First Footing at Mint Springs Park

My sister Nancy spent her last years in Perthshire in the Scottish Highlands.  Friends there celebrated the first hours of Hogmanay, New Years day.  They walked, or if not intending to drink, drove to each others houses where their friends refreshed them with food, drink, and Auld Lang Syne.  The first foot to enter the house on Hogmanay would visit the house often for the rest of the year.  Though friends vied to set the first foot in the house, anyone who came by on the first of January would be a welcome and frequent visitor for the rest of the year.

Ox and I slept late after our traditional quiet New Year’s Eve.  We spent a quiet day at home, Ox catching up on internet correspondence, and I trying to finish a knitted Christmas present.

In the evening we drove to Mint Springs Park to make 2016’s first footing.  It was five o’clock, already lighter at that hour than it had been at five in the weeks before.  We parked by shelter one and walked counterclockwise around the pond.  The sunset appeared first in the northeast.  Tree feathers on the hilltop brushed the salmon sky.  The shadow of the hill darkened the northeast half of the pond; it was topped with a richer salmon color toward us.  Then the setting sun’s reflection moved to the dam.  At last the real sunset showed in the west, in the valley between two hills.  For a few minutes the whole sky was salmon orange. The water looked like hammered brass from the south side of the lake.  Breezes and inlet currents crossed to make these shiny scales.

We met a woman leading three large dogs.  We had met the dogs before.  They sniffed our hands, wagged their tails, and dragged the woman toward the shelter.  We followed their wet footprints back to one large dark wet place on the path and then to another.  The wet footprints ended at this place where the dogs had first jumped in the pond.

From the dam on the east side of the lake we saw the goose flock (Ox counted 23) feeding in the grass by the cattails.  The water, moved by a stiffer breeze, took on the appearance of salmon stucco.  At our approach the geese moved silently toward the water; we split the flock on our path toward the car.  Gray erased the sky's salmon color. The chilly air turned cold. 

We left Mint Springs Park, happy in the notion that we would return there frequently in 2016.

Beavers and Music

Tonight, later than usual, Ox and I drove to a lake east of Crozet.  A fine mist was trying to become a drizzle.  Graceful bare trees stood out, stark against the gray sky.  Leaves on the ground glowed orange and yellow in the failing light. 

Before we reached the lake we saw a swift silver v-shaped beaver wake shining on the gray surface of the lake.  The wake’s dark-nosed point travelled halfway across the lake and then, with a slap of his tail, the beaver dove.  We waited for the beaver to surface.  He stayed submerged. 

Some years ago we had lured another beaver with song.  My voice, always scratchy has deteriorated since then.  I nudged Ox, “Sing something!  Sing!”  Ox oiled his dulcet tenor with “After dark, when everything is still . . .”  I joined in with a wobbly, off-tune harmony.  The beaver wake reappeared and headed towards us.  Ox sang “Wait ‘til the Sun Shines, Nelly”.  The beaver wake headed nearer.  Fifteen yards off shore, the beaver swam back and forth, keeping an even distance from us.  Ox stopped singing.  I took up “The Ash Grove” in a quiet and low-pitched range.  From the west of the lake another beaver wake headed towards us.  I sang “Amazing Grace” as we walked away from the lake uphill to our car.

Beavers may or may not be musical, but they are curious and intelligent.  I felt as we left the lake that we had made a magical connection with two of these admirable animals.

Driving home, we made grandiose plans to introduce the beavers to more wonderful music.  I suggested that we bring the portable CD player I use for garden work.  I suggested Brahms, Ox countered with the more cheerful Mozart Horn Concerto.   We have a world of experimenting to do with beaver musical taste.  I hope they hang around long enough to experience some other kind of music than creaky old voices.  Stay tuned

Cockroach Words

My mother-in-law was fond of language.  She showed this by editing her copy of the New Yorker magazine with red pen; she also edited letters from her daughter-in-law and granddaughters, lesser stuff, with red pen.  When she heard people use new words and constructions she would huff.  I said at these times “Oh, come on, Virgina! – vox populi! – vox populi!”

My arteries now must be as hard as hers were then.  I cringe these days at many new words and to heck with vox populi!  I call the worst of these words cockroach words. 

 

The most disgusting word to me is gift used as a verb.  It is so ugly.  Gifted kills the music and joy of gave, and giving,  It sounds so smug, so pretentious.  Consider the folk song “I gifted my love a cherry that had no stone; I gifted my love a chicken that had no bone . . .”  The season of gifting is galloping toward us and I intend to stick my fingers in my ears until it’s over.

Signage makes my cockroach-detecting antennae quiver.  Why doesn’t anyone talk about signs anymore?

Ox complains about perfectly good records being renamed track records.  I admit that my cockroach antennae hadn’t even twitched at track records until he pointed them out.

Should you accept it, dear reader, your job is to stamp out cockroach words, I know you have your own list.  If I use one of your cockroaches, let me know and I’ll step on it.

Images through Windows: a pean to my Photos

If I were richer I might have become an Apple person.  Today, I’m glad I didn’t have the wherewithal.

I have always liked Windows 7.  I only wanted to upgrade to the free Windows 10 because:  (1)  I enjoy figuring out new computer stuff, and (b) I worried that Windows 7 might lose its support someday.

Windows 10 is a dandy program.  Thank you, Microsoft, for this present.  All the efficiencies aside, the thing I really love about 10 is that it will, hand in hand with Google, take every picture stored in the computer, and bring them to my eyes in random order as a screen saver.  When I was letting Windows 10  know my preferences, Google offered me Google Photos and I accepted.  Thank you, Google, for the present of Picassa and the later present of Photos.   I may stop computing altogether and just watch the screen saver.

In the last few days I have enjoyed, beautiful, clear, and also fuzzy pictures of many people I love.  I watch them age and grow young and age again.  I’ve seen most of the beautiful places I’ve visited over the years.

Betsy pops up as a five-year-old saluting her cousin Nina from the porch of the Redlands house.  Sister Nancy smiles at us during her wonderful 70^th birthday party, she mugs as she and John wear each others hats.  Handsome nephew Tommy, who died at forty, shows as a proud, ten-year-old swimming champion, and as a mature, capable, young man, showing us around his Kansas City neighborhood.  Jack and Rauna marry in Helsinki.  Seija, Nina and Christy, their daughters, look magical dressed as princesses in crowns and gowns; Seija wields a wand.  Jackson’s nostril takes up much of the screen in a selfie he took when he was three, before anyone else made selfies. Polly's daughter Julie stands with her dear daughters, Ruthie and Paige at Polly's house in Keswick.  Nancy’s son Johnny horses around with his younger cousins at the Inn in Mattapoisett.  Nancy’s firstborn, Annie, and Andy cut their wedding cake at their saltbox in Mattapoisett; five-year-old Cat watches the cake with rapt attention.  Ox climbs Bear Den Mountain, drives across the Rocky Mountains, skillfully flies a kite, walks up the beach at Assateague, holds the infant Betsy.  Cat plays billiards (pool?) with cousin John in Naulakha (Rudyard Kipling’s house in Vermont - rented out by the National Trust).  Nancy’s Annie, and Annie's beautiful daughter Jess, look at ancient tombstones in Scotland.  Polly’s Sarah whispers to her niece, Pagie with a fine Christmas tree in the background and a fine view of Lake Monticello in the farther back background.  Adult Sarah looks glamorous against the hanging lights at Bodos.  Betsy holds her belly a few hours before Jackson is born. Betsy, Ox, Tom and I, in sequence hold the hour-old infant Jackson in the hospital room.  Cat helps Jackson stop the waves on the beach at Assateague.  Young Rauna, Jack’s wife, glamorous in a bathing suit, stands behind one of their baby girls, who, naked, crouches in the pond licking the water.  John and Wendy look over the water on the ferry from Arran to Kintyre.   Ox and Cat walk part way up the trail to John’s Meadow in the San Bernardino Mountains; John's Meadow was named after my father.  Virginia Betton Burton, at the age of 100, meets her baby grandson Jackson.  Ox, Mike and Jack sit on Jack's deck in Maryland smoking cigars.  Sammy and Cricket, Cat's dogs, lie in the sand; Cricket barks at the waves.  What a wonderful crew!

I see mountains, deserts, cathedrals, oceans, fishing villages, marshes and sunsets with such pleasure.  I forgot the beautiful sandstone and sunsets of New Mexico, the San Bernardino mountains, Yorkshire Cathedral, New Mexico, Saddell castle on the east coast of Kintyre, where Nancy threw her 70^th birthday party, Polly’s houses in Michigan, New York and Virginia, family parties in Bethesda thrown by Jack and Rauna, the towns of Lynchburg, Virginia, and Redlands, California.  There are many pictures of the sunset I watched for an hour on Assateague. There are many pictures of Mint Springs Park in all its guises and many of the nature trail at Old Trail before they built houses around its mouth.

Pictures I have taken of pictures I have painted show up between all the beautiful people and places.

I have said for years that I didn’t need photographs to remember the people and places I love.  I was wrong.  Watching this screensaver reminds me of my world and my love of it.

The Crocodile

Our friend Weegie introduced me to Ox late in the fall semester; he was her fast-talking boyfriend’s friend, straight-man, and singing partner.  She offered a blind date.  I declined; I had a test the next day. She twisted my arm and I went on the date.  Ox’s reputation intrigued me.

We dated several times after that and enjoyed each other’s company.

Ox took a leave of absence for the spring semester.

Weegie’s sister Ann got a spring-break job in a hotel in Lakeland, Florida.

Ox, wore his college boy khakis, oxford cloth shirt and loafers to hitchhike south through the scary southern states.  He carried a dirty raincoat and a bindle with clean socks and underwear.  He slept in a variety of fleabags, farm fields and rooms.  He had adventures.

For example, In Lyons, Georgia, the sheriff had talked with him at the northern city limit, and took him to a jail cell without booking him.  The cell had no window glass behind the bars.  The next morning the sheriff drove Ox to the southern city limit.  He advised Ox, “Boy, keep on traveling.  I don’t want to see you here again.”

In those days southern sheriffs worried about outside agitators.

Weegie and I rode the train to Lakeland.  Ann booked a room for Weegie and me to share.  Ann was thrilled that the Detroit Tigers farm team was staying at her hotel.

Our first afternoon in Florida, Ox telephoned the hotel.  He came by.  He was glad to shower in our room.  During a break Ann visited as well.  Ann was full of Detroit Tigers stories.  I was bored with the stories; I didn’t know the names of any Tigers and really didn’t care.  Weegie and Ox got deep into a discussion of current events.  I attempted to insert sophomoric, ill-informed opinions, which were ignored.  My nose bent out of joint.  I felt jealous of Weegie – a new and unpleasant feeling for me.

Weegie’s and Ox’s discussion wound down, Ox suggested I walk out with him.  We walked along Lakeland’s deserted streets.  We sat under a tree to talk.  Whatever we discussed engrossed us both.  I leaned against the tree.  I am a Californian, barefoot is my preferred mode.  I took off my sandals and crossed my ankles modestly on a vine.  The drizzle freshened to a rain.  We talked on.  The rain abated a little.  We made a break for it, I carried my sandals.  The sun had gone down hours ago.  The night was dark but the streetlight reflections shone in the rainy pavement.  The rain began to pelt.  My ankles started to itch.  At first I ignored the itch.  Soon I had to stop and scratch.  Ox held my elbow while I scratched first one leg and foot and then the other.  As we stood thus off balance on the sidewalk, a huge crocodile waddled slowly down the center of the road.  The crocodile ignored us; he took about 10 minutes to pass out of sight.  We ran back to the hotel room laughing, drenched, hair and clothes streaming rivers of water.

Ann kindly found a room with hotel employees for Ox. 

That was the only crocodile I ever saw in the wild.