Enough of Mickey, Already!

Photograph © Copyright 2006 WizenedEye.com

Sometimes you’re lucky enough to “get the picture” in the field; sometimes you might have to bring the subject to the studio and work at setting up a shot.

This fall there was a stretch of time when the milkweed pods began to open and the weather favored the transport of their seeds on dry, silky bits of plant-fluff. Rain would end Wind’s opportunity, and so time to photograph these ephemeral fliers was also passing. I carefully gathered up a vase-full of stalks and seed pods - several already open and beginning to spew their contents - and brought it into the house. My plan was to keep them dry and then take them back outside for photographs when I had the time.

Yesterday I glanced at my “bouquet” on the window sill near my desk. The pods are empty! No, the seeds aren’t littering my floor... they were all eaten by the mice.

Autumn Snow

© copyright WizenedEye.com 2006

Scary Stuff

I may have come a step closer to understanding the Bush administration.

Do you know that there are Evangelical Hell Houses staged this time of year to ward their youth from the perils of evil? “Come celebrate like the true believers this Halloween season at the most shocking and controversial haunted house you’ll ever visit!” states one website. Supposedly these EHHs were a brainchild of Jerry Falwell back in the 1970s, and - like bell-bottom pants - they haven’t gone away. (http://lesfreres.org/hellhouse/main.html)

You (or more likely your moronically Christian parents) purchase tickets for one of these events. On the chosen night you enter the Hell House and are walked through different rooms of evil scenarios (secular humanists sipping lattes, suicide, homosexuals dying of AIDS, pregnant cheerleaders) and finally hell. Ultimately you are saved by Jesus and asked to accept him into your life, and then you are brought to a Christian party with a live band, donuts and punch. The stick and the carrot have certainly taken on new dimensions.

All of this causes me to think about the Bush administration and the Republican party going on about Iraq having WMD, about taking war to the terrorists so they won’t take it to us, about Democrats somehow not being able to protect us from evil, and – although there are terrifying people and forces in this world – I begin to see how the G.O.P. may have come upon this idea of using fear to retain their grip on power. Can’t you just see young, drunken George W. Bush being scared sober? Can’t you just imagine Karl Rove’s glee when he realized the potential of the power of fear? Can’t you just believe that Jesus would cry if he could see what’s being passed off as his teaching?

Onions

The onions were pulled from the garden about a month ago and laid out to dry on the bed of the wagon in the tractor shed. The shed is open at both ends, and the prevailing winds whip through there, making it a perfect place for this process. When the tops are brown and beginning to shrivel and the roots no longer rubbery and vital, the onions are ready to be gathered in and stored in a cool, dry, dark place.

Holding the round head of an onion in my left hand, I firmly grasp its neck in my right, then twist the bulb around and around in a counter-clockwise direction until it severs next to my right hand. With each severing I think, “Take that, Dick Cheney [George Bush, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Ralph Reed, Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly...]”

Soon there are two bags full of the heads of those self-serving liars and hypocrites, and I move on to the day’s next project: mucking out Heidi’s stall. There's way too much shit in this world.

The Private Lives of Bluebirds...

A female Eastern Bluebird watches as her mate takes a bath. He splashed around, he hopped out, shook himself off, and then they flew away. The temperature here today is in the upper thirties, and they are headed south for the winter.

Fall Hiker

© copyright 2006 WizenedEye.com

A resting hiker is reflected in a still pool along the Grasse River.

What Would Elvis Do?

I saw Elvis today. He was changing a tire in the WalMart parking lot. I tried not to stare because that is such a dumb thing to do when you see a celebrity, but it was hard to turn away, so I didn’t, and when he returned my gaze, I spoke. It’s not every day you get to talk with The King, and besides, he’s a southern boy, and I’ve been wishing for someone to explain what people from down in those Red States are thinking.

I started with some chit-chat, hoping to break the ice in a friendly sort of way. “How’ve you been?” I asked. Elvis sneered a little, but it was a kindly sort of sneer, then he told me how hard it’s been to find a decent job. He’s worked the fast-food places and now WalMart (where his part-time shift had just ended). The problem was health insurance and retirement, but he said he prays it'll all work out and he buys lottery tickets, and it is nice to work with other retirees who are also trying to make ends meet. Anyway, he thought we all should have to sacrifice when the country’s at war.

Emboldened, I asked what he thought about that war. “I’m all shook up,” he replied, “but we gotta take the war to the tarists or they’ll take it to us.” I handed him a lug nut. “Are you worried about North Korea testing a nuke?” I questioned. “Are they near Iraq?” he responded.

There was a bit of dust on his blue suede shoes, and his hip seemed to swivel half a turn as he stood up, sun glinting off his flag belt buckle. My focus shaken, I fumbled for words but finally blurted out, "Why’d you stop singing?" He stared me in the eye, this time the sneer a bit more menacing. “I’ve got family values now,” he snarled. “What do you think would happen if I got up in front of people today and did the moves I used to do? Gays’d be all over me. My mama didn't raise up no fool. A-wella-wella-wella what would Jesus do? I’ll tell you: he’d get a job at WalMart and he’d be sayin’ God bless America.”

And with that, Elvis turned and got into his Chevy. He’d have roared away, but he forgot to lower the jack.

My Father

I write this on the eve of the 16th anniversary of my father's death. Sometimes I remember him so clearly that I can hear his voice; other times his presence seems so very long ago that when I try to picture the details of his face, what forms in my mind's eye is really the recollection of some photograph or other, the image of one particular instant fixed in time by light striking film - not the real man at all.

The youngest of ten children born to Austro-Hungarian immigrants, raised in a tenement on New York City's upper east side and orphaned at the age of 20, he took to the Adirondack woods. His days were often spent climbing the high peaks; his nights reading Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, William Joseph Long or Thoreau by oil lamp light.

And so, on this anniversary of the last night we spent together, I offer you a photograph of my father at the summit of Mt. Marcy, January 30, 1931. The temperature was 5 degrees below zero.

I stop writing and walk to the mudroom door, peer in, and see the same snowshoes, now sporting new leather bindings and - God forgive me - a bit of duct-tape here and there - and I am thankful for that piece of me that is him.

I miss you, Packy.

Criminal Intent

This morning I awoke and looked out the window at a pretty amazing pink and orange sunrise sky, said "Wow!" and then "Damn" because you have to be an earlier bird than I to get the photographic worm. It then occurred to me that being a photographer is a bit like being a criminal: you need motive (the love of taking a good picture), weapon (decent camera), and opportunity (created by Wizards who get their asses out of bed early).

Coyote Call

I’ve lived in the North Country for thirty years, and during that time the howling of coyotes has become one of the common night sounds – a chorus of varying voices. It wasn’t always so, and in fact it was such a thrilling novelty back in the 1980s that one winter evening we hosted a potluck supper and invited John Green, biologist and coyote expert, to give a short lecture to the assemblage and then take us out into the woods on a “coyote call.”

John brought tape recordings and explained the different voices the animals use to communicate. We listened intently and several of us took turns doing vocal imitations before donning parkas, hats, mittens and boots and setting out for the hilltop (which seemed an appropriate howling location). Surely Sherman’s army was stealthier than we, and if Wiley had been anywhere in the vicinity, he wouldn’t have stuck around to find out what this gaggle of wise-cracking, flashlight-bearing, two-legged amateur naturalists was up to. Although it was a rip-snorting good time, no canines returned our calls that night.

In the years since, I’ve occasionally made efforts to commune with the coyotes. Sometimes I’ll try to initiate something by stepping onto the cold, open back porch and howling into the stillness of the night; other times I attempt to join in a conversation of nearby wails and yips that’s in progress. In the first case, sometimes my neighbor (who attended the potluck...) howls back; in the second, the woods immediately go silent.

I can only guess at how my efforts might translate, but it’s probably something like the time the sheep got into the carrots. I was staying with friends in Costa Rica and early one morning discovered the small herd munching happily on garden produce. Not knowing quite what to do, I grabbed a half-eaten carrot (because I didn’t know how to say “carrot” in Spanish) and ran to the kitchen waving it and yelling, “Las viejas!!!” The cook gave me a very baffled look... and then began to laugh heartily. I had informed her that “the old ladies” (viejas) – not the sheep (ovejas) - were into the carrots! And so it must be with the coyotes: I think I’m yelling, “Hey! How are you? Gather ‘round here!” and they hear, “Ich bin King Kong!! Run for your lives!!” Like the cook, Wiley has probably had a few laughs. He has never answered my calls.

Last night, in the heat of a passionate rendezvous, my mate emitted several fairly loud erotic moans. There was a “beat” of silence, and then suddenly through the open windows came a deafening and enthusiastic chorus of canine wails, barks and yips. Passion gave way to uncontrollable laughter as we realized we had finally communicated something our wolf-like neighbors could understand.

Is it not possible that all animals may share a language of passion, of fear, of need; of hunger or joy or anger - a language that transcends syntax? Humans have simply lost the ability to understand it. The coyote love song may not be very different than our own, and “calling” to them from a warm bed is much more pleasant than those old back porch efforts. John Green probably knew this, but he didn’t tell us.