Day 31 Outdoors: Among the Pioneers

Thursday, October 25, 2012, 8-9 a.m.

Came the wind in the night and blew the leaves off maple trees and lindens. (Ash and walnut were already bare; catalpa yet in leaf.) Wind continued as the sky grew light, glowing rose in both east and west. Ribbons of cloud over the eastern woods now turn from pink to pewter grey.

A band of hardy little popples venture out from the bank above the stream, seeking to colonize the meadow, along with a few small cottonwoods and two or three autumn olives that escaped the spring purge. Among the grasses, purple asters, milkweed, and Queen Anne’s-lace are also the much-less-welcome spotted knapweed. This is how it is with any invasion of pioneers: all sorts pour in.

The wind arrives in a series of gusty, irregular waves. Each wave begins first as a far-off drone, rising to a dull roar, and then becoming at last a whispering and rattling and clattering in the closest leaves and grasses. The air feels as soft and fresh as early summer, but its perfume is that of fall, dense with mould and rich with decay. Milkweed seeds escape their pods and chase about, catching on other weeds like bits of wool at the edge of a sheep pasture, fluttering incessantly.

Is that a bird in the willows? A quarrelsome squirrel? The sound goes on and on. Perhaps it is the rubbing of wind-tossed branches. The willows, their heights gradually lighted by the rising sun, toss heavy-leafed branches about like wild horses nodding and shaking heavy-maned heads.

Somewhere out of sight a flock of Canada geese passes overhead. The old farmhouse and barns watch over the meadow with stoic calm. They have seen many autumns.

Day 29 Outdoors: Another Sunrise Over the Meadow

Tuesday, September 25, 7:30-8:45 a.m.

After several chilly days of rain, yesterday was clear and sunny with gale-force winds. At last, this morning, both clear sky and calm stillness came together. Before sunrise there was hardly a breeze stirring and only a few fleecy, small clouds near the horizon.

This time of year the meadow is a dessicated miniature jungle, a tangle of drying stalks and leaves and seeds. Queen-Anne’s lace has curled up to shape itself into brittle bird’s-nest cages, and the little grey-headed coneflowers have dropped their petals, leaving heavy, dark seedheads that bow the tall stems. Grasses rustle, their heads also heavy with seed, leaves beginning to curl.

A little bird throws its voice like a ventriloquist, sounding first here, then there, but always just out of sight. There are crows in the middle distance, calling to each other on crow business. Canada geese wing by overhead. One unbalanced V flies south, its left leg longer than its right, and half an hour later a ragged line of more geese crosses the sky from east to west, their voices audible long before they come into sight.

As the sun comes up over the dark trees of the eastern woods, it creates a band of light on the meadow, leaving the intermediate orchard trees in shade. Higher and higher climbs the sun, and as it climbs a breeze starts up and keeps pace, stirring the leaves of maple, popple, and catalpa more vigorously as the light increases. Finally the sun is blazing through the weeds. It lights up strands of spiderweb that tremble and gleam and dance. Morning has broken.

Day 27 Outdoors: A Wealth of Late Summer Weeds

Sunday evening, 6:40-8:00 p.m.

The air is densely humid, weighing heavily on the warm, fading, late summer world of green, and filling the heaviness is the constant, high-pitched humming of insects, most of it at the far upper range of human hearing, like a ringing in the ears. A steady buzz at the highest pitch is underlaid by a slightly lower trill, and beneath that comes, at intervals, a chirping. Besides the insect songs and an occasional crow’s call, distant “guns” break the stillness from time to time as an overcast day slips toward its end. It is too late in the season for the loud reports to be aimed at frightening deer out of the orchards, so they must be intended to keep deer, raccoons, and crows out of the still-ripening field corn south of Kovarik Road.

One stalk of milkweed is almost an entire world. Like the air—and like the season itself--milkweed pods, still green but with their green fading to grey and a soft, subtle lavender appearing along their veined bellies, are swelled full with ripening seed. The pods are soft and supple at this stage. They are all business, preparing for another season’s life, but the angles of their connection to the plant stalks is whimsical to the human eye. The leaves are another matter. Taken as an individual, each single leaf is a marvelous instance of nature’s complexity. Rather like the shell of a turtle shell in shape and veining, it displays irregular rows of tiny cells between veins, and along the veins daylight comes through the leaf wondrously.

Goldenrod is equally complicated. A single clump of tiny flowers at the end of one branching plant is rich with dusty yellow pollen, and the branch and then the plant must be multiplied many times to get an idea of only one stand among the other late summer weeds—spotted knapweed going all stiff and prickly, Queen Anne’s lace drying to brittle birds’ nests, wild grapevine still green and lush and luxurious as it spreads through the rest.

Gradually the grey clouds move off to the east, leaving blue sky and smaller, softer white clouds at day’s end. A tiny breeze rises to stir the mulberry leaves, and the grasses and goldenrod sway. Like a benediction, the last light of day pours over the west end of the barn and the bank of willows along the stream.

Day 5 Outdoors: On High Ground, Creekside

Tuesday, January 31, 1:40-3:15 p.m.

Mild temperatures brought a serious thaw, reducing snow on the ground and increasing snowmelt. The small stream north of our farmhouse has no name but shows on county maps, its source not far east, over on the other side of Jelinek Road. From there it meanders through orchard, woods, open fields and more woods. Small and easily overlooked, it nevertheless offers a great deal of variety along a relatively short length.

Flowing briefly north at the base of wooded hills to the east, the stream crosses a low, waterlogged area (not a fully developed bog or marsh but soggy walking) before falling in a very minor cataract to a lower level, and there it enters another small bit of woods and turns west again. A few cedars and pines crowd the north bank, rising to a large stand of pines further uphill. 

Wild roses and red osiers tangle among fallen trees and branches on the south bank as the stream cuts deeper, heading for a wide, low area overhung with old willows. Beyond the willows it crosses open land, through an old homestead and cattle pasture, before flowing beneath the highway and through more woods to reach Lake Michigan.

The sheltered stretch between insignificant waterfall and giant willows attracts wildlife, and their tracks through the snow—deer and coyote, mostly—come at the creek almost at right angles, trails purposeful and straight from orchard and across meadow. The surface of the snow, both in the open and under the trees, is dimpled now with small craters, shrunken heavily down to earth, pulled by the weight of crystals becoming liquid again. As the crystals melt, they leave their impurities behind. Trees here are on the scrubby side—small, lichen-garbed maples, shallow-rooted quaking aspen (locally known as ‘popple’), young ash trees and now and again a black cherry, straight and tall, its high clusters of fruit black now in midwinter. Many trees have lost limbs. Some entire trees have been felled by wind since autumn. At the base of each standing tree today is a hollow in the snow.

In the current thaw, the little creek itself, ice-covered four weeks ago, is darkly visible between its steep, snowy, brush-tangled banks. Certain stretches look almost still, reflecting as perfectly as a mirror the branches above, silt and dead leaves settled to the bottom, a bed that shows dark brown, almost black beneath the clear, cold water. In other stretches, where the flow is obstructed by fallen branches or tumbles of rock, the creek talks quietly to itself. Those sounds today are too slight to be called gurgling. The word purling describes the sound better. A quiet, gentle murmur.

When the breeze catches them, dangling clusters of tiny rosehips (red, orange, yellow) bounce in the winter air, while high off the ground the top branches of pine trees sway in a stronger wind, sending their sharp, resiny odor abroad in soft, passing bursts. The wind has left the mark of its work on several trees—places where a neighboring branch has rubbed and rubbed, sanding away the bark to expose the underlying cambium layer.

Here on the south bank, outside the tangle of trees, there are dry grasses, Queen-Anne’s-lace and thistles bobbing and whispering in intermittent sunlight. Each thistle is a miracle of complexity.

From out on the highway comes the noise of traffic. From far to the southwest, southwest of Claudia’s woods, comes the yipping of coyotes.