Work on the basement continues. I am also going thru old photos. Calgary Zoo lights.

 

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? "

from The Tyger

by William Blake

Trip to the mountains pika and it's food pile

"Who sees, the ultimate Recipient
of what happens, the One Who is aware
when, in the administrative wing
a clerk returns from noon-day, through
the ointment of mortality
for one strange hour, in all his lustreless life,
has touched his face."

from The Apex Animal
by Margaret Avison

https://defendabparks.ca

Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary - Our Yamnuska Pack

Nova and Nickki

Yesterday we visited the Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary outside of Calgary. Part of our tour involved spending 40 minutes with the Yamnuska Pack. These were beautiful, shy and gentle animals. The discussion with our guide was quite informative, but I am not going to paraphrase it and risk getting something wrong. Go see them for yourself or read the information on the website and make a donation.

https://yamnuskawolfdogsanctuary.com/wolfdogs/

Zeus

Nikki

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension 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."

From The Outermost House: A year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

by Henry Beston

Meer

 

"where there's a wall
there's a way
around, over, or through
there's a gate
maybe a ladder
a door
a sentinel who
sometimes sleeps
there are secret passwords
you can overhear"

from Where There's a Wall

by Joy Kogawa

The Bull

"Up there far enough you might hear the world, not 

what people say."

from The Prof 

by William Stafford

Last week we saw  a young bear on the point that juts out into the slough to the left of the cabin, the second bear we have seen there this summer. I did not get a good photo. Last night my wife pointed out that there was a moose on the right side of the slough. The ability to see these animals for our porch is one of the glories of this location.

"Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives"

from Midwest 

by William Stafford

After a good check up with my doctor, I took my camera 

to Kensington our first neighbourhood in Calgary. 

Through no intent on my part 

a theme emerged.

 This week my wife and I attended a talk at the university by 

author Michael Chabon. I quite enjoyed it and 

will be reading more of his work.

“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have  

earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.” 

                                                     from Wonder Boys
                                                     by Michael Chabon

"A moose has come out of

the impenetrable wood

and stands there, looms, rather, 

in the middle of the road.

It approaches; it sniffs at

the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless, 

high as a church,

homely as a house

(or, safe as houses)."

from The Moose

by Elizabeth Bishop

Each year at the cabin is different. Some birds are common one year, scare the next. This year spring was a month early and we missed a great deal of it. Last year we stayed three months at the cabin and did not see a moose on the entire trip, we saw no deer on our 80 acres and only a handful on the trip. This year I was able to photograph a moose and calf from the front porch on Monday night, the night of the Solstice. The next night I was able to photograph a deer that had come up the lane and stopped because the SUV was moved to in front of the cabin because the beavers are falling trees by the parking spot. I photographed it through the kitchen window so the screen did not help. But we have great hopes for critter watching this year.

"When for too long I don't go deep enough 

into the woods to see them, they begin to 

enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the 

pinewoods of my inner life."

from The Faces of Deer

By Mary Oliver

"Miraculous. It is as though the world
were a great writing. Having said so much,
let us allow there is more to the world
than writing: continental faults are not
bare convoluted fissures in the brain.
Not only must the skaters soon go home;
also the hard inscription of their skates
is scored across the open water, which long
remembers nothing, neither wind nor wake."

                                 from Writing

                                    by Howard Nemerov

Some photos of a fellow traveler I meet one morning as

I strolled along the lane at our cabin. Reptiles and Amphibians

have always had a fascination for me and in this area of

Saskatchewan the Garter Snake, the Plains Toad and the

Tiger Salamander are the species I am most likely to

encounter. I have meet Tiger Salamanders in some fairly 
dry windy areas of Alberta, which quite surprised me
and I am very happy to see them here. Hopefully I can get
to know them better when I can spend more time at the cabin.

"When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? "

                                     From The Tyger

                                       By William Blake

When I hear them call

in the morning, before

I am quite awake,

my bed is already traveling

the daily rainbow,

the arc toward evening;

and the birds, leading

their own discreet lives

of hunger and watchfulness,

are with me all the way,

always a little ahead of me

in the long-practiced manner

of unobtrusive guides.

from Why I Need Birds

 by Lisel Mueller

        

      

Enchanted is what they were

in the old stories, or if not that,

they were guides and rescuers of the lost,

the lonely, needy young men and women

in the forest we call the world.

That was back in a time

when we all had a common language.    

from   Animals Are Entering Our Lives

 by Lisel Mueller