field notes:

2.1.2003

T. gave me the great gift this morning of a few hours alone. Sweet time, unfurling of soul, quiet with outstretched arms. We've all got cabin fever here, T., me and the dog. Ostensibly, this time was to write, but I've mostly used it to play and putter. My alone time doesn't have to be spent writing to be valuable, it's just being alone at all that weighs me down, ballast against the anxious flyaway breezes of the world. Funny, but I spent a good hour of my precious few at the beach. I can be alone there anytime.

I thought I'd stay for only a few minutes. From bed this morning I could see that it was a wildly windy day. The tops of trees waved madly -- my boating plans dashed. So I walked down to see what the water was doing.

With heavy winds piling in from the northwest, waves were breaking against the seawall and running up the stairs and onto the pier. The beach was gone on the south side of the cove, and to the north there was only a bit of beach -- a driftwood line before the grassy bluff and the rocky hill.

I lay down with my back against the grass, propped my head up on one bent elbow and watched ducks glide on swells downwind and several minutes later, slide back across my view upwind so as not to lose too much ground; a fishing boat at N. Millerton looking for herring I guess; the greening hills and the Tomales Bay Oyster Co. across the bay, and nothing at all. I watched the sea from sea level and felt, finally, renewal.

I closed my eyes and the sun warmed me, the wind and the waves a lullaby of form, and I dozed.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 12:36 PM link | comments []

1.31.2003

Some poems from West Wind by Mary Oliver:

The Rapture
-Mary Oliver

All summer
I wandered the fields
that were thickening
every morning,

every rainfall,
with weeds and blossoms,
with the long loops
of the shimmering, and the extravagant--

pale as flames they rose
and fell back,
replete and beautiful--
that was all there was--

and I too
once or twice, at least,
felt myself rising,
my boots

touching suddenly the tops of the weeds,
the blue and silky air--
listen,
passion did it,

called me forth,
addled me,
stripped me clean
then covered me with the cloth of happiness--

I think there is no other prize,
only rapture the gleaming,
rapture the illogical the weightless--

whether it be for the perfect shapeliness
of something you love--
like an old German song--
or of someone--

or the dark floss of the earth itself,
heavy and electric.
At the edge of sweet sanity open
such wild, blind wings.

West Wind 2
-Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks -- when you hear that unmistakable
pounding -- when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming -- then row, row for your life
toward it.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 3:57 PM link | comments []

1.29.2003

It was a low, low tide yesterday afternoon. I went for a quick walk before the State of the Union speech, giving myself plenty of time to pour a glass of wine for the show -- but I won't digress (don't get me started).

There were 28 Willets working the exposed bay bottom at the edge of the water. Mostly they ate in busy harmony, but one Willet came up with a squirming two inches of something tasty and was chased bird by bird into flying away from the group where he could dine in peace.

There's a sweet tree at the north end of our cove that grows horizontally from the rocks before it turns upwards nominally. Part of its trunk makes a kind of back cradle that I like to lean against and gaze out towards Hog Island and the imagined ocean beyond. It only takes a moment to lean back and feel the tree hold me. For a moment I am away. For a moment I am not a person with worries, or pressing deadlines, or dinner to cook, just a woman and her tree.

Turning back I saw that the Willets had gone. I could hear them, but could no longer see them. Were they just out of sight beyond the pier? All that I could see was mud or muddy. But as I walked along the beach they reappeared in their places. As I regained the blue watery background I realized that they hadn't left at all -- their muddy coloring had only worked as intended. 28 busy Willets disappeared completely from 30 feet distant. It's nice to see that some things work.

I also did a little pond-birding yesterday. I was called to jury duty but was excused mid-day. Across from our Frank Lloyd Wright-designed civic center is a small lagoon populated by a motley crew of ducks and gulls.

Mallard pairs, Lesser Scaups and little Coots compete with Mew and other unidentified gulls for bread crumbs and whatever other junk people throw them to eat. Ducks gathered around me hoping I would feed them. One after another Mallard would gain the prime center spot of the crowd at my feet by bill-snapping any duck that came close.

In San Pedro I go to a park sometimes that has a dark duck pond. One day I watched as one pair tag-teamed bullied a duck, biting and chasing. It was very upsetting to watch, and moreso because I had my young niece with me. I didn't know how to explain this to her and I didn't want her to have seen it. I've been told that this kind of behavior only occurs at these domesticated pond-scenes, especially where there is no extant life in the water.

I don't know if the mild center-stage grabbing I watched at Civic Center Lagoon yesterday was more of that behavior. I got the bird book out of the car and was trying my hand at gull ids when a woman came by with three little girls of about 7 or so. They proceeded to chase and yell at the ducks and geese nearby, with purpose and without being asked to stop. I wonder if these kids would be acting this way in a more natural setting, or if this too was domesticated-pond behavior. Were there just too many kids here? Was this latent field trip behavior, or public school social conditioning? I wanted to talk to these kids, to tell them to leave the ducks alone, give them some peace. But instead I closed my book and walked away. It's better this way, let the ducks learn to stay away from them now.

This is not the kind of place where kids can get the point about nature and the peacefulness of watching birds be birds.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 9:27 AM link | comments []

1.27.2003

We went out to Staten Island yesterday, it's a recent addition to the Cosumnes River Preserve which is owned by the Nature Conservancy. We drove over the unforgettable Antioch Bridge and along the leveed riverbank of the Sacramento River to Walnut Grove, then headed east to Staten Island. It's not really an island, the delta is full of misnamed islands. It's agricultural land that the owners flood during winter to provide refuge for 100,000 overwintering birds, 18,000 of them Sandhill Cranes. We saw at least 1,000 of those yesterday, along with hundreds of tundra swans and snow geese. I tried to get a decent picture of a Crane, but as hard as I tried I wasn't able to get close enough.

Their call is unforgettable.

Here's a list of the birds we saw throughout the Preserve and on the drive:

Sandhill Crane 1,000
Tundra Swan 100
Snow Goose 150
Red-Winged Blackbird 1,000
Great Egret
Blue Heron
Pintail
American Wigeon
Northern Shoveler
Coot
Bufflehead
Black-Necked Stilt
Red-Tailed Hawk
Northern Harrier
Meadowlark
White-Tailed Kite
Yellow-Billed Magpie
Rough-Legged Hawk
Scrub Jay
Kestrel
crow

I was struck yesterday with the difference between living here on the edge of a national park, surrounded by protected land and people who care about the environment --surrounded by converts -- from living out in the delta. There is still work to be done here keeping development down, jetskis out, and bacteria counts low. But it's so pristine because of all the work that has already been done. Out there along the rivers -- the Sacramento, the Cosumnes and the Mokulemne -- I was stunned by the trash. Even just outside the Preserve was an old gulley filled with broken cars, beds, and scores of old tires. The people who work out there fighting to buy preserves, and to change the way people think, they really have their work cut out for them. But there is a real difference to be made there.

Part of environmental work is affecting policy, but much of it is working with local people and showing them that conservation can make sense for their lives and doesn't have to affect economies negatively. I admire what the Nature Conservancy does throughout the world. They do more than buy up land to preserve it, they work with localities and create practical solutions for people.

And birds.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 10:06 PM link | comments []