Cabin June 3 2021

 

Last year we did not stay at the cabin. Instead we spent two weeks at the farm and the rest of the time in Calgary. We have been here a week and I have some observations. It is incredibly dry. We have noticed green popular leaves falling from the trees and blowing in the wind. I have only seen one Franklin’s Ground Squirrel in front of the cabin. Whether the colony has been reduced or whether some are  still denning I cannot say. We have not seen the Snowshoe Hare so far. For many years we only saw one. Two years ago we had a pair who produced several litters. Typically they take longer to habituate to the presence of us, dogs included. (one just showed up and was soundly barked at)  I have not seen a Red Squirrel but we can hear them. I have seen a couple of Least Chipmunks.

Catbird

Red Necked Grebes have nested in the slough in front of the cabin every year we have been here. This year the only visible nest seems low in the water  and I have only seen one bird so I wonder if something has happened. There seem to be more species of ducks at least visiting the slough including Scaups, Canvasbacks, Buffleheads, Goldeneye, Mallards, Blue Winged Teal, and a pair of Ring Necked Ducks which is a new species for us. We have seen the Bald Eagle, Turkey Vultures and Franklin’s Gulls flying overhead. The first morning we were here I photographed a female Oriole on the porch and one or more pairs has been around most days. We also have had Hummingbirds, Goldfinches, Chickadees, and a female Rose-breasted Grosbeck at the feeders. There are Phoebes and a Robin nesting on the cabin. Again there do not seem to be any Barn Swallows. We have had three pairs nesting on the cabin in one year in the past. There appear to be Tree Swallows by the hayfield, as well as Kildeer, Song, Vesper and White-throated sparrows, a Catbird and a Great Blue Heron. The beavers are omnipresent the number of trees continue to decline. 

I initially came to western Canada to participate in an archaeological field school excavating at Fort George, a Northwest Company post. Every year at the cabin I try to read some history books to expend my knowledge of the subject. Primarily these books focus the fur trade in western Canada and the culture and history of the indigenous people of Western Canada including the events of the North-West Rebellion. Sadly the discovery in Kamloops did not come as a great surprise to me. I would recommend the book Loyal till Death Indians and the North-West Rebellion by Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser if you want to get a sense of the attitudes leading up to the situation we find ourselves today. I am currently reading Waiser’s A World We have Lost  Saskatchewan Before 1905. 

It looks like we can spend some time at the cabin this summer.

"Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives

in the ultimate wind, the whole land's wave.

Come west and see; touch these leaves."

from Midwest

by William Stafford

Young Catbird

Someday we’ll live in the sky.
Meanwhile, the house of our lives is the world.
The fields, the ponds, the birds."

                                  Boundaries

                                     Mary Oliver

Catbird

"This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

from Dark Pines Under Water
by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Catbird

"In personalities I like mild colourless people.

And in colors I prefer gray and brown."

                          from Passing Remark

                       by William Stafford

A rainy day on the metal roof here so it is time to look thru some photos. I have come to love the catbirds I see at the cabin. They seem fairly habitat specific haunting the low scrub and saplings along the slopes edging the slough. The fairly open areas they frequent do make for some good views.

"My people, now it is time

for us all to shake hands with the rain.

It's a neighbour, lives here all winter.

Talkative, yes. It will tap late 

at night on your door and stay there

gossiping. It goes away without goodbye

leaving its gray touch on old wood.

—- barefoot, it has walked 

with us with its silver passport all over the world."

from Wovoka's Witness

by William Stafford

"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 Roethk

I have not been visiting other blogs or posting lately.

We have been preparing for a trip to the cabin and I

have been learning to edit my photos on a MacBook Air.

Also I have been getting used to my retirement. We 

imbue things, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries

with great meaning mark our calendars and then the 

the sun comes up we make breakfast and things roll

along pretty much as usual. Retirement seems to be 

one of the more significant marks, for thirteen years I 

went to the same building sat in the same office and 

talked to some subset of the same people each of who

shared a common work calendar but also had their own

personal calendars with other days circled for new jobs,

moves, births, deaths and their own retirement all of

us circling in a kind of Brownian motion. Stepping 

away from that dance, I have found I still have my 

own interests, nature, books, my own places, our home

in the city and our cabin, my family and friends. And 

while I will miss some of the people I now have the

chance to try new things and spend more time with the

people, places and activities  I want to spend time with

with.

We have been at the cabin a little more than a week.

Here are a few of the things we have seen

Under a granary at the farm vixen 3 kits

"And help me understand this person that I've gradually become,

Yet long ago imagined - a perfectly ordinary one

Whose mansion is the future, but whose setting is a 

Landscape of a summer afternoon, with a sky heavy in the distance

And a book resting lightly in his hands."

  from A Parking Lot With Trees

     by John Koethe