Home again cont

“And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

From Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to post some shots from the trip home. The roads were good and there was a lot of hoar frost transforming the landscape. We also saw lots of animals most I did not get photos of. We saw Pronghorns which I mentioned last post. A deer had just crossed the road as we went through. We also saw Snowy Owl, a coyote, partridges and two unusual sights, the first a Red fox amid a cloud of crows. The second a Bald Eagle with Magpies. I thought in both cases they were being mobbed but Helen though they had a been feeding from the same road kill. It was a vey blue and white day.

The combination of moving car and moving animal rarely make for a stellar photo. But I have including it because I was really surprised to see a Bald Eagle here. We were heading towards the tiny badlands town of Dorothy Alberta at the time. I did not realize that this portion of the Red Deer River Valley had Bald Eagles.

Bald Eagle and Red Tailed Hawks?

 Saturday while on the Thickwood Hills Studio Trail I noticed a Bald Eagle being harassed by what I think are a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks. I am used to seeing crows and blackbirds harrassing larger birds but not one raptor after another which is why I am sharing the not great photos. Lyrics from John Denver's The Eagle and The Hawk.

(again sorry about the spacing)

"I am the eagle

I live in high country

In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky"

"I am the hawk

And there's blood on my feathers

But time is still turning they soon will be dry"

                                     

"And all those who see me

And all who believe in me

Share in the freedom I feel when I fly"

"Mine are the night and morning, 

The pits of air, the gulf of space, 

The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, 

The innumerable days."

from Song of Nature

by Emerson

On today's canoe trip eagle or osprey we are not sure?

It was big. Very Big. Roc?

"Our paddles keen and bright, 

Flashing like silver; 

Swift as the wild goose flight, 

Dip, dip, and swing.

Dip, dip, and swing them back, 

Flashing like silver; 

Swift as the wild goose flight, 

Dip, dip and swing."

The Paddle Song

 

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls."

 

The Eagle

  Tennyson

 

This eagle was was far from crags and oceans, actually it was

asleep in a pasture when we first saw it. Once I started siddling

up it gave me the fish eye. Then a huge flock of hundreds of starlings

appeared they did not mob it they just watched but the eagle had seen

enough and flew away.

 

 

 

"No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you."

 

from Lost

By Mary Oliver

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.”

Rachel Carson

Helen and I went for a walk along the seawall

one evening

Where we saw some of the birds we often

see there the Cormorant and the Song Sparrow.

But you are never far from the forest

and the mythagos it shelters.

 Then evening and ships on the bay.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more

                                          mystical concept of animals. In a world older and
                                        more complete than ours they move finished and complete,

gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never

attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are

not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations,

caught with ourselves in the net of life and time,

fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

 

  The Outermost House

Henry  Beston