All posts by laurahinnj

I like to make lists, Whatever

Another meme

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Stolen from Lynne. Things I’ve done are in bold.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain (actually hiked up a mountain)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang/played a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Made a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Gotten a speeding ticket

Can anyone say sheltered?

😉

Birds, In the neighborhood, Whatever

Geese police

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Most of the coastal ponds I visit for ducks are in the middle of residential neighborhoods… prime neighborhoods within sight of the ocean. I always get a laugh at the canada geese, brant, and coot feeding on those perfectly manicured lawns that sit opposite the most productive ponds. Boy it must really piss those people off to have all that goose crap on their grass and sidewalks!

There’s a price to pay for that nice water view, I guess.

Nevermind the birders wandering around all the time.

Last week I watched this guy from one these houses patrolling his yard with a stick. Back and forth he walked, waving his big stick along the sidewalk, to keep the geese away.

And I think I have too much time on my hands…

This bit of drivel, btw, is my 1000th post. Hm. Think maybe it’s time for me to finally shut up?

😉

Remembering, Small truths, Snapshots

Preening

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Sometimes it feels as if the entire space he carved out in the world has simply closed over.

A coworker the other day noticed the faraway look in my eyes and asked what I was thinking about. “I’m trying to find something in my mind,” I told her. I have this penchant for losing track of stuff and then becoming obsessed with finding whatever it is. Often this necessitates tearing the house or my desk apart.

A couple weeks ago the search was for a handwritten note from my dad; one he’d written years ago to accompany the return of some money I’d loaned him. It wasn’t some thank-you note, mind you, but instead a sort of brief family history. The theme of that history was money, specifically loaned money, and detailed my father’s firmly held belief that what goes around, in terms of generosity, comes around.

Anyway… the details of the note and our family’s financial history are probably too personal to share here, but suffice it to say that I really wanted to find that note and feel the connection to my dad that it represents. I don’t have much else tangible to remember him with. When I first came across the note a couple years ago, I’d probably put it aside for safekeeping and now it’s lost forever.

😉

The other day at work I somehow started thinking about the small gold cross my dad gave me as a little girl. I’d worn it exclusively for years, on a necklace that had been my mom’s. I have even fewer tangible thngs to remember her with, save that necklace and a pair of earrings and her wedding band. I’d been obsessively hunting for that necklace and cross the last couple days and wasn’t able to put my hands on it. I found every other piece of jewerly I own, mind you, but not that simple cross my dad had given me so many years ago.

This put me in a bit of a funk, you know? Granted, my foul mood wasn’t only about that, but oftentimes some seemingly inconsequential thing is the trigger for major crankiness.

The people closest to me must be used to this part of me by now, the part that hangs the *do not disturb* sign on the door and disappears from them without any warning. Those with more open hearts don’t often understand the need of some to draw inward, in self-preservation, when life gets to be too much.

I’ve learned how to take my space when it presses in too closely, even when I can’t physically wander away. Plenty of people don’t understand that about me, don’t understand the secret hiding places I can curl myself into, that you can’t win anything by force with me, that there is no prying me out of my muteness.

I recognize it straight-away when I meet with this trait in others. Often it’s a child, but there’s plenty of people who’ve grown to adulthood processing the world in the same instinctual way I do, people who live everything from a place very deep inside. We recognize each other, somehow, and meet somewhere in the open between backing off and standing by. That’s a sweet spot, I think. A place of acceptance. A place where the things we hold onto and the lengths we hold on is understood and trusted.

(Oh and I finally found my necklace. All is right with the world again.)

😉

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

Gannets

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I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy–
even though the sea is riled and boiling
and gray with fog
and the fish are nowhere to be seen,
they fall, they explode into the water
like white gloves,
then they vanish,
then they climb out again,
from the cliff of the wave,
like white flowers–

from Gannets by Mary Oliver

A glimpse over the sea wall at a huge group of gannets feeding close to shore brought me back onto the beach at Sea Bright yesterday. It was a good thing that my camera battery gave out from the cold, or I might’ve stood there watching long enough to turn into a popsicle stick.

Even the fishermen were complaining of the bitter wind!

Gannets are a treat to see and there’s some mystery of weather I don’t understand that brings them close to shore. Whatever it is, fishermen react to the same call of wind and tide or whatever and were out in numbers yesterday too.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

Searching for a Snowy

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No I didn’t find the owl, but the searching is half the fun, see? Today was my volunteer day at Sandy Hook Bird Observatory and one benefit of sitting there by myself most days is that I get to take calls about good birds people are seeing in the area.

A park ranger showed up today to report a Snowy Owl! Now… I’ve seen Snowy Owls a couple times, and it was pretty cold and the wind was at gale-level on the bay almost, but I couldn’t resist having a look for it. The directions I got were responsibly vague and there’s a lot of dune edge to search through at Gunnison Beach.

I decided to walk north following what I assumed were the ranger’s tire tracks in the sand. She hadn’t found the owl on foot in the ridiculous cold today, but in her warm four-wheel drive truck. Pfft. Of course, this also meant walking into the biting wind that was blowing sand in my eyes and mouth.

Good birders have something like a search image in their minds when recognizing birds, right? With snowy owls it’s pretty simple – big and whitish. The problem comes in when you’re all excited and feverish with the hunt and your lips and fingers are numb with the cold and your eyes are full of sand from the wind… well, you start to see things.

Every bit of white in the dunes calls your attention and you imagine everything to be that Snowy Owl you’re searching for. Of course you also want to be responsible and not get too close, but that only adds to the tricks that your eyes and mind play on you.

This particular white blob looked very promising and had me imagining my victorious phone call to a friend; I could even hear myself mumbling through numb lips, “I found it! I found it!”

Crawling closer on hands and knees, peeking over the top of the dune from a different angle revealed the truth… the rare and elusive white plastic jug owl. That as opposed to the usual white plastic bag owl that is most frequently mistaken for a snowy.

I did, however, find a little flock of Snow Buntings. I wonder what they find to eat in the sand? Someone reported a flock of 200-300 the day before yesterday. I know you’re thinking they look like plain old sparrows, but trust me! I didn’t imagine them, I don’t think.

The return walk to my car had the wind at my back, finally, and this nice view of Sandy Hook Light. The shoreline has changed enough over the years that the lighthouse is at least a mile inland now.

Back on the bayside, the setting sun was putting on a nice show for my drive home, as was this line of gulls kiting in the wind over the breaking waves. Not sure what that was about. I hardly made it off Sandy Hook before I was sidetracked back onto the beach and into the cold again. I’ll save those pics for another day when I’ve thawed out some.

Birds, In the neighborhood

Count the night herons

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night herons
It was getting late and I’d been frustrated with all the pretty ducks on the far shore of the pond avoiding my camera when another birder casually mentioned a Eurasian Wigeon on the other side of the little island in front of me.

I made my may to the opposite shore and sorted through the wigeon – not finding the eurasian – and looked up to see a sleepy-eyed night heron stepping among the sleepy-eyed mallards at the edge of the island. Widening my glance I saw the above panorama which included at least fifteen others amid the tangles of bittersweet. Even more were deeper in the scrubby bushes! Most were immatures, but if you count the things that look like pale footballs with legs, you’ll get the idea.

I stitched the pics together, but the file is too large for Blogger. The pic links to photobucket where maybe you can enlarge it. I wonder how many times I’ve driven past this daytime roost and missed these birds entirely.

Snapshots, Whatever

Signage

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The walls here are mostly bare; something I’ve never gotten around to or found good enough taste to do anything with…

😉

but in the landing to the basement, just inside the back door, is this growing collection of vintage metal signs. They advertise things like fishing lures and shotgun shells and duck stamps. They’re quirky and often off-color.

I like them anyway.

Small truths

To answer your question

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“You know how it feels,
wanting to walk into
the rain and disappear–
wanting to feel your life
brighten and grow weightless
as a leaf in the fall.
And sometimes, for a moment,
you feel it beginning–the sense
of escape sharp as a knife-blade
hangs over the dark field
of your body, and your soul
waits just under the skin
to leap away over the water.
But the blade,
at the last minute, hesitates
and does not fall,
and the body does not open,
and you are what you are–
trapped, heavy and visible
under the rain, only your vision
delicate as old leaves skimming
over the mounds of the seasons,
the limits of everything,
the few shaped bones of time.”

Mary Oliver, At Blackwater Pond

I know I’ve made you all wonder what the question was, but that doesn’t matter, really. This poem is what came to mind and is what distracted me from my own fumbling train of thought and clumsy words. Funny how poems or music so often do that for me; describe in carefully crafted images what my heart knows is true but can’t easily put to pen.