HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

From us riverbank denizens to you…

I hope your turkey turns out perfect, that the dressing isn't too dry or the gravy lumpy, and that the whole feast is enjoyed amid a spirit of love, laughter, and thankful celebration.

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SYCAMORE PINK

The latest weather report is rain starting soon after noon, turning into heavy rain—storm warnings have been issued—more rain throughout the night, and 100% chance of rain all day tomorrow. No doubt the river will muddy and rise, and any chance of a post-Thanksgiving-feast amble to walk-off a bit of the turkey and dressing, green beans, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted mixed vegetables, fruit salad, breads, pumpkin pie, cookies, and so on and on and on, will be impossible. So will outdoor photography. 

But this morning's sunrise more than made up for a bit of rain. The top shot was the view looking east as Myladylove and I sat down to breakfast—though before eating, Moon and I made a quick detour outside for photos. The tree is the huge patriarch sycamore which I mentioned in the foggy morning post a few days ago. 

The second shot is from the exact opposite direction, looking west—with the pink sunrise light bathing the tops of the sycamores lining the bank opposite the cottage, reflecting down onto the nearly white rocks in the riffle, turning the water a sort of purple-rose, and overlaying everything else with a magenta cast. This intense color didn't lasted more than a minute or so after I stepped outside. Just long enough for a couple of quick snaps.

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SAMARAS & SUNLIGHT

I've been working at my desk since about 8:30 a.m. Between today's stint and an even longer session Saturday, I'm glad to say everything got finished and fired off to the various editors. I also included a cheery missive outlining my plans—in lurid and succulent detail—for the 23-pound turkey now resting on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator come Thanksgiving. The idea was to have them drooling on their iPads and suffering from hunger pains as punishment for not giving me an earlier heads-up when they decided to shorten my deadlines. I covered side dishes as well as the main course. Plus desserts. Editors tend to live on junk food, are perpetually hungry, and drool like Rottweilers at the mere mention of anything edible.  

During one of today's few breaks, Moon the dog and I stepped outside for perhaps five minutes. I made one photo…which was of the afternoon sun shining through clusters of box elder seeds in a bankside tree about fifty feet from the cottage. 

Actually, what you're seeing is not the true seed but the paired samaras, or "keys," each a couple of inches long, with the half-inch seed located at the base where the samara connects to the raceme's stem. These little winged seed packages were spinning and flying every which way on today's gusty winds—planting themselves, no doubt, by the tens of thousands. Which still leaves hundreds of thousands of box elder keys for the squirrels to nibble.

You know, I'll bet several of those editors I emailed are about now to the point where they'd gladly munch box elder seeds. What a pity I couldn't email them a bag… 

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A THANKFUL HEART

On the porch beneath a clabbered sky

I watch the day turn gold and slip away,

while gray squirrels rustle through leaves 

browning beneath the big hackberry, and 

chilled air carries a hint of woodsmoke.

Somewhere well upstream, geese are 

honking on the wing, sharp yelps 

marking their homeward passage 

through twilight's steady gathering.

Another unveiled autumn plays out

as we rest in mild circadian confusion,

aware—though circumspect 

in our affected silence—that November 

will run its course and winter waits ahead.

Doesn't winter always wait ahead?

Isn't the still season of ice and cold and 

keening wind always where years take us?

Is that why we make the time during

autumn's summation to gather 'round 

a familiar table, bow our heads, and

declare our thanks before having our feast?

Do we celebrate in gratitude or prudence,

mindful that our lot is good, yet uneasy 

we might have claimed too much credit

for the cornucopia we're about to enjoy?

The river is the color of old pewter in 

the waning light, divided into many 

small channels—a shredded ribbon, 

whispering as it finds it way between stones.

Such beauty. And there, in the quiet eventide, 

with a full moon rising to light the night, 

I recount my blessings before the holy stars—

and pray I might always keep a thankful heart.   

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FOGGY SATURDAY MORNING

It's a foggy morning here along the riverbank. The treeline along the opposite side of the channel between the cottage and the island is all but invisible. Sycamores and box elders rise like ghosts from the pale mist. Mallards thirty yards downstream, doubtless paddling about their favorite pool, quack unseen, their voices loud in the cloistered silence of the enveloping fog.

Moon the dog and I amble about—she busily snuffling through the piles of wet brown leaves, while I try to find things to photograph. In the treetops overhead, a squirrel pauses to balance on a twig and check us out.

Over by the board fence which marks the southern boundary of my streamside acre, the patriarch sycamore, a huge, towering specimen that is easily old enough to have been around when the Founding Fathers drew up the U.S. Constitution in 1787, loomed mysteriously, its topmost branches fading, spectral, almost vaporous, as if they were simply merging into and becoming one with the fog.

If I had more time, this would be a great morning to grab the camera gear, jump into the truck, and go driving around making fog shots. But…I have to work. All my editors suddenly decided yesterday that with Thanksgiving coming on Thursday, they'd like to have my columns in no later than Tuesday—in case they decide to take off from Wednesday through Sunday for the holiday. Seeing as how I have almost all of Tuesday filled with appointments, and things to do on Sunday, that leaves today and Monday to get a week's worth of work completed. 

Alas, I suppose I'd better get to work…

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SQUIRREL PERILS

The past few days have been rather perilous to the local gray squirrel population. 

It began last week when I glanced out the window and saw a neighbor's cat proudly parading across the yard with a limp squirrel dangling from its jaws. Various cats are regular visitors here, attracted by birds coming to the feeders I have stationed about. For the most part, they're laughably unsuccessful. The birds keep a sharp lookout, plus there's not a lot of handy cover for concealment in the final critically-close range, and thus the long-distance rush-to-dinner usually ends with all birds making their escape well before the gonzo cats closes in. A bit of frustrated tail-swishing by the empty-clawed cat typically follows, which I find quite amusing.   

Not the squirrel catcher…just catching a catnap in the wheelbarrow.

 Yes, now and then a cat does manage to pull it off. Not often, however; I'd say the ratio is maybe fifty rushes to one caught bird. 

Squirrels seemed practically bulletproof—way too quick of reflexes, too speedy afoot, and too good at sudden direction changes. This is the very first time I've seen a cat catch a squirrel here at the cottage—and to be fair, I didn't actually witness the cat make the kill. For all I know, the squirrel could have met it's demise up on the road by bouncing off the bumper of a Buick.

Of course, the cat was just being a predator. Mouse, bird, squirrel…eats are eats. Everyone has to eat.

I hold the same attitude towards birds of prey. So when I looked out the same window a few days later and saw a redtail hawk land in the yard next to the river, maybe a dozen feet from the cottage door—a gray squirrel clutched in it talons, the only thing that upset me was that I'd left my camera in the pickup. I knew there wasn't a glimmer of hope that I'd be able to sneak out the back door and retrieve it, get back to the window, and make a photo without spooking the big hawk. 

The redtail, a juvenile, sat on its kill for nearly fifteen minutes. At first it held its wings out, not fully extended, but sort of wrapped around its prey as if hiding it from view. Later it folded its wings back into place. I didn't see any struggles coming from the squirrel, so possibly the hawk was just being cautious. Every so often the hawk looked down, though it never tried to reposition its grip on the squirrel. But most of the time the bird kept a constant watch all around in every direction, head swiveling this way and that, scrutinizing everything. 

A different redtail (I think) taken a few days later.

About midways through this fifteen minute sit, a gray squirrel—one of several which had hunkered in the tree from which the hawk had snatched the hapless squirrel, and under which the bird now sat holding the unfortunate victim—came down the trunk, shaking it bushy tail and squacking loudly at the hawk. The irate squirrel approached to within four or five feet of the hawk. All the redtail could do was glare at the squirrel and take what I'm sure was a good cussing. I thought that was a pretty fearless act on the part of the gray squirrel.

Finally, the redtail flew off, the squirrel hanging like a fuzzy banner below its legs. 

Incident three came this morning. Again, I witnessed it—the final milliseconds, anyway—through my deskside window. I was watching several squirrels chasing one another through the tops of the big sycamores along the river. Suddenly a blur caught my eye, which I realized was a falling squirrel. I didn't see the point from which the fall began, or know the reason it occurred…but I saw the final fifty-foot plunge, and heard the whap when the squirrel hit the ground—barely missing the upturned wheelbarrow—thirty feet from where I sat.

It isn't the first falling squirrel I've witnessed by a long shot. I've watched plenty of squirrels fall from power lines, treetops, off building, and bridges, and poles. Once I saw a squirrel attempt to jump from the top of a hundred-foot-tall cottonwood to a rocky cliff outcrop twenty feet away—only to miss completing the leap by several feet. What I've seldom seen, however, including the cottonwood-to-cliff attempt, was such a fall proving fatal. And this morning's plummet was no exception. After a minute or two of stunned immobility, the squirrel hopped over to the box elder near the front door, scampered up to a comfortable limb, and sat for awhile—considering, assessing, recovering? Whatever it is a squirrel does after such a plunge.

After the fall…

Life for a squirrel can truly be…squirrelly.

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FROST AND CHEER

This was one of those frost-on-your-pumpkin sort of mornings—although the only pumpkin hereabouts is a huge discard considerably larger than a basketball, someone apparently threw into the river a week after Halloween. 


The poor jettisoned pumpkin made it as far as the riffle in front of the cottage, where it then got stuck in the shallows between the stones—doomed to mutely await the breakdown of the flesh that eventually comes to us all…or alternately, being set free by a providential rise in the water level, thus enabled to continue on its downstream adventure.

But while pumpkins may be in short supply, brown fallen leaves, and a few green ones such as those on violets, are not. I liked the way the the frost added a delicate filagreed border around many leaf edges, dusted others like sprinkled sugar, and made the ribs on the big sycamore leaves stand out like crystalized bone. 

Somewhere in the dark tangle of cedars along the fence, a Carolina wren sang ebulliently. Chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches were busy working the feeders. The dapper chickadees seemed especially energized by the brisk-but-sunny morning. 


Of course, a bit of sunshine and a handy supply of sunflower seeds to pilfer are all any chickadee ever needs to be sent into spasms of noisy delight. I expect there's a lesson in there for all of us with our long lists of conditions that must be met before we deign to greet a new morning with even half so much honest cheer.

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