Acair Fearann

On days such as this, when the fog has settled on the hill top, one begins to understand how fog is such a powerful element in myth and story.  One knows perfectly well that the outside world exists, the road is still there, the paperwork is still there, yet the physical world beyond the fog fades.  Not into darkness as at night, but into an unreachable state.  Nothing seems to exist but the here and now. 

Rather pleasant in a way.  Here this sort of fog really only happens in the winter during warm, wet spells and can last for quite some time. of course it also means Mud.

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It is always amusing to run down the hill and see what the weather did elsewhere.  Yesterday’s little bit of snow, the wonderful just-barely-snow sort that sticks so beautifully to the trees, had vanished in the valley by the mid-morning.  Just a few hundred feet separated the fairytale like trees, spun sugar ornaments upon every branch, from a pleasant, if damp, but nothing special landscape of early winter.   Yet looking up at the hills, they were and still are crowned in silver and ivory against the blue sky.

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more serious content*

A list of birds at the feeder today (by taking them in at night we avoid the bears)

Black capped chickadee

Downy woodpecker

Hairy woodpecker

Red-bellied woodpecker

Titmouse

Nuthatch

Red-breasted Nuthatch

White throated sparrows

other sparrows (multiple?)

Mourning dove

Juncos

Cardinals

House finch

Purple finch

Blue jay

Crow

OTHER: I am terrible at birds

(not today, but other days: Pine siskin, Rose breasted grosbeak)

*I’ve got serious content, but I either don’t feel like formulating actual thought or I don’t feel like even walking past that road

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How quickly we forget.  All summer it didn’t rain, we would have loved a cloud or two.  The last month has been nothing but clouds…how much we love a really sunny day! At last.

The fickleness of human nature, must be good for something.  Possibly, is it designed for putting up with the weather?

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(should be filed under half-baked)

I spent much of today working on polishing a bit of metal.  Purely decorative in nature, one might think that this was, if not a wasted, at least an unnecessary activity.  After all, bright work, be it on a harness, gun, or kitchen ware, isn’t mandatory for its function.  Other bits, also needing cleaning, might be needed; but not the decoration.

Working on it was simply several hours of a straightforward task that allowed me to appreciate its existence, the skill of the craftsmen, and the history of the people for whom it was bought.  It was, and is, simply a moment and item of elegance.

Yet, we perhaps have too little of that in our lives.  For all of our conspicious consumption, there is a strong tendency to justify things: we have innumerable gadgets that are all supposed to do something.  Items solely for display are considered ostentatious.  Buying the newest electronic gadget is being prepared for work, buying a luxury handbag is elite frivolity.  Yet, both are displayed, both signal that the possessor is ‘with it’ in some way.  Sometimes though, I think the buyer of the handbag may be more honest in their motivations (assuming they, of course, admit they bought it because they liked it not that they Had to have it).

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reveal inner tendencies towards Druidism, or something.

Here’s the thing, if you really, really want to you can rebuild a building exactly as it was before it was damaged or destroyed.  You can even blow it up* and do so, there are several very impressive churches in Cologne, Germany that were rebuilt from rubble.  With advances in imaging, I suspect that it will shortly be possible to create perfect replicas of even small details, technically possible if not financially so.

What you can’t do is rebuild a tree.  If you lose a century old tree, you cannot replace it.  It isn’t just a chunk of wood, it is live wood plus a unique interval of time.

The physical mark of this hurricane, however relatively minor** might be recorded longest not by man but by trees.  Interesting thought.

*technically, those were bombed ‘down’.   English, gotta love it.

**The blogosphere is apparently composed of an equal number of Manhattanites claiming the world ended and Midwesterners/Texans claiming the world didn’t end and anyway if it had they would have dealt with it better than those wimpy Yanks who are stupid enough to live in a city.  California is oddly silent.

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Turns out Norway spruces don’t care for microbursts.  It could be worse, much, much worse.   That being said, losing the best of the ‘young’ Norways just south of the drive and another farther to the south is sad.  These weren’t small trees: about 18-20 inches in diameter and sixty or seventy feet in height.  The major loss is the one by the drive, very healthy and with good branches all the way to the ground it was an important tree in creating the feel of a deep forest.  On the way down they smashed a twenty year old spruce but avoided everything else.  Kind of them.  They could have hit the ancient Wayfaring tree, the Sargent’s Hemlock, another young spruce, a young beech, etc.

It is going to take us a while to chop them up…

A larger problem is a hemlock farther south on the old road which is tilted over at a forty five degree angle, bowing and popping another hemlock, and both leaning against a sugar maple.  Again about sixty feet tall.  Not sure how to deal with him, much too precarious for us to handle, and completely unreachable with a vehicle.

But, amazingly, that is all we lost of any consequence.

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Courtesy of the quasi-hurricane: watching hundred foot tall Norway Spruces describing thirty degree arcs…

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