Fall Reflections

"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

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

'There may be various ways to organize 

one’s story, structuring it 

By place-names or by people or 

by poems, instead of incidents 

And years, yet all of them seem equal in 

the end.'

from La Duree

by Koethe, John. 

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

"I go and lie down where the wood drake 

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought 

of grief. I come into the presence of still water."

from The Peace of Wild Thing

by Wendell Berry

(trouble with font spacing today sorry)

Yesterday having run out of paint for the farm, we are redoing the outbuildings red with white trim, and having heard we were getting a storm today, one inch so far and no end in sight, we went bird watching. We headed out toward two historically Ukrainian/Canadian towns, Krydor and Hafford. More on these towns in a later post. One advantage to heading in this direction is the A&M

Bistro Bakery in Hafford. I am in no way associated with this enterprise, okay
(while in town we did purchase a ceramic rooster from people who professed to be their relatives at a yard sale, and we did have their cinnamon buns for breakfast) but my endorsement is based solely on merit.
http://www.bakeryinhaffordsk.ca/about/

The other reason for heading in this direction is a series of sloughs, we were hoping to see shorebirds and we learned last year birds here leave early.

We only saw one, shore bird. 

We did see some interesting ducks.

A Mallard? mom and brood.

One slough had both Redheads and Canvasbacks

hanging out together.

And we saw Ring-necked ducks at several sloughs

thanks Helen for the quick ID.

So it was a wonderful trip, we have not seen much less

photographed most of these duck species recently, and 

we still have cinnamon buns for tomorrow.

"From troubles of the world I turn to ducks,

Beautiful comical things

Sleeping or curled

Their heads beneath white wings

By water cool,

Or finding curious things

To eat in various mucks

Beneath the pool,"

from Ducks

by Frank W. Harvey