Calm Waters, Bright Sun, Good Fun
Some end of season work and then hikes and explorations.
All Of One Mind
Canada thanksgiving, with Karen, Irene, Murray, and Elaine.
Nor’Easter…
…along with high water, making for a scary situation.
And guests have arrived.
Who’s Soggy Now?
Barrels and buckets for hours and hours. It quit for a while, but then about 5 in the a.m., a mighty cell moved from west to east, to the north. Radar had it moving across the mainland some 20 miles away, but even from this vantage point it appeared as an incandescent nebula of incessant electrical discharge, accompanied, muted by distance, by a continuous roar. Glad it missed us. On the other hand, more moisture is not what Michigan/Huron needs right now.
Garden Reset…
…followed by serious a duck-drownder. Extended downpour mixed with plenty of lightning and the heavy, rolling thunder that is only possible over wide expanses of water. For some reason, though flickering, the power stayed on (so far). Huge amount of unneeded moisture—ground saturated, water in the swales.
Following the Max Burt advice, tilling in the fall, so that come spring all that is needed is “a rake and a hoe.”
My leisurely pace with the shovel was accelerated by distant rumbles of thunder, and I finished up just as the first drops came down.
Heartwood and sapwood?
Sumac
Laundry Day…
…and grass cut day, and cycle on trailer day, and prepare the porch-wrap day, etc.
Not ours; we don’t have such colorful sheets.
Cloudy, chilly, and windy. Blowing like stink right now. Fire in the stove tonight.
And, things are getting crowded at the Falls.(Video by Sue)
Easing Into The Checklist…
…the shutdown checklist, that is. No need to rush, but no need to save everything for the last minute.
Unretouched photo by Sue—looks like a painting.
The definition of fall?
Trench dug in big upper level chip pile in anticipation of hibernating coreopsis. Tipis erected around new white pines and wrapped in bird netting (as deer repellent).
And, for dinner…
Climate Protest…
…at Wagg’s Woods and then on the streets in Mindemoya.
Too preoccupied to remember to take a photo, but got photographed by a reporter, so mug and protest sign may be in the paper. About 50 protesters, in rain gear.
Then, straight from the protest to dinner at Buoys. Pax had a bad day—lots of car time in the rain.
Being deluged now—climate change.
Salmon Run
Many big fish working their way up river, resting in the slack water before thrashing up the rapids.
Fall day, bright and clear and cool, with a touch of color showing up here and there. Thunderstorm last night, but conditions not too muddy at the dump.
And Then The Sun Came Out…
…and the big water level stays uncomfortably high.
Stake Finders
Just making sure property lines are clearly marked prior to leaving. Pretty easy to get the impression that the little next door lot is bigger than it is.
Murray helped with his 100 foot tape, metal detector and hand bearing compass.
Full Of Beans
The bounty continues.
And above, an example of how a big igneous rock formed deep in the earth, slowly becomes sand.
And below, Greta’s speech to the U.N.
In Spite Of The Rain
Outdoor showers (a bit wet), dog walks (in the intervals), plus the more indoor rainy-day stuff like reading, writing, napping, sitting on the porch experiencing rain while staying dry, and watching an episode or two of our new TV binge—Kim’s Convenience.
What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed. Of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights. And of sustainability versus growth.
This was a relationship model, a kincentric model, one in which we are all equal, but we have different jobs to do here on earth.
—John Mohawk
Mimi’s Mushrooms
Sue has been wandering around looking at mushrooms, of which we seem to have considerable variety. Photos by Sue.
A warm one today, even warm enough to try swimming. And tonight, off to the Cafe In The Woods for a performance by a multiply-instrumented solo instrumentalist.
Dinner in Gore Bay
After a sunny and summery day in Kagawong.
With Murray, Elaine, and Ian.
The Ant and the Grasshopper
And today we mostly took the part of the ant.
Acorns gathered prior to planting. Road ditch cleared prior to spring runoff. Woodshed filled in anticipation of fall chill and spring cold.
Bird Migration
Back in the day, not so many years ago…
…the human people wondered where all the bird people went when the days grew short and the leaves began to turn. One theory suggested that they tunneled underground and waited out the winter there. Another held that they sank themselves below the waters, like frogs and turtles, until the coming of spring.
But then came the arrow stork, or pfeilstörchen, showing up in Germany carrying arrows from Africa.
Gross, yes, but conclusive—birds migrate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“An Apocryphal History of the Discovery of Migration, or The Sacrifice of the Pfeilstörchen”
Translated by Jacob Rogers
I, wearing heron symmetrically opposed over my chest,
swore to the five emperors that there was no such thing as balance,
that if herons upheld
the rivers on all Chinese porcelain it was
simply due to
a locking mechanism in their joints.
they awarded me for risking everything in my defense.
I wrote to you a few years later. I said:
Rostock, sixth of July,
it’s awful of me to interrupt, but I just
need you to understand how certain kinds of wounds can be useful.
I’m finishing up an essay
on pre-modern explanations for bird migration,
and all the species seen since Aristotle’s time as either moon travelers
or sailors that very rarely return.
I even studied a pamphlet from 1703
that argues for the communion of swallows,
that they gather in wetlands
and follow a specific choreography to perch on top of the rushes
until they sink.
they spend winters underwater, in the hypnotic calm of the muck,
and that’s why they emerge so klein damp in spring.
but in 1822 (I carefully attached the photograph),
an arrow pierced the neck of a stork in central Africa
and the bird began its flight bearing both weapon and wound.
when it reached Germany, someone identified the origin of the
projectile,
and went on to form a scientific hypothesis.
I don’t remember much more of the letter, except:
pain and brightness are distributed in equal parts,
and lightness only exists because of past excess.
Since it’s the migratory season (I concluded)
I hope you don’t mind if I bypass the formula for farewells—
Atlantic in between us,
every anemone is fluttering along with the currents.
SunFog
And the actual last of this year’s boat work.
Some epoxy work on the toe rail.
And, for dinner tonight corn soup, featuring Farmer Kens’ s corn, which, because of the slow spring, is now abundant.
Last of the Boat Work
Beautiful day, but hot in the sun kneeling and crawling along the deck with a roll of masking tape and then a paint roller. A few sweat drops mixed in with deck paint.
Lots Of Birds
Warblers in the treetops, kingfishers along the shore, and an osprey moving fast up high.
Other wildlife as well:
Tadpoles (Are they a bit late?)
Whitetail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the book Original Instructions: Indigenous Teaching for a Sustainable Future
Remembering the Original Instructions I wept repeatedly at the beauty and wisdom painted by the voices and visions of the First Peoples and their allies in these numinous pages. They reveal a “house made of stories,” in N. Scott Momaday’s phrase. They embody some of the most ancient wisdom on earth from the world’s “old-growth cultures.” It’s precisely what humanity most needs now to slip through this epochal keyhole of history where the stakes are the very survival of our species and countless other beings in the web of life. It’s a journey to retrieve the Original Instructions for how to live on earth in a good way, in a way that lasts. It’s a journey to recover the sacred.
As we enter the turbulent onset of global environmental collapse, these teachings remind us that what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves. Of equal importance, what we do to each other, we do to the earth. We’ll have peace with the earth only when we have peace with each other, as Chief Oren Lyons says. And we’ll have peace with each other only when we have justice.
Part of the Original Instructions resides in Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). For millennia, Indigenous Peoples have acted as guardians of the biological diversity of the planet. They’ve successfully managed complex reciprocal relationships between diverse biological and human cultures, with their eyes on the time horizon of seven generations to come. This is high-TEK that has already solved many of the environmental challenges threatening humanity today. It shows how human beings can actually play a richly positive role in the web of life as a keystone species that creates conditions conducive to life for all beings. As Native American restoration ecologist Dennis Martinez observes, humanity has never faced global ecological collapse before. To get through this keyhole, we’re going to need the enduring knowledge of Indigenous science, as well as the best of leading edge Western science. It’s high-tech meets high-TEK, and in many cases modern science is affirming what the keen empiricism of First Peoples has long known.
This is the sacred geography of a world where all life is revered and animated by spirit. There is no separation between the technical and spiritual. It’s a world of kinship where all life is related. Its instructions seem so simple: to be grateful—to practice reverence for community and creation—and to enjoy life.
The Original Instructions remind us that it’s not people who are smart. The real intelligence dwells throughout the natural world and in the vast mystery of the universe that’s beyond our human comprehension. Humility is our constant companion. The Original Instructions celebrate our interdependence and interconnection with the diversity of life and one other. They help us remember who we are, that we were all Indigenous to a place not so many generations ago. They invite us to re-indigenize ourselves to our common home, Mother Earth. That is the keyhole we must slip through. It’s very small, and we’ll have to make ourselves very small to pass through it.