How happy I was if I could forget To remember how sad I am Would be an easy adversity But the recollecting of Bloom
Keeps making November difficult Till I who was almost bold Lose my way like a little Child And perish of the cold.
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1080)
The first days of November arrived here cold! One morning it was 29°F (-2°C)! With afternoon temperatures around 80°F on the last days of October this was quite a jolt of weather whiplash.
I’m pleased to introduce you to Fred, our friendly neighborhood squirrel. Tim has been feeding him walnuts. Most of the time he runs off with them, presumably to store them somewhere, but once in a while he sticks around and lets us watch him eat it.
The gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is hereby adopted as the official State mammal of the State of North Carolina. (1969, c. 1207.) § 145-6. ~ North Carolina General Statutes – Chapter 145
When he hears us opening the front door he will come up to the porch to see if a walnut will be rolled out to him. He’s not brave enough to come any closer — not yet. But Tim has a way with squirrels, so…
10.4.23 ~ Cabe Lands Trail, Eno River State Park Durham, North Carolina
This trail was pretty much a seemingly endless straight line through the forest. But imagine my delight when I noticed a small patch of princess pines growing alongside the path. It’s good to know they live down here in these woods, too! It was like running into an old friend.
These tiny plants are usually less than 6 inches tall but they look like miniature pine trees. They were fairy forests in my mind when I was a child.
Wonder — is not precisely knowing And not precisely knowing not — A beautiful but bleak condition He has not lived who has not felt — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1347)
sun ray lighting up a fallen leaf in the princess pine forest
downy rattlesnake plantain
At first I thought I also had the good luck to stumble across a wintergreen but the above plant turned out to be a downy rattlesnake plantain. Apparently this orchid grows in New England, too, but this is the first one I’ve ever noticed.
There are 18 trails in Eno River State park, over 30 miles of them, so we have plenty of places to explore in the coming months.
I have three poems, he said. Who counts poems? Emily tossed hers in a trunk, I doubt if she counted them, she simply opened another tea bag and wrote a new one. That was right. A good poem should smell of tea. Or of raw earth and freshly cut wood. ~ Olav H. Hauge (The Dream We Carry: Selected & Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge)
It’s 96°F (34°C) out there with a feels like temperature of 102°F (39°C). The weather folks tell us 85°F (29°C) is the average high for this week of September in this part of North Carolina. Sigh… So. Stuck. Inside. (Very grateful for air conditioning!) We’re unpacked and pretty settled now and more than ready to explore the world outside these walls. If only this oppressive heat and humidity would go away.
To help pass the time I’ve started binge watching an off-beat streaming series, Dickinson.
The show takes an unusual approach to depicting its protagonist’s coming-of-age in the 1800s: Characters speak in Millennial parlance, the soundtrack is populated with today’s hits, and more often than not scenes resemble fever dreams where what’s figurative in Emily’s poems gets depicted literally. ~ Shirley Li (The Atlantic, December 24, 2021)
At first I thought I might not like it but it drew me in. The costumes and scenery are all 1800s but the language and music is modern. (Except for the words of the poems themselves.) It kind of reminds me of the times we saw Shakespeare-in-the-Park plays performed, twisted in the opposite way, with modern costumes and settings but with the original language intact.
It’s pretty exciting seeing her poems come to life visually.
I’ve also been reading a book of Olav H. Hauge’s poems. (I’ve posted a few of his poems here over the years.) When he mentioned Emily Dickinson in his poem at the top of this post it warmed my heart to know that a Norwegian poet appreciated her poetry, too.
I’m looking forward to the day when it will be cool enough for us to have tea on the porch in our new home!
Saturday, seventeen days after the last one, we woke up to a low humidity day and got ourselves outside for another walk. Because the UNC students are moving into their dorms for the fall semester there are signs everywhere warning about extra traffic in Chapel Hill. So we headed in the opposite direction, to a 24-acre park in Hillsborough. It was very busy there, too, with kids practicing soccer on a field and countless people walking dogs and parents pushing strollers and bicyclists zipping by. I learned later there is a fenced dog park somewhere on the property.
But we stumbled across a little gem, a pollinator garden with a bee hotel. In the garden we met a master gardener who was on her knees, photographing bees on the flowers. While we were talking with her a goldfinch landed nearby and a hummingbird quickly chased it away! After she shared a lot of her knowledge with us she told us about the Orange Master Gardeners website. (We live in Orange County.)
Bee Hotel
In 2016, Hillsborough became the 35th city to be named a Bee City USA. Dedicated in November 2017, the bee hotel provides a home for the 90 species of bees native to the area, many of which live solitary lives and seek a safe, tunnel-like dwelling to lay eggs and care for their young. ~ Orange Master Gardeners website
The website mentions that we are located in Ecoregion 45C, the Carolina Slate Belt, which sent me off on a web-search, wondering what on earth an ecoregion is…
An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterize an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. ~ Wikipedia
Anyhow, after we were done chatting she kindly pointed us in the direction of Riverwalk, an urban greenway along the Eno River. We enjoyed the boardwalk and scenery. The rest of it was paved so it wasn’t really a walk in the woods. But it was nice to get out in the fresh air and sunshine and to move our bodies. (I’ve been doing a lot of yoga but I’ve missed the pleasures of walking!) I’m not used to seeing so many people.
black-eyed Susan
under a railroad bridge crossing over Eno River
a huge hunk of quartz (?)
railroad bridge
access to underground sewer pipes
A something in a summer’s Day As slow her flambeaux burn away Which solemnizes me.
A something in a summer’s noon — A depth — an Azure — a perfume — Transcending extasy.
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #104)
part of Riverwalk
On our way back we passed by the pollinator garden again we spotted a flash of iridescent blue, the wings of this very large wasp. (above) I couldn’t capture the blue on camera. But I’m pretty sure it must be a great black wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus). It prefers solitude and is not aggressive. Nice to know it’s a helpful pollinator and goes after garden pests.
lots of eastern tiger swallowtails down here
Curiosity about ecoregions led me to discover that most of my life I lived in Ecoregion 59, the Northeastern Coastal Zone which is in the Eastern Temperate Forest. And now I live in Ecoregion 45, the Piedmont which is in the Temperate Coniferous Forest. Wikipedia has a map of ecoregions in the contiguous United States here. In which ecoregion do you live? (If you care to share.)
We are slowly getting our bearings here, still working on our to-do list, getting acquainted with new doctors, spending time with the little ones, etc. One nice thing that has become routine is visiting the fantastic Carrboro Farmers’ Market every Wednesday afternoon. It’s been a treat having fresh picked locally grown flowers (some familiar, some new to me) in my vase every week. Makes me feel at home.
Contained in this short Life Are magical extents The soul returning soft at night To steal securer thence As Children strictest kept Turn soonest to the sea Whose nameless Fathoms slink away Beside infinity ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1175)
Paradoxically, life is long and brief at the same time. The more we know, the more questions we have. At some point we come to accept that there will always be limits to what we know and that no matter how long we get to live so much will remain beyond our grasp. After many years of searching for something I couldn’t name, I am at peace with not knowing. Magic is everywhere, as all children know, and science keeps almost-finding explanations for it.
This week our granddaughter is going to a Woodland Fairies & Elves day camp and we get to pick her up every afternoon and hear all about it. Recently this delightful little eight-year old, formerly known as Kat, changed her nickname to Katie, the one I began calling her when she was born. (Longtime readers of this blog will remember this.) But, when she was about 2 years old, we noticed her parents were calling her Katherine so we followed suit. A couple of years ago Katherine started calling herself Kat and now she has chosen to go with Katie.
Katie showing us the location of a future fairy amusement park right next to her fairy house, featuring a fairy landing pad near the front of the stump
At camp the children got to choose a moniker, too, so when we go to pick her up, “Snail” is called on a walkie-talkie to come to the pavilion to collect her belongings and then Katie/Snail shows us around the fairy village the kids are creating. Katie was very excited about an exoskeleton she had found and incorporated into her fairy house design. In my clumsy attempt to get a picture of it I accidently knocked over one of the little structures! But my granddaughter was very gracious and reassured me that no harm was done as she carefully reassembled it. Phew!
heading for the garden gate to look inside for fairy cucumbers
One day we got a tour of the garden where Katie picked a fairy cucumber for us. It took her a while to find one because most of them had already been harvested. That day a counselor had brought in homemade fairy pickles for the campers to enjoy.
tiny fairy cucumber aka cucamelon (thanks to Katie for the identification)
We’ve been so busy that keeping up with blogging has proven almost impossible. I am happy to report that we now have North Carolina drivers licenses and the car is registered with a NC plate. There are still things left to take care of on the “to-do” list but I am hoping by the time the hot weather relents we will have settled enough to get outside for our nature walks once again. Even the small amount of time we spend outside picking Katie up is very taxing for Tim. One day the “feels like” temperature was 98°F. Tomorrow the forecasters are calling for the hottest day of the year so far…
You wouldn’t think it was spring, Austin, if you were at home this morning, for we had a great snowstorm yesterday, and things are all white this morning. It sounds funny enough to hear birds singing and sleigh-bells at a time. But it won’t last long, so you needn’t think ’twill be winter at the time when you come home. ~ Emily Dickinson (Letter to William Austin Dickinson, March 24, 1852)
Springtime snowstorms were not uncommon in southern New England a hundred seventy-one years ago. They happened often enough when I was a child, sixty odd years ago. I prepared this post several years ago, hoping that we might get one again and I could use Emily’s words to go along with the weather. But it was not to be and since this is my last spring in New England I decided to post it now, in fond memory of times gone by.
My best Acquaintances are those With Whom I spoke no Word — The Stars that stated come to Town Esteemed Me never rude Although to their Celestial Call I failed to make reply — My constant — reverential Face Sufficient Courtesy ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1062)
Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the Mind By — Paradox — the Mind itself — Presuming to it lead
Quite Opposite — How complicate The Discipline of Man — Compelling Him to choose Himself His Preappointed Pain —
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #899)
I’m not quite sure what Emily is getting at with this poem but it did get me thinking. Many folks say that experience is the best teacher, but personally experiencing all that life has to offer would take forever and, in my mind, often amounts to wasting time and learning things the hard way. But is it any better to submit to the discipline given by other people, obeying potentially immoral rules from authorities that might oppress or harm ourselves or others? Perhaps experience and discipline are opposite sides of the same coin. Perhaps we are as likely as our teachers to make painful mistakes in judgment as we learn ways to make sense of the world.
