From behind my back, over the ridge, the morning sun slipped its arms through the trees and over my shoulder, gripped the edge of darkness and peeled it back the way a mother pulls a blanket from her sleeping child to wake him for school. Rows of hills, farthest ones first, then the closer, darker colored ones, became visible.
Author: John Messeder
We need more ice
I’m sitting beside a stream a short distance from my home, lower, some people say, than is normal even for a normally hot August, which this August has not been. It’s been hot. July was the hottest month in the hottest year since records have been kept, and August is on track to eclipse July. In some places, it was hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk.
Some politicians say the world is not getting hotter, and if it is, it’s not the fault of humans, and if it is, well, we need the jobs. On the other hand, keeping those heat-making jobs means we can save buying frying pans and kitchen stoves.
Olympic-grade cheering is tiring
I’ve been watching the Olympics with great dedication, and I’m very glad it’s almost over. I am tired, and I don’t know how much more I could take. I need about four years to recuperate.
My favorite sports are beach volleyball – the kind with only two players on each team; gymnastics – in particular the floor and parallel bars; and long distance running – except shorter distances are fun when Usain Bolt is leading, and smiling at the space his closest competitor would occupy if he was close enough.
A fine kind of sorcery
I was about to leave the house one afternoon this week, when I decided to mention to the Resident Nurse:
“I don’t feel right,” I said, “and I’ve been out of bed long enough I should have woke up by now.”
“My heart is sending Morse code like back in the days of black-and-white TV – a couple of quick beats, skip a few, another one, skip a couple more …”
We are Ameri-cans
As I listened to a news anchor this week talk about the hullabaloo surrounding a speech delivered by a Muslim whose son was killed in Iraq, I was struck by the way in which the parents of the lost soldier were identified: Muslim-American.
Much has been made of late about how divided is our country, and it occurred to me attaching a prefix to “American” sharpens the wedges. The now departed son was an American. He served in the American Army. He was quite possibly a hero, for reasons beyond merely his signing up to go fight, and die, for the rest of us. He happened to subscribe to the Muslim faith, as do a few million people around the world.
We humans are a tribal lot. We love to identify with a group. We include, within the boundaries of the U.S.A., Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Sikhs, and Atheists. We wear jeans to work, or ban them. We drive Fords and Chevys and Harleys and Hondas.
When I came to Gettysburg, I took up residence in Bonneauville, a town I soon discovered to be nonexistent – at least to the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles. When I went to get my Pennsylvania driver license, I put my address as Bonneauville 17325. The nice lady at the window, in a not quite so nice manner, questioned which was correct — Bonneauville, of which neither she nor her computer possessed knowledge, or 17325, which her computer said was Gettysburg.
A label can give us roots. In Maine, it was said to be a True Mainer one had to be at least seventh generation. I wrote about a farmer whose Maine origin went back to two brothers who had been paid for their Revolutionary War service with a deed to land near where I lived. In fact, the original land encompassed much of what had become, by the time I was writing, at least three towns.
The only home we have
We The People have a long history of preserving public land for the enjoyment and education of all of us, and for, we have been lately learning, the health of this whirling blob of mud we call home. Yet, we are destroying indigenous families and forests to make room to grow quinoa in South America, and palm oil in Asia.
Here at home, the Republican platform calls for the federal government to get out of the business of owning public lands. There is profit in those forests and canyons – oil, natural gas, coal and lumber are waiting to be harvested by industries that have little concern for the health of our grandkids. (I wonder whether those folks might be interested in giving up the thousands of military reservations we non-military peeps are not allowed to visit. I would love to visit that cave dug into the rock a few miles from my home.)
It’s getting hot out there
TThree Black Vultures showed up in the backyard Tuesday and headed for our stream. They were not looking for food; they craved water. They hover over us every day; that was the first time any of them landed so near our house.
Drinking water is in short supply in many wild places. We are in a time of year when water levels often are low, but Marsh Creek, in places where it normally only is low, is nearly dry. I was shooting pictures of a pair of Great Blue Herons looking for enough water to support a fresh frog for lunch when a Mallard drake swam by, about three feet over the surface of what used to be the creek. There was more water in the humid air than in the stream bed.
On a nearby fence rail, a dozen starlings sat with mouths open, panting. Other critters presumably have found shadier places to await sundown.
They may not speak our language
I’ve lived many places and left bits of me in several of them. One of my favorite memories is swimming with the loons on hot summer midnights in Maine.
Common Loons have existed unchanged since the first ones flew over the planet and under its water. According to the fossil record, they existed as a distinct species more than 30 million years ago, and with that kind of seniority, they think they own wherever they land.
If we love it, why destroy it
I once worked with a man whose wife’s idea of “roughing it” was a Holiday Inn without a swimming pool. He liked to hunt and fish. She, obviously, did not. The result was infrequent family trips to the forest, a problem for which 59 Pennsylvania legislators have a solution.
Close your eyes and imagine Caledonia State Park with a Sleepy-Time Motel & Conference Center, swimming pool and a paved parking lot adjacent to Thaddeus Stevens’ forge, and meeting rooms named for the trees and critters chased away by construction. Camping areas are replaced by a theme park, including a water flume or two wending their way past Stevens’ furnace. A shuttle service carries folks to a wide spot on the Appalachian Trail, where they enjoy box lunches provided by conference center tour guides.
A matter of perspective
A stream splashes down several steps into a pool that is home to at least one growing bullfrog. For the past hour, Old Sol has worked mightily to climb over the oaks and maples that line the ridge.
A Mourning Dove serenades a mate, while in yon garden, tomatoes prepare to be fried green, and the zucchini vines show no sign of my bulk having crashed among them, now two weeks hence. Clearly, I came out the worst in that encounter.
Sometimes, as I sit out under the trees watching a variety of critters go about their daily business, I think about whether we might be in a huge spacarium, like a terrarium only containing multiple planets. We could be, in that imagined universe, like Charlton Heston in the original “Planet of the Apes.”
Busted left wing
Wednesday, there were four eggs in the bluebird nest. Thursday, I didn’t check. Friday evening, the eggs were gone. Nary a sign. No chicks, no shells. Nothing but ne(s)t.
I turned around on the slide up which I had walked to view the nest mounted to the roof of the children’s play structure. I guess I slid, because that’s what one does on a slide, lost my balance and crashed into the garden, on the way becoming tangled in the plastic netting effective at keeping out rabbits and neighbor’s cats but not so much a 260-pound lummox trying to walk on slippery slides.
The worst mass shooting
I woke Sunday morning and, as is my wont, perused my email. I subscribe to several forums and news sources and it takes less time to get the important stuff than to turn on the TV and wade through the commercials.
Early reports said 20 people had been killed, 23 more wounded. The writer must have misread, because later the report was 50 killed, 53 wounded – “the worst mass shooting in U.S. history,” some have said. I doubt that, but I suspect it depends on the definition of “mass shooting.” The shooter was one of those who lay dead, which is too bad; it would have been helpful, maybe, to know for sure what prompted him. On the other hand, he apparently called 9-1-1 to proclaim his allegiance to ISIS.
Industrial strength obfuscation
I grew up around farmers who often used words, or didn’t, in hopes you would hear what they wanted you to hear rather than what they actually said.
I once asked a fellow to suggest a good car body repair guy.
“A lot of people like Ted Jacobs,” Jake said, (the names are not real) then after a short period of thought, “And some think Ken Strasbaugh does a pretty good job.”
“You didn’t mention Jimmy Godson,” I noted.
“You could go there,” said Jake.
I took the hint and didn’t.
If we love it …
On the coast of Maine, investors found undeveloped sections of rock upon which gulls sometimes still roost and waves crash. A little dynamite reduced the moguls to rubble and bulldozers pushed them to the ocean’s edge, leaving a flat place on which to build a cottage in which city folks will pay exorbitant amounts to live for a week. I know; I’ve been among those city folks.
Miles away, other investors have found really nice lakes populated only by Common Loons and bullfrogs. They have divided the shorefront into tiny lots so people from crowded burgs can move to crowded lakesides.
Miracle of life
Monday, there was one, new, baby Robin. We didn’t get to see the first poke into the world of breath-on-your-own, but it still wore a part of its shell like a hat.
Tuesday, there was another.
She laid them one each on consecutive days.
Fifteen days later, the first little one appeared.
Getting used to it
.jpg "Remember when it took longer to fly someplace than to board the plane?")
The Transportation Security Administration says the extra security for flights taking off and landing in the United States is necessary because of the attacks in Paris and Brussels. The lines get longer and the evening television news says check your bags so they don’t hold you up in the search line.
Then the airlines increase their fees for checked bags. TSA promises to hire more people to search our luggage.
An extraordinary queendom
A friend used to say the trees caused the wind to blow, like when you wave one of those Japanese hand fans. “Whenever you feel the wind, you look and see the trees are moving,” he said in an offering of proof. He wasn’t all that far-fetched.
“You just have to think ahead.”
A new bridge is planned for Fairfield Road in Hamiltonban Township. Or maybe Highland Township (as it appears to be on the county’s online map.) There seems to be some question which end of the bridge is the municipal line, but it is a state road, and therefore a state bridge,
A look underneath the existing structure reveals a need for some repair — not immediately, but soon.
A beautiful time for a drive or a walk
Beside a road off Pa. Route 34, somewhere north of Gettysburg, Don Yost and John Deere team up to pull a chisel plow through a field of corn stubble.
Last year was no-till for the field, and the crop was corn. No-till means the ground is left unturned, the roots of the previous crop keep the hillside from flowing to the bottom in heavy rains, and new seed poked into the earth with a tool made for the task.
Safety is paramount in North Carolina
We humans could learn a thing or two from wild critters. Sometimes they eat together and sometimes they take turns. Sometimes a bully comes on scene and chases them all away, and sometimes even the little guy fights back. And sometimes the little guy wins.
Except in North Carolina.