I’m a week or so into being able to move from room to room with no shadow, going for a walk only if I feel like going for a walk (or three), taking a nap if I need to, and going to bed and actually being able to read a book instead of succumbing to SOMEONE’s demands to play hide and seek before bed.
I’m traveling this week, and trying not to think too much about all of the season change I’m missing. Will the dog I don’t have (at the moment) see her first bear without me? Will she bring a big playmate back to dear Jordan, her sidekick this week? Stay tuned.
Hate to miss all the changes of spring, so why not slow things down a bit?
This morning my friend Scott relayed words from an elder when younger people were getting stressed at his job: “Look, this work is gonna unfold EXACTLY as it should.”
Maybe I need to get a little older and a lot wiser to believe that, because I’m still caught up in striving to make things happen.
But, ironically, (or maybe not, if I really believe the “should” part of the old dude’s philosophy), I had just been walking in the woods with Cedar, and noticing the way the giant leaves of skunk cabbage are unfolding as they come out of the ground. It’s as if they have been exquisitely prepared underground for the present tense, which takes form above the surface of the earth. When the soon-to-be-giant… like bigger than a lot of modern tv screens giant…leaves emerge from the cold muddy earth, we see only a corner of the “inrolled” leaves, literally unfolding in the daylight.
Maybe — to empirically test the depth of this elder’s philosophy–I should dig down and see if the whole giant leaf is completely formed, all rolled up down there. But maybe doing that would be the exact opposite of how the elder suggests one should live. Maybe I should just observe what I’m presented with?
A young person prompted me tonight to write about “making the future mine.” I have a choice here. Will I dig, or trust, that things are gonna unfold exactly as they should.
Where did I leave that shovel? Cedar—who sides with the elder— would still love some digging.
My friend Todd sent me that photo, so how could I not make an Easter post? The resurrection performed at 1410 Mary Ellen Way, inspired and supervised by our protagonist, is that of a young spruce tree. Its survival would surely be a miracle.
Cedar inspires plan.Tom digs hole.Realizes Cedar would fit nicely.Plants tree anyway.
On yesterday morning’s walk, you’ll be relieved to know, everything was in its rightful lane. The trees were just trees. Skunk cabbage were just their own yellow darts, not even stinking yet. One far off varied thrush was sketching his thin stripe of sound. A couple of ravens croaked. Some Swainson was practicing his scales. The sky was just the sky. And my back hurt.
Not much else to report.
So I thought about swimming. My body does indeed keep score, and a bit of back pain directs me to the pool. I don’t care how slow I am. When I get past my reluctance to go indoors and leave Cedar behind, I travel beyond the pool when I swim. FreeDog for Tom brain. My thoughts often drift (ha ha) back to those long leisurely days of summer on Great Herring Pond as a kid. We must have spent half of most days in the water, first kicking around learning to swim with hands on the sandy (and sometimes slimy) bottom, later snorkeling among mussels, and lake slime, and occasionally an eel and a bass. (I remember my cousin got so excited when he saw BOTH at once he screeched from the surface, “There’s a beel and an ass down there!” We got scolded. But it was nothing a night of marveling over the Jacques Cousteau volumes couldn’t heal.) We were amphibious.
These days, of course, the brown dog is the amphibian in the family. I love to watch her swim. Those webbed paws do the job and she’s getting really speedy. Here are two clips from a couple of outings this week. Nothing too remarkable. The Lab, I guess, was just a Lab.
Fetching two balls at once gets harder when one sinks!
The AKC missive for week 35–yup that’s how old The Brown One is–warns of regression in training and implores the good dog owner to review even the simplest of commands.
Random fetch sesh at Sandy Beach yesterday…
As always, I find myself wondering if we’re gaining or losing ground. Cedar’s response to COME lately is often a “Yeah, I’m coming Dad, right after I sniff this, chew that, peek around the corner… and yeah, here I come (slow saunter).” Often she waits for my mean voice, which actually tends to work these days. In the end, she mostly gets the job done.
State of the State: Week 35
I’m reminded of my principal days. I had a supervisor who was big on implementing canned programs with “fidelity” but when that made absolutely no sense (as in most of the time), he would back off and say some things required “loose” management, other things “tight.” (Another post some day on that horrible co-opting of the beautiful word, “fidelity.”)
A dog walker I encountered on Sandy Beach the other day spoke about an obedience instructor who insisted that a dog should NEVER be off leash, unless in an enclosed area. Now that is tight. I’m on the loose end of the spectrum, as I probably was as a teacher, thinking that “lessons” will find their way to expression eventually, even if they don’t seem to stick right away. My buddy Jeff and I called that “teaching by osmosis” (or radiation)…Like, eventually the “kids” will mature enough to “get it” … and the experience has a half-life…but it’s better to move on than perseverate and bore or frustrate us all.
Yesterday, neighbor Buck noticed Cedar keeping a loose leash as we met up (Buck with girl-toddler June and dog-toddler Midnight) while “Middie” strained against her leash. I hadn’t even realized Cedar was being nice and chill.
Cedar spends a majority of our time outside off-leash these days . And because I like it that way, that’s the way it’s going to be (unless one of us really screws up). We’ll keep working on the recall (have a had a good couple of HEELS with distraction lately, after a kind of miserable fail trying to keep her away from a skate skier who passed us up the other day). Maybe I just shouldn’t let that happen.
I’ll leave you with part of this Amos Lee tune (smart musician who quit teaching after a year), whom I’d rather listen to than my old boss. Keep it loose, friends.
I think the birds slept in this morning. I wanted to. Woke up at o-dark thirty to the house being shoved by a northerly gust. Cedar’s faith that it may just be worth having another day got me moving, as always.
The woods seemed especially stingy with sound today. A raven croak here… An eagle ruckus there. And finally, as if begrudgingly, on the way back from our walk, the crazy mechanical stutter of a woodpecker (it must be more machine than animal) and one or two Swainson’s Thrush calls. I think Richard Nelson said something like they emit a “rainbow of sounds;” this morning maybe more like a frozen waterfall.
It’s a good day to be on land. Even the ocean looks grouchy, old, almost Atlantic. As if it’s tired asserting its dominance over unprepared mariners. But on it goes. The mountains seem closer on these high pressure, northerly days.
The Ted Hughes term, “blade light” (“the wind wielded blade-light”) has stuck with me since I first read “Wind” at age 21. The light this time of year in Juneau is the ultimate mood-altering drug. As sunsets move farther to the north, early evening light streams into our kitchen, and — while highlighting just how dirty the windows and floor are—always lifts me a bit from the humdrum. But this northerly stuff— high pressure system with less moisture in the air—is different. It’s like we’re all just a little more exposed in our places… the light and the air just a bit heavier or sharper.
I’m sure I’m projecting all kinds of stuff on that blade light. Cold mornings with whitecaps on the Egegik and Naknek Rivers come to mind, bone rattling bouncing in jet-skiffs, and on the Egegik, surging through rolling waves in a helpfully waterlogged wooden skiff. I remember waking up to wind chimes at our friend’s place at Coverden here in Southeast, knowing we had stayed a day too long, taking our old Olympic (another waterlogged craft) home in waves that actually moved the house so that the door would no longer close right. Half way across Stephens Passage, we lost all of our electrical accessories. I decided not to tell either wide-eyed Katrina (who must have wondered why I wasn’t using the wipers) or 260-lb, Jordan who kept marveling at the fact that the waves weren’t swamping the outboard.
So, yeah, I bring all kinds of baggage to a cold northerly morning that may shape into a beautiful day. Cedar greets the day a little differently.
One of my favorite baristas (don’t worry, Trin; there are only two), saw me without Cedar recently and asked, “Cedar taking the day off?” Well, after a morning when we heard our first “hooter” (grouse) and a woodpecker in addition to the usual trail music, I did give her the morning off, so I could ski.
“Hard mornings, soft afternoons” isn’t just a sneak peek into a middle-aged man’s future, it’s the state of the state lately in spring ski conditions and a quote from a recent trail report.
Sorry, Cedar, had a sweet time without you. And I even had a guilty chuckle while driving and listening to Louden Wainright’s “Dump the Dog.”
Hard morning…
Take heart, Cedar-fans. We had a nice misty morning and our afternoon will more than likely be the best kind of Cedar-soft: water, sand, other dogs, and a tennis ball.
Crazy light yesterday before hail.
Cedar smelling a deer spine I put up there a month ago.
I’m just old enough to remember when having a solid state t.v. was cool. No more vacuum tubes, which meant your set didn’t have to warm up. Turn it on, and the image appears. (I do remember the cool mysterious blue dot that would linger on the older kind as the image disappeared when we turned the t.v. off.) I recall a pull-out and push-in knob for power, and a mechanical dial with numbers on it for channel selection.
That’s an awfully long warm-up (get it?) to laugh at how quickly Cedar can turn her body on and off. Here she is in “OFF” mode on the way home from Sandy Beach yesterday. The second we hit the driveway, of course, it’s a solid state Ping. She’s ready to go again and it’s as if the exercise no longer counts. What’s next?
In fairness to Cedar, she does have her vacuum tube moments, but that’s a different physics spectacle: meal time.
One of my favorite early parenting memories is Tim, up in his room doing something involved, half-listening to an Alaska Public Radio story set in Chicken, Alaska, and calling out in his laconic voice to Katie. “Kaaaaatie. There’s a place called Chicken and a place called Turkey.”
Tim and Katie used to spend lots of time studying the globe together while their parents worked crazy hours in the classroom.
Well, in that same spirit, I’m here to tell you there’s a thing called “heart rot” and a thing called “butt rot.” You knew that probably. But like me, you might not have been totally aware of the tree version (especially the hemlock version), and you might also not have known the crazy mix of forestry terms they chum around with. There are also things called conks and cankers and frost cracks and black knots and scars and old wounds.
This is probably a good point to issue an anthropomorphism warning.
As in, like who doesn’t have old wounds? And, did you know that they (along with conks) are the principal entry points for heart rot? Heart rot can take many forms — depending on extent of travel inside the tree, from butt rot to bole rot. Hemlocks are particularly susceptible, I guess, because of how much moisture they draw. Much depends on what kind of rot (white — wood still maybe usable—or brown—forget it), and what kinds of fungus enter one’s wounds. Rot can be “white spongy” or “mottled” or “rusty red stringy” depending on whether one has “Fomes foot” or “shoestring” or “Indian paint”. If you can stomach the rapacious point of view of the US Forest Service, this piece is a good primer on heart rot in western hemlocks.
White rot in hemlock.
Turns out the fungus is rubbery.
Heart rot in the bole.
Butt rot.
Double butt rot.
Look what I scored while Dad was looking at the wrong parts of trees.
Black knots… actually NOT associated with heart rot.
and bear bread (a “conk”)
I mention all of this today in part because I’ve been noticing how many blowdowns are around, broken off up about a third of their height, and in part I guess because, well, yeah, anthropomorphism. As I was taking a few photos this morning, a notice popped up on my phone “World Hurtling to Climate Danger Zone.” Last week, I lost a friend, Jason, to what I guess you could call lung rot. And I thought of my father, Paul, and the kids’ mom Ali, who both succumbed to their own versions of heart rot.
I don’t know if it helps much to realize how many of the trees around me are inflicted with heart rot, and yet doing their thing, reaching for the sky. It does help to know Cedar is completely immune to anthropomorphism, and that she finds lots to contentedly chew on in the presence of all the kinds of rot.
I have a funny little ritual where I stop at the biggest tree on our walk and take a few meditative breaths. I treat the “eagle tree” (a “wolf tree” actually) like my oracle, seeing what word it will give me as I stop and let my mind drift a bit with my breaths (always to the sound of Cedar gnawing good wood). Today, the spruce oracle (a veteran of heart rot, I’m sure) gave me “aspire.”
Seems like the best cure for heart rot I can conjure. (I’ll leave butt rot for the specialists.)
In boggy forests one can often find hundreds of these gleaming yellow spathes rising out of the black muck; the first harbingers of spring, they almost seem to be candles lighting the forest in preparation for the pageant that is to follow.
O’CLair, Armstrong, Carstensen, The nature of Southeast Alaska
Today’s the first day I’ve noticed skunk cabbage this year, which seems a bit late. Cedar tried one nibble of the yellow spadix, the flower that comes up before the leaves (which get gigantic over the course of the summer). She wasn’t impressed. I am, though. The plants really are remarkable: they can generate their own underground heat (with temps reaching the 70s when the ground still has snow), and a single plant can live to be up to 70 years old.
As Molly points out, it’s on.
Reel by Molly Box at https://www.instagram.com/p/CbnzInTALLUfSeAX03qzAnXx6TzllW_YcWDxVk0/
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