Somewhere in the Badlands Dec. 2019

 "And from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my mind."

John Haines

Squirrels at feeder

 I added a PVC pipe to the pole holding the feeder. It does stop the squirrels from climbing. So they jump from the lilacs. It also makes a good support for your foot while you work through the seeds in the bottom tray. The grey phase black squirrel below is giving the PVC a look but it uses the tree access point as well. Basically the feeder is empty and it is cleaning up around the base. Most of our Eastern Grey Squirrels are black as seen in the top photo, but we occasionally get these grey brown squirrels with white bellies, their markings are beautiful. My buddy Doug who lives in south Calgary by Fish Creek Park noticed they have fewer squirrels at the feeders now. He thinks this is because they now have bobcats. With the dogs I would rather have squirrels.

"Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail 

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; 

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;"

from Sunday Morning

by Wallace Stevens 

And here we have squirrels.

Christmas 2019, Driving to Saskatoon

“The sky is realest: the sky cannot
Be touched and in the mirror it cannot
Be touched. He is enchanted. The rare azur
Is flawless; happily blurred blue is no whit
Less exquisite than blue unblurred. And what
He misses he would never know was there.”

James Merrill - Collected Poems

Thoughts upon reading Matt Cardin's, The Stars Shine Without Me

"And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. "

from Dolor
by Theodore Roethke

Reading Thinking

"Everything he wrote, Berger says, was written “during the period of the Wall.… Everywhere the walls separate the desperate poor from those who hope against hope to stay relatively rich. The walls cross every sphere, from crop cultivation to health care…. The choice of meaning in the world today is here between the two sides of the wall. The wall is also inside each one of us. Whatever our circumstances, we can choose within ourselves which side of the wall we are attuned to.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/john-berger-joshua-sperling-biography-review/

A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing

"I come home with a chicken or

a rabbit and sit up

singing all night with my friends.

It´s baroque, my life, and

I tell it on the mountain.

I wouldn´t trade it for yours."

from Coyote

                     by William Stafford

Link below: This is the best trail camera image I have ever seen.

2020-02-03, 7:11 PM

Russ McSpadden

@PeccaryNotPig

A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing to pass under a busy California highway together. Coyotes and badgers are known to hunt together.

Feb. 2nd Snow

"That night and for years afterward, she had envisioned another dream land, built from the imaginings of powerful women dreamers. Perhaps it would have fewer gods, she thought as she watched the moon vanish over the horizon, leaving her in the darkness of the ninety-seven stars.”

from The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
by Kij Johnson,