First Tuesday in May
May 4, 2010
Two geese calling incessantly approaching from the shadows across the Mill Gut, falling silent and flying ten feet overhead and ten feet to the east, then resuming their calling as they skimmed the surface of the bay lit by the glow from the sky. A beautiful set of changing sunrise colors, a bright half moon straight up in the sky.
All kinds of songbirds, the ground under the cherry trees – which would have been in full bloom this past weekend if it hadn’t been for Thursday and Friday’s wind and rain that blew down the petals – strewn with a thick layer of pink petals. The grove of lilacs blooming behind the cherry trees is giving off a cinnamon-like smell that persists for perhaps a hundred yards.
Turning past the head of Bristol harbor, it was quiet enough to hear the whooshing sound of the beat of a heron’s wings coming up behind me, then flying on south towards Bristol Marine Services. Temperature in the upper 50′s, very hard to beat.
The final stages of lilac blooming on the stem I’ve been tracking are below: April 18th, April 25th, and May 2nd.
Snow, Mardi Gras, and sap
February 16, 2010
I was out walking about three hours before my New Orleans running buddies reported for the Rex Run – beautiful woods in the dark with the snow making things visible. Sounded like a couple of tons of geese on the Mill Gut, squawking in the night. Snow falling in various quantities, from fitful flakes to great wet clusters; when I turned into the wind my glasses completely clogged up.
Thinking of the gang having King Cake and champagne, then the parades. A quick weather check from here suggests that it would be a great day for a record attempt at the Rex Run given the chilly temps (at 34 degrees only four degrees above the Bristol temperature) – hope it warms up enough later.
Slow start to sugaring at Coggeshall Farm
They tapped the trees at Coggeshall Farm about 10 days later this year than last year, but the sap froze overnight. The farm is doing its annual sugaring demonstration. Picture was taken on Valentine’s Day.
Happy Mardi Gras!
Stoned
November 4, 2009
A beautiful morning. Walking down the farm road with a moon two-days-past-full up in the western sky, throwing strong black shadows of the newly-denuded trees. The two bulls sleeping in the field on the left, largish black mounds on the silver grass.
Just as I swung my eyes to my right there was the flash of a shooting star, not the narrow pencil-line type but a broad white wash there, then gone. Further down the road, the northward-pointing spotlight on the stone barn wasn’t on, so my walk continued in the moonlight.
Headed north, the moon on my left, the increasing glow on the eastern horizon to my right, a balance began to emerge, of moon and sun opposed and coexisting. One of Those Moments. It seemed to be the appropriate time for the Ritual of the Stones.
Ritual of the Stones
Find two flat stones, large but still small enough to be gripped in your hand with the palm held facing downwards. With your arms naturally at your side, face your objective, in this case the small brilliant diamond of the morning star, orienting your shoulders perpendicular to a line drawn between you and the objective.
Raise your arms, holding the stones palms downward, pointing straight to your left and right. Slowly bring the arms towards the front so that the hands meet, palms towards one another, fingers pointing towards the objective. Sight on your objective through the notch made by your thumbs.
Breathe deeply twice, exhaling fully. Repeat – not aloud – a short incantation appropriate to the time of day.
Return your arms so they point straight to your left and right, palms downward. Pause for a count of two, then simultaneously drop the stones. It is desirable to have the stones strike the ground at the same time. With your arms at your sides, pause to reconsider your objective.
Done correctly, the Ritual of the Stones will start the day.
I walked back up the road past the farm. The bulls were up on all fours, their coats beginning to show red with the increasing predawn light from the sky. The day had begun. The sun would appear.
Note: The Ritual of the Stones is repeated daily around the world. My friend Larry would recognize it from the first time we observed in on the tenth hole of the Audubon Park golf course in New Orleans. Groundskeepers on golf courses would also recognize it as the manual placement of tee location markers. The Strong-Schlueter Institute for Ephemeral Archeology has also recorded an instance of the Ritual of the Stones evidenced by footprints in the dew on the 5th hole; ritual writ on water, mirabile dictu!
A photo taken last Saturday: The morning was less dismal and foreboding than it looks.
A great morning
October 6, 2009
Another one of those early mornings that makes you feel up and ready to go. The moon was two days past full, sitting about a third of the way up from the western horizon, and it was simply bright out. I felt as though there was enough light for my eyes to be perceiving color in the grass.
The morning before, with about 50 percent cloud cover, I had been able to see the skunk from about 12 feet away, rather than becoming aware of him by detecting his movement in the dark. Which made it easy to avoid him.
But this morning I started to wonder how far away I would be able to detect my doppelganger, Ed, in the moonlight. I figured at least a hundred yards away. As it was, he was coming up the other side of the bridge over the Mill Gut, so he was probably only about 75 yards away when he became visible.
I had also wondered whether the new guy with the dog – and the flashlight – who began showing up about a month ago would be able to see well enough to forgo the flashlight. Although he has been getting better…over the past few weeks, he’s stopped flicking it on pointed at my face, now directing it towards his feet instead.
The guy who drives up and parks on the circular lookout just before the bridge and leaves his headlights lit for two minutes, shining out into space and burning the night vision out of the walkers was there, though.
No boats were on the water this morning – whether because of the full moon, the low tide, or the 12 to 17 miles per hour winds, I don’t know. I assume they were launching from another location this morning.
The floodlight mounted on the wooden pole next to the two defunct toll booths at the entrance to the park has been lit 24 hours a day since Saturday, and it was still lighting up a small circle at the entry. That one will be self-limiting. The flood light will burn out in a couple of days at the most, and it will probably be six months before it gets replaced.
The Phantom Bike Rider (an old guy dressed in black on a dark bicycle who rides the streets of Bristol in the pre-dawn hours) came up on my right shoulder as I passed Harbor Point at the head of the harbor, the noise of his bicycle cloaked by the sound of the wind. “Good morning,” he said into my right ear, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
Still, it was a great morning.
Trying to figure out if this will be the latest sunrise on a morning with a full moon visible to me this year. Next full moon is on November 2nd, but because daylight savings stops the morning before, due to the switch to Daylight Spending Time the sun will be rising earlier for that full moon than for this one. November 1st will have the latest sunrise of the year, 7:15 a.m. (it was 6:48 this morning).
On the other hand, because December this year will feature a Blue Moon on December 31st, and because the earth is slow to swing back on its axis, the sunrise time on December 31st – and for several days on either side of the 31st – will be 7:13 a.m. So that will make it the latest sunrise of the year for a morning with a full moon.
Whether the moon will be as visible on any of the next three full moons is another question. Like most of the things on the morning walk, you have to take what is given.
Took this on Sunday morning, a morning of interesting light and mist, in the Coggeshall farm dooryard. Put it up on the Wunderground photo site and the “Approver” made it one of his/her “Choices,” and as a result it was seen and rated by several times the usual number of viewers. Currently has an average rating of 9.4 out of 10 with 69 people rating it (full disclosure: I rated it myself, and gave it a 10).
Picnic Bench Wrangler: Platonic occupation
August 9, 2009
I’ve had my eye on this one for a while. The picnic benches at Colt State Park tend to migrate, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, sometimes in daylight and sometimes overnight. Park administrators, however, clearly have ideas about the correct arrangement of benches across the landscape.
This creates the occupation of Picnic Bench Wrangler, something I’m thinking about for my retirement. Here’s the current wrangler in action, warily approaching a stray picnic bench that has wandered off by itself.
Picnic Bench Wrangler approaching a stray
It looks like a great outdoors occupation, combining all your basic outdoor skills and understanding of picnic bench behavior with the operation of noisy machinery with big tires. In addition to hunting down strays, the Wrangler also has to cull the herds to maintain their proper sizes.
Picnic Bench Wrangler culling the herd
Having cautiously approached the herd to avoid startling them, the Picnic Bench Wrangler deftly snags the chosen bench with his lift fork and reverses quickly away.
Picnic Bench Wrangler relocating culled bench
The Wrangler moves rapidly away from the previous herd and then deposits the bench in its appropriate location with the new herd. The Park Administration has clearly marked each bench and designated the specific areas for them.
At the end of the day the wrangler can be seen at the top of Surprise Hill, gazing off to the West – towards Westerly, RI, in fact – across Narragansett Bay in a pose reminiscent of Curly Washburn (the Jack Palance role in City Slickers).
A-yup, seems pretty idyllic.
Blues, running
July 7, 2009
Yes, there was a time when this title would have been about a New Orleans footrace. But today it’s about bluefish in a feeding frenzy.
This was one of those mornings that I wanted to change up the daily walk routine. Yesterday I’d missed the moment of sunrise because I was behind a hill and some trees; Nick had mentioned on Sunday morning that the sunrise had been beautiful at the crest of Asylum road next to the North Burial Ground, so today I took the camera and walked from the Coggeshall Farm entrance up to the burial ground.
As it turned out, there was a bank of clouds that obscured the sunrise and kind of changed the timing of the coloration of the sky, so things were interesting and beautiful but not spectacular. Harrumph.
Sunrise, North Burial Ground, Bristol, RI (1920 x 1200 pixels)
But there was this kind of feeling that there must be something happening out there that had nagged me into bringing the camera out and changing my route. So I went back by the marsh where the heron and the egrets hang out, pretty sure that I’d catch them there. They had been there yesterday when I didn’t have the camera, so I anticipated the possibility of a heron shot or two.
Heron in the salt marsh at the head of Bristol (RI) harbor (1920 x 1200 pixels)
And sure enough, there he was. But too close to the edge of the road to really let me get both close and unobstructed. An egret hung about for a bit but got spooked and flew off. So, a little bummed out, I took my heron shots, hoping that I could get a shot of him as he flew off – it’s usually just a matter of time before he tires of my stalking him.
A sound of waves behind me distracted me a little. It was a still morning and I couldn’t figure out what could have made waves in the harbor. But the sound was enough to make me miss the heron’s takeoff; I snapped off a shot as he circled to the harbor side, but all I got was the tip of a wing, out of focus, at the edge of the picture.
But just as I returned to my bummed-out state, I realized that the sound of waves was actually the sound of hundreds of bodies slapping the water as the bluefish worked their way towards me, chasing the menhaden into the shallows at the head of the bay.
Which, of course, made my day.
Bluefish chasing menhaden, Bristol (RI) bay (1920 x 1200 pixels)
It made for a few minutes of novelty, bluefish bodies slapping the water (one’s body is visible in the foreground, above), seagulls hovering and wheeling to pick up a leftover tidbit, and one very busy cormorant (head visible to the left of the two seagulls on the left side of the picture). The egret even made a slow pass overhead but appeared to decide there was just too much going on to feel comfortable about going in low. Two fishermen on the seawall pulled in bluefish every time they cast.
Which, of course, totally vindicates my having hauled the camera along and changed my route. Except that I missed Nick who had come out to walk with me assuming that I would use my regular route. I told him it was all his fault anyhow for having told me about the sunrise Sunday morning.
Skeeball Wizard
June 30, 2009
Laurie took three tokens worth of practice Sunday night at the carnival on the town common. The crowd swirling around included the usual town suspects, clouds of teenage girls, swaggers of teenage boys, mothers struggling with strollers in the grass criss-crossed with electrical cables overlain with rubber doormats.
Last night we went back to the common and I got Laurie five tokens for Skeeball. In the 24-hour hiatus, she had apparently been thinking about her lack of success on Sunday when her high game had been 110 points. The minute the token fell and the balls were released, she went into her old-school stance and concentration, right arm holding the ball high in front of her while she visualized the coming launch of the ball.
Five balls snapped off in rapid succession, she waved to the attendant, pointed to herself and mouthed, “I won!” For which she received a rather tired nod, and in a brief consultation Laurie was told that she could only win twice – but if she did win again before she ran out of tokens, they would be repurchased.
Five more balls, 160 points, another win.
Two stuffed bears and three dollars were exchanged for the remaining three tokens and a most pleased smile broke out on Laurie’s face. She strolled the rest of the evening cuddling a bear in each arm.
Most satisfactory.
Skeeball Wizard
Coyote
June 17, 2009
Feeling pretty sure it was a coyote, I said to Nick, “Think I saw a dog,” not wanting to be misbelieved.
Nick said, “Must have been a coyote.”
Too early for a good image: Coggeshall Farm, Bristol, RI, 17 Jun, 2009, about 5 a.m., Saved at 1920 by 1200 pixels
Anti-quark
June 17, 2009
This is Ed, who walks the opposite way ’round from me in the morning. Like the two cartoon sheepdogs clocking out: “Mornin’ Ed.” “Mornin’ Ed.” Only twice, since we walk in overlapping loops.
We can tell ourselves apart because I’m the one with the faux hip, he’s the one with the pacemaker…or, wait a minute, is that right?
Photo: Poppasquash Road, Bristol, RI, June 17, 2009 around 5:30 a.m. Saved at 1920 by 1200 pixels.
Case in Point
May 8, 2009
No one has actually asked my why I go out to walk (or, in the old days, run) at 5 a.m. Today provided plenty of reasons.
The soft pre-dawn light lit the low ground mist around the Mill Gut, and I walked through a cascade of mist that flowed past the Coggeshall farmhouse, the ice house, and dissipated at the edge of the Gut.
At the top of Surprise Hill (runners find out why it’s called that, a seemingly innocuous rise that is actually a three to one ascent over 150 yards) I turn towards Narragansett Bay. In the half-light, a broad shallow vee of 90 to 100 geese approach from my left flying about three feet above the surface of the bay, heading towards Providence.
I was going to ask Ed, the teacher who is the anti-quark to my quark, walking my route the opposite way, if they had passed him as he rounded the end of the park. I saw him coming from about 3/8ths of a mile away, something not possible a month ago in the dark. Then I saw a big group of birds floating about 150 yards offshore and decided not to ask. Which, as it turned out, was too bad, because the birds on the water were gulls, not geese. Where the geese ended up remains unknown.
As I walk along the water, the sun is coloring the sky in the east, shining through the trees on the ridge line, oranges and yellows against the purples and mauves of the clouds and the light blue of the morning sky. A handful of small clouds above the sunrise shines with an intense yellow.
On the way up the hill to the defunct toll gates that mark the entry to the park I pass the five or six varieties of fruit trees that are blooming, each variety to its own drummer.
Joe, one of the other local geezers, has just broken into an easy jog as he approaches from the other direction. He stops and waits and we descend towards the head of Bristol Bay, congratulating each other on our good fortune to be out on such a glorious day. He breaks off and heads for town as I turn towards Poppasquash Point to return to where I parked the truck.
The salt marsh is greening now, and across from the Bristol Marina the weeping cherry I photographed a year ago is again lit by the rising sun. Nick, my former running buddy and now occasional walking partner, passes by in his Harley Davidson Edition Ford 250 and pauses long enough on his way to his spinning class to remark on the beauty of the morning.
Ed, the anti-quark, passes, each of us now headed in the opposite direction. Today our fifteen-word conversation remarks on the appearance of the sun after a week of clouds and rain. The conversation window is too short to adequately frame a question about the geese, so I let that go. The two donkeys are in the pasture across the road from the Bristol Yacht Club but the sheep haven’t made it out of the barn yet.
In the truck, I pass the Goose Lady on the way to Sip ‘n’ Dip. She’s the Goose Lady because for the last two years she’s chronicled geese in the early morning hours all around the top end of Bristol Bay. In the last six months she appears to have finally gotten enough goose pictures because she’s broadening her photographic interests to other fowl. The low, bright light of the sun makes the boat hulls on the harbor shine and sparkle, giving her a great background for whatever bird is in her sights this morning.
At Sip ‘n’ Dip the wait staff are carrying on patchy conversations in Portuguese. I draw an unfamiliar waitress and for the first time in months I have to repeat my order; medium black, no sugar. A medium coffee ordered without other qualifiers comes heavy on the cream and sugar. That and the ProJo (Providence Journal, now quite skinny) come to $2.97, up from yesterday’s $2.86. Next week I’ll find out if it’s a price increase or simply the new waitress.
* * * * *
I park the truck just the other side of this stone fence. The yellow blossoms of the weeds seem to float above the surface of the pasture. Taken Sunday, May 3rd and formatted 1920 pixels by 1200 pixels. Click for full view and download.
Coggeshall pasture
