Our Daily Bread

Through the years, I've made it a practice to dispose of any stale or moldy bread that I happen to have by tossing it outside to the birds. And during that time, I've come to also be familiar with what is known as bird bread. From doing this for so long, I've also come to learn which avian species most appreciate my handouts and which couldn't be bothered. And I've come away from it with some interesting facts as well as a storehouse of memories watching the birds actually going at it when several slices of bread fly out a window or the front door and onto the grass.

　

While some might argue that there is indeed a method to it from the point of view of what's easiest for the birds to deal with, I've found that it really doesn't matter. If they're hungry enough, which they almost always are, they are prepared to deal with everything from small pieces to entire slices without much ado. The important thing here is that the bread is there, and they don't seem to be too bothered by what form it happens to be in.

　

Here, on a Saco, Maine (USA) side street, the property lends itself well to distributing the bread either from the front door or from a rear living room window. There are screens on all the windows here, and I have intentionally left the screen off one rear window off all winter so that I can toss the goodies out there. Not only do the birds benefit, but the squirrels are often up for a bread meal as well, so nothing is ever wasted. And that's not even taking into consideration the nocturnal animals, such as raccoons and skunks, that clean up anything that might be left behind while the rest of the animal population sleeps.

　

During the nearly two years I've lived here, I've had the honor of sharing my daily bread with crows, wild turkeys, blue jays, and seagulls. The latter are the brutish scavengers that swoop in aggressively, having spied, sometimes from a great distance, the incongruous objects on the lawn before heading this way to clean up. And it doesn't take them long either, for they are perfectly capable of swallowing multiple slices of bread whole, their necks swelling in unbridled and bestial gluttony. Meanwhile, the crows, the very ones who are the first of a morning to send out the call that it's breakfast time, stand off to the side, hoping that some tidbit is overlooked, which rarely happens when the gulls are involved.

　

If the local flock of resident wild turkeys is present, some interesting confrontations sometimes ensue between the two larger species, with the turkeys running at the gulls in an effort to chase them off. That's not usually effective, though, as the gulls simply take to the air where they circle around until it's safe to land again. Following this feeding frenzy, there is usually not much left, but it's interesting to note that the smaller birds, such as juncos and titmice, manage to find some wee bit to eat, something too small and insubstantial for the larger birds to bother with.

　

To keep the smaller fry happily satiated, I've been known to stand at the kitchen counter breaking the stale bread up into tiny pieces fit only for them. Too insubstantial to be noticed by the gulls, they do appeal to the turkeys, which, like their other poultry cousins, subsist by spending vast amounts of time pecking at whatever the ground has to offer. It is only after that when the smallest species move in, undisturbed, to glean what is left with their small bills.

　

The old adage of "waste not want not" applies here, for indeed, nothing IS. I've been doing this for so long now that it no longer even occurs to me to toss a moldy half-loaf of bread into the trash. Instead, I automatically and instinctively take the bag to the door or window and start tossing. While nothing is wasted in the end, there is also much to be gained in the knowledge that I'm helping to get my feathered friends through another winter as I share with them each day "our daily bread."

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Garbage

The human species is the most complex, specialized and highly evolved of all living organisms, and as such, is completely dependent upon all other life forms that came before it. The irony in that is that it doesn't work the other way around, for no other life forms depend upon humans for their survival. No matter how superior we may think we are, we have essentially proceeded from all other forms of earthly life, and they were all here long before we were. I would go so far as to say that none of them would be all that traumatized were we to mysteriously drop out of the biological equation.

Yet no other species, however enlightened, is as capable of upsetting the ecological apple cart as humans, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the garbage we produce and that we seem to have no idea what to do with. No other living creature produces so many byproducts that nature cannot reassimilate to the extent that we do, and no other even comes close to the disrespect for the environment that humans are capable of.

No matter where I go, I see it. Be it on the lovely path at the bird sanctuary at Biddeford Pool or along the edges of the Mast Road in Lyman, the evidence that humans have passed this way is painfully evident in the form of all manner of detritus such as food wrappers, empty cans, and the infuriatingly ubiquitous cigarette butts. If there is such a thing as violence against nature, then this is surely one manifestation of it, and one that is so easily avoidable.

Many cities and towns regularly dispatch sweepers to clean their streets and roads, yet who is there to monitor the less-travelled paths and lanes? And isn't it, or shouldn't it be, incumbent upon each and every one of us to display a proper respect for nature by at least not asking her to dispose of our garbage, too? Yes, certain things do disappear into the soil given enough time, but the best nature can do in most cases is to wait until enough autumn leaves have fallen to cover the unsightliness of objects that simply do not belong there.

I've been just as guilty myself in the past of rolling down my car window and tossing out a gum wrapper or a used tissue. But as I sat in my car on Main Street in Biddeford recently waiting for a friend who was on an errand, I noticed a man walking along with a long-handled grabber, picking trash up along the sidewalks and depositing it into a bag he carried. It occurred to me that the visible trash, of the sort that clogs our streets and drains, is considered more of an eyesore and an affront, and so it must be quickly disposed of. But conversely, it seems that the old "out of sight, out of mind" maxim applies to the less frequented by-ways where it seems less of an transgression to crush a cigarette out or toss a granola bar wrapper because fewer people are likely to see it. Yet are we doing our environment less of an injustice because no one is likely to make a fuss?

I feel one should be made, as it is very unpleasant to walk along the roads less taken, absorbing the beauty of a grass carpet dotted with wildflowers only to glance down and spot something completely incongruous and that spoils the view. If we are to smugly claim the honor of being the most civilized species, then shouldn't we act the part as well where our Earth is concerned, consider our origins and stop this needless desecration of our surroundings?

There are places for trash, and the seaside, roadways, fields and secluded woodland paths are not among them. While many of us are trying harder to recycle and to be more careful about how we dispose of our trash, we can't stop there. We must become the species that not only takes freely from the Earth and from nature but gives back to them as well, not in the form of garbage but in one of respect and a passionate unwillingness to defile their sacred beauty.


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Summer in York County

Roaming the York County countryside means seeing fields shorn of their tall grasses and corn standing knee-high right about now. Raspberries are filling out on their canes, and blueberries are ripening a little more each day. Birds linger longer on tree branches, particularly among the flowering varieties whose blossoms have given way to yet another year's-worth of seeds. It's July, the seventh month, which means that we are over half-way through yet another year. The heat rests heavily on the land, and the sun shines down more intensely than it will at any other time.

I'm not a big fan of hot weather, so when I do venture out, I try to get as early a start as I can. Driving along with all the windows down, I bask in the still-cool morning air that, by noon, will feel more like the heat pouring from an oven. On hot days, even the trees seem weighed down by it, their leaves barely moving in the moisture-laden air moving in from the south and the west, completely resigned to the elements that constitute summer in southern Maine.

Much has been written of late about conservation and the actions of many dedicated individuals geared toward protecting unspoiled land for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. While their efforts are indeed commendable, it occurs to me that conservation can take different forms and that it can be deliberate or simply the result of of land being left undisturbed for many years. The long swaths of open field and meadow that I see in my many travels illustrate what I like to call passive conservation. Such acreage emerges from beneath the snows each spring, sprouts a full component of grass that is eventually cut back to ground level. That is about as much as ever happens to such land, and year after year, it is wisely left in nature's domain. The hay or straw harvested from these lands fills many needs, but such undisturbed lands provide another benefit as well by enhancing the countryside and making a lot of lovely scenery possible. Visual beauty, as well as the survival of relatively untouched places, are indeed valuable components of conservation, passive or otherwise, that sometimes get lost in the shuffle of providing areas for people to enjoy in other ways.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to those landowners who quietly, and without much ado, leave large portions of their land in nature's care. Because of them, we have many places to escape to in this part of the world where life's busy-ness and the wilderness live in close proximity to each other. And although much of this land is private and, in some cases, posted against trespassers, I feel that just having it to look at as I drive by or stop along a road somewhere to enjoy is a gift.

I sometimes park my car and walk along the by-ways that border such properties, camera in hand, always on the lookout for that special something that would be missed if I'd just passed by without a second glance. From such a limited vantage point, I am still able to gaze out upon rolling pastures and deep into dense woods where the leaves split the sunlight into glimmering beams. I can gaze down from a bridge into flowing water or look up at clouds that break up a rich blue sky above a field of golden grasses bending in the breeze, thankful always to those wise landowners who know that, when nature is given full rein, nothing short of the spectacular will do.


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Songs of the Past

Every so often in my ramblings, I come upon a place that sings particularly loudly of the past. Along with trying to be more attentive to the details in my surroundings that are overlooked during a cursory glance, I also try to discern what a particular area might have looked like before progress, if you will, forever altered its profile.



It might be something about a stand of trees or the way the land dips before being cut off by a paved road. It is also sometimes simply in how a ray of sunlight is interrupted in a spot where it shouldn't be by something that just doesn't seem to belong there. I've come across certain markings in forgotten places, ancient remnants of other times, other lives. Chunks of granite blocks poking up through grass and weeds or the sad remains of what was once a fence that delineated property boundaries, crumbling now and making its way, molecule by minute molecule, back to the earth from which it came.



I noticed, one day last week, a long row of tall regal old pine trees lining one side of a road in Arundel. As I drove slowly past, I wondered at how that tract of land might have looked a century or more ago before a road even appeared there. Oh, there might have been some sort of trail or way to negotiate the area, as most rural roads were once nothing more than paths before the advent of the automobile or lanes composed of pairs of ruts worn by wagon wheels. As more and more of them were widened, graded and paved, the landscapes abutting them changed forever, leaving us now to wonder at what might have been lost in the process; and it's always a comfort to come across an area that appears to be relatively untouched by human hands or affected in some way by the human touch.



I chatted yesterday with several ladies who live in Springvale, and they shared their memories of living in the area. Dorothea, or Thea, as she is fondly called, who is in her nineties and has spent her entire life in the Oak Street area of Springvale, remembered when "all the streets were dirt roads," and "you could walk along the railroad tracks to get to Deering Pond." Peg and Cora, originally from the town of Alfred, playfully reminisced about Mouse Lane, a narrow road that branches off from the Kennebunk Road and whose name has always amused them. "The Kennebunk Road was dirt," said Peg, and added that Mouse Lane was also just a "small and curvy dirt road." Peg also reminisced about the many wildflowers that, as a young girl, she saw growing there. Cora said that Lady Slippers and Lily of the Valley grew everywhere. The ladies collectively spoke of other flowers that grew wild at every turn-Queen Anne's Lace, Oxeye Daisies, Indian Paintbrush, and wild strawberries. "Wild strawberries grew everywhere," Peg said. Thea also shared her memory of a time when elm trees were familiar sights along the streets of Sanford and Springvale. "You should have seen them on Oak Street," she said. "Their tops met over the road."



Cora lamented the disrespect for natural beauty that she sees everywhere in the form of litter and trash. "I don't know why people do that," she said. "It's awful. Empty cans and cups are just thrown on the ground. They just don't care." Thea added that she admires the efforts of local conservationists to preserve the wild places in Sanford and Springvale for future generations to enjoy; and Peg wistfully mentioned how her parents had taken steps to formally preserve some of their land, but that subsequent owners had removed the protections that they had put into place.



Talking with seniors gives us a rare glimpse into the past, when life was slower and, they all agreed, less complicated. Through their eyes, we can travel back in time and imagine what the busy streets we now take for granted looked like as dirt roads, how trees, fields and wildflowers dominated the landscape, and what it was like to travel everywhere on foot or in a horse-drawn wagon.



The ladies all agreed that nature was much more visible back then and played a much greater role in their everyday lives. I truly enjoyed my trip down Memory Lane with them, from Thea recalling how farmers built walls from the rocks they coaxed from the soil as they cleared the land, many of which are still there today, to Cora fondly remembering the garden her family grew that helped put food on the table during lean times. As the conversation was winding down, Peg thought a moment and, with the characteristic twinkle in her eyes, spoke of spending a lot of time outside as a child. "We were always outside doing something," she said, then added with a chuckle,"and sometimes, believe it or not, even getting into some sort of mischief!"


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