I can snap them for the porch. Mocking me, while the family hauls away my trees one twig at a time.

 

"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

Dinner and a show (The Wind in the Willows)

“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.”

Helen sent me the link below to a pizza eating groundhog today, which I absolutely loved.

https://twitter.com/abc7/status/1250492458686771200?s=11

The video reminded me of the menagerie of small mammals (and some that are not so small)  that creep, crawl and hop thru the grass in front of the porch of our cabin. Unlike some, I'm looking at you Justin, we are going to follow the Federal and Provincial guidelines about unnecessary travel. Which means we will miss spring at the cabin, and I suspect the little critters will miss the bird feeders. However since everyone in our circle has been spared the virus, knock on wood, we have nothing to complain about. 

Okay the moose and bear were photographed from the cabin 

bur across the slough. Which is just as well. 

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

"Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,   

that I have perceived nothing completely,

that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk."

from Corsons Inlet

by A.R. Ammons

New Lens on Life
Residents of Pinehouse in Northern Saskatchewan are using photography to heal from trauma.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/photographing-pinehouse

The Beaver

I first came to Western Canada to participate in an archaeological excavation at a Northwest Company post. I stayed for three months living in a canvas tipi and came to love the parkland. Every summer at the cabin I try to read books (often shared with my mother-in-law) about the fur trade and the Native People of Western Canada both pre and post contact. I am trying to learn a history other than my own, I find it interesting, and it seems the least I can do.

"The slow current
of the life below tugs at me all day.
When I dream at night, they save a place for me,
no matter how small, somewhere by the fire. "

from Remembering Mountain Men

by William Stafford

   We got to the cabin Monday. About five trees were down on the lane, so we had to get my brother-in-law to come by with his chainsaw. Had mice in the cabin for the first time. So lots of laundry to do, they picked my sock/underwear drawer for their nest. It looks like they all suicided in the bucket under the bathroom sink. About 4 or 5 but it was a pretty disgusting mess so I did not look too close. 

   A squirrel also started a nest inside by the kitchen door but he moved out when we got here, I don't think he was there long but we need a new pest proof door. My wife is duking it out with another squirrel in the outhouse, I may sprinkle some black pepper to drive it out of there, that normally works. 

   Another first, we have tent caterpillars in large numbers. Not close to the cabin yet but the trees around the slough are grey. We do have some nice orioles around the cabin, also coyotes yipping at night but I can no longer hear them. I can hear the grouse that are really drumming in the evening. 

   The beaver cannot chatter at me from the trees like the displaced Red Squirrels, but in the evening they circle in the slough below the cabin and slap their tails on the water to mock me.

(Week 1)

Hit the road Jack, and don't you come back, no more, no more..,

"He took then to waiting

till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset

But the moon carved unknown totems

out of the lakeshore

owls in the beardusky woods derided him

moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed

their antlers up to the stars

Then he knew though the mountain slept, the winds

were shaping its peak to an arrowhead

poised

But by now he could only

bar himself in and wait

for the great flint to come singing into his heart"

from Bushed

by Earle Birney

1

Sometimes in the open you look up

where birds go by, or just nothing,

and wait. A dim feeling comes 

you were like this once, there was air,

and quiet; it was by a lake, or

maybe a river you were alert

as an otter and were suddenly born

like the evening star into wide

still worlds like this one you have found

again, for a moment, in the open.

2

Something is being told in the woods: aisles of

shadow lead away; a branch waves;

a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its

path. A withheld presence almost

speaks, but then retreats, rustles

a patch of brush. You can feel

the centuries ripple generations

of wandering, discovering, being lost

and found, eating, dying, being born.

A walk through the forest strokes your fur,

the fur you no longer have. And your gaze

down a forest aisle is a strange, long

plunge, dark eyes looking for home.

For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers

wider than your mind, away out over everything. 

Atavism by 

William Stafford

My first photos of one of the beavers that are

denuding our property of aspen. Also as a species

an animal which played an enormous role in shaping 

our country. The photos were taken from our screened 

in porch and therefore a bit fuzzy.

Shaun and Whateley prepare for the long journey home.

Traveling thru parkland and prairie we meet fellow travelers. 

  

"There are rooms in a life, apart from the others, rich

with whatever happens, a glimpse of moon, a breeze.

You who come years from now to this brief spell 

of nothing that was mine: the open, slow passing

of time was a gift going by. I have put my hand out

on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you."

                                        

 from Little Rooms

                         by William Stafford

"How can one help marveling at the voyage we are making
on this planet? One has to lift one's self up and use one's
imagination to see that it is a voyage, and that our course
lies through the star-paved abysses of infinite space. Few
of us ever see it or realize it in all its awful grandeur. But
sometimes, as we look up at the night sky, we are surprised
out of our habitual stolidity and blindness; the mind opens
for a moment, and we see the Infinite face to face; the veil
is withdrawn, and the rays from myriads of orbs penetrate
to the soul. "

Both quotes are from The Summit of the Years
( 1913 ) by John Burroughs  they were chosen
to celebrate the fact that Helen has purchased her
8 inch Celetron Telescope and next year she can
enjoy watching the dance of stars above the slough.

During our 2 weeks at the cabin we were able to take the canoe
out several times and the photos that follow are combined
from all our trips. Like so may people we choose our future
retirement paradise (non-winter ) based on a proximity to water.
In this case a slough or prairie pothole. A definition follows but
basically they are ponds or marshes in which the water can
fluctuate wildly over the years depending on the long term
weather patterns. Within the last decade we have seen 
a drought which reduced many of these sloughs to a fraction 
of their former size and currently, our present situation where 
our slough is as high as anyone within the family can remember. 

This also means that we have gone from almost no beavers
 and lots of trees to lots of beavers and a lot fewer trees. 
The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources claims on
average one beaver can take down 260 trees but I have read 
higher averages elsewhere and of course you rarely have
 just one. Changes to the water level also means that our normally 
fish-less slough has fish (many sloughs freeze entirely in winter 
eliminating fish this however helps the population of amphibians 
with less predation of their young).

One thing we did notice was that on our trip in May there 
were a number of pairs of Bufflehead ducks displaying, chasing etc. 
However on this trip we basically saw no ducks of any kind 
on our slough. We initially though they might be molting but 
when I visited other sloughs in the area they had mallards, teals
 etc. in plain sight and much closer to the road 
so I  have no idea of the cause of this.

 “ Prairie potholes (sloughs) are water-holding depressions
 of glacial  origin in the prairies of the Northern United States and 
southern Canada. Water is supplied to the potholes by precipitation 
on the water surface, basin runoff, and seepage inflow of ground water.
Depletion of pothole water results from evapotranspiration, overflow,
and seepage outflow. Since potholes generally do not overflow, seepage
outflow is the principal way in which dissolved salts can be
removed. Salinity of pothole water is therefore a good indication
of the seepage balance. Net seepage outflow results in fresh
to brackish waters that constitute ephemeral to semipermanent
ponds, whereas net seepage inflow results in brackish to saline
waters that constitute semipermanent to permanent ponds.”

From HYDROLOGY OF PRAIRIE POTHOLES IN NORTH DAKOTA
by Charles Sloan GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 585C

One unexpected consequence of fish is fishers. I saw 

Kingfishers on several sloughs including ours.

 

Our slough is crescent shaped so this
Great Blue Heron would fly into the other 
arm only to see us come around the corner 
yet again.

I have noticed in several places on 

the property the beavers will almost entirely

denude a spot but then leave a tree or two; 

to paint the sky with bird song?

On this trip it was a green green world, a world of 

reflections, a world of mirrors.

"How wonderful that the globe itself should have
been born out of the nebular mist — the cosmic
world-stuff in the womb of the great sidereal
mother; that it should have had its fiery and turbu-
lent youth; that it should have sobered and ripened
with age; that its mantle of fertile soil should have
been wrought out of the crude igneous and stratified
rocks; that it falls forever around the sun, and never
falls into it; that it is so huge that we cannot span
it, even in imagination, but can picture it to our-
selves only by piecemeal, as with a globe of our own
making; and yet that it is only as a globule of blood
in the veins of the Infinite; that it is moving with
such incredible speed, and yet to our senses seems
forever at rest; that the heavens are always above
us wherever we are upon its surface, and never
under us, as the image of a globe might lead us to
infer would be the case at times — all this, I say
and more, fills me with perpetual wonder. "

No trip to the farm would be complete without

a visit to our cabin. After all our 80 acres is

just down the road. Our visits were brief, the cabin

is not winterized and we had lots of Christmas

activities to get to. There was not much snow,

the slough was frozen and crisscrossed with lots

of tracks but not a creature was stirring while we

were there.

Above: if you squint you can see a
beaver lodge.

This last photo shows that our resident

population of beavers has been busy. As

this point of land is between two arms of the

slough it seems to get very heavily harvetsed.

" a single beaver can cut down up to 1700

trees each year to ensure its survival."

                        Mammals of Alberta

                                 Pattie and Fisher

" Do not touch words to what has no name

or feel the place of wandering stones with eyes

the beast we hunt must not be said

its smell rides under the wind

its face remembers our faces."

                            Glacier Spell

                               Al Purdy

Sorry it has been a while since I updated

my blog on our work on the cabin. Things came up.

Monday July 18th.

Work on the roof continued it is plus 30 degrees

on the ground with the metal roofing and tar paper it is

worse up there. Helen's brothers soldier on.

Helen surveys the neighbourhood.

Tuesday July 19th

That is not the camera, our contractor supplied two

different shades of red roofing. The other sides match,

it is only this side, the one you see when you arrive

that had to be striped. 

Another 30 plus degree day but Ralph and Brian finish the roof.

Helen and I have palmed sanded the cabin and begin staining.

We finish the front and the far side. The front we stained by hand

the side we used a power sprayer to shoot stain everywhere and 

then rolled the stain even with a roller and a bit of brush work.

That was a better method faster and more even.

The neighbours were also busy, we saw up to three beavers

on the slough at the same time.

I guess were were a bit noisy.

Wed July 20th

No photos, we had hoped to finish the staining but after
two hours, the rain got worse since we were worried about the
road we went to the farm. As we arrived at the farm the
power went out about 10:30 am and was off the rest of the day
lots of wind and rain. We have had a fair bit of wind

this trip with lots of fallen limbs.

Thursday July 21st

Power still out but since we are using a generator

we finish staining and begin cleaning up. We are leaving Friday
and so we cannot actually stay in the cabin this summer.
Next spring we will build the outhouse, put in the floor and
appliances (propane), and mosquito proof it so we can stay
later in the summer. We will also have it skirted to keep
the wind and critters from getting underneath.

Power back on yeah.

We also hope to open a path so we can see annother slough

that is beside the cabin as well. Also we will clear some other

 paths. However we will leave most of the woods intact

since it is the very reason we bought the land. The woods

have many plants including an impressive stand of

stinging nettles.

and some Pincherry

A final look at the cabin, the patio door boarded up to

discourage access. It will take years to actually finish

but that is part of the adventure.

"Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries
you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream.

There is magic in it. "

                                             Moby Dick

                                                                        Herman Melville