Whit's Blog / 1000 Recordings

Uphill Both Ways

Joe and I walked through Broad Meadow Brook park today, the shortest loop you can do, starting at the visitors' center and then down Holdredge Trail, over to Sprague and back up the Frog Pond trail. Our goal was to see animal tracks. In the winter, you are lucky to see the animal itself, and so you have to learn to take your pleasure in seeing the tracks the animal leaves behind.

It's something of an art, a re-orientation of how you think, to see the traces of the animal as the animal itself. Ultimately, it is satisfying, but I think for a three-year-old, well, "ultimately" is a long way off. We did see good stuff: We had deer tracks (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it), and tracks of turkeys, dogs, squirrels, rabbits, and small unidentified rodents (pictured here) that I think were probably mice, although I am at a loss to tell you what possessed the mouse to come out from under a two-foot snowfall, unless it was a mink that was under the snow with him. Nevertheless, there it was, a hole that looked drilled in the snow with a 1-inch spade bit, and little feet running out and across the snow as far as the eye could follow them through the understory, then at some point coming back to the hole.

Also, there was a place where the end of a dead log overhung the snow, and the snow was littered with little pieces of splintery rotted wood, where a woodpecker had ripped out little pieces in search of insects. (I don't know about you all? But I would eat suet, from, like, November to February.) Under the log ran a dotted line of tracks where a UR had run in semi-shelter. 

My favorite was the tracks of a fox, which look like the footprints of a dog but apparently high-stepping and not as churny, or at least so I think. I'm not Natty Bumppo, if you get my drift. 

Joe was exhausted less than halfway into the walk, and who can blame him? The trails were crunchy and the footing treacherous. But he hung tough, with minor episodes, and walked a very long way indeed.

As we passed the frog pond, he asked me a question. "Do you know about the winter shrews?" I replied that I did not, and asked to hear more. "They come out in the winter," he said. "They make nests of grass, and twigs, and sticks. And they decorate them with white things. Like ice, and snow, and things like that." And I will tell you, that I have a picture of the winter shrews in my head, now, busily building their white, white nests, blue shadows cast over them in the weak light of winter noonday.

Tough Bird

The ruby-crowned kinglet is still coming. We're talking about a tough bird, here. It's not supposed to be here this time of year. At this point, it has survived roughly 30 inches of snow and untold rain and wind and misery, sharp-shinned hawks and heaven knows what else. Its diet allegedly involves insects and occasional fruit, and I am here to tell you that we're powerful short on bugs and as for fruit, well, this ain't no Boca Raton breakfast buffet. Here it is in a picture from about 20 minutes ago. Click the picture to see a slightly larger image.

Seasonal Variation May Occur

Comic Serendipity

Per the last post. And, per no posts at all, except the ongoing sense of age that piles on each of us like a heap of stale tea-soaked madeleines, I remember.

By Way of Explanation About The Dancing Thing

I went to cotillion growing up. In sixth grade, I think it was, you signed up (and your parents paid a bunch of money) and you want in town to dance for a few hours on Saturday night. And they taught classic dances, like the Waltz, and dances that must have seemed scandalous at some point, like the Jitterbug, and positively contemporary dances, like the Saturday Night Fever and even the Stargazer.

One night I was dancing with a girl I liked. (Which was, frankly, not unusual, as I Liked Girls. Rather more than I had previously realized, if you must know the truth.) And it was not going well, because I do not pay close attention to phyiscal instruction and I have less muscle memory than a spatula. The teacher came over, I guess he was maybe even 17, and he told me, and I quote, "You are the worst dancer I have ever seen in my life."

This smarted. No scar -- I am happy and well-adjusted. But it did sting. And I was hurt, and I bristled, for all the good that ever does. And by the time he was done with the girl I liked, it was time for the Next Dance.

Years went by. (I kept going to cotillion.) I forgot the statement, and then as I danced again at parties -- mostly on one foot, as this was 1982 or so -- I realized. The truth, and it was the truth, had set me free. I could dance as badly as I wanted! I could do whatever I wished! I was so awful I could leap like a rabid deer!

This led to excessive dancing at a recent event connected to my job. I received compliments of varying degrees of bemusement. The next morning, I heard a colleague say, "There was this one guy, we called him 'Happy Feet,' he had the wildest moves!"

I wll take this lateral immortality. I am now Happy Feet.

Radio Free Whit

It's like being famous, except without the messy fame or riches part. Still getting used to how long it takes to interview somebody for a sound bite.

Play It

Twenty years apart, I saw Laurie Anderson. The first time, a friend of mine got us free tickets. She was at The Mosque, in Richmond, Virginia. It was a miracle of unevenness. I will never forgot the beautiful shock of her playing electric violin with a glowing bow in a deep black hall. The sweet, crazing chords of “Born, Not Asked,” had haunted me some until then, and after that they haunted me much deeper once I saw her play, and still do.

Other aspects were just plain murky and felt more like skits than reality. I still think her “Que es mas macho?” work is caricature of caricature, too many iterations removed from the core fractal to affect.

Last week, I saw her again. I ate dinner in the Combat Zone and walked wincing through thickening blowing snow to the theater. First, a fire drill forced her offstage; then a fight interrupted her. Mostly, she talked, and again it was uneven, smacking sometimes of late nights in the dorm's common room talking about stuff to stave off sleep – and sometimes of real mastery. So one moment she told an anecdote about her dog, and used it to reflect on terrorism. And in another, she used a lengthy set-up to reflect too easily on the Iraq war. And in the next, she said something to the effect that “Tears fall from my left eye because I love you. And they fall from my right eye because I cannot bear you.” And that pure, ineffable illustration of the misery of yin and yang I found real poetry.

But when she took the bow, which did not light up, and laid it on her violin! There was the evidence of age, the impact of mastery, the fortune of a sure hand that achieves what the mind imagines.

I Ain't Five-Oh

So, I'm walking down the street in what I knew as the Combat Zone when I was here in 1988. Now it's Chinatown, and nothing but, but there's still a few guys on the street who are just plain tough. Guy walks toward me, raises his eyebrows and just says, "What's up, officer?"

Maybe I need to get some more stylish clothes. Or a McDonald's uniform.

Frost Dragon, Your Challenge Awaits

We dumped ice out of a downspout yesterday, and today Joe stumbled on it as an appropriate gift for me. So we took the fragments up to somewhere where we would get better light and erected them in a row. Joe decided it is a "knights' city."

"The fiercest knight," said, "lives in the biggest castle." Works for me.

No, aim at the sparrow! The SPARROW!

We've had a ruby-crowned kinglet hanging around for about a week, through snow and ice and misery. They're underdog birds, tiny, bold and brave. (If you were primarily an insect eater, would you hang out in a winter storm and scrape off bits of suet in the hope, presumably, of being that much earlier to your breeding grounds in spring -- which is still months away?)

Today we had an ugly encounter, as a sharp-shinned hawk swooped out of the evergreens and tried to nab the kinglet as he hovered near my window suet feeder. As far as we can tell, the kinglet ducked at the right moment. (Pictured: The hawk, departing, talons empty.) I am hoping to make a sign with a picture of the local house sparrows on it and circulate it among local birds of prey.