This evening we’ll let the photos do the talking. Enjoy this healthy fisher (Pekania pennanti) documented recently with one of Rosslyn’s wildlife cams.
Fisher (Photo: Rosslyn wildlife cam)
Part of the weasel family, these native neighbors enjoy dining on wild gates and they’re one of the few predators in our forests who successfully hunt and eat porcupines.
Given that we frequently document both sling the trail targeted by this camera, I suspect that this stealthy hunter will be sated during his nocturnal ambling.
Fisher (Photo: Rosslyn wildlife cam)
Often referred to as “fisher cats”, they’re actually altogether unrelated to cats.
Fisher (Photo: Rosslyn wildlife cam)
It’s profoundly satisfying to document these wild creatures trafficking Rosslyn’s wildway earlier this month. Here’s hoping this robust specimen has plenty of companions.
Happy Easter to you from the Adirondack Coast where our seasonalreawakening is picking up pace with each passing day. And since spring is synonymous with the reemergence of vibrant lizard-like amphibians — most notably the red eft and the yellow-spotted salamander — it feels appropriate to substitute creatively died Easter eggs for a watercolor tribute to these brilliant wild neighbors brightening our day with their own unique Easter color if we take the time to observe them.
Easter Color: Red Eft & Yellow-Spotted Salamander
If you do any hiking or biking in our area this time of year, you’re quite likely to come across fluorescent orange-red salamanders making their way across roads and trails. Although most of us refer to them as red efts, they are actually adolescent eastern newts.
The eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) is a common newt of eastern North America. It frequents small lakes, ponds, and streams or nearby wet forests… The striking bright orange juvenile stage, which is land-dwelling, is known as a red eft. –Wikipedia
I assist them across roadways during my bike rides to ensure that they don’t meet an untimely end in transit from shoulder to shoulder.
Dissimilar in appearance but similarly vibrant in Easter color and pattern, the yellow-spotted salamander is another startlingly, beautiful amphibian that you just might spot on a damp afternoon.
The spotted salamander or yellow-spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) is a mole salamander common in eastern United States and Canada. –Wikipedia
So, in lieu of an Easter egg hunt I bid you a happy, healthy holiday (with a basket full of good fortune in your wildlife wanderings.) I hope you spot some Easter color, whether salamanders or otherwise!
Tucked into a meadow surrounded by forest, the tennis court was starting to show a quarter century of soggy springs and icy winters. The net drooped, but we decided not to tighten it and risk breaking the rotten netting. Besides the droop better accommodated our rusty tennis skills.
The twelve foot tall fence around the court sagged along the north side. A tree that had fallen across it a few years before had been removed, but the stretched steel mesh retained the memory. Several young maple trees grew along the crumbling margin of the court and protruded inside the fence. Towering maples, oaks and white pines surrounded the court on three sides, lush with new foliage that whispered in the wind. Birds and squirrels chattered in the canopy. Ants paraded across the court’s puckering green surface, and a pair of small butterflies danced in a rising and falling gyre. Tasha sniffed around the perimeter of the court, her obligatory inspection as head ball girl for our sylvan Roland Garros.
We started to volley back and forth, balls collecting quickly on both sides of the net. It felt great to be hitting a tennis ball again, and – like every spring – I vowed to spend more time on the court, perennially optimistic that a solid tennis game was within my reach.
The sound of our rackets making solid contact with the fresh balls encouraged us and prompted Tasha to abandon the grasshopper she had been badgering. She headed out onto Susan’s side of the court and started to lunge at balls, attempting to catch them in her mouth. We tried to be more creative in our placement, trying simultaneously to avoid hitting her and to protect the nice new balls from her slobbery maw.
Soon enough she discovered that she could simply take her pick from the balls that were collecting beside the net, and she plunked down in the middle of the court to enjoy a new chew toy.
“Maybe we should have brought the hopper of old balls, so it wouldn’t matter if she chewed them…”
“Home run!” Susan cheered, sending a ball soaring over the fence into the woods. Excited, Tasha got up and padded over to the fence where she stood, looking for the ball in the woods.
Soon, enough balls had vanished over the fence that we headed out to see how many we could recover.
“Hey, come check out this snake!” I called out to Susan after startling a small garter snake in the tall grass near the woods.
“Tasha, come! Grab her. Don’t let her get close to it!” Susan’s words came like machine gun fire as she sprinted toward me. “It might be poisonous!”
“It’s just a garter snake,” I said. “Tasha’s fine.”
“Are you sure it’s not a rattlesnake? Where is it?” she asked, next to us now, grabbing Tasha by the collar and pulling her backward, away from the grass where the snake had already vanished.
“It’s gone.”
“Gone? Where? Why didn’t you keep your eye on it?” Susan hustled Tasha back toward the tennis court.
“Relax. It was a garter snake, Susan. It’s harmless. Nothing to worry about.”
“How do you know? What if you’re wrong?”
Tasha shags a tennis ball
When I returned from the woods with most of the balls, Susan had our tennis rackets tucked under her arm. Tasha was leashed.
“I’m ready to go,” Susan said.
“Because of the snake?”
“No. I’m just ready. I’ve played enough tennis.”
“Okay.”
Susan asked me to walk ahead, checking for snakes. I laughed, then obliged, walking a few paces with exaggerated caution.
“Stop!” I bellowed, freezing and pointing into the grass ahead. “I think I see one…”
“That’s not funny,” said, repressing a smile.
“Wait, do you hear that rattling noise?”
Susan laughed. Tasha pulled at her leash, excited, ready to help me search for snakes.
“Well, you never know,” Susan said. “Tasha’s a city dog. She might try to attack a rattlesnake.”
“Because that’s what city dogs do?” I laughed.
Tasha, our twelve year old Labrador Retriever, enjoyed bark at wildlife, maybe even an abbreviated mock charge in the case of deer, but she had little interest in tangling with animals, birds or snakes. Frogs intrigued her more, briefly, until she realized they were not toys. A sleepy cluster fly could entertain her for five or ten minutes. But Tasha would leave rattlesnake attacking to younger, more aggressive beasts.
Call it a 184-day streak. Or call it dogged determination. Either way I have 181 days to go until I reach my goal. And with each new post, each small victory, I am growing more and more confident that I will accomplish my mission of 365 posts, one complete year of daily updates beginning on August 1, 2022 and concluding on July 31, 2023.
So how to commemorate this midpoint milestone? With 6 months down and 6 months to go, it feels momentous enough to pause and praise my good fortune. But should this benchmark be acknowledged with a celebratory salute? A solemn ceremony? A toast, my first spirited sip after 31 days of teetotaling? (Yesterday marked the conclusion of my 7th or 8th, maybe even my 9th “dry January”.) Or perhaps a decadent dessert after a sugar free month? (For some sadomasochistic reason I’ve decided in recent years to add a sugar fast to alcohol abstention during the month of January, a timely recovery after the excesses of Thanksgiving-through-New Years…) A new month (ie. rabbit-rabbit) ritual transcending the delicious dinner I shared with Jim and Mark two nights ago at Juniper?
Slow Cooked Whole Rabbit: cumin, blood orange and smoked paprika glazed, corn tortillas, chimichurri, salsa fresca, refried beans (Source: Juniper at Hotel Vermont)
Maybe a romantic romp with my bride who suggested, upon retrieving me from the airport yesterday, that we celebrate a belated anniversary to compensate for the one we missed this past autumn when she was unwell. 17 years of marriage and 21 years together. I’m incredulous even as I type these numbers. Neither seems remotely possible. But my 50th birthday seemed similarly inaccurate this past spring, and I’m obliged to accept it.
Or how about we honor the 200th anniversary of Rosslyn’s front façade, ostensibly completed in 1823? (Apparently 3/5 of the building — the two window portion to the north of the entrance, as well as the entrance itself — was completed in 1820. The remaining 2/5, including the two windows to the south of the entrance and comprising the dining room downstairs, a guest bedroom and Susan’s study on the second floor, and another guest bedroom on the third floor, was most likely finished three years later in 1823, fulfilling the the architectural promise of this classic Federal home with Georgian and Greek Revival elements.
An auspicious confluence of milestones and anniversaries. I’m choosing to interpret this is a good omen even as I nevertheless acknowledge that I’ve meandered from my original mark, hoisting the flag at my halfway point, mid-journey in my post-a-day quest. I recall an earlier waypoint in this quest, an update I published on October 10, 2022 when I was still just shy of halfway to where I am today.
Yesterday marked ten weeks of old house journaling. Every. Single. Day. Two months and ten days back at the helm of this wayward, meandering, sometimes unruly experiment I call Rosslyn Redux. I emphasize the daily component of this benchmark because it’s been an important part of the goal I committed to at the end of July. (Source: Old House Journaling)
Then as now my emphasis on everyday journaling remains a top priority.
Over the last few years, Susan and I have scrutinized our hopes and expectations with Rosslyn. We have reevaluated our plans as they originally were in 2006 when we embarked on this adventure and as those plans evolved during the decade and a half since. It’s been an extended period of introspection, evaluating our current wants and needs, endeavoring to align our future expectations and goals with respect to one another and with respect to Rosslyn, and challenging one another to brainstorm beyond the present.
There’s no question but that our impromptu quarantine at Rosslyn during the spring and summer of 2021 catalyzed some of this soul-searching. But so too have the many life changes in recent years. Our gradual shift toward Santa Fe as our base and Essex as our getaway rather than the other way around. The loss of Susan’s mother. My parents’ retirement near us in Santa Fe. Our nephews and nieces growing up and expanding their orbits far beyond Rosslyn. A perennially postponed but driving desire to collaborate on a smaller, efficient, creative lakeside home of a different DNA altogether, an unrepressable will to imagine into existence the sort of slow cooked (albeit shapeshifting) and highly experimental homestead we originally envisioned in 2003-5 when we first began to explore our Adirondack Coast homecoming. And there is that hiccup in our 2006 original timeline, our 2-4 year vision for homing at Rosslyn until we’d managed to reboot and reground, until we were ready for our next adventure. Those naive expectations were eclipsed — willingly and joyfully — within the first year or two.
So what does this have to do with my daily Rosslyn updates?
Everything.
In committing to this daily practice last summer I was acknowledging that I had some serious work to do. In order for us to constructively sort through out collective vision for the future, to determine whether we’re too fond of Rosslyn to proceed with plans for designing and building the lakeside retreat we’ve conjured over the years, to honestly assess our willingness and our readiness to hand this sanctuary over to another family, both Susan and I are undertaking the sort of “deep work” that will hopefully enable us to make some decisions. I’m talking about 100% honest, prolonged consideration. Rosslyn has quite literally been a part of our family, and not just our nuclear family. Can we untangle her? Are we willing to let her go? Can we joyfully pass the privilege on to new custodians? Or are we not yet ready?
For me this daily practice, digging deep into sixteen and a half years of living and loving Rosslyn, is my time and place to work through these questions. To sort it all out. To find peace and confidence in my convictions. And six months in, I believe that I’m on the right path. Not all the time. There have certainly been some tangles and tangents that got away from me before I realized what was happening and reined them in. But the constant conversation — *internal* as I study, reflect, and compose these installments as well as *external* as I share these updates and then interact with many of you — is reinvigorating and reawakening Rosslyn from her comfortable slumber (and me from mine!)
So this midpoint milestone is a profoundly significant benchmark for me personally. It’s the tangible representation of my germinating confidence and clarity. It’s the measurable mean between a conflicted outlook and the conviction I’m hoping to discover over the next six months. In a real sense, it’s a halfway point toward the sort of rehabilitation that we’ve been undertaking with Rosslyn’s buildings and grounds since 2006, only in this case the journey is profoundly personal. Instead of historic architectural rehabilitation, it is restoration of my innermost wonder, my romantic dreams, and my idealistic hopes. With passion reawakened and a map forward becoming more apparent each day, I’m tempted to see this benchmark as the sort of celebration enjoyed upon finally reaching a base camp, a lofty peak viewable in the distance foreshadows the ambitious ascent ahead but also offers a majestic affirmation of the reachability and proximity of the summit. Today marks just such a halfway point, an opportunity to appreciate the accomplishments so far, and an incentive to forge ahead.
Carley, Contemplating 33% Ahead (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
This is my 243rd Rosslyn update in daily succession. It completes an 8-month streak of daily old house journaling, the 2/3 mark in my quest to post every day for one year. I marked an earlier milestone — six months in and six months to go — with a summary of the aspirations guiding these posts.
With four months to go, I’d say this vision is still accurate, but the “mercurial transition / transformation we’re currently navigating” has received short shrift. The most psychologically probing (and the most elusive) of the subjects I’ve been exploring, it nevertheless gets sidestepped, dodged, abbreviated, and postponed.
And so I’m hoping to recalibrate in the weeks ahead, offering more perspective on our current state(s) of liminality. Dig deeper. Increase transparency. Invite you into the considerations and conundrums that we’re weighing. Big decisions on the horizon, and sometimes complex, sometimes conflicting feelings and ideas. Time for an open book…
Welcome to spring! It’s currently 43° at Rosslyn, on target to hit 46° shortly. Sun is out. Snow is melting. Bulbs are bursting. So many remarkable signs and suggestions that the vernal equinox may indeed have marked the transition from winter to spring (daffodils and daylilies perking up, an auspicious sunset cloud formation, a handsome Barred Owl encounter,…)
Let’s start out with our just-passed solar equinox and then work our way toward the Barred Owl (Strix varia) and some celestial special effects from Susan’s end-of-day walk with Denise.
Vernal Equinox: Rosslyn Sundown (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Vernal Equinox-ish
In 2023, the official first day of spring is Monday, March 20. This date marks the “spring equinox” in the Northern Hemisphere… at 5:24 P.M. EDT. This… is the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere… (Source: The Old Farmer’s Almanac)
That was yesterday. In fact, this post was intended to be published yesterday. On time. Relevant. But, sometimes searching for poetry preempts timely updates. Sorry.
Despite the fact that today’s post is slightly out of sync with the astronomical calendar, I couldn’t resist the chance to subtly revise yesterday’s draft and share it anyway. There was simply too much resonance. Yes, I’m biased. But after yesterday’s candid peak into Rosslyn’s artifact-packed carriage barn (and into my mental morass where architectural salvage, historic rehabilitation, poetic introspection, and memoiresque storytelling commingle) it felt, well, almost logical. Bear with me? I find that spring’s arrival rarely follows a predictable schedule. Each year unique. And, in spite of the heathen thrill that comes with romancing celestial and meteorological rituals, it would appear that the vernal equinox is merely a symbolic approximation of springtime.
An equinox occurs twice a year, around 20 March and 22 September. The word itself has several related definitions. The oldest meaning is the day when daytime and night are of approximately equal duration. (Wikipedia)
I excerpted the tidy part, eliminating the inevitable diatribe about day and night not really being the same length. A debate for another blogger. I love rituals, even when they’re easily scoffed. Here’s a flip riff by Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) if you’d like a quick scoff before we romance the vernal equinox.
Today is the vernal equinox, what a lot of folks think of as the first day of spring (though given the forecast, people on the U.S. East Coast can be forgiven if they’re rolling their eyes at that thought, assuming their eyeballs aren’t frozen to their eyelids). (Slate)
The omnipresent smell of mud hints at spring’s earth entrance, and that’s good enough for me. No. More. Snow. Please!
Tony and I were returning from the forest beyond Library Brook where we’d been blazing the next meander in Rosslyn’s ongoing trail building initiative. The brook was swollen and running wild. The trees were a-chatter with avian neighbors and squirrels riffing raucous against the riparian chorus. It felt like a page out of Dylan Thomas. And then Tony spied the owl.
“Do you see it?” he hoarse-whispered, pointing up into the trees.
I didn’t. He guided my gaze. But I couldn’t identify the big blob on a branch. Wrong sunglasses.
“It’s an owl,” he said
We walked closer. I fumbled with my phone, launch the camera app, zoomed in as far as I could, snapped a couple of images. We kept walking. The owl swooped away, an immense span of plumage, arcing through trees and branches powerfully, gracefully without brushing a twig.
Disinclined by temperament to observe overt omens and symbolism in the world around me, I’m nonetheless receptive to the “singing underneath”. Sometimes life rhymes. I try to exercise humility and wonder in these moments. I endeavor to hear and observe and sometimes to record the poetry that presents itself. I’ll leave conclusions to others. For me, for now, questions are plenty.
Vernal Equinox: Day Lilies Reawakening (Photo: Geo Davis)
Daylilies
With snow, still covering much of the ground, bulbs are bursting up, unwilling or unable to wait. The earthy array above are day lilies, among the thousands of green shoots reaching skyward below the stonewall that divides our lower lawn from upper lawn.
Perhaps overly precocious sprouts. I’d venture a guess that some more freezing nights, possibly even some more snow might challenge these daylilies. And yet, as in all previous years, they will flourish, foliage thickening, stout stems reaching somewhere between knee and waist by Independence Day when they’ll explode in joyful orange blooms. They will. And yet I can’t help wondering if they’re premature?
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre I (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Sundown Skies
As if conjuring orange blooms is contagious, the day’s spring preview weather concluded with a dash of colorful drama and cloud theatre extraordinaire.
Taken by Susan while winding down the day with Denise and Carley, ambling Blockhouse Road, likely lost in conversation. Phone photography sure has come a long way!
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre II (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
So beguiling and mysterious is that second cloud theatre image that I’m sharing a tighter, second perspective.
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre III (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Welcome back, springtime. What wonders do you have in store?
Did Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow? Is spring around the corner? Are we headed into six more weeks of winter?
In this high tech era of satellites forecasting weather from beyond the beyond, intricate algorithms gobbling gargantuan data sets, and media channels dedicated to analyzing and communicating meteorological mysteries in real time, we still get excited on February 2 to see how a groundhog will react to brisk midwinter conditions. It’s folksy fun, I suppose. Maybe a result of cabin fever…
Today the furry fellow decided it was wiser to double down on hibernation. Spring’s still a long way off, at least in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
To be sure, Essex isn’t exactly tropical compared to Punxsutawney, so a belated de-wintering would seem inevitable based upon this morning’s proceedings. But, I’m pro-spring, even if that puts me in disagreement with Phil.
Unlike the groundhog,
fur ruffed against shadowed chill,
I suspect springtime.
I love springtime almost as much as I love morning, and for similar reasons. So much possibility in both reawakenings!
And who’s to say that haikupoetry is any less indicative of spring’s arrival than a groundhog coddled by top hatted members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club gathering at Gobbler’s Knob? Not I. (Which begs the question, what *else* do marmots and micropoems have in common?)
What to make of an annual tradition centering around a groundhog venturing out of hibernation to prognosticate on the coming season? Let’s dig into the legend of Punxsutawney Phil.
Each February 2, on Groundhog Day, the members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club make the pilgrimage to Gobbler’s Knob, Phil’s official home.
The group waits for Phil to leave his burrow and, legend has it, if he sees his shadow we’re in for six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, we get to bask in an early spring.
Scientifically speaking, winter will officially come to an end on the equinox on March 20, regardless of what Phil predicts. But Mother Nature doesn’t always follow the timetable, and neither does Phil.
Though Phil has no meteorology degree, every year the United States tunes in for his prediction.
Phil’s track record is not perfect. “On average, Phil has gotten it right 40% of the time over the past 10 years,” according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration… (Source: CNN)
So, the meteorological marmot’s not the best indicator of whether or not winter will yield early/late to spring.
This year marks the third straight year the groundhog spotted his shadow, something that he has often done since making his first prediction in 1887. Of the 127 recorded times Phil has predicted the weather, he has now seen his shadow 107 (84%) times. His longest streak of seeing his shadow remains at 31, when he saw it every year from 1903-33.
It’ll take some time to figure out if Phil’s prediction will be right, but given his history, he’s likely wrong. (Source: USA Today)
But math be damned! There’s a whimsical charm surrounding the event. Seasonality keeps us in sync with our environment, wondering and wandering about nature, so the meter-marmot’s sub 50/50 track record isn’t really the point.
To better understand the popularity of Groundhog Day, Troy Harman (Penn State University history professor and Gettysburg National Military Park ranger) talks left brain, right brain and the science-to-tradition spectrum.
“Throughout history, whenever there has been a real strong emphasis on science, its counterpart of intuition, instinct, emotion, imagination — the right side of our brain — pushes back a little bit,” Harman says, explaining that Groundhog Day took off right around the time of the industrial revolution.
He says those massive societal and technological changes spurred a desire to return to what people imagined were simpler times, in the form of things like literary romanticism and gothic revival architecture…
“I strongly suspect that the people that go to Gobbler’s Knob are fully aware of the power of science, but at the same time want to hold on to traditions and a deeper vibe,” he says. “There’s the instincts and the intuition and the imagination that every human being has that has to come into balance with logic and reason.” (Source: NPR)
It seems there’s plenty more to be said on this logic, reason, and science versus intuition, emotion, and imagination comparison, but this isn’t the time or place. And I think that Harman’s probably right. Trusting in science and logic, many/most of us still allow room for romantic traditions and intuition. It’s quite likely a part of what humanizes us.
So whether today’s shadow viewing gets chalked up on the wins side or the losses side of Punxsutawney Phil’s tally, we’re likely to see another six weeks on winter weather in Essex. Sure, there will be some balmy days when the mud oozes, but it’s a rare year that February and even much or March aren’t snowy or at least inclement. But we’re hoping this year to take advantage of the high tunnel to fast-track spring in the vegetable garden, so we just might stand a chance of realizing the optimism in my haiku!
In closing, you may be wondering what the difference is between a groundhog and a woodchuck. And what about a marmot?!?! Although the three names are often used interchangeably, the “marmot” is exactly the same as the other two. While a groundhog and a woodchuck are one and the same wildlife (taxonomically Marmota monax), the term “marmot” generally refers to the entire genus Marmota and/or the subgenus Marmota which includes the groundhog (aka woodchuck, whistlepig, monax, moonack, whistler, groundpig, etc.) Armed with that tidy tidbit of trivia you’re armed and dangerous for happy hour this evening. Cheers to Phil. Cheers to spring!
So many photos and field notes and punch lists, marked up plans, pruned and grafted scopes of work. This is the ephemera of construction and the detritus of rehabilitation. A midden of sketches and diagrams, souvenirs of collaborative problem solving, artifacts of alterations and adjustments,… this is the tangled and layered chorus we seek to distill and remix into an oasis. Some days the process almost approaches autopilot. Others it approach mes a multi vehicle pileup.
Field Notes (Credit: Geo Davis)
Although I’m as goal oriented as the next guy, as eager to complete the project as I was the day I started, I’m inordinately fascinated with the in-between. I romance the journey. I thrill in the process. The interstices lure me as much as the origin and destination.
And so it is with this icehouse rehab. The journey. The myriad micro narratives tucked into each chapter.
Currently we’re wobbling a little as we adapt to two members of our team succumbing to COVID, as we ramp up testing and masking (and wondering if anyone else is destined to become sick.) The icehouse is such a small, enclosed work environment, so it’s easy to worry that the contagion may have embraced others still testing negative. But angst breeds angst, not relief or good fortune. So I try, we all try to focus on matters we *can* control. Tony finishes beech flooring in the loft — sanding and cleaning and sealing and repeating — investing his energy and passion in perfecting the small but sensational perch where soon I will be able to install myself at my black walnut desk to write and revise and read. Supi and Justin began trimming in the coving, working the poplar lumber that was grown, harvested, milled, seasoned, dimensioned, and finished at Rosslyn. Hyperlocal carpentry. Leaning into tangible tasks, transforming sketches, plans, field notes, and punch lists into results is an analgesic of sorts.
Tomorrow we will all test again. If fortune spares us, we will all be able to stay on task, charting a path forward, advancing through timelines and upon objectives. The wind will subside, the temperature will rise, the snow will melt, and the mud will gradually replace the ice. Perhaps the opossum will return to eat the cracked corn intended for the mallards, the daffodils will recover from the blizzard and begin to push their green fuses higher, and the high tunnel will warm to 103° again (almost tripling the temperature outside). If time permits, Susan and I may cross country ski through Rosslyn’s fields and forests after finalizing the order for new deck furniture. My brave bride might even take a polar plunge into 35° Lake Champlain. By choice. For pleasure. I will almost definitely not take a polar plunge into Lake Champlain.
Field notes will accrue, punch lists will get checked off, and another chapter will be sculpted out of bits of wood, stories, laughter, memories made, and incremental headway. I am anticipating a good day!
You’ve heard of happy hour. And maybe even beer blogging. But opossum o’clock?
Carley *Prior* to Opossum O’Clock (Photo: Geo Davis)
Earlier this evening (or late this afternoon, if you’re still jet lagging from the standard time to daylight savings time adjustment,) Carley burst into a barking frenzy. Bark, bark, bark,… Not an excited “My momma’s home!” bark. Nor an “I need to pee” bark. It was an unmistakable alarm bark.
So I extracted myself from my desk chair and headed down to the sunporch where she’s taken to snoozing, tucked between pillows on the sofa, most days lately.
But she wasn’t on the sofa. She was alert at the glass doors, pointing, hackles high. All business.
So I followed her gaze to the stonewall around the back deck where a fat opossum was waddling. Carley was incensed. Why wouldn’t I let her out? She wanted to show that overgrown rat who was boss around here!
The opossum finally made her/his way up and over the snow bank, across the driveway, and then began an ungainly exit toward the hemlock hedge. At least until Carley seemed less threatening at which point the opossum made a 90° turn to the right and began waddling down toward the bird feeders hanging under the ginkgo tree.
Opossum, Oh, Possum
What to make of these quirky characters that have become commonplace in the Adirondacks despite the fact that I never saw one in this area in the 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up. Are they even native?
I turned to ChatGPT, the chatbot causing such a stir lately, to see what light it might shed (or make up).
Yes, the opossum is native to North America. In fact, it is the only marsupial that is native to the continent. Opossums can be found throughout much of the United States and Mexico, as well as parts of Central America and Canada. They are known for their distinctive appearance, including their long snout, hairless tail, and opposable thumbs on their hind feet. Opossums are also well-known for their ability to “play dead” when threatened, which is actually a defensive mechanism called thanatosis. (Source: Source: ChatGPT)
Not 100% sure that’s all tip-top information given the rather dubious ChatGPT answer that was shared with me earlier today by David Howson. (More on that tomorrow perhaps?) Let’s see what Wikipedia contributors believe about the opossum.
Opossums (/əˈpɒsəm/) are members of the marsupial order Didelphimorphia (/daɪˌdɛlfɪˈmɔːrfiə/) endemic to the Americas. The largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, it comprises 93 species in 18 genera. Opossums originated in South America and entered North America in the Great American Interchange following the connection of North and South America.
The Virginia opossum is the only species found in the United States and Canada. It is often simply referred to as an opossum, and in North America it is commonly referred to as a possum (/ˈpɒsəm/; sometimes rendered as ‘possum in written form to indicate the dropped “o”). Possums should not be confused with the Australasian arboreal marsupials of suborder Phalangeriformes that are also called possums because of their resemblance to the Didelphimorphia. The opossum is typically a nonaggressive animal. (Source: Wikipedia)
Seems like there’s enough overlap to set us straight (and enough Australasian unclarity to invite confusion?)
Let’s turn instead to a far more reliable source, poetry.
Opossum Poem
Oh, possum, opossum,
our springtime may have come;
narcissus nudging up,
snow melting into mud.
Perhaps prehensile tail,
opposable thumbs, and
dying art theatrics
have inured you to threats.
Or perhaps you're aware
that my Labrador's barks
are booming bluster not
cause for canine concern.
But beware, snouty snoop,
that winter's not finished,
and precocious parades
hint-hinting at hubris
may well invite frigid
flashbacks, hail, blizzards, and
temperate day delays
with bites bigger than barks.
Playing Opossum
[Witnessing the curious creature investigating our deck and yard, I’m transported back to another opossum memory, this one from December 23, 2008 during our early days living at Rosslyn with Griffin, our Labrador prior to Carley.]
Saturday morning and we’re sitting in the morning room eating waffles in our bathrobes and slippers. We’ve slept in, lazed around, made breakfast, and lingered over the ritual of starting our day.
It snowed last night. Not much, but just enough to cover everything. Maybe an inch. Wet snow. Like white frosting coating everything.
Suddenly I’m aware that a critter is making its way across the front lawn toward us. Actually Griffin realized it, stood up from his bed abruptly and pointed, hair on his back standing straight up, low rumbling half barks alternating with half threatening, half excited glances at us then back at the animal. Like a huge rat. Wet from the soggy snow. Dragging itself across the grass, then across the gravel driveway, then across the grass between the driveway and the house. He was coming right toward us and Griffin was not sure whether to be protective or excited.
“An opossum,” Susan and I both said at the same time.
“I’ve never seen one here,” I said.
“Me either,” Susan said.
“Looks like he’s headed for the trash bins,” I reasoned and picked up my Blackberry from the table. “I want to go take a picture.”
“Don’t go out there.”
“Why not?”
“He could bite you. They’re mean.”
“I won’t get that close. Just a quick picture then I’ll be back in.”
The opossum had managed to pull himself up the stone step to the deck and was waddling past the sliding doors of the garbage and recycling shed toward the back deck.
I opened the door and headed outside in my bathrobe and slippers to get a closer look and a photo.
And then, as if Susan had cast a spell upon me, totally wipe out.
I fell on my back, head bouncing off the deck, limbs splayed to the from corners, bathrobe wide open, buck naked, looking up at the sky. And at a freaked out opossum literally a foot from my face, chattering his teeth menacingly.
Susan was laughing, Griffin was barking wildly inside, I was stunned, and the opossum was presiding.
Larger than life, or at least most of our avian life, the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is a familiar plumage and percussive soundtrack in our Adirondack Coast forest. And often at our suet feeders, even trees in our yard.
Freaky physics notwithstanding, the poise and drama of this sylvan neighbor stand out among our local bird population. And for the first time one of our wildlife cameras documented one, a mature male pileated woodpecker mid flight.
Drilling and darting, my scarlet capped companion drums for his dinner.
Of course, I’ve taken some poetic license, imagined myself into the moment this digital voyeur glimpsed the pileated woodpecker. But it’s a familiar enough sound and sight that I don’t got a moment feel guilty about my imposter poem. Micropoem. Well, maybe a little…
Hope you were able to celebrate and take time for gratitude yesterday. And today. As with most holidays, I find myself thinking that we should dedicate longer than a day to giving thanks. Maybe a week? Even that seems too brief a time to honor everyone (wild neighbors included) who adds value and happiness, health and wisdom, balance and compassion, laughter and beauty, and so much more to our lives.
Today, the day after official Turkey Day, I send you a feast of Thanksgiving thanks, from our family to yours.
In the photo above we’re just about to come inside for a bountiful family feast. What? You say that doesn’t look like Rosslyn? True enough. This year our gratitude is being celebrated in Santa Fe. (But that turkey at the top of this post was celebrating his wild freedoms mere feet from Library Brook. As were those in the photo below, one year ago.)
When I was in middle school my parents moved our family from a circa 1876 manse in Wadhams that they’d restored gradually over a decade, to a new home tucked into a tree-lined meadow near Lake Champlain.
Formerly part of the Higginson farm, the homeowners association comprised a little over a half dozen camps and homes tucked between Rock Harbor and the Split Rock Wilderness Area. During the next two years before I headed off to boarding school this wild wonderland dished up a daily buffet of adventures.
Recently I’ve been remembering the spring that we discovered foxes. Or the foxes discovered us. In the spring of 1985 a pair of red foxes got themselves in the family way and unwittingly lured my brother, sister and me into a full-scale Vulpes vulpes obsession.
Red Fox Kits (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t remember now if there were two or three fox kits, but I do remember that their mother would let them play around the house while she hunted for mice or freshened up the den or got her hair done or whatever it is that vixens do when they get a little time to themselves.
The kits played and wrestled and chased butterflies and explored while we studied their every move, first from the windows and then from the open front door and then from the steps of the front stoop.
Day by day they became more comfortable with us, and day by day my brother and sister and I grew more entranced. At first the kits were skittish but they gradually grew more comfortable with us. They tousled and nipped at each other in the sunshine a mere 6 to 10 feet away. As we became more and more obsessed with the idea of diminishing the distance between ourselves and the foxes, they too became curious about us. They watched us and came closer to sniff and inspect.
I was 13 at the time, the eldest of my siblings, and I probably should have spent more time considering the dangers of interacting with wild animals, but I didn’t. I’d abandoned prudence and reason. The beauty and playful nature of the rapidly growing kits had swept me up, eclipsing any common sense I might have possessed.
Red Fox cubs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
No doubt it was my idea to see if we could entice the young foxes into the house. Little by little the kits followed the trail of snacks placed on the steps, on the landing, on the threshold, in the hallway… We gradually lured the young foxes into the kitchen where they sniffed briefly, nibbled the snacks and headed back outside. We were elated.
In hindsight, there was no meaningful reason to entice the foxes inside except curiosity. And challenge. And the almost primal thrill of interacting with beautiful, wild creatures.
I’m not quite sure how we managed this without my parents realizing what was going on. Perhaps it was early on weekend mornings. I don’t know, but somehow we managed over several weeks to overcome the foxes’ sense of caution and prudence. And then the adventure ended. I’d like to think we wised up, realized the danger of befriending the kits, the danger of having their mother return when the kits were inside. But probably my parents discovered our misguided obsession and abbreviated the adventure.
The memories flooded back this winter because that handsome (if somewhat short-legged) fox in the video clip above became a frequent Rosslyn visitor. Perhaps affected by the virtually snow-less conditions or more likely by my bride’s enthusiastic bird and squirrel feeding regimen, the fox made daily — and sometimes twice daily — tours of our front lawn. I was usually the one to spot him early in the morning while feeding Griffin breakfast, though Griffin’s attentive window watching served as a reliable early notification system.
Fox hunting for mid-morning snack. (Photo credit: virtualDavis)
It turns out that plump, well-fed squirrels are not only a tasty breakfast for a fox but they are also easy prey, unable to skitter up the ginkgo tree as quickly as necessary to escape the hungry hunter.
Despite the emotionally disturbing reality of observing any predator-prey showdown, the foxes cunning and efficiency intrigued me in the way the playful kits had more than a quarter century ago. I’ll save details for another time as I know that my bride suffers these descriptions. She’s informed my on multiple occasions that our yard is a safe haven for wildlife, which is a laudable decision, but difficult to enforce. So far we’ve failed to communicate the message to the foxes and hawks… Any suggestions?
