Last Days Of The Iris

This iris has a story, too.

One day a few years back, I visited a friend in Tiverton RI. She was renting an apartment in a house that had been there for decades upon decades, perhaps as long as a century.

It is next to Fall River, MA, which is mostly a dirty, litter strewn city struggling with poverty and pointlessly unprofitable political corruption.

It is the kind of place with lots of broken windows and boarded up multi-story stone mills interspersed with soon-to-be-bankrupt and empty "renewal projects" financed with loans and grants.

The soul-less decrepitude of the longtime dying mill town and its population overflows across the border like a backed up storm drain burbling sewage into a green park after a long and heavy downpour.

My friend's home and apartment was in a neighborhood just yards from the border. The overflow is heavy there.

She had some items to sell to be photographed. We decided to use the sun for lighting so we set ourselves up outdoors in the sunny, open yard beside the house.

In the side yard was a garden, as old as the house... or nearly so.

The garden was partly overgrown and had seen times when more care had been lavished upon it than had been lavished then.

Irises were blooming... and some other flowers, too. They had been planted long, long ago, had endured many years.

My friend went back inside to swap around items. I had a few quiet minutes in the yard near the garden.

I looked and took a few pictures of the blooming royal-purple iris that had been there for so long.

They had a quiet nobility to them.. to quietly stand so strong, so long, yet to seem sincere and unassuming.

We finished up our photo session and soon I went away.

A few weeks later I returned to visit.
The garden and the iris were gone.

The lot next door had been sold and had been harshly bulldozed to make room for a cheaply-manufactured box intended for human occupation.

The yard was grass in turf squares, poorly placed and soon to brownly die. The green-dyed and dying grass was imprisoned by a shiny, chain link fence.

The yard of this over-sized crate was full of mass-produced, garishly colored, gimmicky ornaments of the sort broken-souled humans tend to fill their sterile, plastic yards.

The iris garden had been churned into bulldozer-tracked mud.
The garden was not even in their lot.

They had heedlessly run across the boundary while plowing up their land with absolutely no care nor clue an overgrown garden would be appreciated or missed.

It was a tiny heartbreak
to see the iris garden
simply was no more.

Noble purple iris,
roots and stalk and blooms
replaced by flashy, trashy gore.

Visiting Two Maine Museums

There are some nice museums in Maine. Two are the Maine State Museum and the WW&F Railroad Museum. I've visited both recently.

In two vists, I spent about six hours in the Maine State Museum. it is next door to the state capital building in Augusta.

It is a great museum, well laid out and full of interesting exhibits.

The entry fee for an adult is only $2 with discounts for senior citizens and kids. But at $2 who needs a discount?

There are four full floors of exhibits covering a wide range of Maine topics. Lots of old cars, old machinery, logging and sardine and textile industry stuff.

An exhibit of civil war flags is impressive as is a roomful of exhibits about Maine setting itself apart from Massachusetts after Massschusetts about gave it away in the War of 1812.

The Maine Museum has a truly excellent section on Archaic and post-Archaic era Native Americans in an exhibit that takes us from 12,000 BC to the near present. I went back a second day.to explore this section more closely.

After visiting the museum in Augusta I felt the pull of museums in general.
The WW&F railroad museum in Alna stands beside my home.

I went next door to the WW&F Railroad museum and took a ride on its steam driven passenger train that runs about three miles out and three miles back on narrow gauge 2 foot rails. The fee was $6 which goes to restoration of the railroad and its equipment.. It is all-volunteer staffed.

I rode in the open car on the way out to the stop at Alna Center and in the enclosed car out to the end of the line.

On the way back to the museum... I was asked if I wanted to ride in the cab of the engine and I said an emphatic "Yes!".

It was hot near the firebox. and, strangely enough.. it was a bit dirty in the coal-fired engine cab..... who woulda guessed, eh?

But it was really fun.. and informative to see the engineer and his assistant running the steam engine and blasting the whistle and ringing the bell as we approached RR Crossings.

It was a nice little ride down tracks I have walked pretty recently.

A link to the WW&F Railroad webpage:

http://www.wwfry.org/

A link to the to the Maine State Museum webpage:

http://mainestatemuseum.org/

My Friend Thelma Is A Hen.

My friend Thelma is a hen.

Thelma's one of the egg-layers here at the homestead.

She's the last of the oldest group of hens. 

The others are all younger hens.

Thelma has lighter colored feathers than the youngsters who stay in the henhouse out back. She has seen all her first coop-mates pass to the great henhouse in the sky. Her sister and companion was Louise who died of old age at the end of the cold season this year. Louise got hospice care in my living room. We gently communed while she quietly passed away in a comfy little box.

They were "Thelma and Louise" but now it is just Thelma.

Thelma has been granted permission to stay overnight, every night on the steps leading up to my second floor apartment. She ascends to the fourth or fifth step toward sunset each day and hunkers down for the night. I pet her on my way by up or down the stairs.  Sometimes I sit a step or two below and pet her for a few minutes.

Each morning she makes her way down the steps and heads out into the yard to chow down on some bugs and some grass seeds and some plants. 

Sometimes my next door neighbors... who technically own Thelma....

... toss out some corn cobs or other treats for Thelma and the five other hens who prowl the yard.

Thelma... after taking a breakfast jaunt....

... almost every day

... comes back into my stairwell...

 ...climbs all the way up to the second floor landing,

 ...hunkers on down and lays an egg on my doormat

   ... right in front of my door.

It is not the easiest thing in the world for a hen to climb stairs yet Thelma goes out of her way to lay her egg before my door.

Ya know.... it is things like this that make me cry, the good kind of crying....

A simple little hen
climbs up some extra steps and gives me an egg almost every day.
Maybe its because she is my friend.

Yup. Thelma, the hen, is my friend. 

Keeper of the peeps

I'm today's "keeper of the flock" here at the Dalton Clan Ranch and have been out wrangling the flocks of chickens and peeps today.

The little mason jar peep feeders needed filling way too often so I took a big old plastic self-feeder out from my cat feeding collection and filled it up with a couple gallons worth of peep feed.

Pulled off last night's tarp... for protection from rain and chill... and now the leetle creeters are peeping away, chowing peep chow and drinking nice fresh well water out of their gallon-or-so self-waterer.

The free ranging egg hens came over to snap up some peep chow that got tossed on the ground when I emptied out the mason jar peep feeders of their last few cubic inches of peep chow.

It is fun to watch the interaction of the peeps., the egg hens and Gil, (the black lab mix doggie who lives here) and my gray old rescued barn kitty Lightning.

I do, indeed love to sit and have the hens making their hen noises around me.. and I answer in hen lingo.... I bark at the dog and make cat noises at my cat.

I have, for years, spoken fluent cat, and am good at dog... and feel comfy in both hen and peep dialects of chicken.

Yesterday the crows were making a racket in the trees... I dunno if it was mating or arguing or both. Might have been fish crows vs ravens.

So, I am picking up on crow too.

Day of the porcupine

Austin Cary Lot is a small state park land in Harpswell, Maine on Great Island which is also called Sebascodegan Island. It is located east of of Route 24 down Long Reach Lane.

The woods are mixed pine and hardwoods. It is green year round there and is home to many critters including at least one porcupine.

This map is a GPS track of my stroll at Austin Cary Lot on the day of the porcupine.

A few springs back it seemed like it was time to explore Austin Cary Lot, a small state park land, about a 10 minute drive from my home.

I drove in on Long Reach Lane, a gravel right of way, found a wide spot in the road and parked my big white truck. I got out some hiking gear put it in a small backpack and walked on into the woods heading north on a two rut, one lane work trail. It was a sunny day but not hot, a good day for exploring the woods on or off the trail.

The ruts that passed for a work road were too puddled and muddy for much pleasant walking so I veered east and made my way overland through overhanging evergreens and some light brush. I worked my way over gentle small rises and through shallow dips to a seaside cliff where I sat for a while.

The cliff dropped abruptly from the woods, which pressed right up to the edge. There was little warning I was approaching a cliff except for the sound of the small wavelets breaking below and blue sky showing through the trees where one expected only green. At night one could easily tumble over the edge. It is a few dozen feet high, the ocean laps right up against the foot of the cliff. There is no beach below it at high tide.

I sat quietly and watched the gulls and ducks swimming and fishing for their meals. I sat for around a half hour and drank some water and ate some crackers and cheese I had brought along.

After a little indecision, I stood up and looked at a little game trail and foot path that led away from my spot on the cliff. I decided to explore some more.

I headed north paralleling the coast for a while, maybe twenty to thirty minutes, to a nice little cove about a hundred feet wide at most. The trail led gently down to the beach, there was no need to climb down to get there.

The tide was falling. I could tell from the wet beach which had been exposed as sea level fell. I stood quietly and listened to the water lapping on the shore, but only stayed about ten minutes or so.

I went from there northward following the faint foot path that followed the contour of the shoreline. The trail led me north and then took a short turn east and then rounded back southward toward where I figured the rut road I came in on must lie.

I explored a little cove with an abandoned run down houseboat anchored in the muck near to shore. In this section of the park the hills ran pretty steeply toward the water. The hills were pine forested with smell of pine forest soil drifting upward in the gentle warmth.

Eventually, I found my way back to the two rut road and figured to work my way back toward where I had parked my old Chevy Tahoe, "the behemoth".

On my way, I came upon an acre-sized clearing cut in the woods that looked to be a forest management project. There were stacks of cut wood and of brush... branches and brush in heaps here and there. No people or trucks or tools were in sight.

As I quietly stalked up on the clearing, I saw what looked like an upside down bushel basket of sticks moving away from me. As I made my way closer, I could see it was not animated sticks come to life but a porcupine.

When he saw me he started with some high speed, evasive waddling. It is only my guess that the porcupine imagined it to be high speed, but he did pick up the pace when he saw he had company. Porcupines do not seem to run much nor too fast.

I followed and talked soothingly to the critter for a while. There was no reply from the porcupine. He hurried along seemingly unimpressed with my friendly, calming banter.

I let him get ahead of me while I unslung my backpack and took out my camera. I took a couple shots of him as he ambled away and through the clearing and to the east away from the rut road leading out of the area and back to my truck.

Eventually the needled beast, presumably having grown tired of my too close companionship, climbed into an uncut clump of small pine saplings and young trees for shelter from my gaze and, maybe from my conversation.

I took a final couple portrait shots while looking in through the branches and figured I had hassled the poor critter enough. I went along my way, saying quiet, but not silent, goodbyes to the pointy woodland resident.

I paused at the edge of the clearing to put away my camera and to glug a little water before leaving the area entirely.

From there it was a five or ten minute walk uphill on the muddy two rut work road back to the parking spot and my big white behemoth.

I had bothered
one of Nature's pointy creatures,
ever so slightly,
and lived to tell the tale,
un-punctured.

Sunfish Meditation

Sunfish Meditation

Caroline Evans

___________________________________________________________

Years and decades seeking
secrets of the way.
A sunfish knew and showed me,
that quiet sunny day.

I formally learned the art of meditation in my twenties. I was a do-it-yourself-er, using books and a few visits to a Zen Center to guide me.

I sat with eyes open, some times gently gazing toward a spot a couple yards away. Other times I watched a candle, counted breaths, observed the flow according to the teachers. With practice I got the knack and found their mind state.

I had known it years before, but had not known it then. I had no name to give it, had let it drift away.

In my grade school years I lived in then-rural Exeter, Rhode Island. We lived along a two-lane highway, but it was not busy. Maybe half a dozen families were our only nearby neighbors.

We kids rode our bikes or walked along a dirt and gravel two-rut, one-lane path to a swimming spot on a small fishing pond called Barbers Pond.

The dirt road was one or two miles long and touched the highway at each end. It paralleled the highway. A quarter mile of woods and wild-land stood between the two.

A couple miles of graveled dirt road, with trees and brush on either side. It was a tunnel through the forest, the perfect youngsters' trail.

One end of the dirt road was closest to our homes. It looked like a narrow driveway to the few who sped on down the highway. No one but we locals knew it was a public road.

The fisherman's access was farther to the south, just off the highway pavement. A picnic grove with some wooden tables, stone picnic fireplaces and an unpaved boat launch under some nice big shade trees lured the few picnickers and fishermen away from our private swimming spot. The far end of our dirt road reconnected to the larger world there.

The swimming spot was at a washed out embankment about halfway from either end. The washout's rounded gully ran about ten yards from the gravel road sloping pretty steeply to the pond, ten or fifteen feet lower than the road.

Some unknown neighbor good guy had poured a dump truck load of sandy gravel to make a rough beach. There was a ten-yard dock of logs and scrap wood standing at one side. The water was about a yard deep at the far end of the dock.

My favorite mornings were when I was alone there. I went to swim a few hours after sunrise, well ahead of the small crew of neighbor kids who went there almost every hot day of the summer. We kids, when together, could be loud and rowdy. Some days I didn't feel like being noisy or rambunctious. And so I swam alone.

I pedaled my Schwinn 3-speed down there, a towel, my swim fins, mask and snorkel in a pair of baskets across the back.

I'd hide my bike across the road in a secret bushy hollow and then make my way downward, shoreward, dodging painful pointy stones on the slope.

I'd move, without splashing, into the water, spit in my mask and rub it around and rinse to keep the glass from fogging. Then I'd wade in waist-deep, squat into the humus scented water, pull on my swim fins, stretch forward prone upon the surface and slowly prowl the edges of the pond.

Sometimes I'd tow along some five or ten-pound rocks on a scrap of broken styrofoam float and head out toward the middle. I'd use the little boulders for a gravity-assisted dive to a mid-depth thermocline.

There was a distinct separation between the cold and the warm water. It was not a gradual change.

Two fathoms thick was the layer of sunshine heated water. Turtles, plants and fish... and swimmers... liked this layer best.

Two fathoms down and deeper lay murky water, cold and still and dark and spooky. Black-brown mud and coldness meant few living beings inhabited the world below.

I would hold my breath, kick my way down to lazily float in the sun-warmed, light-dimmed space just above that border.

Facing down while hovering in the warmth of the upper layer I could stretch my arm and hand straight down and into the cold water below.

Twisting like a submerged otter and rolling to my back I would lie there looking far, far, upwards to the surface.

A few stray bubbles escaping from my snorkel, swam their way upwards, tiny, wiggling, silver balloons of air shrinking ever smaller as they left me.

For those few moments, it did not seem entirely like water, more like infinite weightless space.

The surface was another world away way up there. This weightless place was mine for as long as I held my breath.

With practice I was able to stay down and laze mid-water for some few minutes and feel no panic. I'd gently fin my way toward the distant air when lungs suggested it was time to breathe.

Some warm sunny mornings I had the whole thirty-acre pond to myself. No anglers, no canoes, no tourists, no neighbors. Just the fish and birds and turtles worked the pond.

Tufts of pond plants barely waved in the tiny currents that moved along the gently sloping bottom. Trees and brush crowded the shore leaning over the water. Birds enjoyed the branches, sometimes singing, sometimes flitting overhead.

One swim remembered fondly found me slowly, gently snorkeling the edge of the pond, a few yards out from shore, gazing downward to see what lived in the couple feet of water. I easily pushed through clumps of reeds and lily-pads spaced about a foot apart.

I spotted a shallow, foot-wide bowl swept out of the sand.
It was a tiny crater of gravel lined with pebbles.
A six-inch sunfish had exposed the underlying gravel by finning away the overlying sand.

I slowed my forward motion, drifted to a stop and let my fin tips drop to lightly touch the sand as a gentle anchor. I hovered with my face a couple dozen inches above the sunfish's nest. This nest is where her eggs were, gluey strands between the pebbles.

I slowly, gently breathed through my snorkel.
My displacement changed as my lungs filled and emptied.

I gently rose and settled, cycling in time with my breath.
Ripples from my bobbing cast moving bands of light and dark across sand the color of last autumn's straw.

The sunfish quietly circled her nest unconcerned by me.
She felt no threat, it seems she sensed I was no danger.
Perhaps she thought a drifting log had grounded,
bobbing with the ripples.

I rested there hearing my breath moving through the j-shaped tube, quietly watching the sunfish as my back skin air-dried in the dappled morning sun.

Like a piece of driftwood, I simply floated watching.

There was no time but now then.
No past or future moved my thoughts.
Simply there, a hunk of human driftwood.

Driftwood with some eyes, though,
that watched a little sunfish.

Moments passed uncounted
I knew no sense of time then.
Moments were but one now.

No words at all came to me,
none were there to think or speak.

I floated, breathed and did not think but noticed.
I was someplace elsewhere, wordless.

Too soon a sense of time came back, though.
Mind's internal chatter slowly started up again.

I moved along and left her, the little sunfish
prowling round and round the warm shallows
round her gravel spot, her nest upon the bottom.

I made my way to shore then,
walked up the slope and toweled off
and then I pedaled home.

Or so I thought back then.

A silent sunfish showed me,
that quiet sunny day.
I'd met a buddha swimming
and then I swam away.

Flowing Time

A waterdrop,

I
experience time
as flow along a riverbed,
ordering my experiences
according to my journey downhill.

A quiet beginning,

I float
in a whispering, dark
bank of fog
far above the earth
below.

Companions condense around me,
some before me, some after,
some above, some below.

I feel myself growing,
expanding and gradually notice
the earth looming
closer.

I feel the air rush by
as I gain speed.

I tumble through the chill air,
though feeling no cold.

I notice green pines,
gray-black rocks,
scattered bramble,
brilliant specks of color,
flowers
and sense scattered movements
of a brook beneath.

I know no fear.

I remember
no previous experience.

Without warning,
I splat startled
against the rapidly spreading scenery.

Amnesiacally awakening
I find myself on the verge of a mountain stream.
scratching raggedly across
a rough-faced granite boulder
that borders a rivulet some few feet wide.

My comrades land all around.

Some have been blown to the blazing white snowfields above,
that feed my little stream.

Many land nearby to share a fate similar to mine,
some downstream, crash through
the rustling yellow-green brush on the bank.

I slide into the roiling brook
and merge with the flow
of many like myself.

I feel a steady
downward,
forward
pull.

I slither along jostling others.

We avoid obstructions,
rolling gracefully
along the path
that resists us least.

I can remember no other life.

Pressed together
by the stream banks,
we travel downhill
to a destiny
unknown,
unpondered.

We tumble together
through cracks and crevices,
over broad surfaces
of polished gray-pink granite.

We rub gently the roots
of trees and grass
that tentatively poke their way
into the humus-floored watercourse.

On steeper pitches
we are tossed
into the air
splashing and
bubbling.

Some of us are thrown clear,
and fly sparkling to quench the thirst
of the vegetation sprouting green and fresh
along the borders of our burbling world.

My neighbors shift constantly,
some return to my side;
some drift away
gone forever.

Maturing, I consider events more closely.

Seeing unwarned companions evaporate,
doubt and wonder fill my thoughts.

I twirl and whirl further along,

first indifferent then frightened,

at the prospect of disappearing
like my short-lived
fellow-droplets.

I ask myself hundreds of answerless questions.

I hear rumors of the sea,
a vast volume of drops like myself
heaving and flowing in answer to the moon,
a world quite alien to me.

I ponder;
the future,
evaporation,
the mythical sea.

Passing through cracks,
I convince myself that fate is crack-like.

Resting in calm algae-filled pools,
fate becomes pool-like.

Rubbing against root-filled, dirt stream banks,
I feel compelled to argue for a rooty, muddy eternity.

Endlessly the changing stream bed charges by.

I
am scuffed,
battered by craggy stones,
meeting the onslaught,

I
equalize by tearing
sand
from the self-assured,
torturing mountain.

A swoop of glassy obsidian roundness,

an impact;

and I find myself sailing
through Spring's warm air.

Feeling light golden warmth envelop me,

I sense my impending evaporation
and anxiously dream of the cool stream bed
and the haven it offers.

Surprisingly,
I feel myself rising,
leaving the worn watercourse.

I shoot high in the air,
looking upon all that is below me
and above me and around me.

A flash of clarity.

I am vaporized,
returning to the undifferentiated mist
only to condense and fall in a never-ending cycle;

Each plop of landing a fresh birth,
to be followed by a wholly new life
dependent upon a chance of landing,
the downhill slope shaping a limited future until,

again,

I evaporate and return
to the formless, limitless expanse
above.