Acair Fearann

Linkbait:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/see-loretta-lynn-willie-nelsons-somber-lay-me-down-video-20160323

Now I! feel old!

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It is interesting, gratifying, mystifying? to see this place through a new set of eyes….

I took a logger/forester/person in charge of the day-to-day ‘keep it running without a budget’ operations that 30,000 acres of watershed entails around the place the other day.*  A tour of some of my favorite trees so to speak. He is the first person not to be bored by the tree tour. Being dragged off into tick country to look at a gorgeous example of an ash tree, why not!**

I’ve grown up here.  My sense of what a big tree is…warped, badly. My sense of the diversity of trees one might have on a typical property….warped, badly. Who doesn’t have Multiple trees listed in the top twenty for size in the state, who doesn’t have dozens of different species?  But when someone whose job experience includes looking at thousands of acres of trees, ranging from urban parks to forest is captivated by the place….that is not to be taken lightly.  Whether it is the oldest of the Norway Spruces, the big lone hemlock, the Norway maples (invasive nightmares but usually not that big), the old Sugar Maples, the Cucumber Magnolia, or the Black Locusts; there are a lot of gorgeous trees here.

What does that mean? I don’t know, except validation for the growing conviction that this place has a value beyond the personal. What that means….?

*Technically he isn’t, but union shops are interesting.

**yes, yes, of course the fact that it was me giving the tour may have helped….

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http://www.city-journal.org/html/new-old-masters-14188.html

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He is risen! Alleluia!

Even better was getting to sing a Ukrainian hymn for our choir director’s mother, I think we made her day.

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No, not a little midget dolmen.

Old well, publicly accessible property somewhere in Connecticut or Massachusetts.  The flash on the camera is a handy way to judge if there is actually water near the surface, without actually sticking one’s hand in or leaning in too far, the latter tends to make people nervous. Now how deep that water is? Anywhere from 5 to 25 feet, with an average of 10.

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You know, one would think in this age of constant connectivity….you wouldn’t find out in a passing conversation that a neighbor had died a month ago. She kept her horse next door since before I can remember. Last November she moved him, for the winter, she said.  I didn’t think much of it, though she had never done so before, because she said she was coming back in the spring and last winter had been brutal, I’d fed for her more than once when she couldn’t get up the hill from where she lived. I was looking for her, it being spring; I suppose I can stop looking now.

(or in other words, cancer is a stone cold killer).

RIP Karen.

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a foot of snow Sunday night (naturally I have to work, I thought I’d not have that pleasure of that particular drive this winter)

But right now, following a fast moving thunderstorm this late afternoon, the fog is lying in the river valleys, the peepers are singing in the deep swamps and still ponds of the forest, while the stars and the crescent moon look down on the hills where glints of young grass blades shine in their light.

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I still think it is utterly ridiculous.  Why not just set the clocks to noon on the half day of the equinox at 45 degrees North/South and have done with it?  Ours is not to reason why!

Besides, I was seeing dawn on a routine basis anyway and finally not getting up in the dark.  Now I’ll agree, it is nice to be up and watch the sun hit the western hills between a gap in the clouds.  A brief flash of gold and purple.  Definitely pleasant to see.  But still!

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