a shallow pond. But while marveling at the transformed golf course, a memory from more than 20 years ago suddenly resurfaced in my head: driving I-40 in Arkansas shortly after the Mississippi had flooded, mile after mile of fields covered with a thin sheet of water, and every so often, a house out in the middle of all that water, an unnatural island. Every day something reminds me to be grateful for what I have.

Though the rain has stopped now, the river still gushes, a churning spate pouring over the dam--our own white-noise machine turned up on high volume. The slower, wider section upriver of the dam offers up a flat mixture of rain and ice that looks more liquid than solid. Only a duck should trust that surface.

Rain falling on snow--
the world slowly made liquid.
All washes away.

January 25: January Thaw

With a week left in the month, this year's January Thaw squeaked in under the wire. I woke to rain dripping off the eaves. Twelve hours later I can still hear rain dripping off the eaves. When I drove into the (unpaved) Land Trust parking lot this morning, my brakes had no effect on my momentum whatsoever; instead of turning to park, the car just coasted forward on the slick surface of what seemed to be sheer ice. I finally hit a patch of bare dirt at the bottom of the sloping lot, where I was able to turn around and get a grip, so to speak. I parked elsewhere today, after I wiggled my way back out of the Parking Lot from Hell (Hell after it froze over, of course). 

The rain brought birds back to my feeder again: titmice and chickadees visited throughout the day. The river ice looked sodden and very unsafe. "Rotten" is the term, I believe.

Wind picked up throughout the day, making late afternoon errands an adventure. I could feel my car being buffeted sideways on Route One, actually had to steer against the gusts. The one good thing: I'd been meaning to get a car wash, but now the rain has done it for me.

And luckily there was enough snow that the rain and warm temps haven't reduced everything to a muddy puddle. Some winter still remains; it's just sopping wet and not so much fun to play in right now.

I wake to dripping,
but I won't delude myself
that winter's over.

January 24: Ducks, Laughter

With cloud cover and no wind, today was even warmer than yesterday, perfect for a walk on the Rockland Breakwater. Calm seas at low tide made it easy to get good looks at two seals sunning themselves on an exposed rock. And ducks--at least for the brief moments they showed themselves between dives. Buffleheads popped up and down like pool toys, black ducks foraged in the shallows close to shore, and red-breasted mergansers cruised past, showing off punk hairdos that got wilder with each trip underwater.

And long-tailed ducks gabbed away in floating groups of magically shifting numbers, individuals suddenly surfacing where no duck had been before. Or entire rafts all disappearing at the same time, right on cue. Focusing my binoculars on a duck that suddenly became a widening circle of ripples on the water, I was reminded of a stanza from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird": "I do not know which to prefer,/ The beauty of inflections/ Or the beauty of innuendoes,/ The blackbird whistling/ Or just after." Only my version would end with the lines, "The duck floating on the surface/ Or just after."

Photo by Wolfgang Wander, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Male long-tailed ducks in their winter plumage are beautiful birds: predominately white, with a grey and black cheek patch, pink and black bill, black body, and spectacularly long black tail feathers that they can twitch like a split whip. These are pretty boys who seem to spend much of their winter vacation preening, posturing, diving, and making a lot of noise. Long-tailed ducks were called "oldsquaws" for many years, because the males' yodeling sessions sound like a bunch of gabbing women. (The term "squaw" has since been recognized as offensive to many Native Americans, precipitating not only an official name change for the duck but also many places in Maine.) If I remember my high school Latin correctly, their Genus name Clangula means something like "full of noise." To me their calls sound like musical gobbles--"Ow owlup, ow owlup!"--and never fail to make me smile as I try to imagine what these chatty drakes have to say to one another. Are they comparing notes on a nearby group of females or where to find the best mussels? Reminiscing about their Arctic summers? Talking trash about who has the prettiest feathers?

Later today, I came across a cartoon that made me laugh so hard I couldn't stop. I was crying, unable to speak. It completely set me off, so that for hours after even something mildly funny was enough to send me into uncontrollable laughter again. In the throes of my own raucous laughing, I thought of those ducks babbling away at the breakwater. Maybe they were simply sharing jokes. What better way to while away the long winter?

Yodeling sea ducks,
I want to share your gossip,
hear Arctic secrets.

January 23: The Birds

I woke early with a whole beautiful sunny winter's day before me to do whatever I wanted. So I started off by going on a run to my parents' house, about 2.5 miles away. I felt warm enough because I was moving, and safe enough because the shoulder was well plowed, but hadn't anticipated how that cold air would feel hitting my lungs. On my run, despite by belabored breathing, I heard enough birds that I made an effort to keep track: blue jay, robin, cardinal, downy woodpecker, crow, white-breasted nuthatch.

So a good run, but my breathing needed a little recovery time. While hanging out "recovering" with my parents, we had front row seats as a bird drama played out on the Megunticook River: two young eagles repeatedly dove on an injured Canada goose in the open water just below the bridge. At one point, an eagle landed in a pine tree right in the backyard, causing my mother to unexpectedly curse very loudly in her excitement. The goose lived to see another day; perhaps the eagles were just toying with it, or testing its strengths and weaknesses for a future tandem attack.

Later, my friend Brian picked me up for a bird outing in Belfast, with a brief stop at Chase's Daily, of course, for one of their amazing pear almond muffins. We walked down to the Footbridge, from which we quickly picked out several groups of goldeneyes bobbing and preening on the Passagassawakeag River. As far as I could tell, every goldeneye we could see was a Barrow's, an unusual winter visitor but one regularly found at that spot on the river. We got good looks, close enough to see their golden eyes, the crescent-shaped facial marking on the males, and the orange bills of the females.

Photo by John Good - NPS Photos

On the roof of a nearby industrial building, hundreds of gulls (and a handful of black ducks) hung out, presumably resting and warming themselves in the sun. Suddenly, they all lifted off and flew over our heads in a swirling mass--just like the flocks in "The Birds." I kept looking for what might have scared them up--an eagle, perhaps--but no luck, even though this happened twice while we were there. The cool thing was that the second time, I was able to pick out an Iceland gull amid the milling hordes of herring gulls. Like the Barrow's goldeneye, this white-winged species is another winter visitor from that Arctic that's uncommon enough that I was particularly excited to see it. Especially amid the craziness of the massive gull lift-off.

Photo by Brian Willson.

Before heading back to Camden, we made another stop at a new preserve upriver, acquired by Coastal Mountains Land Trust in December. We followed a snowmobile trail to some old farm fields, only spotting three chickadees and a meandering line of tiny rodent tracks. But as we were leaving, a red-tailed hawk soared overhead in the blue sky, its tail bright red in the sun. Seemed a good omen on which to end our outing.

Knowing winter's long,
humans and birds soak up sun
on a day like this.

January 22: Persistence

The snow has now drifted high enough in front of my office window that a squirrel has discovered it can access my window feeder. I heard some scrabbling on the wall this morning and looked out, curious. A squirrel, looking particularly fluffy and cute in its winter coat, looked back at me.

Or rather, I thought it was looking back at me, but I slowly realized it was really eyeing the bird feeder in front of me on the other side of the window, sizing up its potential approach. The snow below the feeder was spattered with little squirrel prints and seed hulls. This squirrel was onto something big.

After I sat back down, I heard scratching again, looked up, and laughed out loud to see this at my window:

In fact, I'm still chuckling to see it again. The brazen rodent slipped off the window frame a few times, and got scared off more than once by my arm raising the camera, but eventually reached the mother lode.

Its persistence was rewarded, albeit rather briefly, because the feeder was so small it would lose its balance and have to hop off. But it kept coming back. It eventually got so used to my presence that a simple knock on the window had no effect. So I was able to observe it rather closely, until apparently it felt its exertions were not worth the meager results and it swished away to seek easier fodder. Still, I've got to hand it to squirrels--they've got brains the size of acorns, but they know how to focus every little brain cell to figure out how to get what they want. I've personally seen very few bird feeders--maybe two--that were genuinely squirrel-proof.


Squirrel in my feeder--
is it the food or challenge
that motivates you?

January 21: Robins

Contrary to popular belief, it's not all that unusual to see robins in the winter. Yes, all robins fly south when the seasons change, but for robins north of us--say, in Newfoundland--this is south. This winter, however, robins have been few and far between. The Thomaston-Rockland Christmas Bird Count was remarkable for its paucity of tallied robins. And although a small flock usually forages in my neighborhood each winter, I don't think I've personally seen a robin for two full months, maybe more. Until this morning. Wending my way back to the office on Camden's side streets, I almost drove into a snowbank as I caught sight of a group of a ten or so unmistakable birds scattered in the trees of a backyard, their rosy breasts bright against the backdrop of snow. Finally, some robins!

These Canadian robins are noticeably bigger and darker than their southern counterparts, making them look even more dramatic when they flock together in a snowy tree. In winter robins shift from sucking worms out of our lawns to foraging for fruit in crabapple and mountain ash trees, sumac stands, and berry bushes. In this time of year when finding a territory and a mate aren't the driving imperatives, the birds flock together--partly for the "safety in numbers" factor, but also because many eyes are better than two when looking for a food source. They aren't the only species to do this, either. Winter robins will sometimes be accompanied by bluebirds, their thrush cousins--another odd but not rare sight in these cold climes.

"Newfoundland" robin. Photo courtesy of Luke Seitz.

Although they aren't harbingers of spring just yet, they certainly brightened my morning--almost as much as seeing the first sunshine and blue sky in four days. In just a few months, however, we'll start seeing these sturdy birds gathering by the dozens on thawing fields, lawns, and golf courses. And then we'll start hearing their cheery, chirruping songs in the trees. Those robins will be "our" robins, returned for another nesting season. The hardier Canadian visitors will have headed back north once again.

Winter's festive flock:
robins eating crabapples.
No signs of spring yet.