Good Morning...
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The sun peeks through the icicles hanging outside my kitchen window. I look, I smile, I go for my camera, and now I must turn my thoughts to "the work project" that is filling these days. I hope to visit you all soon... Wiz

Track Soup

I dropped in on Elizabeth Gnome this afternoon. I hadn’t seen her in some time, and with the warmer temperatures, today was a good day for a ski around the forest broken up by a visit with this dear friend.

As I approached her small cottage, the smell of something delicious came wafting on the breeze, mingled with the faint scent of wood smoke and balsam. I knocked, and after a short wait the door opened, emitting a cloud of steam that obliterated all but the feet of the gnome who I was sure was beckoning me in. I ducked down to enter the tiny cottage, we hugged the familiar hug of friends, exchanged greetings, and Elizabeth offered a mug of mead. (To be honest, I had been looking forward to this treat).

The source of the wonderful smell was a large kettle over the open fire: Elizabeth was making Track Soup! Like fresh asparagus, strawberries or maple syrup, there is a season for this delicacy, and when the conditions are right, the opportunity must be seized, and Elizabeth Gnome was seizing it on this fine February day. She is proud of her cooking (as well she should be), and on this day when she was feeling that all was right with the world, Elizabeth shared her recipe. I have scaled down the amounts so that it will serve four people (rather than the traditional 73 gnomes):

Track Soup

Tracks of deer, coyote, fisher, mouse, rabbit etc. (you can not have too many)
Onions – 1 large
Garlic – 2 cloves
Butter – 3 tablespoons
Milk – 2 cups
Water – 1 cup
Potatoes – two large, cut in cubes
Cottage cheese - up to 2 cups (as desired)

1. Melt the butter in a kettle over a medium fire
2. Chop the onions and sauté them in the butter for a couple of minutes
3. Mince the garlic, add to the onions and sauté a couple more minutes
4. Stir in the deer tracks, mixing well
5. Add two cups of milk and one cup of water
6. Stir in the coyote tracks a few at a time as the liquid is heating
7. Add the potatoes, cover and bring to simmering.
8. Reduce the heat slightly and add the remaining tracks, being careful not to incorporate any excess air.
9. Simmer 5 – 8 minutes (until the potatoes are cooked)
10. Remove from the heat and stir in a cup or two of cottage cheese. (Depending on how cold the cheese is or how much you use, you may have to reheat the soup slightly to melt it).

Serve immediately.

Cook’s notes: Fresh tracks are essential. Pass up any with dull edges caused by time, and avoid those from areas where mosses and grass tufts have been scattered by deer digging for food. Elizabeth was ecstatic over having found some porcupine tracks, but in my opinion this is an acquired taste, and they are not often found. For best flavor, serve and eat as soon as possible after the cooking process is complete, as coyote and fisher tracks lose flavor rapidly.

Bon appetite!
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Please click on the image to enlarge it.
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News Bulletin:
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Gopher Leaves Forest, Becomes Psychic!

The sly little gopher knows your thoughts... Is it animal instinct? Intuition? Magic? Are your thoughts that simple??? His laughter can be heard all the way back to the forest...

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Shorty’s Treasure
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One day during the summer when I was six, I received a letter in the mail. It was from a man named “Shorty” who was incarcerated in the county prison. He informed me that he needed help; if I would find the treasure that he had hidden on our 285 acres of Adirondack forest land and hold it until he was released, I could keep half of it. Being six, with an active imagination and having read Treasure Island, I was excited out of my mind.

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The next day another letter arrived with a detailed map of our land and with an “x” marked “Shorty’s Island” on it. My father and I set out to find the spot and the treasure. After several hours of following trails and the map, we came to a small “island” in the middle of a spruce-marsh. We scoured the island and finally under a pile of leaves and branches I found an antique metal cigar box! I remember to this day opening the box and seeing the pile of old coins that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. My father and I took them home and I was busy the rest of the day examining, sorting, and counting the coins.

Several days later I received my last letter from Shorty. It said that he wasn’t going to be around much longer so I might as well keep all of the coins. It turned out that “Shorty” would be around for seven more years, but when my grandfather did pass away, the memory of Shorty’s treasure remained one of my fondest.

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The coins had been collected by my great-grandfather when he was a trolley car driver in Rochester. Whenever he found a coin that was unusual, he would replace it with his own money, and soon he had quite a collection. My grandfather, who was a boy at heart, invented the entire story, knowing the effect it would have on an impressionable six year old.
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“Shorty’s Treasure” did have a lasting effect on me; it sparked a hobby that has lasted since that day when I found that shiny cigar box under the branches. Even if those coins were worth thousands of dollars, I don’t believe I would ever sell them, because when I see them today I remember “Shorty” and what a wonderful, kind-hearted man he was.

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.....~ One of my son's college applications asked for an essay about "a meaningful event" in his life, and that was what he wrote. (In case you're wondering, he was accepted). This week would be Shorty's 106th birthday.

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The most valuable coin in Shorty's Treasure was this 1922 Grant half dollar, valued at about $25 in 1983. For the next ten years or so, my son added to his collection with purchases of fairly low-priced old foreign and domestic coins. Below, father and son revisit "Shorty's Island" nearly twenty-five years later.

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The Wizard Goes YouTube...

With many thanks to Baron Ectar for his help in figuring out how to navigate the perilous shoals of cyberspace... ! I hope you enjoy this, one of my favorite Joni Mitchell tunes.



By the way, there is a theme here... Joni is Canadian...

Oh Canada!

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Here is my personal postcard to you from last Saturday spent across the border. Please click on an image to enlarge it.

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A snow-walled maze, iced slides, horse-drawn sleigh-rides, clowns, musicians and dragons, hot cocoa with poutin and beavertails, giant snow sculptures: Canadians know how to celebrate winter!

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.. .. In the maze.

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A one-horse open sleigh.

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And near the end of the day, here's Grandson in the company of dragons and musicians... looking like all the fun has fit him for a nap...
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Cold Blood

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Her body was brutally impaled and dangling from a fence. There was a trace of dried blood on her breast, the last drops her wounded heart had managed to pump out before it stopped beating forever. The wind blew a snowdrift over the ground below her to obliterate the rest.

If any positive thought could arise from this killing, it would be that the victim was taken completely by surprise. Paranoia nor reasoned fears had not darkened her days or caused her to rearrange her daily life in some protective, cautious manner. She lived every day to the fullest, satisfied and confident even on that last one when it must have occurred to her that she was very much alone. Perhaps they had decided to grab a bite to eat elsewhere and had neglected to tell her, or perhaps the wind and the falling snow had caused others of her kind to seek shelter, leaving her there alone. Whichever the case, it didn’t matter to her and she chose from the take-out offerings. That day she was not missing the pressures her society of friends imposed at such times.

He had been watching her. She saw him approach and immediately sensed danger, but it was too late. She tried to flee, but he was too big and too fast for her, and even though she zig-zagged and ducked and tried to swerve and wrench from his grasp, she could not. Death followed, not quickly, but violently, as he used the fence’s sharp point to run her through.

The killer was known as The Butcher, a serial killer and a cannibal, but in this case he abandoned her wrecked body. Habit and perhaps the psychological hard-wiring of his brain - not hunger – had driven him this time, which shouldn’t surpise us, for even Hannibal Lecter ate only the sliced off cheeks of his first victim, choosing to waste the rest. If her friends and acquaintances ever noticed her disappearance, they showed no sign, and the police did not file a report. Wind and weather would soon erase the reality that was her.

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I have the proof of his presence at the scene immediately before the violent act. My photograph, shown below, might be useful to any of you who might wish to do something to bring him to justice, but I urge you to let him be.
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This is a Northern Shrike, a bird who feeds on large insects, rodents, snakes and small birds. The shrike is a rare visitor to our place in the forest, but his arrival clears all other birds from the bird-feeders.

This afternoon I noted the absence of our usual feathered friends. Seconds later, the shrike swooped down, startling the one chickadee who must have been oblivious to his presence. They flew across the frozen pond, twisting and diving, the smaller bird perhaps only two feet ahead of its pursuer, and disappeared from my view.

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The shrike has no talons; it kills prey with its beak and by impaling it on something sharp such as a piece of fence wire or briar. I didn't actually see this, nor did I really find a bloodied body, but - inspired by Sling's blog yesterday - I thought it might make a good story... because it does happen. And, uh, before you tell me how grossed out you are, stop by a slaughter house - you know, the place that turns cows into those nice, neatly packaged steaks you occasionally enjoy.

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photo of a plate in Birds of America, edited by T. Gilbert Pearson

The Wild Heart


howls in woods near by
footprints in snow make heart shape
call from valentine
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haiku by Becky Harblin © copyright 2007
photo by WizenedEye © copyright 2007
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From Coyote, Shaman and Wizard, Happy Valentine's Day!
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From the Playground

Shaman's words float into the forest, fall like snowflakes, and pile up on my computer in a lovely drift. Often they are the inspiration for a photograph, a pleasant prod that causes me to don my barn parka (because it's big enough for the camera to fit under) and skis or snowshoes and go off in search of something that will reflect or illustrate her poetic creation. It's a game we're playing. Our playground is a secret blog known only to us, where her words and my images mingle and balance, teeter-tottering together.

Crows have been scarce lately. "The King's Trees" has been hanging around my desk for a couple of weeks, waiting for me to get a shot at their "black and primal selves," and then, yesterday morning they finally heard their cue.


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The King's Trees

One crow
rests
on top of an oak tree,
another crow
sits, alert too,
on the neighbor tree,
a maple.
Comfortable,
on the highest branches
their outstretched heads,
with penetrating eyes
focus
on whatever suits
their black and primal selves.

Or maybe,
they are simply half asleep,
each humming a favorite tune.
As I used to do
as a child
who climbed and sat
in beautiful trees,
feeling
like the king.

By Becky Harblin © copyright 2007
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Need

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to perform. As a kid, my love of horses took me to rodeos and horse shows, and maybe because I was female and females had pretty limited career paths in the middle of the last century, I aspired to be a trick-rider in the rodeo. (When Ringling Brothers came to town I also wondered how I might become the bareback rider in the circus).

I painted and drew pictures too, almost always of horses and cowboys, and early in my grade-school years was recommended for Saturday art lessons at the city art museum, but my parents and I both decided that Saturday’s hours were better spent outdoors. My classmate who did attend the museum classes became a successful painter.

My mother thought to correct my pigeon-toes – and maybe derail my tom-boy leanings – by enrolling me in dancing lessons. I took tap, ballet, “modern jazz”, and acrobatic for years, and they put me on the stage for the first time. The excitement of costumes, bright lights and applause fanned the fire deep within me.

Cowboys played guitars, so I managed to get one on loan and talked my mother into paying for lessons, then convinced my dancing teacher to let me perform a couple of numbers during the intermission of a dance recital. I was probably the oldest dancer in the recital that night, and although I still enjoyed tapping around the stage, the singing was what I would remember. The songs I chose were “Tall Paul” (which had been a hit by every girl’s favorite Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello) and a G-Em-C-D7 tune (you musicians recognize that as the chord progression used in about half of all early rock’n’roll “hits”) called “Hand in Hand.” No doubt I was awful, but I sang and played my heart out...and people applauded.

There was another music genre rising in the 1950s. The Kingston Trio took “folk” music in a new direction, their acoustic instruments and voices speaking to me in a more meaningful way than the dance music that was rock’n’roll or the traditional (and boring) subject matter of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” or “Frog Went a-Courting” (everyone’s first guitar songs), then one Saturday morning in 1962 a friend came to my house with an album entitled “Peter, Paul & Mary.” The hair on my arms rose as I listened, and on that day, unrecognized passions stored deep within me found a voice. By the next day I had learned every song on the record, and although I never thought about it, my rodeo or bareback riding career was a thing of the past. I have been a “folksinger” ever since.

So many things I’ve done have been for an audience of one kind or another: acting in a play or musical, displaying a photograph, doing a dramatic public reading of one of my husband’s poems; and now I’m blogging.

The need to create is a driving passion, an often urgent, aching need to express thoughts and emotions. It is a longing for connection, for the sharing of these passions with another human being. For me it is undoubtedly wrapped in complex, insecure egocentricity. My words, my photographs, the songs I sing and the roles I play give expression to an internal energy that aches to be released and recognized. I don’t fully understand why, and I have no choice: I am an artist.