Monday, February 20,
3:10-4:10 p.m.
The view north from the hill
(our shared driveway runs along it) is both panoramic and intimate. In center
foreground is the little no-name creek where it comes out of the willow thicket
and crosses open pasture and the old homestead. Immediately upstream are the
huge, old willows, just downstream our neighbor’s Scottish longhorn cattle and
old buildings—unpainted sheds, the old house--of two generations back of her
husband’s family. Stretching “straight” north is cherry orchard, rows of bare
trees in February a deep plum color against patches of snow, deeper the farther
back one looks in the receding row, where individual trees are lost in a fuzzy,
magenta-purple mass. Almost to the center horizon is a farther group of
willows, their branches a vivid orange-yellow, while off to the northeast from
those willows lie yet more distant hills, each less detailed than the one
before it, until finally deep blue claims the farthest shadowed reaches. On a
sunny, clear winter day, cold breezes from nearby Lake Michigan make for a
chill in the air.
But to look north from here
is to gaze on a slant, as Newtonian straight lines seem all to be laid on an
angle here. This is owing to the shoreline of Lake Michigan as it tapers
gradually to the end of the peninsula, and the slanted impression is
accentuated by hills and perspective. Rows of cherry trees follow the curves of
hills and converge upon another at the ends of their blocks. Lines of old fence
posts stagger off-plumb as if the posts will collapse any minute like ranks of
drunken soldiers. The newer, taller fences, built to keep deer out of the
orchards, also form irregular quadrilaterals, not simple squares or rectangles.
At this distance, the cattle
are almost abstract in shape. Shaggy-coated and long-horned, they animate the
view with their slow, Paleolithic pace, their occasional deliberate steps
bringing about a rearrangement of elements in the kaleidoscopic scene. The
three are burnished russet, a color like the Crayola crayon ‘burnt sienna,’ and
the last a soiled off-white. Massive shoulders and chests taper to narrow hindquarters and long tails.
Off to the north a chickadee
calls. Backlit by afternoon sun, two small birds in the tallest ash tree along
the driveway (all the ash trees volunteer growth) twitter and fuss before
moving on with quick, swooping darts. From upstream there is the sound of
steadier bird activity, and once something large and white and graceful flies
overhead, a gull or a snow bunting. Soon, in spring, the tangle of trees and brush
upstream will be filled with birdsong, echoing and bouncing as if the cut
through which the stream flows were a brass bowl. Soon, but not yet. In the
snow between driveway the drop to stream and lower orchard are trails of deer,
but the deer are too wary to venture across this open ground in midafternoon.
Below, on the bank of the
snow-covered stream, a pile of rocks bears witness to the labor involved in the
clearing of these fields. Perhaps barn snakes and others are passing a sleepy
winter there.
As afternoon shadows lengthen, the
cattle lie down. Two face west, the direction of the Lake and the wind. The
third, the big white steer, faces northeast with his body but turns his head
regularly to look in the same direction as the others. Dignified, at ease, they wear
their horns like crowns.