High Water Mark

The dry days of summer, this year have not come.
Even now, my path to the pond and beyond remains a winding one—
taking the higher ground, hugging the fence line as it reaches toward the field behind the barn—
never coursing straight across, for the lush green grass of an April day grows there still.
And through the blades, where each step would be quickly consumed, the heat of the day dances in small flashes of light, on inky puddles.

A crack has grown in the center of the gravel drive.
From a small trickle weeks ago, with each deluge, carving a deeper path down our hill, as the waters race toward the small stream roaring across the road. Removing one stone after another, widening the wash. Until a small canyon now welcomes our guests at the road’s edge.

Question Mark Butterfly, Polygonia interrogationis

Ebony jewelwing damselfly, Calopteryx maculata

But the higher waters can carry us , too.
Further back,
deeper than ever before,
into creek beds we’ve never explored.
Beyond the gravel bars that, on most August days, jut from the water—
draw a line you may not cross.

Here, with its only access the water,
a celebration seldom seen—
those flowers of the hidden summer streamside.

American Water Willow, Justicia americana

Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata

Sharpwing Monkey Flower, Mimulus alatus

In a mass of roots on an exposed bank, a 4-foot long Northern Water Snake was well-hidden, too.
It looks as if he's chosen the roughness there to slough off his outgrown skin.
Can you see it beginning to loosen from the top of his head?

Rain

Lichens and Fungi on dead log

The bright color brought me there, subtle beauty kept me, hunkered down, after rains had passed, on the narrow bank beside a tiny creek. This area untouched by the years’ changes, woods to pasture to scrub. Intact land, preserved as all around it lost to agriculture—these small plots still stand, saved because they could not serve.

White Trillium, Trillium grandiflorum

In air dripping with the sweetness of fruit blossoms, more wildflowers, natives here, beneath the old trees marking the small creek’s path.
Nodding beneath the heavy droplets,
their broad leaves drinking in spring.
While toads add their voices, each to the growing trill, the melancholy chords, build in a distant pond.

White Trillium
The Ohio State Wild Flower

I pass a neighbor’s yard, each evening, as I walk down our lane. His woods, old like mine, now raked bare, piles burned, the dark earth turned and prepared to seed—grass.
And I wonder if he has chosen to rid the banks of these old beauties,
or if he has not seen them as I have--
on a dim morning, drinking in the spring rain.

Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum

Mayapple, not yet unfurled

Finishing

Mother Maple in Snow

Several snows have teased us, keeping us poised on the edge of spring, refreshing winter’s grip.
Almost daily, leaving a light covering taken again,
as if to say, “Not so soon.”
Patience for spring, tried and failing.

Carried slowly forward in the steps of this process, I know that its conclusion marks the arrival of spring. That, each day, and with each step, the grip is loosened.

The final step in the process of making maple syrup, aptly called “finishing,” takes the evaporated sap from the pan outdoors and brings it to the proper density indoors, over the stove. Of the entire operation, from the tapping of the trees until the syrup lines our shelves as amber in glass, this final step requires the most precision.


Out come the fancy tools of the trade, wrapped carefully in tissue and kept in a drawer, safely aside from all the other heavy kitchen utensils that might break its delicate, glass form. The hydrometer—a weighted float, calibrated and marked in fine black and red lines along its hollow, slender stem, to measure the specific gravity, the liquid’s density relative to that of water. And a hydrometer cup—a tall, thin, metal container that will hold a column of liquid for testing.
Hot liquid, ladled from a pot on the stove, and into the cup, is checked often, until the hydrometer floats in the column to just the right mark.

Boiling on stove

Hydrometer floating in hot liquid

Not dense enough, and mold may form over time within the saved liquid.
Too dense, and crystals may form within the jars.


So, as we are “finishing,”
so is winter, wrapping itself up,
releasing, finger by finger, its grasp.
And leaving us with amber in glass.

Amber in Glass

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From Beneath the Roses (SWF)

Ice melting at roof's edge

Snow—it comes and goes.
And, when you think you’ve caught that scent of spring on a passing breeze, you’re fooled.
Six weeks of winter, indeed.

Icicles, heavy on barn gutter

We wait beneath a freshly laid blanket, crisp and white.
But what the groundhog must have seen,
on that day, warm as April…
Can you imagine?

Close-ups taken beneath this Mulitflora Rose
all click to enlarge

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The Power of One

Teasel, bent at fence

Frozen

Mailboxes in the Morning

Mounds line the edges of the roads, a crusty ridge, where Wednesday’s snow was left by the township plow--a small truck with a blade. The face through the frosted windshield, the grown version of a boy I remember seeing on the playground, years ago, behind the small school at the end of the road. Not much by measure, the snow, probably less than 6 inches—but able to close down this community and most around it, in a single snowfall. The boy, now man, splitting time behind the wheel of fire truck and plow, an integral part of this rural landscape.

Ice on Golden Alexanders

With a shortage of salt this year, county roads are barely passable, the accumulation, hardened now by traffic, into dense, immovable ice. Schools have been closed for several days, businesses empty of their patrons.
And the open farm fields, that rarely disappear entirely beneath white, are trimmed by drifts extending across the ditches with graceful, wind-carved arms.

Snow on Pasture Grass

Like the dunes at the edges of the oceans, where countless grains rest and nestle together, strong until just one is dislodged--then broken and blown on the wind.

When our fields wear white, I wander,
and search until I find just one.
So fragile,
so fleeting,
so powerful,
that I would hold my breath to save it.

Can you see just one?

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Snow Angels

This afternoon's snow

I cheer for the few little flakes—
small clumps, actually, that fall ever so slowly on bare grass.
Like the lightest small feathers shaken loose.
Barely there.


Last week's dusting of snow is already gone, the yard soft and muddy from yesterday's hint of spring. And, though part of me waits eagerly for longer, fragrant days and the life that erupts madly with the first warm, spring rain, I’m always sad to see it go.

Snow holds so many precious memories--
of little angels.

Last week's snow

with Black Walnut shell

with Sycamore button

on gravel drive

All Alone

Empty Trails
Cincinnati Nature Center

The Frozen Falls on Avey's Run

It accentuates the absence of all else—the sound of a drip into water, round and clean, against the backdrop of stillness. While, throughout the darkened house, all other activities pause.
The silence then, so great, that it becomes, instead of absence, its own presence—a tangible thing.
Rarely unspoiled.

I ventured out into Friday’s frigid air and roamed the trails, alone. For these woods, so loved by so many on any other day, today, were barren.
And, beneath hat and hood, the stillness, very strange.

Several times I stopped and stood, puffing warm air into cupped hands and letting it rise to wash my face in steamy clouds. And found myself dressed in frosty lashes, squinting against the brightness of a cloudless January sky.

Watching Deer

In the distance, the call of a Barred Owl, this wintry day, his. And I imagined him fluffed against the cold somewhere, hidden against the brown and white of densely crossed winter branches, still.
While deer, frozen forms on a sheltered hillside, watched me pass.

Winter Light on Avey's Run

I hopped across the crossing stones frozen in the thick white stillness of the creek bed of Avey’s Run, the low light casting long shadows onto the steep hillsides on either side. All alone in the depths of these woods, I knelt in the middle on the cold and slippery surface. The waters that roar here each spring, now still.
To listen to the silence of the winter woods.
Drip, drip, dripping beneath me.

Ice