Monthly Archives: January 2010

I like to make lists, Remembering

Things I’ve broken

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1. My chin. I was 8-ish and got a ride in an ambulance and seven stitches. I cried bloody murder.

2. Multiple iPods. Mostly by coffee. Most recently by blatant overuse.

3. Rules, hearts and promises.

4. My little girl princess canopy bed. (Yes I was jumping on it!)

5. A chair… my brother being the intended target. The chair mostly survived, but things with my brother haven’t been the same since.

6. A couple cars. Sometimes whole important parts of them fell off; others just steamed and hissed at me for mysterious reasons.

7. The copy machine at work. I break it at least once a week. (I am that person.) I try to unjam it before walking away… honest I do!

Whatever

For D.

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What can I say, dear friend, to ease your heart in its breaking?

There are no perfect words when someone dies; there is no easy way through pain.

We grasp for comfort, but grief has a way of hitting like a tidal wave; it’s hard to find a steady place to stand when your whole world is upside down.

Know this: that each day is a treasure and that love is its own reward.

I still believe in prayer and that something good and kind comes from it.

My prayer for you is that you continue to reach out
and ask for what you need
that you are able to say what you need to say
and that you go easy on yourself.

Please help me to care for you now
the way you have done for so many and for me
Take your time…
Understand there is no right or wrong way
Carry on…
Let me stand beside you again.

Snapshots, Wanderings, Whatever

Freedom

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When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing: the world was meant to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you…
~David Whyte

Lower range light at Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin

Crazy things i do to amuse myself, Snapshots, Wanderings

4/100

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I’ve sort of fallen off the bandwagon the last month or so with my stranger pics… probably I’ve lost my nerve for it, but this guy…

Hmm.

Everything about him wanted to be photographed, I think.

😉

I dashed up to him across the jetty, asked his permission, snapped the photo and dashed off… feeling really, really embarrassed.

I wonder what it is that makes a stranger feel approachable enough to me…

I wonder what it is that makes a stranger interesting enough…

I wonder why I haven’t had the nerve yet to approach a woman…

This photo is #4 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com

Birds, Books, Snapshots, Whatever

Ruddy turnstone

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Other names: Sea dotterel; Sea quail; Sand-runner; Stone-pecker; Horsefoot snipe; Brant-bird; Bead-bird; Checkered snipe; Red-legs; Red-legged plover; Chicken plover; Calico-back; Calico-jacket; Sparked-back; Streaked-back; Chuckatuck; Creddock; Jinny; Bishop plover.

… I had an exceptional chance to watch… The select company was “one little Turnstone and I,” the latter armed with binoculars, the former too busy to notice intruders. He was a fine gentleman, dressed in the gaudiest calico possible for the fall fashions, yet not too proud to work for his supper. His method was not unlike that of the proverbial bull in the china shop, for he trotted about, tossing nearly everything that came in his way. Inserting the wedge of his bill under a pebble, a shell, or what not, he would give a real toss of his imperious head, and flop over it would go. His efforts seemed to be well rewarded, for he fed there for some time. It is in search of such prey that the turner of stones operates, a cog in the wheel of the system of nature, which decrees that every possible corner and crevice of the great system shall have its guardian, even the tiny spot of ground beneath the pebble on the beach.

Info from Birds of America, first published in 1917 and which includes color plates of Louis Agassiz Fuertes’ paintings. Said book made for good company this evening.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The Turnstones were not so much trotting about as they were, instead, slip-sliding along the jetty rocks yesterday while they fed. There were no stones to be turned; in fact I wondered just what they were finding edible among the waves.

Birds, Pastimes, Snapshots, Wanderings

Sea dog, jetty birds and the distance

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A return trip today to Barnegat Light with the Monmouth County Audubon Society was graced by many of the same species as last week’s visit, plus a new one!

This harbor seal had hauled itself up onto the rocks of a small jetty behind the lighthouse to rest and soak up some sun, much to our delight. They’re fairly common here in winter, but this is the closest I’ve ever seen one. They have small rounded heads and whiskered snouts, but it’s their huge and soulful eyes that establish the resemblance with a more blubbery version of man’s best friend.

Click for whisker views!

It was really sweet to watch it nearly tipping off the rocks as it napped! The seal seemed well aware of, yet unconcerned with the group of admirers that had gathered at the base of the lighthouse to watch it.

Many thanks to Steve for letting me use his big lens for these closer-up views.

High tide and a heavy surf had rearranged the sea ducks and shorebirds in new patterns. The jetty was impossibly dangerous today… so hardly any harlequins were within view, but the crashing waves beyond the jetty were black with ducks!

😉

There were big numbers of long-tails and lots of scoters (black and surf) close within the inlet, disappearing and reappearing behind the swells… a real treat! I also saw quite a few common eiders looking just like the field guides say they should… sweet!

(Of course there’s no pictures… I wasn’t about to climb up on the jetty and get soaking wet or worse.)

The purple sandpipers, dunlin, ruddy turnstones and a lone sanderling were mostly feeding on the lee side of the jetty… out of the wind and the crashing waves. They’re all so inconspicuous somehow, looking like nothing more than jetty rock, until you realize that the rocks are moving and alive with birds.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I often wonder why in the world I do this… why I stand out in the cold until my hands and lips are numb… just to see birds that I’ve seen any number of times before in much less awful conditions?

It’s mostly ritual, I think, like waiting for woodcock in an early spring dusk or estimating the number of swallows that might rise from the phragmites at North Pond on a late summer dawn.

What’s not often mentioned among birders is the time spent scanning the horizon, that distant magic place where sky and sea or sky and land converge to ignite the imagination. The time spent looking at nothing. You have to be patient when you look there. You might not see anything new… or see anything at all, but you have to look and wait, just in case.

Some people don’t ever want to look into that distance. Some people won’t tolerate the discomfort of it.

(Wimps!)

Sometimes the best thing I find while scanning that distance is inside me, anyway.

Growing up, I like to make lists, Whatever

Is there a badge for this?

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Were I still a girl scout, these are the badges I might’ve earned so far in life…
😉
Books
Family living skills
Cyber-girl
Write all about it
Dollars and sense
High on life
Camp together
Working it out
Plants and animals
Listening to the past
Camera shots
Pet care
The lure of language
From shore to sea
Music fan
Wildlife
Collecting
Your outdoor surroundings
Traveler
All about birds
Let’s pretend
Car sense
And some I haven’t quite met the requirements for yet…
Do-it-yourself
Ready for tomorrow
Stress less
Creative solutions
Finding your way
Making it matter
Sky search
Math, maps and more
Art in the home
Let’s get cooking
Healthy relationships
Ms. Fix-it
Globe trotting
Writing for real
I quit going to girl scouts about the time I started being embarrassed to wear the uniform to school… besides softball was more fun anyway. My big brothers were scouts and got to do the cool stuff, like real camping and hiking and getting dirty… not sissy sewing and camping in a *lodge* around the lake. Lucky for me, I got to go along on a few of those neat trips my brothers participated in… tho I was sorta left out for being the kid sister and all.
😉
What about you?
Birds, Snapshots, Travels with the flock, Wanderings

Images: Barnegat Light

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Some more pics that might’ve been included in yesterday’s post…

Beth and her friend Kathy traveled all the way from Pa. and had HAD ENOUGH by the time we met in the parking lot at midday. While the weather was beautiful… usually I think of Barnegat Light as the coldest place on earth… the brisk wind had brought out the apples on sweet Beth’s cheeks.

🙂

This would, I think, make a nice quiz photo for those, like me, who are terror-stricken by shorebirds. At least in wintertime, the possibilities are somewhat limited.

Sleepy dunlin (I think… though I was at first convinced they were purple sandpipers), an orange-legged ruddy turnstone, and a sweet spotty-flanked black-belly plover.

(Take all those ID’s with a grain of salt, of course.)

I love how tame shorebirds can be in winter and am amazed with how they find comfort together on these wind-swept jetties.

Harlequins… what sweet little sea ducks!

They weren’t close in to the lighthouse this time, like they usually are…

Instead they were feeding way out at the end of the jetty, with a happy group of photographers closeby.

(I was a wimp and walked along the sand, instead of on those treacherous rocks.)

Oldsquaw (long-tailed ducks) are a favorite… for their pink-tipped bills and their calls… nothing says winter to me like that sound echoing in the wind.

The day was ended near Manahawkin with hopes for short-eared owls hunting like butterflies over the marsh at dusk.

There were none, but that matters little, really. For all the frigid sunsets I’ve lingered in to spot one with no success… the couple times I have seen them in the low-slanted light of a winter afternoon serve my memory well enough that the hope of them keeps me coming back to wait, just in case.

Birds, Snapshots, Travels with the flock, Wanderings, Whatever

Moments: Barnegat Light

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Once past the terror of the jetty rocks, a rush of wind and an expanse of space… and ducks.

Birders caught in a quandry about the identity of the long-tailed (or are they pin-tailed?) ducks paddling and diving along the inlet at Old Barney’s feet.

(A good enough reason for me to continue calling them oldsquaw… politically incorrect or no…)

The oddly painted costume of the harlequin duck is distinct and well worth the hours long drive to see them.

Random teeterings and dawdlings of dunlin, turnstone and purple sandpiper.

Tears that come at the memory of another visit here, a lifetime ago. I turn around confounded by the wall of wind… heedless of how fast and far I’ve come.

I try to imagine this place in summer, as most would know it… waves glitter a thousand small suns, the long rhythm of the surf, a herring gull’s call like a rusty pulley, the clatter and crunch of periwinkles, scallops and skate egg casings, the sight of a black skimmer slitting the seam between two worlds.

– – – – – – – – – – –

See any good birds yourself this weekend?

😉

Oh… and I ran into Beth out ogling the harlequins! Small world…

Snapshots, Wanderings

The Night Traveler

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“Passing by, he could be anybody:
A thief, a tradesman, a doctor
On his way to a worried house.
But when he stops at your gate,
Under the room where you lie half-asleep,
You know it is not just anyone —
It is the Night Traveler.
You lean your arms on the sill
And stare down. But all you can see
Are bits of wilderness attached to him —
Twigs, loam and leaves,
Vines and blossoms. Among those
You feel his eyes, and his hands
Lifting something in the air.
He has a gift for you, but it has no name.
It is windy and woolly.
He holds it in the moonlight, and it sings
Like a newborn beast,
Like a child at Christmas,
Like your own heart as it tumbles
In love’s green bed.
You take it, and he is gone.
All night — and all your life, if you are willing —
It will nuzzle your face, cold-nosed,
Like a small white wolf;
It will curl in your palm
Like a hard blue stone;
It will liquefy into a cold pool
Which, when you dive into it,
Will hold you like a mossy jaw.
A bath of light. An answer.”
–Mary Oliver, Twelve Moons
I’m not sure how it’s even possible to love a poem so much that I barely understand, but I do…
🙂
Pic from last December at the Lakota Wolf Preserve