Clouds in the slough

"The birds have vanished down the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away."

from Zazen on Jingting Mountain
by Li Bai

The Big Walk

Labour Day weekend we went for a walk intending to visit an area next to the cabin where we can hear frogs in a wet spring. We found it, a dried slough but got turned around in the trees and the half hour walk became 2 1/2 hours as we walked past sloughs, neighbours' fields, the nearby lake, Helen's brothers place and the family farm. But we saw some lovely things and the rain held off until we got to the cabin.

"But rather as children of one common birth,

Discerning in each natural fruit of earth

Kinship and bond with this diviner clay.

Let us be with her wholly at all hours,

With the fond lover's zest, who is content

If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;

So shall we grow like her in mould and bent,

Our bodies stately as her blessèd trees,

Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers."

from On the Companionship with Nature

by Archibald Lampman

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

" I walk here and there, seeking open,

flat spaces against a sky up high.

I have discovered, too late, perhaps

that I always preferred the empty

more than the full

for breathing and forgiving."

from  The prairie farmland fields

Teresa Palomo Acosta 

We have been at the cabin for a couple of weeks which 

accounts for my absence from the net. Since we took the

dogs for the first time we converted the 9 hour drive into a

two day journey. They traveled well but I did enjoy the shorter

days. The first part of the journal was thru the mixed grass 

prairie an area that, once you are away from the rivers could 

be described as flat. It is very much an area of the open road

long distances between small prairie towns marked by water towers 

and the increasingly endangered grain elevators. It is a landscape

that celebrates its identity as big sky country. 

  

  

This particular elevator located the in aspen parklands area

of the northern prairie before it transitions into the boreal forest

is an indication that we are close to home.

"On the prairie, what you are left with is the bare truth,

 the land pared down to the bone, the basic dirt and 

grass and sky that shape the lives that play out upon it."

                           from The Secret Life of Cowboys

                                             Tom Groneberg

                   

Friday I had to visit one of our locations in

central Alberta so we decided that the entire family

minus the cat would drive up Friday ( mostly Helen )

stay in a hotel overnight and wander home Saturday

visiting a couple of birding spots on the way. This

would give us an idea of how the dogs travel. This trip

 is about 4.5 hours the trip to the cabin about 8 hours.

The dogs were not happy about hours in their new

kennel and Shaun was paranoid about a night

in the hotel, he gets that from me but they did fine.

However it is still winter here so birding consisted

of magpies, crows and skeins of returning geese.

Out first stop was Beaverhill Lake. We never found the

actual observatory but we did find the lake.

"This natural area is internationally recognized for its wetlands

& diverse bird populations - more than 270 bird species have

been reported, with 145 known to breed locally. Beaverhill Lake

was designated a RAMSAR site (wetland of international significance)

 in 1987. The two-day Beaverhill Lake Snow Goose Festival attracts

6000 people to the site annually."

Government of Alberta

http://www.albertaparks.ca/siteinformation.aspx?id=436

Beaverhill Lake has dried over the years and is now more

wetland than  lake. As such these photos are pretty

typically of a prairie wetland in the winter.

Next we decided to stop at the

Miquelon Lake Provincial Park

"Miquelon Lake is at the south end

of the Cooking Lake Moraine. The park is

dominated by trembling aspen, balsam poplar

& white spruce forests."

Government of Alberta

http://www.albertaparks.ca/siteinformation.aspx?id=81

Despite numerous maps and mapbooks

we did not find that either. We did find a

nice spot to stop (dogs) along a gravel

road. There was still a fair bit of snow once

you got off the highway into the trees and no
visible birds. It is still winter here. Then

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jog;"

Mother Goose

"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver