"What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye"

Wahoo! Another award from Teachings of the Horse! Thank you!

Like Victoria, I had to take a moment to appreciate the presentation of an award that is not the most exquisite aspect of human anatomy; however, I am thrilled to receive it because it symbolizes the relationship that develops between people of like interests, which is what makes blogging so wonderful.

The creator of this award says:

“The Van Gogh's Ear Award is for blogs that are making a difference in the blogosphere. Its creator said, "We are all artists in our own way, be it art, photography, writing, philosophy, comedy, or blogging, and we all go a little crazy sometimes. But if you ever feel so crazy to cut off your ear and give it to a prostitute, "Seek Help"! Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else."

To give my writing muses a poke, I examined the award and studied the curling messages: "Outstanding artists, achievement, art photography writing philosophy comedy blogging The Very Best." and am humbled to be included. While I know the sad story of the great artist’s sufferings and his passionate self mutilation for the love of his Rachel, there was an elusive “something” in the mists of my mind that would not come out.

I put the thought on the “back burner,” and went to work, dealt with meetings, a building emergency, an angry colleague, computers not working properly. I started planning out the weekend with its errands stacking up: Bring Simba to the vet for his diabetes check-up, map out next week’s groceries and what’s on sale, clean the house, pick up ten million branches and twigs dropped by the winter winds in preparation of spring clean-up, 3-mile exercise walk around the lake, riding lesson Sunday...and then I smiled, wondering which horse I would be riding this week.

My mind drifted off to last week’s session on “Quarterback,” and our difficult but successful practice of listening to each other to figure out what the other one was asking, and the satisfaction of feeling my body responding to something beyond itself. It’s the same wordless joy I feel when out watching birds and following their lives through binoculars. Simply put, I leave myself behind to enter another dimension, one I cannot see but whose energy enters mine through the willingness to listen without words. Listening through the filter of loving what you love.

As Antoine De Saint-Exupery in the Little Prince so eloquently put it:

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Exercise Rider

I am getting motivated to make my body stronger. Why now, after months of languishing, ignoring the treadmill and watching the dust wads grow on the free weights?

Because I just opened my second bottle of Aleve. I rely on it for mobility for two days after one half hour riding lesson. As an older returning rider, there are new places to discover pain and stiffness after you spend some time on the back of a horse, especially one very sweet Quarter Horse/Draft gelding who doesn’t want to move. After some time on his back trying to get him to go forward, I feel the same way. But really, I have got to get better about this both for myself and for any horse I am riding. It’s time to push myself as much as I am pushing them. Besides, I get frustrated feeling “sloppy” in the saddle and know with improved core strength and flexibility; I will be more confident and able to give clearer signals to the horse. It will bring me closer to my mental image of myself as a safe, poised rider, rather than a discombobulated Raggedy Ann. Anything to help coordinate myself through space while perched on someone else’s four legs who weighs half a ton and has its own brain.

Whooping Cranes and Hope

Victoria Cummings of Teachings of the Horse forwarded a link to the New York Times article by Jon Mooallem about Whooping Crane migration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/magazine/22cranes-t.html?exprod=myyahoo

Ken’s brother sent me a different article about them from his local Florida newspaper. Both describe the incredible journey these birds have made from the brink of extinction, though they are still holding on by a wing and a prayer. Literally. And the wing is an ultralight aircraft.

The Whooping Crane eggs are hatched in the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, and then the chicks are sent to the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin where they are tended by humans dressed in long white robes who feed them with Whooping Crane puppet heads to prevent the the birds from imprinting on humans. By August, the human “parents” teach them how to fly and prepare them to migrate to southern climes. Whooping Cranes do not migrate instinctively. If the parent cranes are not around to show the chicks the way, or even to go at all, they stay where they are. Mooallem’s article describes the elaborate chain of ultralight planes and volunteers and secret crane hiding places that have been developed to carve the migration track into the birds’ brains. It is only needed once. After that, they get it and fly back in the spring on their own, this time able to fly at higher elevations than the ultralight planes are capable of, and catching the thermals for long distance, low energy soaring.

The author writes about “conservation-reliant species,” which is wildlife reintroduced into its original habitat but that will likely not survive without continued human intervention that caused its near extinction in the first place. We cannot carve out a chunk of habitat and put it aside and then and walk away to pour the congratulatory champagne.

When I read this on-going saga of the cranes and the people who are working so hard to save them, I have to sit back in amazement. These men and women and their families are dedicating their lives to a species that may or may not survive in the long run. The Whooping Cranes are the poster birds for conservation-reliant species.

The words of a woman who once wrote me in response to one of my published articles about nature plague me. She said: “These are the end times,” and mourned on about how wildlife and wild places are disappearing from the earth forever, but also how grateful she was to be of an advanced age because she would be gone before the worst of it.

It was a depressing note. You are a sad woman, I thought, and you’re wrong. In a cleaning frenzy before a house move, I threw the note away. But that sentence is stuck in my brain. If we are now teaching birds to fly and to migrate, if we are creating and maintaining “conservation-reliant species,” I wonder if she might not have a point.

When I hold that dreary thought up against the efforts of these people who dedicate their lives to holding on to a species against all odds of long-term survival, I wonder about the energy behind it. They do not bow to the long term hopelessness or wallow in the very real possibility that the Whooping Cranes will probably never stand on their own again as a species, but plan and organize and sacrifice and every year fly their noisy machines before of a flock of five foot birds to lead them to a tomorrow that might never happen.

Are their efforts are ultimately futile? Or does this dogged refusal to quit signify a dim light in a very dark tunnel that there is something more to the human spirit than ruining everything in its path?

Riding Again!

After weeks of bad weather, scheduling conflicts and bouts with minor health issues, I finally got back to the barn yesterday for my weekend riding lessons. Tequila, my usual mount, was lollygagging in the outdoor ring with his pals to recover from a minor injury, so I was instructed to tack up another school horse named "Quarterback." (Sorry, no photos. I didn’t want to bother anyone at the barn who are all busy doing their own thing).

One of the few advantages of not owning your own horse is that you get used to getting on different animals and can make adjustments to their quirks fairly readily. Experience gives you a bigger toolbox. It doesn’t bother me to be riding one horse with his particular habits for weeks at a time, and then be handed another with a whole new set. This time, I was told Quarterback, whose gene pool includes a mysterious mix of Quarter Horse and an anonymous draft breed, does not like to move much. My instructor handed me a crop and said: “You’ll have to work for every stride.”

She wasn’t kidding. I pushed the entire lesson. I do not like to carry stuff when riding but had to resort to the crop a couple of times (I accidentally hit myself another couple of times). I am also out of shape so it was unfair to blame the horse for my lack of coordination. Even so, despite my near heart attack conditions, we managed to get up a smart trot that surprised the instructor and pleased me. The canter, not so good. We squeezed out a few strides before I was an exhausted wet noodle. But despite what could have been a frustrating lesson, I was still happy. I was on a good and honest horse with an adorable personality and the knowledge that I was where I most wanted to be in the whole wide world. My riding attitude is much different now than years ago; I am just grateful to be in a saddle at all.

New Jersey Flower Show

We looked forward to a taste of early spring this Saturday at the New Jersey Flower Show. What displays will greet us when we walk in the door? What piles of golden hope lay in wait for us after these winter months? Who will tempt us with tiny basil plants to place on a window sill, gift us with a ruby tulip, or hand us a packet of zucchini seeds?

I have not been to the Flower Show in many years and do not want to complain that it was “better then....” But after a half dozen displays of daffodils (my personal favorite), singing pansy faces (Ken's favorite), amaryllis, and the heady perfume of hyacinths, the rest of the Convention Hall was dedicated to selling shower heads, painted plastic frogs, culinary equipment, sour cream dips, tablecloths, outdoor grills, framed dead butterflies, and jewelry. My friend finally found someone who actually sold seeds at a flower show, where she happily purchased the promise of pumpkins, zucchini, and candy-colored nasturtiums that she will plant in a few weeks.

I would go again, despite the slim flower vendor pickin’s. And from the number of buses pulling up at the door and the long wait at the ticket booth, it seems others will too. Perhaps it is a sign of winter break-up. It is the same line we are all waiting on, for spring.

Skywatch Friday

I am willing to bet that despite the negative reputation of the Canada geese, a flock calling overhead has stopped you in your tracks, and a part of your heart flies with them. Do you ever wonder where YOU will be when the geese fly north again?
Go to Skywatch for more photos from our big, old earth!

Wordless Wednesday

Retreat

Barnegat Lighthouse

I do not affiliate with any particular religion but accepted an invitation from a friend who was leading a church retreat at the NJ shore. I enjoy meeting other people, and a gathering of women is almost always a good thing. I was not sure how comfortable it would be; however, to be “talking God” with people who all know each other from their home parish but my friend readily agreed when I told her I might not attend all the sessions. In the back of my mind, I was clicking off the nearby places that sheltered the northern shorebirds bouncing the winter away on the waves of the Atlantic coastline.

In truth, I experience God not so much in the formality of liturgy but in the Law of the natural world. I can trust that water will always run downhill. I know the leaves will change color in the fall. I know the oak trees will spill their acorns, and some will thrive and some will not. So after the morning session, when one woman shared her story of faith despite a heartbreaking series of events that included the death of a 17 day-old granddaughter and everyone around our table murmured grateful prayers of God’s love, I could only contemplate about how really pissed off I was at him at the moment. So after checking in with my friend, I left. I retreated from the Retreat House.

I drove south to Barnegat Lighthouse, tromped down the sidewalk to the mile-long platform of Volkswagen-sized boulders and hopped, skipped and jumped from one to the next with my binoculars and camera slung around my neck and a telescope balanced over my left shoulder. Just went out with my wild lone, slipping through the afternoon moments like the loons under the waves. A flock of Long-tailed Ducks sparkled in the distance. Strings of Brant slid along the side wall of the rocks. When I finally reached the end of the pier where the waves were pushing the rising tide toward shore, I almost fell to my knees in amazement at the shocking cinnamon of the Harlequin ducks.

It was my kind of gratitude: The earth and all who are assembled in it, the seaweed floating in cold water, the hiss and slap of ocean waves, alabaster shells, the brittle field grass, the incoming tide fingering its way into the dark secrets of the rocky pier. It is a fire in my bones, a lusty love affair with sea and sky, trail and timber. These are my prayer books, my devotions, my communion.

Harlequin Ducks

Harlequin Drake
The Universe at work.

Long-tailed Ducks (once fondly known as Oldsquaws)
Brant

Rough-legged Hawks

Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge

Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge

Rough-legged Hawks, Merlins, Kestrels and Northern Harriers have been spotted in the Black Dirt Region of New York, not far from where I live. They have also been spotted, along with two Snowy Owls, in the New Jersey Meadowlands. So when my friend invited me to join her to spend Sunday afternoon standing outside in the snow and ice and freezing cold, I happily collected up the books, binoculars, scope, water, gloves, boots, hat and super-duper-wazzooey warm coat.

My friend is an excellent driver. I would go anywhere with her. But you’ve got to have some nerve about you when driving with a birder (especially when you're the lone birder/driver) and even more so if the car is equipped with a moon roof, that lovely pane of glass in the top that allows you to see soaring raptors in a blue sky. Since a good driver is alert for peripheral motion, it is not uncommon for them to spot a bird before a passenger, as my friend did…

“What was that?” she exclaimed as her hands gripped the wheel of the jeep. She leaned her head back to look at the sky, and then twisted to the left to peer out the side. “I haven’t seen a Rough-legged in years; don’t they fly with a shallow dihedral? Or was that a Turkey Vulture? There it is again!”

I fought the iron grip of the seat belt. Damn! I tried to follow her gaze but the strap kept me from turning around to look out the back window.

“There! It’s right there! I think it IS a Rough-legged! Oh…it’s beautiful!” she sighed as she steered the jeep to the right side of the road.

I unsnapped the seat belt and spun around. There it was, a magnificent Rough-legged Hawk, about 20 inches long, with a wingspan of about 53 inches, named for the feathers covering its legs (the only other two American hawks with feathered legs are the Ferruginous Hawk and the Golden Eagle). We could see its pale flight feathers with the dark trailing edge of its wings, and even the black marks on its “wrists.” Its tail was white at the base but we couldn’t quite make out the banding from this distance.

Rough-legged hawks breed in the Arctic tundra and taiga regions of the northern hemisphere (where they sometimes use caribou bones for nesting material) but have traveled south in search of food. Judging by the number of raptors we saw in a few hours last Sunday afternoon, they were finding enough to stick around.

Both light and dark morph Rough-legged Hawks hovered over the frozen fields of the Wallkill. They hunted the same fields where the Northern Harriers floated and dipped for prey. American Tree and Song Sparrows hunkered under frozen stalks of goldenrod and ragweed and phragmite to avoid being the next meal.

My little camera cannot do justice to these birds. For more information, go to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It is a spectacular raptor! Keep an eye out for one, but be careful if you’re driving….

The Jewels of Winter

January is finally over. January, the most frigid, frozen wasteland of days in the year. Since it heralds the official beginning to the Gregorian calendar, it is often heralded as a time of well-intentioned resolutions, but for me, January holds out little hope of change, just like its hard, harsh weather. I do not like the month of January, not because it’s winter but for its endless days of unrelenting, white sameness. No holidays to break it up (my company does not close on MLK Day) and since I prefer to hoard my precious vacation time for later in the year, no days off work either.

To break up the monotony, I went to the library yesterday after the usual Saturday errands to pick up some books and cuddle in a chair next a wall-sized window that affords a spectacular view of a snowy, silent field. The sun was slanting west, leaning into tomorrow’s considerations, and I relaxed into a comfortable chair for some quality reading/writing time.

Suddenly, one of the trees started twinkling. I sat up and looked closer. The rays of the sun were highlighting the icy twigs of the branches. A mixed flock of Eastern Bluebirds and Cedar Waxwings were flitting through.

I bolted out of the library and galloped over the mounds of snow and ice to the edge of the parking lot to see these jewels of winter. And traded in reading and writing time for looking and listening time.