A FEATHER, A RESET: I found a feather outside the cabin door today. Pretty, isn’t it? A downy woodpecker left it for me to discover. To notice. I like noticing feathers. And plants. And birdsongs. I like paying attention to the clouds, and predicting what the weather is going to do. I like studying music and art and history. And
A PEACEFUL AND QUIET early spring evening at the old cabin under the big pines. With the sun spreading gold over the far shore. Quiet, except for last year’s young eagle attempting to barge into the old, familiar nest tree. With much screaming and flapping of wings and similar commotion as the parents/proprietors, busy housekeeping for a new family, attempted
THE STRANGEST THING happens here at our bird feeding operation at the little cabin-in-the-woods. Sometimes—as this morning—when it is very cold—no one is here. I go out, in all my impedimenta, with seeds and corn and sunflower hearts and water, and brave the beastly cold, and… nothing. And I get a little worried. For more often when I go out
OCTOBER SUNRISE, Church O’ The Pines. The morning gossiping of chickadees. The laugh of a pileated woodpecker. The reflecting Father of Waters…. All the congregation, surrounded by beauty. We wish you beauty. We wish you Good Sabbath.
AFTER DAYS OF North Country scorchers it is a fine and pleasant thing to watch thunderheads building over Fawn Isalnd on Rainy Lake. An island is no safe wall against the craziness and troubles of the world. But it is a reminder that there is only so much we can control or influence. And thunderstorms billowing above are similar reminders.
EVEN ON A COOL, gray and cloudy Sunday morning, a slow stroll around the Church O’ The Island is rewarding. The view from high atop Moonlight Ledge is outstanding, while down the cliff-face pale pink corydalis flaunts its pink and yellow blossoms. White-throated sparrows and yellow warblers sing their hymns. Near Jackpine Point the blueflag iris shows its colors, and
THE MORNING cuppacoffee view from the cottage screen porch down the historic ‘voyageurs’ highway’ is worth the trip up to Rainy Lake all by itself. Rained all day yesterday, supposed to rain the next few days. But this morning, with song sparrows and yellow warblers singing, with the ghostly echoes of old voyageurs’ chansons and with sunlight glinting off the
THIS MORNING, after returning from guiding Road Scholars, it feels good to sit on the deck in my grandad’s old Adirondack chair from 60 years ago. To be under the big pines and beside my little bonsai friends. And to listen to the nearly full chorus of the Church O The Pines choir, flitting from limb to limb in the
IN THE GORGEOUS Bluff Country-Driftless Area, gazing across the Mississippi Valley at the cloud and sun mosaic of the Minnesota hills, we find ourselves in Wisconsin. Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge is spectacular, for scenery, wildlife, and particularly birds—from double crested cormorants to great egrets, bald eagles to red-tailed hawks to barred owls to gray catbirds to red-headed woodpeckers, all of
ON TODAY’S Road Scholar adventure we took in Whitewater State Park and its surrounding wetland marshes. What a grand day! Including a highly unusual bird-sighting. In the park, on the Trout Run Creek trail, we found the palm warbler and eastern towhee, our first rose-breasted grosbeaks, and others, while enjoying a woodland carpet of violets, spring beauty, trout lily (yellow