Measure of Success

A sunny meadow on a rolling hill, edged in evergreen fence-row cedars, on a cold November afternoon: This was the setting for my mission. The mission: Delight in the close up viewing of a foraging Cedar Waxwing through the lenses of my trusty childhood binoculars. Before I get too far into the setup and description, I should probably tell you that my mission sort of failed. Not that I didn’t delight in wonderful views…they just didn’t include any Cedar Waxwings.

This mission’s genesis was sparked earlier in the week when an office-mate revealed, with her usual glee, that a certain rare winter visitor had made a brief and unexpected stop at her bird feeder. Now, I’ve never seen a Cedar Waxwing at our feeders, and have seen only one fly quickly through our yard a couple years ago. They aren’t common around this part of North Carolina (or if they are, they are very sneaky). I didn’t really accept my mission until this morning as I was in bed thumbing through Sibley’s bird behavior guide, when I happened across the Waxwing section and thought “Oh yeah, I should go find one of those!” Heather was up for an outing and so we decided on the Ayr Mount property near town. She would bring a novel and a coffee, and I would bring my binoculars. She would sit in the sun, on top of the hill in an Adirondack and I would sit…or stand, or crouch or lay anywhere in sight of a berry-loaded red cedar. WE BOTH would be bundled against the chill. And for almost two hours this is what we did.

My mission took me down the grassy hills, through well-trimmed pine thickets, beside the willow-pond and eventually back up the gentle slope to Heather. I walked slowly. My gloved hands alternated possession of the bulky binoculars. The shell of my jacket hood shielded the wind gusts and muffled all exterior sound. Pulling the hood back, I could listen for nearby calls, before tugging it snugly over my cold ears. I found a sunny perch below the base of a Hackberry tree and so lounged back into the soft, tufted grass. Resting on warm earth, I scanned the hedges.

The search for birds is a lesson in optics, both ocular and binocular. You must shift your focus or you really can’t “see the forest for the trees,” or in this case the birds for the trees. So I first looked at the broad view with only my eyes to catch the small stirrings of motion, the flicker of feathers, before swinging the big lenses up for a zoom. When you have this privilege of supersight you can get lost in the details.

I allowed myself to get lost in those other non-Waxwing details flitting and flying into the periphery. As a gray squirrel, snug against a trunk, quivered its tail, I could see the emotion in his eyes. A yearling brood of blue birds danced with each other and darted around their old home. The dark crows, casting shadows below, glided up to the treetops and mocked me just a little. And thus my mission failed, though with a pleasant measure of success. Remember to measure your successes (don’t skimp). By the way, Heather thinks she saw a Cedar Waxwing as she looked up from her page into the tree overhead. I’ll be heading back there soon.

Cold Feet

“To go or not to go?” That was the question. Well that was part of the question. “To go canoeing early Sunday morning on a section of river not easily navigated at low water on a cool fall morning, with a short window of time?” That was the bigger question. Would we get cold feet or…get cold feet? The adventurous spirit prevailed and we decided to give it a go.

It was Heather’s first time on what I’ll call the lower section. It is the “Suburban Hillsborough” section of the Eno which meanders by the long backyards of the in-town homes. It was my fourth time along the route, though first with company. A loaded boat will not pass smoothly at normal water levels here. Two people make a loaded boat in this case. We packed light: camera, paddles, and a bucket of shoes. Yep, a bucket of shoes. Knowing that our feet would get wet, but not knowing if we would need to portage around fresh snags or hike up a steep bluff, we each brought hiking shoes and water sandals…and we used both.

It ended up being a mild adventure with no major unexpected obstacles (although the look on Heather’s face said otherwise when I almost tipped her out of the red boat as I clumsily tried to climb back in while losing my footing in a suddenly deep pool of water). We paddled calm stretches of flat water, snapped photos of falling leaves and mirrored canopies, walked and dragged the shallows (after awhile your feet don’t feel anything!) and eventually glided to a quiet stop up the mouth of a downtown feeder creek.

Cold feet warm up eventually.

Find Your Peak

There was a light steady breeze outside the window as I was writing this. The sound was a rustling of leaves. As I watched the descending flutter, I thought back to midweek when I had mentioned to Heather my observation that fall color had peaked at precisely 1:40 pm on Wednesday as I was driving between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough NC. That got a good laugh…which was mostly the objective. However, I wasn’t completely making it up. I didn’t think it could have been more picturesque than at that very moment. Of course I was wrong.

But isn’t that what we do? We declare and define. Heck, we post Fall Color Timetables in our local newspapers and on the Weather channel. We are often wrong but usually only by degrees. I kind of like that way of thinking and planning as it relates to nature. If it gets people excited about the outdoors I’m for it. (I’m not necessarily for being behind a long slow line of RVs trudging up the winding inclines of the Blue Ridge Mountains…but when I get up to the lookouts I’m more forgiving)

This Autumn, Heather and I got to see the colors change in six states thanks to our visit with her parents in Pennsylvania. There, fall settled roughly 3 weeks ahead of North Carolina. Such stark regional differences remind me of the diversity of place both near and far. They were dotted with ruby reds while we were aglow in yellows. The differences were obvious but now I'm noticing our similarities too.

As I made my way home later in the day this past Wednesday, I turned the corner at the base of Occoneechee Mountain where there, overlooking the still-green field, shivered a candy-red maple at its peak of color at 4:42 pm.
Find your peak of beauty…then find another one!

A Fall Preview

The recent trip north to Pennsylvania gave us a fall preview. The creeks were colder, the air more crisp, and the walnut trees were freshly bare next to sweet red maples. Morning frosts lifted slowly into late morning steam. The hunter’s moon lit the nightfields full of deer. It was vacation time and all things conspired to give us a good one. Each day the brilliant evidence of the changing seasons replaced my imagination, for I was out of doors more than in: sensing more than thinking. My brain lay fallow, nourished by the faint whistle of a white-throated sparrow and a long view across the golden, rusty hills.

Minnows from another Stream

We chose to do a paddle hike on Saturday while the leaves were still on the trees and the air was cool. Paddle a canoe, hike a trail. It was difficult to get out of bed, out of the fleece blankets. But it was harder not to get out and enjoy the day, so by mid morning we got our acts together, put the big red canoe on the car and headed down the hill to the river. The Eno recently overfilled its banks with the help of tropical storm Hannah. It had been several years since the last big flooding; since the last time the lowlands got soaked.

On this morning, things looked mostly back to normal. We put in under the bridge at the base of Occoneeche Mountain. The water was tan with some remaining silty particulate. A breeze descended occasionally; felt like fall when we were in the shade. If you looked close, you could see the dusty line on the low foliage marking the flood height. Grasses were still bent downstream. Smooth, muddy banks edged the water, where driftwood hung from limbs or balanced mid-air on branches.

We cruised up the intimate river, not knowing if our way was passable. We scooted under fallen trees, through thickets of dusty branches, and around newly sculpted sand bars. The small turtles were out, perched on fresh snags, testing out new habitat. Plop, plop as we passed. The minnows were out too. We had wondered if the flood would wash them all away. Were these local minnows or minnows from another stream? A giant shadow of a fish, long and lean neared the boat, seemingly unaware before wrenching away from us into the depths. It looked out of place. We had never seen one like that before. Not here. Maybe things were not back to normal.

Near the northern terminus of this section sat a dam and a steady waterfall. During the flood, it had become a dangerous and amazing milk chocolate colored churning machine, with hydraulic undertows swallowing whole trees before spitting them into the air with ease. This was our turnaround. We rested in the shallows. From where we sat under the shade of Dimmocks Mill Bridge we would have been 10 feet under water just 2 weeks ago.

We headed back downstream with sights set on the low banks near Occoneeche State Park. There, we could catch the foot path at its lowest spot, before heading up to the high lookout. We tied big red to an overhanging trunk, and delicately skirted up the mudbank. We know the trails here well. But every season is a discovery. Now in the early, pre-fall coolness, we worked our way up the North side, along a wet, dense cliffside where laurel and galax hung with dripping, musky aroma. Into and out of the clearings the trail wound. We stopped below the quarry, listened to youths playing and discovering amidst the boulders. At the top of this quarry, the overlook allowed us to catch our breath. We looked down on green Hillsborough. When I’m above the trees, I understand why the birds sing. They always know something we don’t. But I’ll bet the minnows had the better story this time...of a flood who had visited the Eno Valley.

Side by Side

Four of two and two of four. These were the numbers and configurations of feet on the trail in our group Sunday morning. Heather and I walked with friends who walked with dogs. Collectively we plodded, panted, stumbled, talked, sniffed and marked our way along Sal’s Branch Trail through the density of leaf-darkened Piedmont parkland.

Umstead Park buffers Raleigh NC from the daily thunder of airport traffic. It is not wilderness. But it has its wild sides. We explored the north side, the side which descends to a paddle-worthy lake by way of a smooth-pebbled creek. The creek held clear water, not muddy, despite the locally muddy runoff. This creekbed contained small rocks in grainy profusion: a snaking, sunken sandbar with, tan, oversized granules. Further down, the rocks turned to quartz, more white than sandy. The upper trail surface was woody: not mulchy, but sinewy, with crisscrossing, water-searching, elevated speed bump roots. Step on this one, step over that one. We took turns leading and following.

Dampness, from leftover rains, settled into the leaf pits and rotting logs. Fungus families sprouted in their favorite regions, recognizably distinct and purposeful. Mysterious subterranean networks arose forbiddingly into quaint villages. From orange and red to white and brown, flat saucer tops; some spindly, some round.
Unaware at times, we squished those few who surfaced mid-trail. Unfortunate fungi.

But what stood out today, to me, were those former trees who no longer stood. X marked many a spot along the trailside where straight wooden trunks lay in quiet repose, amidst fern and vine. Many had flat and smooth ends cut by saw. Were they blown by fierce storms, and then cleaned by kind hands? Or were they cut by fierce hands, and left to be cleaned by kind storms? In everything there are elements of nature and nurture. In Umstead too, side by side.

These Frail Theatres of Life

There, in the dense shadow of a giant poplar, was a life grander than the myths of memory, upon a small stage containing a vast cast of players more passioned than the seasoned ensembles; assembled not by the hands of man but by the hands of time. Selfish in every act; alive with the seflblood determination of a dying relic, growing deliberately upon the lives of others, a hushed progeny of fecund, infarcical reality.

Sure, “the play’s the thing,” but the things played, pale in comparison to the real things. Remember the things, and, if you can’t remember, revisit the things.

I’ll tramp the ruins of a forest for the first run of a replicated rhapsody.
I’ll stand and applaud, in unmatched sincerity, not to the humans, this time, but to the intrepid and timeless, humus-dwelling fruitings hidden from today’s common senses, though beckoned by the calming senses. To breathe the air of dramatic inspiration and to view the heir of brooding perspiration, I go to the shadows; to these frail theatres of life.