The Peace of the Wild Things in Coronaville

Turns out there's a heron rookery five miles from my condo.There's something very moving about watching herons touch one another's beaks when you can't shake another human's hand.

And here's a library in a beautiful historic building. Maybe I'll go there one day.

This a is a restaurant I meant to go to. You can have a cocktail on the ferris wheel. Or you could--you know, back in the day when people did those things.

Friday Morning Beach Report: Heron Stalks Fisherman and other news

Here's what the beach looked like when I arrived this morning.

And as if that wasn't enough, there were some dramatic bird goings-on.

There was a great blue heron stalking a fisherman. I've never seen a blue heron on the sand, but since this one could fly, walk, and tiptoe like a thief perfectly well, I guess it was okay. Mostly the herons hang out on the rooftops  and boat docks of the houses in the marina.

I take all my photos with my iPhone and that's painfully obvious here. But this gathering of little white birds (I couldn't quite tell if they were snowy plovers or sanderlings) is only partially captured in the photo. They were just sitting there. Hundreds of them.

And there was beach glass. Nice big chunks of it.

Herons on the Housetops

Funny how these graceful beautiful birds look so forbidding with their long necks and wings tucked in.

Saturday Morning Beach Report/Friday Night Flashback

                      Rip currents, big waves, and surfers.

Clouds above and clouds below.

View from a Kayak

And when I came home and checked my email, there was this from my Poem a Day subscription from poets.org:

Song of Quietness by Robinson Jeffers Drink deep, drink deep of quietness,         And on the margins of the sea  Remember not thine old distress         Nor all the miseries to be.  Calmer than mists, and cold  As they, that fold on fold  Up the dim valley are rolled,         Learn thou to be.  The Past--it was a feverish dream,         A drunken slumber full of tears.  The Future--O what wild wings gleam,         Wheeled in the van of desperate years!  Thou lovedst the evening: dawn  Glimmers; the night is gone:--  What dangers lure thee on,         What dreams more fierce?  But meanwhile, now the east is gray,         The hour is pale, the cocks yet dumb,  Be glad before the birth of day,         Take thy brief rest ere morning come:  Here in the beautiful woods  All night the sea-mist floods,-- Thy last of solitudes,         Thy yearlong home.

Pussycat and the Pea Green Boat

The kayak sat in the garage for a couple of days, because I needed help to tote it down to the dock. But thanks to M, it made it. I've been out the last two mornings, eyeball to eyeball with the great blue herons, on the water by myself at 6:00 or 6:30 a.m.

I'm really getting in shape with all that paddling, right?

 If you could see what I really look like, you'd laugh. Typical outdoorsy pants--check. Ratty t-shirt--check. Life-vest--check. Think Pillsbury dough boy goes paddling. The neighbors in the condos across the water are probably spreading the word, and in a few more days there ought to be audible applause as I belly-flop out of the kayak and onto my dock. It's no problem getting into the boat, but a graceful exit eludes me. Yes, I've watched the youtube instructional videos. Hahaha.

photo credit: tourbarbados.net

How to tell a heron from a satellite dish

Scan the rooftops while out for your evening walk.
Look carefully. Then look again.

House Guests

There's someone sleeping in my garage.

J arrived on Momday evening--in from Minnesota for a conference. I put her up in fine style, at first. Bedroom with a view of the water. The guest bathroom all to herself. On Thursday, the seafaring folks (daughter C and her husband) blew in from the icy blasts of  Lake Michigan. With only one towel bar in the bathroom that they would now share with J, they set to installing a couple of two-pronged towel hooks. This project was preceeded by an exposé of my neurotic belief that bath towels should not touch one another. My craziness was proclaimed, and C volunteered her towel to co-habitate on a hook with her husband's towel--which I admit, does not seem to be a breach of hygiene.

On Saturday daughter M arrived with her partner (M from her not-so-far-away grad school campus, and S flown in from Minnesota.) It was necessary then to explain our house "sexile" policy which clearly states that those with partners get the private accomodations while singletons are offered the couch or air mattresses in any corner they can find. I should have mentioned that the man who loves me also arrived on Saturday--leaving J clearly in the position of the person to be sexiled.

But I was kind of ready for some high-style sexiled accomodations. The new fancy (relative term) full-height rollaway air bed was unfurled in the garage complete with a hideous million-year-old folding table covered by a tablecloth and bedecked with, not one, but two, battery camping lanterns. As a final welcoming touch, a throw rug (okay, it's more of a doormat) was laid out bedside.

Somewhere in the wee hours of Saturday M's sweetheart discovered she had picked up some food posioning in her travels. The segregation of towels suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea. Antibacterial wipes and Clorox clean-up also took up residence in the guest bath.

The day after tomorrow my friend S will arrive, and we will begin the prep for our Thanksgiving feasting. As I write this paragraph, J has now begun her journey back to the land of ice and snow, so S will enjoy the garage-partment. I believe I invited another friend to sleep over Thanksgiving night. He, too, was once nicely ensconced in a bedroom here while housesitting, but on this visit he will have an air mattress in the living room or dining room. Full disclosure on this arrangement must include that my mother, whose bedroom is downstairs, yells/roars like a bear (not talks--oh no--what she does is not talking) in her sleep. The grandchildren opted for wedging themselves into the upstairs hallway when they were here rather than endure the nightmare inducing bedlam.

So, yes, come to Margaritaville for a visit, dear friends and family. Stay over. But if you come this weekend, I suggest you bring a rope ladder and a very cozy sleeping bag. These things would provide warmth and a private entrance/exit to my balcony where there is a couch.

Or if you arrive in your boat boat, perhaps you could sleep there. Though it's quite possible that you could be awakened by a hungry heron.

Or wait until the crowd departs. No doubt, my mother and I will be lonely when this crew of turkey eaters leaves. Yes, come. I will offer you your own towel hook. I will walk with you on the sand.
I will feed you lemon bars.

 And I swear to god, there will be vermouth. There will always be vermouth.

Bird of the Day X 3

Swallow. Perhaps Cliff Swallows since these birds do not exhibit the "deeply forked tail" of the barn swallow.

Yesterday, as we were enjoying my patio, my friend Michael pointed out the mud nest under my rafters. Wasps, we thought. Then today as I was washing my windows, I noticed that the nest has quite a large entrance. I put it all together then--the swooping chattering birds outside my living room, the mud nest.

And as a bonus, a Great Blue Heron flew over this evening, its legs stretching out behind like a travel trailer. The lines, "Jane, Jane tall as a crane," popped into my head. I studied Edith Sitwell's poem in high school.

Here's the full text. If herons could be domesticated, I'd have one and call it Jane--even though herons and cranes are different birds.

Jane, Jane
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, Come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain,

The light would show
(if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers
that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers
that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips, shining
Where the old dawn light lies whining

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp,
turns the milk's weak mind...
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light
creaks down again!


AND, I may have seen a Red-Billed Tropic Bird. Maybe. It seems unlikely, given the range, but it's the closest I can come to the white, long-tailed bird with the orange beak that flew over about 4:00 this afternoon.

Who knows what I'll see "when the morning's light creaks down again."