Nesting phase concluded, the hawks and
the owls have moved along. Leaving to us
the cardinals, robins and goldfinches to flit
through the trees, singing their territorial
tunes and their glorious songs of life's
adventures. Gone the nuthatches and
chickadees, the blue jays and the song
sparrows, but just for the nonce; they are
destined to return to join woodpeckers
busily exploiting the forest's resources.
Large, black squawking crow juveniles
still imploring sustenance from their harried
parents and silent chipmunks enliven the
environment as they slip through the canopy
and the dense-brackened understory.
Scolding red squirrels roast our ears as
we obligingly leave the day's offerings. In
our wake, suddenly appear hordes of
peanut-addicted grey, reds and blacks.
Gone now, the ripe red strawberries and
bright orange hawkweed. In their place juicy-
red raspberries and just-blooming pink thimble-
berry. Cowvetch runs amok over ferns and
hazelnut shrubs, between cinquefoil and
daisies, fleabane and buttercups; a riot of
colour. Giant pines spread out in the forest
their green limbs a sheltering structure.
Sharing the landscape of this forest arras,
elm, maple, fir, spruce, ironwood, poplar
cedar and ash. Many agonized by the sharp
thrusts of a Pileated woodpecker's search
bleeding sap. The trees creak and sway
grate trunks under the prevailing winds that
gust through this place, accompanying sudden
cloudbursts swelling the lazy creek to roar.
Gone now the days when grouse and partridge,
fox and raccoons, the occasional porcupine
and skunk might appear during our woodland
rambles. In the winter months when snow is
banked high and the ground is solidly frozen
coyotes appear at dusk and at dawn, and deer
are sometimes seen, venturing beyond their
usual places of refuge. These are rare occasions
when deer move closer to human habitation.
On these hot and humid summer days, we
see hares silently appear on the trails, and just
as silently depart. We delight in each new
sighting of bold chipmunks, downy woodpeckers,
chattering squirrels and chickadees awaiting
homage. Or the appearance of a colourful
fungus, a brown-speckled toad out of its element.
Red-winged blackbirds, constant revelations of
life; endless, welcoming, mysterious cycle.
They are immense, peculiar in their
presence, standing in ordered rows, planted
upon the verdant arras. Still, like ancient
massive, stone-dolmens, though their wide,
scepter-shaped blades are meant to
steadily, efficiently, reliably revolve, those
powerful images on the rural landscape.
The sky, blue and hushed, widespread
with white billowing wisps, is in no mood
to co-operate. Aeolus stubbornly holds
back his motion-beckoning breath. Until
finally an urgent exhalation nudges the
blades to stir themselves. Slowly, gracefully,
they obey the imperative that placed them
there on acreage after rural acreage.
Until finally, the army of wind-blades is
inexorably propelled, shifted from useless
indolence to the prospect of a standing army
of purposeful, revolving-determined action
energetically flailing the atmosphere, taming
the wild wind of exploitative usefulness.
Moving out, moving on; people do that
in this modern world so regularly, much
unlike earlier societies where townsfolk
and village people, farmers and settlers
stayed where they were born, incurious
about the world beyond their doorsteps
content to surrender to the comforts of
familiarity, proximity, predictability.
How things have changed, as we have
become experimental and opportunity-
migrants, thinking nothing of leaving
geographic roots, venturing beyond
the familiar toward adventure and life's
disclosure of open secrets, scarcely imagined
whose values we embrace as our lives
become complicated with new aspirations
old contents and contacts casually left
behind, with no regrets, none whatsoever.
These are the enterprising, confident
migrants, become thus as a personal
imperative, to set out and away, rather
than cling to heritage, culture, and familial
verities. They will succeed at whatever they
try their hands at, minds to, absorbing
other values, verities and social contracts.
Then there are the hordes of human dross
made so by being thrust asunder from a
place held dear, their lives ransomed for
escape from tyrants, oppression, starvation
and predatory-deadly tribal-incendiary
malice fully aforethought; pillage, massacres.
They represent the sad underbelly of forced
migration, living in sordid camps short of
food, water, medical attention, and hope.
This is the tragedy of the human spirit
left adrift on a sea of indifference because
the plight of countless numbers cannot be
consciously absorbed and rescue is tardily
delinquent to dire need. This is where
migration stalls in its tracks, where the
effluvium of humanity languish sadly
unsettled, set aside, a living nuisance.
There are so many people who go through
life deliberately unengaged with others'
concerns even when those concerns happen
to impact the entire society. Deliberately or
through sheer disaffection, effectively
disinvesting themselves from mutual concerns
to which others hasten to respond while they
the utterly self-invested simply remain
insensibly unaware, free to remain so.
Whether concerning neighbourhood
improvement, social ills; man- or nature
-inspired, ameliorating activities are always
someone else's concern, most certainly not
theirs. For they mount themselves above the
common fray. Knock at such doors collecting
charitable funds for an obvious social cause
of undoubted repute and their cold dismissal
places you and all other such common pests
in a well-earned place; social dungeon.
These are the entitled who will not cancel
personal planned events of social delectation
in the face of cataclysmal potential. A dread virus
surfacing to threaten the global community?
No matter. The exotic locale of an upscale
accommodation, tailored for the moneyed
set and pretenders beckons and they will
not miss their flight, nor pampered getaway.
Even as humanitarian groups work
feverishly to rescue, house, feed and medicate
counselling the indigenous afflicted beset by
misfortune resulting from a major hurricane
tsunami, earthquake or massively destructive
oceanic oil spill, the entitled bask in their
exclusive hotels, eating their gourmet meals
sunning on beaches where volunteers clean
wildfowl ordure and remove unsightly oil washing
ashore to destroy the pristine surface of fine
white sand, the sublime turquoise waters of
Paradise, horrendously defaced.
This is all so dreadfully inconvenient, too
drearily disturbing of one's anticipated
enjoyment. The tedious presence of those
do-gooders runs disturbingly counter-
productive to the exclusive elegance of
paid tourist presence. Simply intolerable.
Something should really be done about that.
Great good humour, a wonderfully
good nature and relaxed sense of
well-being, inclusive of my presence.
A robust, sometimes wry, always clever
and succinct ability to sum up a situation
and see a problem through to an immediate
and appropriate conclusion. An unfailing
reason and presence of mind, capable
of deep interest and understanding
overwhelming me by the width and
breadth of his boundless curiosity.
A completely open and reasonable
mind, alert to nuances and perspectives.
That incurable curiosity about what
lies beyond his previous experience and
knowledge base, leading him to propel
toward acquiring a well-grounded
understanding to accomplish whatever
tasks he sets for himself, out of sheer
determination and willingness to acquire
the required ease with the tools required.
His character and sense of responsibility
leading so frequently to a considered analysis
a workable conclusion. His engaging empathy
extended toward and beyond the familiar.
His unwillingness to harm even noxious
nuisance things that live and thrive, invade
and irritate. These creatures will be rescued and
retrieved to live another day, why not?
His intemperate joy in life and its
complexities. His keen, sometimes puckish
more often mordant, razor-sharp wit
geared to amuse and yet balance carefully
what lies beyond the sanguine obvious.
His courage in helping me to face any shared
life difficulties. His unflagging regard for the
well-being of intimate others, me primarily!
His encouragement, his reversions
to the enthusiasms of youth, drawing
his adoring partner to repeat the pleasures
of, say, dancing to the music of younger
years, all those too-many-to-count years
ago when we truly were young, the age
our grandchild has now attained, oh my!
And so much more.... The smile that
lingers on his familiar face as he regards
me. The comfort of his touch as flesh
meets its partner. The love and trust
respect and joy that exudes from each
of us. Inexorably, toward the other. Ah
I regret to say, the position is no longer
open; it has been admirably filled. I
commend you for your interest and urge
you to try elsewhere; it will not be regretted.
Finally, the storm that had roiled
and railed throughout night's
passage into the dim light of dawn
begins to wear out its incendiary
bellowing passion. The half-drowned
world below the weeping cauldron of the
sky lifts its sodden head in relief.
Dripping ceaselessly from the night's
assault, the relentless drumming
of the dark sky, as black clouds defied
one the other's domination, like the
clash of ferocious Titans, the world
shook itself and soon the dense
cloak of fog slunk away, leaving a
shimmering veil of mist to accede to
the strengthening sun's imperious
command to summarily depart.
Rivers of rainwater, storm water
the life-blood of that celestial combat
tumbled down mountain slopes
gathering momentum and thundering
and tossing, hauling all unsecured in
their wake, trees and shrubs and
rocks and soil all submitting to the
fury and the majesty of Nature's
imperious anomalous tantrums.
The tumbling mountain streams
icy, swollen beyond their narrow fluted
confines, hurtle through and over, beyond
and between time-and-water-scarred
stony-ridged passages, on the remote
impervious mountain slopes. Boulder-
strewn and tree-stumped, the excited
wide and running, tumbling rivers
thrash over all in their riotous passage.
Great steaming, boiling cauldrons of
water rushing to the great beyond of the
world's vast seas and waterways, stream
and steam, carrying in their irresistible
grip the unresistant detritus of forested
slopes, thundering the atmosphere
flailing all in their path, enjoining Nature's
chaos as she wills it, when she does.
