Young Lovers

Fort De Soto Beach and Bird Migratory

North Beach

Under a 4:00 O’clock sun, the gold-tipped waves on green gulf waters give me hope. Pelicans are grey-brown like gargoyles. They glide gracefully with precision inches from the water’s surface, their large bodies not yet weighted by oiled wings.

Warning signs hang on wooden posts to separate the conservation area for migrating birds from the public beach -- an attempt to keep beachgoers away, along with their red plastic cups, banana yellow buckets, and large blue coolers. The soft white sand is unaltered; sea oats grow on dunes that haven’t been flattened by flip-flop feet.

A choreographed flock of black skimmers take off in unison; ink-black wings contrast their underside that is white like marshmallow. They return to the sand as gracefully as their take off and abruptly stand in silence and stillness at the shore’s edge. Their red and black beaks all face downward as if the birds are observing a moment of silence. They’re cloaked with black wings, looking like small funeral attendants, but when in flight, their undersides are white like doves against blue sky.

The gulf looks light green and pure. Slow water ripples the sand, and broken shells, not oil blobs, scatter across fine, innocent sand.

On the Way Back from the Sandbar

The sun is two hours from setting. The gulf water at the sandbar is light blue and the evening sun sprinkles diamonds across the surface. One sandy path cuts through the long walk to the beach that is filled with wild plants native to beach. I search the crowd of small flowers, wiry grasses and sea grapes. A small wildflower catches my eye, its pods are soft and the color of lips. Like small bells they swing lightly in the breeze. The ocean breeze causes the thick, unstructured dune flowers to bend eastward. One lone black skimmer soars across the musical field. I could stay here all night.

The crickets begin to chirp at the coming of night. I want to shake my sandy towel clean and lay down in my bathing suit to be lulled to sleep by waves and wind. Suddenly the small tent seems like too much shelter. I don’t want to close myself in. I don’t want to stop feeling the current of my blood like the flow of the water. I don’t want to wash the saltiness off my body.

Night

The Gulf beach at night is black and blue. Crickets play sad repetitive songs for the sleepless. A waxing moon glares through palm fronds of tall trees, its eye ever aware like mine. I hear something playing in the water; an anonymous kerplunk in the indigo night.

The laughter of a father’s daughter echoes into the night, giggles in rhythmic time after her dad’s voice. Their duet reminds me of the years of longing for my own absent father.

Small sounds won’t penetrate the silence: June bugs tapping at the lantern and the wind shaking browned palms like pom-poms.

I’m interrogated by stars.
The solitude I once loved laughs at me here.

The sky cries without thunder or lightning, gently against my tent, and never-ending.
I wrap myself up with what I’ve lost. With my back against the night, I close my eyes over an awakened mind.

Southern Magnolia Bloom

A Welcome Intruder

When I bought my home last year, a corner of the small yard was thick with vines, a couple large trees, and saplings from the trees. It was a mess, but for some reason I liked it despite a few cries from friends to just cut it all down. My initial rejection to cutting it down was bird’s nests within the entangled wildness, at least three. Plus, I like privacy. My lot sits at the corner of a four-way stop near downtown and across the street is a church and a park. So, what little privacy I can get, I will take. I spent the first fall and winter cleaning it out carefully, pruning instead of hacking. I quickly discovered one of the vines was an invasive vine from Kentucky, nicknamed the alligator vine. Its stem is thick and green with thorns as large and frequent as rose thorns. The roots of the vine run long under the lawn like grassroots. Another vine had gnarled roots that were smooth and gray and formed a trunk of many vines at the base. I trimmed the vine and other branches to create a type of negative space. I sculpted vines and branches so that its form was interesting and sparse, and so that I could view the large live oak and loquat trees in the distance. In addition, the cardinals and blue birds flew in and out, and at least two more nests appeared.

I didn’t give much thought to the vine I was trimming except for my focus on it becoming a piece of art. My pruning must have stimulated its growth, because this year the vine towered over the trees in this space like a lavender waterfall. The leaves were infrequent and light green, and the wisteria blooms hung like grapes. The pods of the flower were like velvet, and when I ran my hand underneath to feel their softness, they felt I was running delicate prayer beads across my palm. The sweet fragrance hovered around my front yard, and the week they were in bloom, I sat in the hammock on my front porch just to be near them.

I consider myself a hypocrite because of this gorgeous vine. I soon discovered they are an invasive species in Florida. They are not yet as invasive as Category I species that alter and choke plant communities, but they could reach this status. My plan to foster native plants in my yard will be stained by this interloper. After a week, the petals fell and now it is as if the clustered plants were never there, reminding me of the impermanence and beauty of spring.

Place Entry Eight

My last day to post about the lake has me feeling pretty sad. Spring in Florida is unpredictable and often fleeting. We’re only a few weeks into the season, and I already feel summer approaching. It’s eighty-six degrees and the breeze is slight. Signs of winter have disappeared in such a short time. Cattail grasses are no longer brown. The wind bends the long fronds into a bow northward, grasshopper green with yellow tips like palms from Palm Sunday masses.

Orange trees in groves on the West and North side of the lake are without their small orange spheres, without February-March blossoms, without fragrance, and all are green. Spring happens quickly here until all seems green. Azaleas are undressing; petals on the ground encircle the base. The coots that I’ve gotten so used to seeing are gone. They stay in Florida until April, and at mid-month they’ve already flown up north to lakes that have just melted.

Today I watch a lone dragonfly gliding across the surface of the water. Every now and again he makes a quick turn to the right or left as if he changes his mind while staying on course. He looks like a miniature, delicate helicopter without a landing pad, although flying low like a bush pilot. I feel anxious about the disappearance of the coots and the one dragonfly. I feel as if I can hear the petals of pink flowers falling. My inability to hold spring reminds me of all other things I love but can’t have near. All things that pass by or stay just beyond my reach.

The large cumulous clouds collect behind me. I notice them after the breeze picks up. They are heavy and moving in the direction of the lake. They look like summer, but they offer no rain.

Prompt Entry Eight

Through this course my time at the lake caused me to put my talk to the walk in a way. The lake has been near me for ten years, but I had been neglecting it. I am grateful for the hands-on approach to nature writing in this course. Blog writing helped solidify and confirm ideas about the natural world that I formed in my first semester. More importantly, going to the lake each week caused me to interact with my writing subjects. In my writings that focus on cultivating home and sense of place, I knew that awareness and interaction with the natural local environment is a first step. A sense of community which can root one to a place should include the natural environment. Much like how setting and place can become a character in a book, this is true to communities. I was attracted to the lake when I first came to Saint Leo by fishing with a friend or studying. Then I passed it by for years without giving it a thought. Now, if I am not at the lake for a few days, I feel the pull.

Time at the lake also caused me to reflect on bodies of water near former homes in my life and how I utilized them or didn’t. This caused me to become more aware of how fortunate I am in Florida to have lakes, rivers, springs, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. My son and I plan to camp near water at least once this summer. As I became more aware of water and its effects on me, which was calming and meditative, I recalled how many water sources are within a short distance.

The lake also caused me to reflect on activities with my own children. If I believe in incorporating natural environment as community and home, how have I shown this to my own children? I quickly realized that I didn’t, and so took my son fishing on the dock and went kayaking with my daughter. Winter at the lake was a perfect season also because it’s a time of reflection and preparation for spring and change. Once temperatures rose and azaleas were blooming, I thought of all the natural places to be in. Observing and experiencing has become a crucial part of my writing process that I did not have last semester, my first semester. How can a writer describe the sounds, sights, smells, and feelings without time in these environments? Especially time that is not really measured which is how I feel around water.

Prompt Entry Seven

The contrast between the Gulfcoast in Florida and the rugged coast of Maine has become symbolic of how my personality better matches a place like Maine. I feel both synchronized and at ease within Maine’s coast much more than Florida. In Florida, Gulf waters are like glass. The sun gilds the crests like crystal, and all is pastel and light. Terns are like white puffins, flying fast and quick against wind currents, young and fickle. The Gulf water is light green like the dresses of little girls on Easter Sunday. Small, dainty waves break into moving lace across the shoreline. Waters are shallow and clear. When I swim in the Gulf, I can see to the bottom. There’s no mystery. It’s transparent. A Florida beach is like skimming the surface of things. This spring, the cirrus clouds hang wide and even across the sky like sheer curtains on a white canopy bed of my childhood, and they look close enough to touch. The bright white beach is like a stage where all is on display.

I prefer darker waters that are indigo and teal. I prefer Maine. The rugged, dark rocks that are varied and irregular contrast with the flatness of Florida sands that have no secrets or depth. I also prefer the movement of the deep Atlantic Ocean, unpredictable, rough and powerful. The rich colors of rocks are garnet, slate, and russet, and they glisten with foggy, moist air. I spent a weekend on Monhegan, a small island off the coast of Rockland, Maine, and most of the mile-wide island was pristine forest with dirt trails. In the morning, the mist hovered in the green woods, the depths of the forest showed hues of green – emerald, katydid, avocado greens. I almost forgot this small piece of land was surrounded by water. The trail ended abruptly and unexpectedly where a clearing of pine trees revealed 160-foot cliffs. Not only do I love the depth of that water, but when viewing the foaming and swirling water from cliffs or rocks, the depth seems magnified. The rocks, ocean, coves, cliffs and fog in Maine are both mysterious and intriguing. If I’m fortunate enough one day to choose which landscape to live in, Maine is a perfect fit.

Fort Desoto Beach

Flowering Kapok Tree

Place Entry Seven

What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye

We decided to watch the sunrise over the lake Easter morning. I couldn’t tell if the sun had risen yet on the drive over, the morning was thick with fog. I’ve been at the lake at least once each week since January. It has become a place where I can clear my mind and water down any problems and stresses, like visiting a friend where conversations help ease burdens and uplift my spirit. It seemed appropriate for me to be there Easter morning. But I never saw the lake. The landscape I’m so used to seeing was completely shrouded with heavy, low fog. Just 100 yards from the water, only the dock and cattail grasses were visible along the shoreline. The lake and sky were erased by a thick white veil that was before me, behind me, around me. I walked onto the dock. I stood on the dock as if I were suspended in clouds, without contrast and without color. I could faintly see where the sunrise might have been in an area of the fog that was lighter than the rest.

The birds chattered in the trees, and the orange blossoms from nearby groves were fragrant in the moist air. Only if I looked directly down from the dock did I see water, sprinkled with oak pollen, as quiet and still as a tomb. The bells tolling at the Abbey across the lake told me it was 7:00. A raft of twelve coots broke my feeling of being suspended in the sky. I first became aware of the water’s surface with the movement of the small, black birds swimming. My urge to capture the sunrise was met with white haze. The lack of what I wanted to see reflected back on just me. And I felt the significance of believing without seeing.

Later in the day, we surrounded ourselves with Easter-egg colors of sky and water and spring. Gulf waters were green and met with a crystal blue sky. Trees were blossomed, and the Caribbean Kapok tree near the St. Petersburg Pier was in full bloom, large red blooms bigger than my hand covered the naked, gray branches of the gnarled tree as if someone glued on origami flowers but forgot the leaves.
The colors we associate with Easter were infinite. But my morning where all was white-gray light, and I saw nothing, remained strong in my mind, more vivid than all the colors.

Place Entry Six

Carpe Diem

March 12, 2010
Today it’s pouring. This is the rain of tropical storms where nine inches can fall in one day. The campus is getting ready for spring break. Most students have gone. I’m looking down the hill at the lake as I often do lately. My pants are already soaked from my ankles to my knees. I imagine what I’ll feel like the rest of the day if my blouse were also soaked, so I bend my umbrella to block the rain pellets that are shooting sideways from the wind. A retention pond obstructs the view of the lake. It was built to serve residence halls four years ago. The large, ugly, brown ditch was carved out of the long, green field that used to introduce the lake like a long, lush carpet. At times, the ditch makes me feel like someone pulled the doors shut to the lake.

Today the ditch is full- it looks like a pond in front of the larger Lake Jovita. It filled up in no time. In Florida, only an inch or two of rain can fill an entire area with several inches of water. Florida averages 4-½ feet of rain a year. Out of this rainfall, only one inch soaks into the ground and stays. All this rain I see will either run off or return to the sky.

Three male students run toward the man-made pond and dive in. Two of the guys bob in the water, and just their heads appear as they float around like the American coots in the lake. The third guy scrambles out of the side of the ditch on hands and knees. As he gets to his feet, he turns his body around toward the ditch, jumps, and grabs one of his bent knees-- a half-cannon ball dive back into the water. All is blurry and wet and gray as if we were standing in the middle of a cloud with plummeting rain ensuring the thick, moist air would hang on. The students’ clothes and bodies are darkened. Like birds, they look the same and play the same within the new pond.

I’m reminded of night-swimming as a teen before my fear of feeding sharks or beer-buzz lack of judgment. Growing up in Maryland, I used to walk around Washington, D.C. at night with friends. The city was dark and quiet, and the memorials were lit with floodlights. Like a postcard. One night we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while a solitary man played saxophone beside the large, stone president. Mike was missing from the stairs, and when we looked down into the large, rectangular pool in the center of the mall, we found him swimming and diving within the water. Backstroking and backflipping within the Washington pool. I’m sure this was illegal.

I wonder how long I’ve been concerned with where I submerge myself in water. I learned in Florida that sharks feed at night near the shoreline. I also learned that amoebas in warm lake water can cause encephalitis and death in small children. A friend died jet skiing in a lake, slow judgment from drinking.

The sky is gray water. Falling fast and thick. If I leaned my head back, I could drink, and I long to quench more than my thirst in water without intimate knowledge of what’s underneath.

Prompt Entry Six

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land -- by the Oceans passed.
Transport -- by throe --
Peace -- by its battles told --
Love, by Memorial Mold --
Birds, by the Snow.
--Emily Dickinson

I’ve been thinking lately how I’m intrigued by opposites. How feelings can occur simultaneously, like sadness and joy. How diametric concepts can define one another, like peace and war. And how colors complement one another on a painter’s wheel, like green and red.

I’ve spent my life hovered against the east coast. So, in my mind, the west is opposite. Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Florida have been my homes, and I’ve visited every state along the east coast. Somehow this makes me feel out of balance. I’ve never lived more than 300 feet above sea level, so I desire the height of mountains. My landscape is dense with green, so I desire earth that is red. I know the taste of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, so I thirst for the Pacific. I’m not alone in my thoughts to head west. It’s a well-worn cliché. My best friend had wanderlust for the west and settled briefly in Arizona. It was then she discovered she had to live near water to be happy. Rather than move back to Florida, she moved to Pittsburgh, and in her apartment that overlooks the three rivers, she’ll reminisce of Sedona, but will never live out there again. My fantasy of out west has always been conflicted. I grew up with a pull to the west because my father moved there alone when I was young. I think of California and the west as a place that seduced my father. It is a place that seduces me, too.

Strange that it is where land is dry that I would be drawn to feel quenched. When I took a trip last year to Denver for work, I took the only free time that week, nine hours, to find mountains or at least red landscape. A snowstorm caused me to drive south on route 25 instead of north. In the distance I saw a cluster of red rocks. At first they were like all things that we keep at a distance. The large spaces between that cause indifference. As the rocks grew before me, I was magnetized to them. I spent the day on the paths as if protected by the orange-red rocks. They seemed to reach and point toward the sky. With the exception of wind that whispered and whistled, all was quiet. In the silence, I felt fathered. Like when what is not spoken speaks the loudest and our thoughts echo back with wisdom.

I plan to head west more to experience the environment more fully, beginning this summer. In Pueblo traditions, the direction of east represents the mind, and the direction of the west represents the physical. Maybe I just need to transform what has been in my mind for so long and make it physical.

Place Entry 5

Today my fourteen-year-old son and I went to Lake Jovita’s public dock to check out if the cattails were too thick to allow us to launch kayaks. The kayaks were still at home in the shed, but today we only planned. We feel winter ending and sometimes it gets too hot too fast. Kayaking is one thing we’ve got to grab before the summer heat beats down. We saw signs of spring on our way. A large field that used to be filled with rows of orange trees was clear, allowing full view of the lake. Today the browned field was dotted with a red-rusty wildflower; the stalks looked like rose-colored wheat leaning from the slight breeze. The wild magenta phlox is another promise along the roadside that spring is near. After the coldest winter on record in fifty-two years, we’re more excited at these signs than ever.

A small, wooden dock jets out over the lake just over the zone of the shoreline, where animal and plant life hide and provide food. I’ve come to expect the raft of coots that seem to always be partying at this lake. Today they’re hovering at the shoreline, as is a teenage boy fishing on the dock. He casted a line over and again two feet from the brush.

“I’ve been here all mornin’,” he told us with a deep southern twang that told me his folks have lived in this area for awhile. “Nothin’s bitin’.”

The coots aren’t dunking as frequently as they usually do when the wind is stronger. They whine and bark, with an occasional shallow dive. One swam in a complete circle, a 360 degree turn that made the black bird look like a spinning domino as he revealed two large, white markings on his behind.

Overhead, the sky was periwinkle blue. Clouds were barely there, like curtain sheers draped sideways across the sky. A bird flew solo overhead, too high for me to identify—I couldn’t recognize the silhouette of its wings. A slight wind blew the hair off my shoulders. I was reminded of how wind that smells like nothing is also sweet somehow. I was cooled but not chilled, and my skin drank the sun’s rays until I was warmed and quenched.

Aside of the dock, two boys, the same age as my son, hauled a canoe through the opening in the cattails. Their father directed them in Mexican, and they glided into the middle of the lake. The father joined us on the dock with a fishing line and a loaf of white, enriched bread in a plastic bag. The teenager told the father of the canoeing boys how he hadn’t caught a thing on his line all morning. The Mexican gentleman rolled a piece of the soft, white sandwich bread between his forefinger and thumb and stuck it on his hook. He cast the line swiftly, and we heard a whoosh pass our ears before the breaded hook plopped into the water. Within minutes the man pulled up a baby blue gill on the line. Again, he hooked a bread ball, cast the line, swished and plopped. One after the other, the father pulled up gill after gill.

“I’ll start fishin’ like dat,” the teenager said with wide eyes and an impressed smile.

I couldn’t see the father’s sons or the canoe. “I fish in the sea like that,” he told the lonely kid. “I’m fishing for bait.”

I asked him what he’d like to catch in this lake. He told me he catches bass this way – 20 – 25 inches long. He took the line with the baby blue gill hung on the hook. He tossed it over his right shoulder and swung the line like a cowboy in a rodeo. After the fish swung around on the circling line three times, he flung it as if he were lassoing something in the lake. The teenager began rolling the bread and placing it on his own hook: “I’m gonna catch me some bass with you.”

My son and I left the dock and wished the two of them luck. I realized as we walked away that I’d never taken Dominic fishing. I asked my son the last time he went fishing with his Dad. “I was seven or eight, I think,” he said. “I love fishing.”

Along with kayaking, we’ll be trying out fishing here this spring.

Prompt Entry Five

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink

Florida has the most coastline, seven hundred miles, than any other state. It used to seem odd to me that we had a water shortage when water could be seen almost anywhere. There are 7,700 lakes in Florida. Along with lakes, there’s the Gulf, the Atlantic, springs, rivers, and ponds.

When I first moved to Pasco County, I met a native of the area who showed me two lakes that flourished throughout his childhood. One was a dry ditch, a huge bowl of brown, dead grass. Another held a small, muddy pool of water about forty percent of the circumference of what should have been the lake. He told me lakes were “drying up” because Pinellas County, where Clearwater and St. Petersburg Beaches are, pumped Pasco’s aquifer for their needs. Pinellas caters to the tourism industries. The population, golf courses, and resort water fountains all demanded water that the county couldn’t provide, so they would pump water from the Pasco aquifer where many lakes dried up or became so low that wildlife would diminish considerably. If too much water is pulled from the aquifer, Gulf water is also pulled into the aquifer and then salination contaminates it for drinking. It takes a lot of rain water to refresh the aquifer. The practice of grabbing water from the county was controversial, and citizens pressured local governments. Eventually the water pumping was regulated, and three neighboring counties – Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas—shared the pumping and use by forming Tampa Bay Water. The lakes filled again and I’ve not again seen them dried up as I did ten years ago.

Almost a decade later, Pasco residents had to protect their aquifer again from outsiders. A landfill company had a bid to build a large landfill near the Green Swamp, one of the largest protected wetlands in the state. A large part of the swamp is located in Pasco County and is directly linked with the aquifer. The water from the aquifer would have been contaminated from the landfill. Citizens pressured local and state governments, and last year the bid was finally rejected for the last time, so we think.

Pasco residents have had to protect their water sources from outside risks. Community strengths are loud and organized voices to protect the local aquifers. I believe the community should also show strength in a preventative way. Recycling became available at the same time as the landfill was rejected. The landfill was close to being a reality, and this was partly because we are producing too much trash. Preventative measures should be thought of before environmental threats move in so closely. Residents should be more at the forefront of sustainability and resourcefulness. Tampa Bay Water diffused and regulated the water problem in neighboring counties, but we are still under mandatory water restrictions throughout the year. In light of this, Florida yards should not demand so much water. Florida lawns and landscaping often flourish with non-native plants that are not drought-tolerant. Their high-maintenance needs demand a water supply. An alternative is Florida native plants. Not only do they preserve our native species and provide habitat for native birds, insects and other animals, but many are drought resistant and do not demand our water.

I attempted to replace non-native plants with a native, Florida-friendly yard lately. I found nurseries, Home Depots, Walmarts did not carry native plants. The closest nursery to the eastern part of my county was a one hour drive. I was led there by their elaborate website that listed native varieties in pages with price lists. When I arrived, the one-city-block nursery had one small corner dedicated to expensive, native varieties. I walked out of the nursery with three wild coffee plants, a $20 expense. The Florida Native Plant Society discourages uprooting and replanting native plants found in the woods and forests, which would have been my next step. I’ve had a note on my calendar for the last month for the March 13th native plant sale over on the coast. I’ll head over next weekend to find more native plants. This shouldn’t be so hard, though.

We need both local and big box businesses to get on board with providing native plants for Florida friendly landscaping to reduce our water needs.

Place Entry Four

In Florida, I spend most of the year hiding from the sun. It is intense, demanding, and prolonged. Summer lasts for six months, and seasonal changes are too subtle. Transitions between seasons are not defined by the equinoxes, and I often refer to the Farmer’s Almanac for long-range forecasts of cold fronts to pull me through. So, I welcomed January and February with prolonged cold fronts with a scattering of sub-freezing temperatures, as well as a grey-clouded sky which concealed the day’s sun. Change is good, and I crave extreme changes because they seldom happen.

So today is a break from the cold. It is seventy degrees and sunny-- the type of weather Northerners envy during mid-winter; the type that causes sane people to uproot their families, leave communities, trading their life for one in sunny Florida to not shovel snow. Today I’ll appreciate the sun, because I’ve been without it. I head down to the lake to see what colors the sunlight will generate. Lately all has seemed grey, so I’m looking for colorful signs of winter on a sunny day.

I think of St. Jovita, who was a Christian martyr decapitated for refusing to honor the sun. A pagan soldier attempted to coerce the deacon from Lombardy to worship the sun, but Jovita refused, only honoring God as the creator of the sun. The lake, a namesake of the martyred saint, is bathed in sunlight for most of the year. Today, I enjoy it like an old friend I’ve not seen in awhile, and I find colors that tell me it’s still winter.

A wooded area on the southwest side of the lake has a forest floor rich in textures and growth. A carpet of dense, wet leaves covers the floor that is scattered with wild coffee plants. They look like Christmas holly bushes, their deep evergreen leaves are stiff and waxy and shelter small, vibrant red berries like awnings. The plants are scattered as deep into the brush as I can see, and they’re beautiful. A generous mix of lima-green marsh ferns also covers the woods. On the periphery of this virgin forest are ligustrum trees with blackened leaves from the frost, which are now crowned with new tender leaves and bud clusters, healthy and katydid green. Mid-winter is showing its impatience for spring. The grass on the hillside that leads to the lake is dead, but instead of brown, it looks cinnamon in the bright orange sunlight. Mixed within the rusty grass are bright green weeds, and in the distance the sunlight glows on a grassy area as if a dusting of yellow pollen lay on top of the blades. The hillside looks like a muted patchwork quilt of green, rust, and yellow, blurry but calming like an Impressionist painting. Part of me enjoys the false- spring day, and part wants the grey and cold back because there hasn’t been enough change. It’s not change I fear, but stagnation. As I drive home, azaleas and dogwood trees in neighbors’ yards are beginning to bloom.

Juvenile Sandhill with Parent

Baby Sandhill Crane

Prompt Entry Four

The Florida Sandhill Crane

Grus canadensis pratensis

http://www.savingcranes.org/images/stories/audio/Sandhill_Crane_Guard_Call.wav

I adore Sandhill Cranes. I first noticed these graceful and awkward birds when I moved to Pasco County in Florida. It was the first time I lived in an agricultural area-- The first time I connected to natural Florida in the ten years I lived in the state-- The first time I saw the cranes. The 3-4 foot birds would gather together, stroll and feed in fields with their families. It was the most curious thing to me to see a bonded pair with one or two “kids” like a human family strolling through a park. Adult feathers of Sandhills are a washed-out slate grey, like the color of cedar shingled homes on a New England Coast. Juvenile cranes look like ginger, pot-bellied stuffed toys. They walk close to their parents and when they are sub-adults, before finding a mate, their plumage becomes an attractive mix of cinnamon and grey. At the time I would observe the Sandhills, I was always with my family, too. I was raising my son and daughter by myself, and the three of us were inseparable like the crane families. We would go for a walk down the long dirt road that led to our house. We’d see a crane family crossing the road, one behind the other. We would sit around the table for dinner, and we’d see the cranes drilling their beaks into the crop soil for their meal, mate and children drilling right along side. And just as I would call out to my curious son who would wander into the neighbor’s yard to grab an orange off of the trees or pet the calves, the Sandhill parents, too, sounded their trumpeting guard call through the air to alarm their family to stay near and warn predators. My children are older now, and we rarely are in threes. There is one Sandhill Crane that stands or sits, posing in the field by Lake Jovita. She seems to be there every day. Yesterday she stood in the grass in front of where I parked my car, as if she were waiting for me. I wonder if there were many solitary cranes those years when I noticed the families. Do I notice her now because of my own solitude?

Prompt Entry 3

Winter Solstice

On the Winter Solstice, Kurt told me they’d start the fire in his back yard just before sundown.

I shed my responsibilities at the office for Christmas break, left the roles that I play locked behind the door until January. The holiday schedule would soon have the same pressures and time restraints as the work I just left behind. Both schedules gave me black and white dreams.

The sun hung low, just over the roofs of neighbors’ homes. I headed out to Kurt’s house, a small, freshly painted white home with a tomato-red door. Wild, untamed native flowers and plants covered the narrow patch of land between the home and sidewalk. An arc of Tibetan prayer flags hung by a string at the front door. Turk’s cap, with their green, heart-shaped leaves and cardinal red blooms, swayed in the evening breeze, and wild petunia, with water-color violet chiffon petals, almost hid a narrow path with overgrown ferns that led to the back. The sun paused over the horizon; a golden glow infused the negative space between the trees. I followed the direction of the smell of burning wood. I could see the flames in the distance of the long, narrow land, but no path led to the fire. I felt I was walking through virgin forest. My feet searched for a path as I waded through erect and thick ferns that covered the thicket. I shuffled my feet as if I were checking for sting rays in the ocean sand, but couldn’t find smooth ground. I forced my mind to erase thoughts of snakes. I walked with large steps over the greenery toward the warm, earthy smell of burning wood and then burning sage. I felt as if I had entered Eden through a porthole on the side of the house. Tangerine trees punctuated the wild forest area, closely intertwined with young white oaks and magnolias. I carried store-bought tangerines in a brown paper gift bag, with a tied, red ribbon. Even this simple gift seemed unnatural.

Kurt gives the gift of himself, unadulterated and honest. Once my professor, and now my friend, he inspires by guiding without force. Some students are lost without structure, but his abstractness can inspire if willing to follow up on his references. Within a course on Native American literature, Kurt will also discuss Tibetan Buddhist chants to illustrate the sacredness of sound in cultures. In a Senior Seminar course for English, Kurt began with oral storytelling, focusing on cultures’ collective stories rather than individual authors. Sometimes, as his student, I felt lost. After the class was completed, I was transformed.

I found my way to the group unscathed. Kurt was stoking the fire with a large branch when he turned to smile at me, largely, warmly, and welcoming. I joined his wife and daughter who were making prayer flags for the sweat lodge. We ate tangerines off the tree, throwing peels and seeds into the fire. Once the stones in the fire were white hot, and the sky turned indigo, we celebrated winter solstice in a round hole in the ground, covered with a tarp over a frame of tree branches. Yasmin and I tied the prayer flags inside the lodge. The hot stones were placed in the middle pit of the lodge for the purification ceremony. Prayers were not limited to Native chants. Kurt’s wife sang songs of the blessed Mother and Christ. Friends prayed for the past and upcoming years.

As I walked out of the primitive woods that night, onto the road, and into my car, I wanted to hold the pure feeling from the woods throughout Christmas and through the year. I wanted to hold the wind. I wanted to hold the sky. I dreamt that night in vivid colors.

Place Entry Three

Muted Winter

This morning I drove to the Northeast shore of Lake Jovita, seen directly across from the dock. It was cold again, thirty-six degrees, and the blue sky was hidden by snow clouds, a cotton-covered sky that I remembered well from my Maryland childhood. One look and we knew snow would fall soon, when the wet air would linger and tease. I won’t see snow here, though, unless it is a dusting from a dawn snowfall. I’ve seen Florida snow twice in twenty years. It left a half-inch cover on cars and sidewalks until 9:00 a.m. when the sun and rising temperature melted it all. I mourned the loss of white winters as I walked to the lake house for morning meditation.
Fifty yards from the shore, the lake house sits calmly, as quiet as a tomb. The sliding glass door of the shrine room offers a full view of the Abbey, University and orange groves across the heart-shaped lake. Colorful thangkas decorate the walls of the room with blue, gold and red silk fabrics elaborately painted with Buddhist deities. Small, brass bowls with lit candles line the altar. With the fecundity of spring, the vibrant room warmed the colorless scene outside of the sliding glass window.
After practice, I walked down to the lakeshore. The air was still, and the lake looked like stainless steel. There was no sound. Two Sandhill cranes pondered along the shoreline, their tall grey bodies blended with water and sky. Only their red forecrowns broke the monochromatic landscape. One submerged his head into the shallow water while his partner stayed aware of potential predators. After lunching, the 3-foot tall birds walked out of the water onto the grass, like two beautiful women emerging out of the ocean onto the sand, slowly and gracefully. My presence made the cranes nervous. I walked away leaving them and my memories of deep snow behind me.

Place Entry Two

Southern Magnolia

I first came to Lake Jovita with paper and pencil ten years ago when I arrived at Saint Leo as a student. My full time job at the school supported my education, and this dual role didn’t allow much time for studying. On my lunch hour, I’d head toward the lake by way of a field which was flanked on the right with a thick forest of trees untouched since the community was founded over a hundred years ago. To the left of the field was an open view of the approaching lake. The lakeside was often breezy, and I’d sit on a bench that was angled to allow a view of the entire heart shaped lake. A large, southern magnolia tree shaded the bench, and between the breeze and the sun’s warmth, I’d soon lie down and fall into a twilight sleep. Not much studying was done when the feeling overtook me, and the Abbey bells that sound at the top of the hill every 15 minutes allowed me keep track of time in a relative way. At times, work stress would cause a friend and me to sit on the dock and fish for a lunch hour. A couple from the adjacent town of Dade City would catch turtles from the lake and throw the netted victims in the back of their old, dented pick-up truck.

Changes at the school and in my life kept the lake out of my mind. The school built lakeside student housing with an adjacent retention pond that sits in the foreground of the lake, altering the view from the top of the hill. The Abbey posted signs that fishing was prohibited. School departments held lakefront barbeques where co-workers discussed work in the past, work in the present, work in the future.

While walking back from Lake Jovita yesterday, I walked through the student parking lot that used to be the long field. The forest of trees seemed untouched from ten years ago, the same thickness and virgin quality of thriving plants within it. The woods were thick and moist, flourishing with marsh ferns. Wild coffee decorated the forest floor as far deep as I could see. These knee-high shrubs displayed glossy, evergreen leaves with clusters of red, currant-sized berries. It’s the most beautiful sight I saw that day, and I thought about how much I love what remains the same.

Prompt Entry Two

Constancy

We moved to upstate New York when I was twelve. I thought the move would be our last. My older brother, mother, and new step-dad left Maryland, and said good-bye to relatives that I loved. It was the first and only time I lived near mountains. I felt invigorated about my new surroundings, and my new step-dad, Jerry, was enthusiastic. He was usually very quiet, Apollonian in his ways, and spoke with brevity. Jerry’s words were concise from clear thoughts, and he never wasted speech. Conversations with him were like our time living in New York—brief, punctuated with calm silence, and profound.
I had cried too much at their wedding – each guest who lingered and hugged in the receiving line had to witness my tears. My sorrow has been immortalized in the wedding photographs. I had longed for my father who had moved to California years before, never to return. My tears flowed like the water I later saw trickling in crevices of the gorges near New York’s Finger Lakes. My cheeks glistened with wetness like the slate walls of the deep canyon, although my eyes in New York were now dry. Jerry had lived in this area with his first family years before. He knew of secretive and beautiful places to explore. In Maryland, he spent free time at the driving range or methodically cleaned the car and house windows so that we always had a clear view. In New York, however, he took us on car rides on unnamed roads through Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains, to each of the five Finger Lakes, or along the Susquehannah River. My first visit to a gorge at Watkins Glen is carved into my memory. A slate grey path meandered around steep, cavernous cliffs. No protective railing divided visitors on the path from the two-hundred foot drop that led to the bottom. A stone, mock railing, which stood lower than my knee, didn’t prevent the feeling of being on the edge of cliff. Jerry walked between me and the drop, which allowed me to look down into the subterranean stream that formed the cavern or look ahead at the jagged slate wall that increased in size around the corner. He didn’t hold my hand, but every once in a while he’d ask, “’ya okay?” with a small smile and with a hand on my shoulder. I felt I was dropped inside the earth, to view something ancient and solid. The consistent flow of water over soft rock had created this beautiful place, and where harder rocks lay over softer ones, waterfalls flowed, decorating the gorge like sheer window curtains. Jerry’s silent presence didn’t distract from the sound of falling water, but seemed to highlight the dramatic effect. I sensed that day he would be as constant and steady as that stream and that our family would be solid with his presence. Thirty years later, I hear my children calling him Grampy. We often talk about those two years in New York, and we both still dream out loud to each other about living near mountains.

Prompt Entry One

Neighborhood Environment

Growing up, my landscape was manmade. I walked on paved roads and sidewalks and rode my bike through my neighborhood whose main road was lined with crabapple trees, each equidistant from one another. In this environment, I never felt a lack of nature, finding it on occasion within a fixed landscape. I had not yet hiked in the mountains or kayaked in a Florida spring, activities that I love today. Only through reflecting back do I realize some of the few organic landmarks that punctuated my childhood. In spring or summer, I would climb in the crabapple trees, and in winter, “skate” in my boots along a semi-frozen creek behind my best friend’s house, risking a fall through the shallow ice-water if my boots cracked the surface like a spoon tapping on a crème brulee. For the most part, though, the landscape was all about neighborhoods, neighbors, and going to a store or restaurant for food. Because of this environment, I learned early the importance of community, and how our families and friends can mark the days and seasons as profoundly as the earth’s rotation on its axis or revolution around the sun.
My family was originally from Revere, a small town with a large Italian-American population, just a few miles north of Boston where the previous generation immigrated from Sicily and Avellino. When we moved to Maryland, my Aunt, Mother, and Grandmother packed up the culture from their hometown and unpacked it in the new neighborhood, where neighbors and friends would knock once, and enter into the back door which led to a seat at the kitchen table. Often, my grandmother was standing at the stove, stirring in a large pot with a faded wooden spoon. The house would fill with a pungent, fresh smell of tomatoes and penny royal simmering on the stove or fresh dough with egg yolks. Sometimes the kitchen table was covered with strips of drying fettuccine laid out on a white, cotton tablecloth or draped over the kitchen chairs. Visiting neighbors would use fold-out chairs that my Aunt stored against the family room wall to accommodate frequent guests.
One of my fondest memories was the drive into Baltimore with my Aunt to Trinacria’s Italian grocery store. From this monthly trip, we’d stock up on all things Italian: roasted red peppers, macaroni in various shapes, provolone and Romano cheeses, and olive oil. Most of our meals were at the kitchen table with the exception of getting dressed up to go into Baltimore or Washington, D.C. to an Italian Restaurant.
I was hardly aware of the natural world in Maryland because all things were about people, cooking and eating. I moved from Maryland to Florida when I was nineteen. I didn’t realize the importance of community and neighbors until it was stripped from me, and I was dropped into the Tampa area. Although I grew up going to stores and restaurants, something was missing in Florida, and all seemed shallow. Soon I despised the consumer culture, but this feeling changed when I moved to the country and became familiar with the natural Florida landscape. I learned to kayak in the clear, 72 degree springs of Northern Central Florida, and my children and I gardened and raised chickens while living out in the natural Florida landscape at the end of a dirt road. I became attuned to the rhythms of the day and seasons from raising chickens and roosters, gardening, and bird-watching.
I’ve never found or been able to recreate the community I experienced growing up. I’ve replaced this social environment, in one sense, with a connection to my natural environment. In my opinion, the most fulfilling way to live is to incorporate community with the natural environment.

Place Entry One

Jan 17th 3:00pm
Strong as the Wind

On the weekends, Lake Jovita is a quiet place without a lot of activity, especially in winter. Florida air is usually still and heavy with too much moisture. The sun beats down on all things, authoritatively. From this oppression, the wise animal world hides in the shade at mid-day. Today is unusually windy, and as I walk down the hill that leads to the lake, the wind picks up stronger and louder. The position of the sun indicates it’s about 2:00. Its rays frost the west shoreline of the lake as if the sun laid a sheet of gold leaf to gild the water. As the cumulous, graying clouds cover the sun, the gilded water turns to stainless steel, muting the vibrant colors of the landscape. The wooden dock is moaning and complaining at the undulating waves. I sit down in lotus position with my back against the dock post. I rock with the dock from the waves, and the laps against the base of the dock are soothing, like gentle splashes and plops from moving in a hot bath. The wind has stirred the lake, creating a feast for coots and soaring birds. Coots, which are duck-like the way they swim and bob in the lake, float in a raft of twenty or thirty others. One dives under the waves and another follows. Like ladles in a pot of soup, they grab small fish and plants that the wind has stirred up. I’m reminded of my brother and I jumping over and diving beneath waves as kids in the Atlantic Ocean, as I watch the kuk-kuk-ing coots doing the same. The howling wind stifles the sounds of the Abbey bells that tell me it must be three-o-clock. Overhead, a falcon is flying with a small fish hanging out of his mouth. On the East side of the lake, a bald eagle circles, peering below in the churning lake for his dinner. The cattail grass that skirts the lake is bending in the wind. The blades that have turned brown shake like pompoms, sounding like distant, polite applause at a symphony. The tips of the grass are pointing toward the shore, all reaching forward as if trying to escape the lake. I leave against my desire, suddenly aware of the time. As I walk up the hill, I pass the library windows where I usually sit to study, the best indoor location for a view of the lake. Lake Jovita seems quiet when observed through the window, and I realize it’s been seven years since I sat on the dock with pencil and paper.

Winter at Lake Jovita

I can't really talk about how refreshed I feel in this weather. The last two weeks of cold air with lowered humidity leaves me invigorated and energetic like the horses and calves I see trotting in the roadside fields. If I appear wide-eyed and content, I risk ostracism for my insensitivity. Yesterday was the coldest morning in Central Florida so far this winter. Here in Dade City, the dawn temperature was nineteen degrees. Again, I hear on the radio and from the community that landowners are concerned about losing their orange crops. It will take a week to determine the damage. I don't know what it's like to rely on the weather for my livelihood in such a fragile way. A mere 15 degree difference can cause an orange grower to lose everything he or she has worked for. The last devastating freeze in this county was 20 years ago when the 1989 prolonged freeze altered the citrus industry. Dade City’s Lykes Pasco Plant, the largest orange juice plant in the world at the time, closed down. A man whose groves were worth three million dollars couldn't save his trees from that freeze, and overnight his business was worth negative $200,000.
Behind Saint Leo Abbey, I walked down the hill that leads to the heart-shaped lake. The orange trees are lined up as if parading lakeside. It’s a balmy thirty-five degrees, and as I walk through the grove, flanked by orange-decorated trees, the browned, dried grass crunches underneath my boots like tortilla chips. The golden spheres look healthy, and I notice the leaves which are usually a deep, evergreen, are curling and blackening at the edges. The sky, like azure milk glass, is cloudless. Its complementary color to the oranges could be found on a painter’s palette. The Saint Leo Abbey monks own these trees, and each winter I buy 5-6 lb bags of Hamlin oranges for one dollar. I hope I'll get to juice them all winter.