The Field of Dreams

Reflection

I have retired.
Not in the social security sense—
that age-determined status that promises perpetual care,
the reward for life’s contributions already made.
But in the sense of taking a changed path—
to determine each day the direction for myself,
to discover that contribution yet within me.

Damsel in the grass

From a car parked beside mine, a man left the gravel lot and walked off into the woods on a narrow trail barely visible through the eagerly reaching, green spring grass. On his back, lashed to a large pack that I suspected of hiding a camera, long-legged photographic paraphernalia swung with each step, as he disappeared into the undergrowth. It is a lovely spot where a broad lake attracts folks of all sorts for fishing and birding and thought. Yet, his determined stride had taken him away from all that. The object of his pursuit, uncertain to me.

painted turtle

I had come there to walk the trail as I had always walked it.
A wide, raised bank adjacent to the water ran a straight course north. On one side, sycamore trees bent low over the still surface, their gnarled fingers pointing to newly emerging lily pads, while on the other, turtles flopped, one after another, from the sunlit spot on a log into the safety of the steadily thickening green swill. Times before, I had watched from this edge as swans approached and posed for my camera to create a picture framed by the sycamore’s reflective arching arms. On this day, however, the geese commanded the lake. In the distance, the faded ring of cattails rimming the marsh drew the barest line between two oceans of blue.
For a moment, a fancily clad crane fly drew me several feet off course, as she bumbled about on long, striped legs before finally coming to rest clumsily on a thorny cane at my feet. Above me, a pair of blue-gray gnatcatchers flitted in and out of the branches, their wheezy call the only sound along the trail.

Mute Swans on Spring Valley Lake

Canada Goose

Phantom Crane Fly

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

teneral damselfly

Returning to my car, I was reminded again of the man who had turned from the lot and set off with such purpose into the nearby woods. He had come, conquered and gone, all in the time that I had wandered the water’s edge.

So, I ducked past the brushy boughs hiding its course into the woods and followed the path he had taken, slowly and quietly, to its very end in a farmer’s field. The dirt was freshly plowed, dark and warm under the afternoon sun and it rose to a point on the horizon where earth brown met sky blue.


Some wait for fields of roses.
Days filled with dandelions will be good enough for me.

Dandelion seedheads

One of the Guys...III

Reflection

(This is part III of a story that begins here.)

While the pheasant dashed between the rows of corn stubble without so much as a pause or backward glance, I pulled the car to the side of the road and waited. The dogs, still running circles in the tangles beside me, apparently had lost him at the road’s edge. And the fact that my vehicle now stood between them and their prey’s low, escaping form had stopped their pursuit in an instant. They ran, tails wagging, back through the fence row in haphazard bounds and were gone.
I rolled off down the road—now beginning to comprehend the great gathering of pickups drawn to a small, unmarked lot, tucked several yards off a quiet, rural road on an otherwise unremarkable Friday morning.


The lot at the lake’s edge was larger and less busy.
Within minutes, I was out on the trail—a wide, mowed, grassy path that ran up the entire south side of the lake, before finally veering off into the woods and joining the marsh beyond. Beside it, thick brush filled a corridor separating the grassy path from the pavement of a well-ridden bike trail.

sycamore leaf on water

basking turtles

I could peek past their branches to see a small, shallow pool where fallen logs collected leaves and spots of sunshine drew turtles from beneath its thick, green surface to bask in an autumn afternoon.

katydid

Autumn Meadowhawk dragonfly on sycamore leaf

Autumn Meadowhawk, Sympetrum vicinum

Familiar Bluet, Enallagma civile

From within each bush, katydids chirped boldly as I walked past, as they and a number of late-flying dragonflies and damselflies warmed their wings and cruised the unshorn edge. And the air was heavy with the smell of fresh mud, still dark and wet, applied to the large mound of straight, pointed sticks erected by the beaver whose muddy tracks I crossed again and again, as I made my way along the grassy path.

Cattails

Spring Valley Lake with blind (far right in distance)

The open water of the lake was broad and blue, rimmed with cattails and fading stems of grass that hid several blinds, strategically situated to look out upon its center, and, in a different season, hide the hunters within. Empty on this day, I tried one on for size. A cozy box of space, its roof was draped with nets and its sides wrapped in layers of mottled, shaded fabric. With random branches fixed to its face and a modest bench, it became a nice place to pass the hours--to see and not be seen. For it would appear that our hunt is much the same —it is just our capture that is different.


Slow, deliberate steps rustled the leaves a few feet off the trail. And sure that its source was smaller than a deer’s browsing, larger than a songbird’s scratching steps, I followed, creeping through the bare branches, hoping to see. Up and over the pavement he scurried, to the thicket and swamp beyond. With ease he left me far behind, snared in the thick, tangled mass.

Where the lakeside trail turned toward the marsh, I stopped. Discordant sounds had begun all around--clearly hounds, whose constant calling grew clear and then faded as pairs turned and tracked their prey. Distant shots rang out. And, the dogs ran on, spreading through the woods like wind on wildfire. Until I sensed a transparency I would not expect to feel in such a wild place. In these woods there was no place to hide.


I met a man in blaze orange, his shotgun ready and hunting knife plainly carried in a sheath at his belt, while his dog sniffed the ground at my feet.

“What’s going on,” I asked, my rather wide-eyed look difficult to conceal.
“Opening day on pheasants,” he replied. “Seen any?”
I hesitated and grinned broadly, in part, exploring the options for my response, and in part, now recognizing the utter uselessness of the can of pepper spray hidden in my pocket.
“You wouldn’t tell me if you did, right?”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“It’d be a good idea to get some orange on.”
“Yep, I’ll be sure to do that. Thanks.”

And we went our separate ways, hunting--
our separate ways.

Hunter

Hunter of a different sort

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In the midst (SWF)

East Fork Lake
November 2008

East Fork Lake looks different now.
No longer the slumbering giant, lurking beneath last fall’s fog, left one morning as a bitter night dropped its chill onto warmer water, and hurried off toward dawn.

We paddled back, as far as the creek would allow, onto a wide gravel bar, covered densely with water-willow, side to side. The blooms now gone, the leaves stained with mud from summer rains that flood this plain. And after searching for a path across it and finding none deep enough to ride upon, sat to rest in the shade of a sycamore—leaving Red Canoe caught on the rocky bottom, waiting within view.

Across the expanse of water-willow, clear, small pools—constantly refreshed by a layer of rushing water, inches deep, dotted the field of green.
Crayfish scurried ahead of my feet, disappearing backward beneath the flat rocks, until only the scarlet tips of their pincers could be seen.
Small fish snuggled in to my sandals.
And damselflies a brilliant red, darted and dashed, waiting and chasing.
And I with my camera, stood in their midst.

American Water-willow, Justicia americana

American Rubyspot damselfy, Hetaerina americana
male above, female below

Spotted Sandpiper (?)

Double-crested Cormorant

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Jewels

The weatherman's forecast is written in bold, sizzling red letters--HOT.
I'm thankful that the woods have grown dense.
Within, they are still and cool.

We glide quietly upon water.
Far beyond the sunny beaches and the boaters.
Past thickets of horsetails.
Until the vines grow everywhere and it looks as if we should stop.

It is there, in the stillness of a shady bank, they rest.
Ebony jewelwings--bright bodies below black.
Cool and lovely.

American Lotus

Horsetails along bank

Cowan Lake backwater

Ebony Jewelwing

Camera shy

This weekend has brought us long-overdue sunshine and warmth.
And, finally, days to go walking and watching.
But, try as I might to catch more than a glimpse--the leafy woods hide them well.

A Great Blue Heron flaps off clumsily from the pond, toward the woods--no doubt, I have disturbed his frog breakfast, as I approach.
On the bank, a muddy trail is the only evidence that Mama muskrat was here, just moments ago, gathering greens for her kits. She hits the water with a PLOP. Deep swirls disturb the surface.
Above me in the apple tree, a White-eyed Vireo dances from branch to branch gleaning insects.




The shadowy shapes of five snapping turtles have gathered in the shallow arm of water. They see surprisingly well--and vanish instantly, as I stand watching. In the woods, a thin gray shape leaves quietly. The coyote, perhaps, not used to my being here. The last weeks of rain have kept me away more than I like. He must think these trails are his own.

A Field Sparrow is feeding her family this morning.

Hidden in the tall growth beneath the small oaks, they answer her calls. I see nothing but the slightest movement in the grass, as they find each other--and she flies up and away for more.

The tree frogs are calling loudly from Little Pond pool. This wet spring pleases them.

On its surface, damsel flies catching the morning sunlight.


And a Yellow-breasted Chat calling from across the field.
Maybe another day's watching will find him.
Maybe not.

Cope's Gray Tree Frogs

Nearly the only residents not camera shy today.