CALM BEFORE THE STORM

A gloomy and cloudy, gray morning is upon me today.  It feels like the calm before the storm.  As I step outside the cabin door the sulfury smell of the paper mill, thirty some odd miles to the east of us, permeates the air.  That's the way it's been all my life.  My Grandfather, who lived a mile south of me as the crow flies, always said in the 1960s, "I can smell the paper mill.  It's going to storm."

I hastily walk around the pond dike, dipping into the thick woods near the creek and nestle up against a big oak tree.

All around me are signs of those who were here before me, just days or weeks ago.  I notice two small maple trees rubbed by a buck's antlers and a large scrape on the ground not far away.  The regular whitetail gun deer season ended yesterday and the woods is quiet as it waits for the impending storm to arrive.

A few raindrops land on my journal...  and then stop, as if beckoning me to write faster.  I can occasionally hear in the distance the three birds that seem to follow me this time of year in our Wisconsin woods; crows, chickadees, and blue jays.  None of them are in sight.

I'm likening the weather today to my own mood.  I've just finished six months of chemotherapy, my second round of treatments.  Now I sit and wait... for a recurrence that will most likely come quicker than the last one.  I'm facing reality and my own "calm before the storm".

It's difficult trying to sort out the best way to cope and enjoy this time I've been given to the fullest.  Should I spend it gathering up firewood and stacking it up before the snow falls, or stashing acorns in every hollow tree like the squirrels, or maybe flying south like the trumpeter swans to avoid winter's snow and cold.

My breath is visible as the wind begins to pick up a little, but the rain and ice are waiting for me to finish writing in my journal.

I think I'll not worry about gathering firewood, stashing acorns, or getting rained on.  I believe I'll just keep sitting under this oak tree and allow myself to get soaked... and enjoy every minute of it!  It's just rain, on the last day of November in Wisconsin, and it's both frightening and exhilarating.

p.s.  I'm not saying Grandpa was wrong, but the rain never did come this morning!

FIVE THINGS

5 THINGS

If I could only choose five things in nature to heighten my senses…

Just five little things to keep me sane,

It’d be easy for me to decide.

I’d pick wild roses to smell...

Wintergreen berries to taste...

 Trumpeter swans to hear...

Cardinal flowers to see...

And pussy willows to touch...

What five things would you choose?

NOVEMBER MOON

It's cold out today, the second day of the whitetail gun deer season in Wisconsin.  This morning when I woke up and looked out my window, the ground was coated with powdered sugar.  Most of the snow has disappeared this afternoon though, except for a coating of white on the pond's new ice.

We've went from fall to winter, from dragonflies to snow flakes, in just a few short days.  It always seems like winter begins here where I live during the week of Thanksgiving. When it comes suddenly like this year, it takes us time to acclimate.

It's calm in the woods right now and I'm enjoying the peacefulness of the day's end as the sun sets beyond the gray, cold, clouds of a soon to come winter.

What lies in front of me as I sit near my brother's tree stand, hoping a deer will come my way, are fallen oak leaves, golden marsh grass, everything in shades of grays and browns.  The tamarack's golden needles and red, orange, and yellow leaves from the oaks, aspen, birch, and maples have since fallen and turned to brown.

I'm not hunting again this year, and sometimes I do miss it.  As I sit here in my blaze orange coat leaning up against a big oak tree, I hear a few distant gun shots to the east and the west, but nothing close by.   I hope everyone has had a safe and fun season so far.

It's time to walk back to the cabin now as the sun has set and darkness is closing in.  But wait, here's the moon!  As I catch a glimpse of it rising through the treetops above the pond, it brings me hope.  Staring at the moon's bright and fuzzy glow, I see a framework around it consisting of  tiny buds on the tamarack branches and catkins on the aspen trees, all sure signs that spring is around the corner... just waiting to come back again!  And boy howdy, I can't wait! 

CROWS, SPIDERS, & LIGHTNING

As I step outside on this beautiful Sunday morning the blue sky is full of crows trying to chase away an owl.  I follow them around the pond and into the woods where the owl honkers down in the middle of a large white pine tree.  He's hoping the crows will stop harassing him, but no luck.  Before I can locate the owl he flies up and crosses the creek with the flock of crows gathered all around him cawing loudly.  I continue to hear them cackling in the distance as the owl finds another perching tree.  How long will it be until the crows quit playing their game?  Who knows.

I find my way to the mouth of the little Lindsay Creek and sit by an oak tree to write in my journal.  It's almost shirt sleeve weather and I can't believe how many "gift days" we have had this fall.  Two spiders chase each other across my leg but I'm not going to kill them.  They're so little they don't scare me, and besides, my mom said if you kill a spider it'll rain.

I can see Joe-pye weed plants just across the creek standing tall amid the marsh grass.  Their beautiful pink blossoms of summer are only a memory.

 

 

A sturdy little white pine tree stands in front of me and looks full of promise.  It picked a great place to live, right next to the creek in full sunlight.  Some day it will fear lightning when it towers over the other trees, but not for many years to come.




In two more days I'll finish my last chemotherapy treatment if all goes as planned.  It's been a long six month stretch this time.  What's next?  Who knows.  Today... who cares.  There aren't any crows chasing me, the spiders came and went, and a lightning strike is next to impossible!  I'm going to celebrate on this beautiful Sunday by soaking up the sun and looking for red dragonflies. 


 

I found them!

"Take me away from the solitude of nature and I will die swiftly.  

Give me a woods to walk in, a creek to cross, and the sound of birds singing... and I will live forever."

FOR THE LOVE OF ROCKS

My post this week is a bit behind, and also a little off the wall, but I hope you enjoy it.

I'm a little bit of a rock hound and love looking for agates in particular, and other rocks that are just plain pretty, or have fossils in them or something cool.  Wisconsin, or least the area where I live, does not have many fossils.  Sometimes we have to be creative when we find a rock that catches our eye in these parts.  When I'm out exploring nature wherever I might be,  I tend to pause and study rocks at my feet as well.  It's a habit that started when I was very young, inherited from my father's side of the fence.

Here's a story that came to me the other night, while I couldn't sleep, thinking about the rock with the face on it that I found the other day at home.  This rock is just a little smaller than a golf ball. 

"A Native American Lady, "dubbed with affection by her tribe as, "Woman Who Wastes Time Looking", was gathering clams one late summer day nearly seven hundred years ago, in a small stream not far from her abode, when she found a rock in the ripples of a shallow place with the sun shining upon it. As she placed the rock in her hand, noticing what she thought was an aged face, wrinkled from the sun, she heard a story in her head. The story follows...

Many years ago you may recall hearing about the time in late summer when your great grandmother, "Lightfoot", left your camp to look for the delicious sweet tooth mushrooms everyone prized as an ingredient to her soups and partridge stews. She had found the apricot colored mushrooms before, in a special place on an oak knoll, but this time, Lightfoot, on her journey alone, never returned home.

"Woman Who Wastes Time" gazed at the stone clutched in her palm and the story came to her about the woman she barely remembered, as she was just a young child when this happened. When Grandmother spoke to her, inside her head, in an aged but somewhat familiar voice, she said, "Never stop looking for small treasures from Mother Earth that delight you, no matter what others say... like small pebbles from the earth, feathers from the sky, shed antlers from the deer, and little things that no one else takes time to see." "When I left you, my journey was not wasted, I found the sweet tooth. My feet wouldn't let me make it back home, but my mind and heart are always with you."

SUNSET WHITETAIL

It's sunset, and I'm sitting on the ground on my old tree stand between two oak trees.  Gray squirrels are cackling, one directly above me and another southeast of me.  The woods is quiet and calm, and the temperature on this first day of November is quite mild!

I was planning to walk across the crick this afternoon but I couldn't cross it with my Merrell hikers that I'm wearing.  We received close to three inches of rain in the last few days, and the water level has risen a bit.  I forgot that little detail.

I've got my camera in hand, focusing on the jabbering squirrel in the red oak tree right above me.  It seems as though his noise making will give my presence away to the entire world.  Dang!

 
But after snapping a few pictures of the squirrel I hear a commotion to my left.  A whitetail buck is walking directly towards me and he's extremely curious.  He steps closer and closer while I keep trying to capture a photo of him that isn't blurry.

Then he stops about 60' from me and slowly trots away after realizing that I wasn't the doe he was looking for.  This buck is clearly in the rutt to have his guard down so much.

Just a couple minutes later an owl lands in an oak tree nearby.  It's hard to write in my journal with so much action going on this evening.  The owl escapes me as I frighten him with my quick motions, setting down my journal and pen and turning my camera back on.  It is neat to see his large wingspan as he takes back off in flight and soars through the oak trees toward the pond.

Moths are fluttering around me also.  They are elusive but I see one now perched on a maple tree just across the trail from where I'm sitting.  With a flash, I'll try to capture it later when I get up to leave.

The sun has completely set now and darkness is settling in all around me.  Will I make it back to the cabin without a flashlight?  For sure.  Do I want to?  Maybe, but I'm in no hurry.  Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, tra la la la la?  Not me!

What a glorious beginning to the month of November in Wisconsin.  I think Indian Summer is just around the corner.  Don't let it pass you by! Go take a walk and enjoy it.