6:34 a.m. 34 degrees, wind SW 3 mph. Sky: a bouillabaisse of shape and color, pastel pink, shades of gray, white, and blue. Highlights and bruises. Rising ground fog. Permanent streams: bolstered by an all-day drizzle, the soft voice of rolling water. Intermittent streams: puddles linked by drizzle, an ephemeral bridge and flow. Wetlands: frostless and soggy. Yesterday, I crossed the marsh, over the spongy ground, puddle to puddle, past narrow otter trails, and wider unevenly trampled deer tails. And oval beds of flattened reeds where deer spent the night . . . drinking and playing cards and whatever else do where the lights go off. Truancy of birds. Pond: nano waves, like windrows of sand, a subtle undulation. In the shallows, drowned leaves blanket tadpoles and frogs, a six-month nap, metabolism reduced to a tick. Underwater, in the winter, turtles breathe through linings in their throats and cloacas; frogs and tadpoles through their skin . . . a seasonal adjustment fined-tuned over two hundred million years. The unwavering nature of turtles and frogs. There's a lesson there, somewhere, I'm sure.
Forest floor from crispy to sloshy. A dripping world, beyond bushwhacking.
Woods lightly seasoned with nuthatches, a soft fanfare of toots. In defiance of Newton, three red-breasted nuthatches wander down a maple sugar trunk, foraging in tufts of moss and lichen. Then, an encore performance, flit to an adjacent maple and begin again. And again, on a third tree. Chickadees keep to themselves, hushed in the wet woods, but blue jays headed northwest, break through the dreariness, hastily screaming en route to my feeders.
Today's the first day of rifle season. I don’t hunt, nor do I own a gun. I don't post my land. I encourage deer hunting. There is plenty to go around. For predators and furbearers, however, I draw the line. Several men who hunt the marsh and hillsides grew up on Robinson Hill and have hunted here for decades, often with their fathers and grandfathers. They have a very personal history here, the land a source of topophilia. I won't disrupt a bond like that because I could afford to buy the land and pay the taxes.
Glad to have a new word to pack into the luggage of my mind ‘topophilia ‘. There is a saying about not being able to step into the same river twice .. that’s the way I feel when I plod around our 120 acres . The same but different every day.
Hunted the steep (!) knob of granite and red oak above our Sutton NH tree farm this morning. Woke at 3:30 to be hiking by headlamps at 4:30 and in position on the narrow ridge by 5:30. Pink dawn. Valley fog. My 29-year old son raised here was sitting just 25 yards away on my flank. Wind from NW was perfect. Amazing views. Valley fog. Naming the hills surrounding us as the light came up. No deer today. Antlered only now.
Doesn’t matter. The memories will last my lifetime and I hope his too. He has a son, 9 months old. His first child. I’m sure they’ll be up there when I can no longer make the climb. Almost felt that way today!
My son casually told me as we descended at 10 am that the landowner just informed him that the land will be listed for sale this weekend. He said he’d give us a good reference when there’s a new owner. My son asks for written permission each year via email. Landowner aging, downsizing, moving south. I remember when he bought it 20 years ago. He never did complete a conservation easement to protect it. It’s mostly unbuild-able topography- ledges of hemlock and slopes of icestorm-blasted, diseased beech.
I saw “blonding” of dying ash bark from woodpeckers due to emerald ash borer we haven’t seen (yet) just below on our property. I found some clumps of invasive honeysuckle. Packed out a Mylar balloon some superstitious deer hunters equate with swirling air currents conducive to good ground for bedding bucks to rest in security of a wider olfactory radar screen.
All airborne new arrivals. Maybe the new abuttors too? Urban refugees? I banished the idea of bright yellow “POSTED” signs - for now. Hope we’re going up there in the cold darkness of November mornings for years to come.
No guarantees I guess.
Topophilia - you know it when you feel it.