Packing Up

The snow I photographed Monday Sept 17th finished our summer at the cabin. It had become increasingly cold (about 10-15 degrees celsius below the seasonal average), and despite the fact that the fall colour was just beginning and the migration of birds was still beautifully evident, we packed up and were on the road by Tuesday.

"The music seemed to him oddly unartificial. It made him think of trees swept by the wind, of night breezes singing among wires and chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; or — and the simile leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of suggestion — a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to the moon. He could fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats upon the tiles at night, rising and falling with weird intervals of sound, and this music, muffled by distance and the trees, made him think of a queer company of these creatures on some roof far away in the sky, uttering their solemn music to one another and the moon in chorus."

from Ancient Sorceries (John Silence)
by Algernon Blackwood

While picking up the canoe we encountered a flock of Eastern Bluebirds and while the photo is not great I thought I  would share it.

"The moon drops one or two feathers into the field. 

The dark wheat listens. 

Be still. 

Now. 

There they are, the moon's young, trying 

Their wings. "

from Beginnings

by James Wright

"For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. 

For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad."

Edwin Way Teale

"a flock, a body, the birds

moving, moving the air, moving

the bank behind the house, the snow

sieved by sun and rain, the

seeds, the fallout from trees, hedge"

from Suddenly

by D.G. Jones

Cranes

"Autumn is crisp and the firmament far,

especially far from where people live.

I look at cranes on the sand

and am immersed in joy when I see mountains beyond the clouds.

Dusk inks the crystal ripples."

from Drifting on the Lake

by Wang Wei

Yesterday we took off in the morning, promising to finish the little jobs in the afternoon. We did. We went back to a series of sloughs where we saw Sora last year. We did not see a lot of birds, so we are not sure if we have missed the start of migration. Given there were no red winged blackbirds I suspect we have. But we did see Sandhill Cranes a bird we have wanted to see close-up for years. Ever since then my wife (I am too hard of hearing) has heard them passing overhead.

https://thatsjustthewildwood.blogspot.ca/2016/08/so-gradual-in-those-summers-was-going.html

Wilson's Phalaropes

Stilt Sandpiper

Sandhill Cranes

Blue Winged Teal on the prairie.

“If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.” 

from Bones of the Moon

by Jonathan Carroll