A Stewardship of the Heart

“…in any true sense there is no such thing as ownership of the earth and the shadow of any man is but for a time cast upon the grass of any field.” Henry Beston, Northern Farm.



It would be all too easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that I own this land, this wooded five-acre hillside that slopes down from Grant’s Hill to Swan Pond. One of my neighbors has perhaps a better claim to that thinking, as this entire area, including my own humble parcel, once belonged to his father. So I’ve come to understand his attachment to it that extends even to my land, as it was once in his family, and he’s never stopped thinking of it as such. I, however, am a relative newcomer here, and unless I will the place to my own heirs, someone else will someday invariably take stewardship of this knoll.



But can any of us, no matter how long we’ve occupied it, truly own the land? Are the trees, hills and fields to be owned, or do they simply allow us the luxury of our imagined dominion over them? We’ve all witnessed the ravages of progress, how it can strip away acres of trees and replace them with shopping centers and apartment complexes. Yet, once abandoned, does the earth not take over again, with nature slowly but inexorably reclaiming what is hers? No legal proceedings are involved, no hand needed to sign deeds or easements. She simply moves in quietly, and over time, refashions the hills and fields into something more befitting her eclectic preferences.



Our history is full of stories of those who held unwritten rights to this land for centuries before the Europeans decided it was theirs simply to take. Who better to attest to the fleeting nature of ownership than those very souls who now eke out their existences in the places allotted to them by those with the power to decide such things? I think I know a little of how they must have felt as they left their ancestral lands, I, who have only been here a few years and who is hardly rooted yet can feel how tenuous my grip is on this place.



A good friend of mine once said that no one ever really owns the land, that we are all merely stewards, a reality that extracts from us a promise to leave it as we found it. He and his wife owned 80 acres of pine-studded wilderness not far from here, and he, too, had a healthy reverence for that wild place that held him in tenancy only. Even in death, whatever small space any of us occupies passes to someone else: heirs, new unrelated owners, even developers, and all perhaps thinking it is theirs, all theirs, to do with as they will.



None of us knows what lies ahead, and it’s perhaps better that way. If I should have to reluctantly leave this place someday, I hope that whoever comes after me will see the light golden in the pines at sunset and hear the wind approaching from the west on a stormy night. I hope they care for it, give back whatever they take from it, and not interfere too much with processes that have gone on long before any of us were here. But most of all, I hope they hear what it has to say and that they, too, take comfort in the truths it has to share.

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My Feathered Visitors

While the earth continues to provide bounty for both earthbound and avian creatures, the time is approaching when my feathered visitors won’t be able to find enough to eat. The ground will freeze and be covered in snow and ice, and they will be hard-pressed to find some bit or morsel that will help keep them warm during the bitterly cold nights of deepest winter.


Research shows that birds are warm-blooded animals whose internal body temperature is roughly 105 degrees Fahrenheit. As they have virtually no body fat in which to store heat, it is crucial for them to eat almost constantly during the colder months, especially during those times when they are cut off from a natural food supply that includes seeds, berries, and insects.
Sudden dips in temperature can be fatal to birds, and it is then that they need our help more than at any other time. To maintain their body temperatures, birds need the extra calories that seeds and suet cakes can supply. Thus, it has been my practice here to try to fill that need as best I can, all the while fighting the good fight with squirrels and raccoons to make sure that the birds are the ultimate victors.


I recently downsized my feeding arsenal to just one feeder and one suet-cake holder, and these I place close to my front door for easy access and a fast approach during squirrel skirmishes. No matter how squirrel-proof the more sophisticated feeders are said to be, I have found none yet that those clever creatures cannot somehow defy. I have hung them from wires, from poles, and used all the baffles and foils I can think of. Yet, sooner or later, the feeder is on the ground, its contents scattered, and I’m faced yet again with deciding on another approach that, next time, may just work. I’ve even hung feeders from a long clothesline that is nearly 10 feet from the ground. Believe me when I say that squirrels can and do hang by their paws like high-wire acrobats and somehow make their way to the feeder. As frustrating as it is, it is nothing short of amazing.


Perhaps the greatest pleasure in feeding birds is seeing the vast numbers of different species that visit the feeder each day. Most bird-feeding devotees can attest to the thrilling antics of the chickadees, almost always the first to give in to hunger over fear. Other birds, like nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers take a while longer to trust that no harm will come to them if they come near. As for the seed that ultimately ends up on the ground, the ground-feeders such as juncos and chipping sparrows make short work of it. And barring that, raccoons can always be counted on to clean up the mess. A small flock of turkeys visited my porch on a cold winter morning a few years ago, and even an opossum visited once. Hunger is a powerful force that compels these creatures to go well beyond their natural boundaries.


It is a necessary and humane interdependence. For do we humans not reap, and sometimes even recklessly, from the animal kingdom for our own sustenance? And isn’t it only right to give something to them when they are hungry? As long as I’m here, or wherever I am, I will continue to provide a feast for the birds and other creatures while this good earth sleeps beneath its mantle of snow. And I will always believe that part of the reason they keep coming back is that they are indeed thankful.


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Night Lights

This is the first in the "Fall Series" of essays begun in 2010.



Contrary to what some might think, no night in the woods is ever completely dark. There is never a time when I open my eyes and feel as though I’d never opened them at all. As starless and moonless as some nights are, there is always some sort of light shining from somewhere, and the black treetops are nearly always silhouetted against a lighter background.



Cloudy nights can be surprisingly bright, as the clouds manage to reflect some of the sun’s residual light, making the sky appear lighter by comparison. If there is a full moon behind those clouds, midnight seems more like a late winter afternoon. And on the coldest January nights, the earth manages to reflect the light from the billions of stars that stand out in stark contrast to the black velvet drape they appear to be affixed to.



There are few street lamps along the long stretch of South Waterboro Road that separates me from both Biddeford and Waterboro. Sometimes, when it’s snowing, I turn my porch lights on and watch the soft and silent fall of flakes, each sharing its light with me before disappearing in the vast white sea below. Like fireflies on a hot July night, they possess a spark that is all their own as they fall noiselessly to earth on nights when the moon hides its face. Later, with the lights turned off, the glow lingers across my snow-enveloped world.



Some nights, I lie awake, my face turned toward the window, where I gaze upon the stars, occasionally seeing a light moving among them made by some celestial vehicle bound for parts unknown. On foggy nights, I stare up at a bare canvas through equally bare branches, watching them sway in the wind, soothed by a softening of atmosphere.



Once, on a full moon night, I saw a shadow skitter across the foot of my sloped driveway. It was a fox, probably on the hunt. It stopped briefly at one point to look back, ever vigilant, as is their kind, for danger. It soon resumed its moonlit trek and disappeared into the woods across the road. I sat for awhile, my eyes glued to where it had stood in the moon glow among the trees casting long shadows across the bluish snow. But it was not to retrace its steps that night, at least not while I was watching.



It is never completely dark in the woods. Even on the blackest nights, my eyes eventually adjust to whatever light shines faithfully behind cloud banks, allowing me to observe familiar shapes and shadowy objects that I take so much for granted during the day, objects that, in their altered nocturnal states, elicit a quiet reverence from their lone beholder.



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The Grass Harp (The Last of the Summer Series Essays)

A friend of mine and his wife raise horses on a farm in Bowdoinham and in his emails he paints vivid pictures of the hay fields that keep the feeding troughs filled, the livestock sustained and the rolling pasturage coiffed in gold. Through it all, he keeps time with the seasons, this man, remaining acutely aware of the pull and tug of the weather, of its imperatives and mandates, and its challenges. Sometimes, I feel that I can actually see him amongst the bales, guiding the tractor, forking and piling the fragrant grains, bending with them, ever at their mercy...

Haying season was one of the my mother's favorites times of year, as she herself had spent time as a girl involved in that hot prickly work, which hasn't evolved, technologically speaking, as far as other things have in this our complex world. It still involves interacting with the grasses, listening to their song (I am reminded of Capote's "The Grass Harp"), sweating and heaving and going from earth to mow and loft and as my friend proclaims, in preparation for the cold dark stripped and demanding days of winter.

It was a good thing when people had to get ready for winter, for the great drawing in, the wrapping up of things, the narrowing of vision and heightening of a thousand sensibilities and sharpening of ancient instincts in tune to nature's rhythm. Reading about the state of Alaska recently, I was pulled for the span of those 800 or so pages into a world where nature so often turns on a whim and plunges that part of the earth into deep and unforgiving cold or house-high snow, where natives have no choice BUT to be ready for all of that, or die. We have grown so complacent in other parts of the world, too much so, in our air-conditioned leaf and snow-blown comfort here in "civilization," where the advent of winter for many of us means nothing more than plopping a pair of boots down by the back door and remembering at the first snowfall that we forgot to bring a shovel inside. The weather, and all it portends, has become nothing more than a tweaking of our imaginations, to the point of lucratively warranting its own 24/7 televised coverage complete with all the drama and sensationalism that only nature can provide when other inane programming falls flat (which most does nowadays).

Fields dotted with bales, round or rectangular, flash by as I make my way through here in York County in an area once primarily devoted to generational farming and a firmly established way of life. Vestiges remain-a useful barn here, a few cows grazing there, a vegetable stand by the side of the road-thrilling and encouraging reminders that the practice is still alive and well in the minds and daily existences of a few at least who still maintain a direct connection to the earth and her processes.

The annual late-summer blackbird ballet also informs the watchful eye this time of year, as vast flocks of grackles and blackbirds cackle and swoop from place to place, decimating what little is left from the treetops and tall shrubbery before moving on in a great dark undulating cloud, a black lace curtain billowing in the great open window that is the sky. Though unrelated (or is it) to the grass harvest, it, too, is part of the cycle that folds over and over upon itself, leaving little untouched, unaffected.

It is September once again here in our little corner of the earth, and there is still time before the days shorten perceptibly, time to revel in what is not entirely summer nor entirely autumn but something wonderfully in between.


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Water Lilies

The characteristics and origins of garden flowers and wildflowers are pretty straightforward and obvious most of the time. It's all pretty standard and routine in the flower world. They germinate from seeds, tubers or old roots left to winter in the ground, emerge as foliage and burst into bloom when they're supposed to. Nothing mysterious about that. Some, like marigolds and impatiens, die after a single season and must be replanted anew each year. Hence, their status as annuals, many of which produce seeds that can be harvested and saved for next year.

Then there are the perennials, those faithful and stalwart troopers that die back to ground level but whose roots persist beneath the frozen soil. In spring, we see the result of our fall bulb-planting efforts in the form of daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses; and later come the irises and daylilies, sprouting anew each summer from rhizomes that spread underground and that must be divided when they become too congested.

Then there are those blossoms that appear in odd places, where it seems that flowers shouldn't grow, where the odds are apparently all against them and where it makes no sense for them to even be. But they are, guarding the secrets of their impossible existences in thier very fibers.

In tropical locations that never see any frost, orchids fill that bill, sometimes taking hold in the crotches of old trees where the humidity and light are just right. And here, in the northern hemisphere, in spots too inundated with water to support any other type of flower, where thick almost leathery mats of pads loll about on the gentle currents, water lilies appear, cupped and graceful, each tethered to the bottom of the pond by a single flexible stem that can measure up to six feet long.

Nymphaea odorata emerge from rhizomes, or fleshy roots, growing in the sediment that accumulates on the floor of a lake, pond or along the edges of a slow-moving stream or quiet marsh. The blossoms, composed of white petals arranged around bright yellow stamens, appear in mid to late summer early in the morning and close by mid-day. The leaves, that can measure up to a foot across, are round with a narrow wedge-shaped notch that proceeds outward from where their submerged stems are connected.

Early in the season, a dense mat of new leaves float patiently on the surface of the water for several weeks until the unopened pointed buds of the lilies appear to break up the monotony. As they open, they release the scent for which they are named, but it is a gift reserved only for those who dare to venture near in canoe or kayak or who are able to get up close and personal to the very edge of a body of water in which they grow.

Water lilies are yet more evidence of how nature works to keep the cycle of life going. For the submerged stems and leaves are not only home to aquatic creatures such as frogs, bass and sunfish, but also provide food for beavers, muskrats, deer and ducks.

Looking out over the pond just now, its restless shimmering surface aglow with millions of sun-gems, I wonder how much more breathtaking it could possibly be. Then I notice the water lilies, bobbing among the leaves, and I have my answer


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Layers

There's an intriguing quality to woodlands that I like to call the layered effect. It's most obvious when staring into a forested area that spans a large area and is composed of many different species of trees and other growth. Those in the foreground appear, of course, the clearest and offer the most detail. Pine needles, branches and leaves are all visible, distinct one from the other. But as the eye moves more deeply into the denser growth, images begin to blur, until they appear as layer upon layer of subtly different shades of greens and browns.

There, the edges of distinguishable shapes like leaves and branches blur, and smaller objects, such as individual pine needles, join to produce a tufted look when framed by the more delineated shapes of large boughs and trunks. Colors soften, and from that distance, pine boughs take on a bluish tint depending the slant of the light, becoming the stuff that woodland fantasies are made of.

This so-called layering process extends to all of life, from the air masses that exist above us to the ground we walk on. From its core outward, the planet we call home is a series of mineral masses that have continued to build on top of each other over billions of years. The uppermost layers, called plates, move constantly, releasing some of the intense pressure trapped beneath them in the form of earthquakes and volcanoes.

The oceans are composed of layers of water that start out relatively warm at the surface and get progressively colder toward the bottom. Clouds are layered masses of moisture, the air we breathe is just one layer in what we call our atmosphere, and in winter, snow accumulates in layers between storms. As all things grow, they do so by a process of new growth covering, or being covered by, old growth, as illustrated most distinctly in trees, whose new tissues emerge as rings that can be counted once they are cut down. As smaller plants grow, they do so as layers of new tissue displacing the old, snakes shed old skins to make room for the new, and even we humans evolve through growth that involves a layering process that takes place within and without.

Stylists speak of hair layering, painters apply pigment in layers toward the perfect finish, and masons put down stacks of foundational materials. We polish our nails with multiple coatings, we dress in layers against the cold, and even our lives could be said to be layers of experiences, one following another, each resting upon those that came before it.

Physically or philosophically, much of life evolves by degrees that often manifest themselves as shapes, objects, events or outcomes superimposed one upon the other. And the woods mirror that, in the detail they show us up close and layered against blurred masses of color and substance that act as backdrops, lending perspective and assigning meaning to what we are seeing. In this sense, nature is forever making connections between all forms of life, between the real and the abstract, between the clear and the hazy, between the lives of woodlands and wild creatures and our very own.

Looking deeply into the woods is an exercise for the mind and the eye, as both take in the myriad shapes, planes, surfaces and configurations that work together to produce what we see. And at some point in the farthest reaches, clarity dims as does reality and the imagination takes over. What is that over there, I often ask myself, when some shape, shade or shadow in the distance is too vague to identify. It could be nothing, I answer, or then again, it could be everything.


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Dragonflies

Sitting quietly on my deck one recent sunny afternoon, I noticed a very small movement along the edge of the railing. Upon close inspection, I saw that it was some type of dragonfly with what seemed to be purple wings and a purple head. Its size made it impossible to see clearly from where I was sitting, so not wanting to scare it away, I went inside quietly to get my field glasses. Magnified, I saw that the tiny creature was indeed purple, from its wee head and gossamer wings to its filament-sized segmented body.

I watched it for awhile and noticed others of its kind alighting elsewhere along the railing and on the deck floor. On a whim, I crept inside again and this time grabbed my camera, doubtful at this point that I'd be able to get a clear enough shot of those wondrous insects who are a boon to anyone who likes spending time outdoors and who has an aversion to mosquitoes and other pesky bugs. For it's a well-known fact that dragonflies are quite fond of mosquitoes as well as ants and whatever else they can manage to consume during their short lives.

This was not, as it turned out, a dragonfly, but a damselfly. And if my research and assessment are correct, it was a male violet dancer damselfly, a diminitive member of that insect family, called Odonata, that appeared to measure no more than one and half inches at best. The female is roughly the same size but duller in color, while the male's coloring is brighter and more pronounced. Unlike their close relatives, damselflies keep their wings close to their bodies when not in flight.

Aside from its mesmerizing color, its most striking features were its large protruding eyes and the metallic sheen of its long segmented thorax and abdomen and the delicately transparent quality of its wings. Had this insect been larger, it might have been imposing; but as such, its size enabled me to appreciate it for what it was-an intricately complex living thing that seemed to enjoy basking in the sunlight on my deck.

Sitting quietly for its own sake provides so many opportunities to see things that I'd otherwise miss in my day-to-day comings and goings, and I'm never prepared for what my vigilance and patience will reward me with, such as the very small creature making its way one afternoon in a slow undulating motion along the edge of a plant pot. It was a tiny inch worm, probably no more than one-eighth of an inch long and bright green. Or sometimes, I am so focused on the words spanning a particularly interesting page of text that I don't immediately notice a fly no larger than a pinhead land along the margin and sit there until I move and it flies away. Even with my reading glasses on, I have all I can do to distinguish its body parts one from the other and am always amazed at the intricacy present in so small a living organism.

My question when I see such tiny creatures is always the same: if they are themselves so small, then how much smaller must the food they eat be? In the case of inch worms, the answer is simple. As the larvae of adult moths, most consume vegetation, eating their way through leaves and often doing quite a big of damage in the process. But the damselfly? It seems that it eats the larvae of mosquitoes and other tiny aquatic organisms. As for the tiny flies that sometimes distract me from my reading, they tend to prefer decaying substances like most other types of flies. In short, the answer is simple though not at all discernable with the naked eye: they eat whatever they can overpower or can physically consume. For me, this adds just one more layer of mystery to the goings-on in a world that literally has no room for one of my kind. A Gulliver of sorts, I content herself with being a spectator at these mini-events, and it's not such a bad thing to be after all.


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