Four days after we visited the nature center with Kat I wanted to return to see if the Canada goose was still sitting on her eggs. She was, and had turned and was facing the other direction. This time we walked on some other trails through the woods and the meadow. There are still more loops to follow so we plan to return once a week to see the Canada goose, and if we’re lucky, some goslings one day.
eastern white pine sapling growing in the swamp
glacial erratic on top of Council Rock
It’s like the Light — A fashionless Delight — It’s like the Bee — A dateless — Melody —
It’s like the Woods — Private — Like the Breeze — Phraseless — yet it stirs The proudest Trees —
It’s like the morning — Best — when it’s done — And the Everlasting Clocks — Chime — Noon!
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #302)
I imagine ‘it’ in Emily’s poem is Presence.
We also found six locations along the Meditation Walking Path, “each selected to provide a place for quiet reflection or meditation.” The path follows some of the other trails and the shortcuts between them. A little confusing but I think we sorted it out.
plentiful skunk cabbage the leaves are food for the Canada goose couple
a blind for meadow bird photographers
a view from the blind
birdhouse in the woods
red-bellied woodpecker
Canada goose on her nest notice the turtle climbing up the rocks
mama
seed pods, goose feather and moss on water
papa’s morning nap
The light is so magical this time of year!
Sadly, Connecticut’s covid positivity rate is going up again. On Friday it was over 5%. I got my second booster shot that day and felt malaise all weekend, but it wasn’t too bad. Feeling overwhelming mourning and anticipatory grief for Ukraine…
The ground was pretty soggy from melting snow and days of rain so we decided to take a walk in the village of Stonington Borough, rather than traipse through the muddy woods. I visited this lighthouse many years ago with my sister-in-law and climbed the very narrow circular stairs up the tower to the lantern room on the top. The view was wonderful. There wasn’t much space to move around or stretch out, though!
The Stonington Harbor Light is a historic lighthouse built in 1840 and located on the east side of Stonington Harbor in the Borough of Stonington, Connecticut. It is a well-preserved example of a mid-19th century stone lighthouse. The light was taken out of service in 1889 and now serves as a local history museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. ~ Wikipedia
The Stonington Harbor Light is located at the southern end of Stonington Point, marking the eastern side of Stonington Harbor. The light station consists of the tower and keeper’s house; both are built out of large granite blocks, and the keeper’s house has a wood-framed ell attached. The tower is an octagonal stone structure 35 feet (11 m) in height and 10 feet (3.0 m) in diameter, with a circular glass lantern house on top. The house is 1½ stories and about 30 feet (9.1 m) square. ~ Wikipedia
leftover Christmas wreath above the door
The promise of a water view behind the lighthouse lured us around the back and across the spongy lawn. How nice to see a bench there. Looks like a nice spot to enjoy a warm spring day. But no sitting for us on this wet day!
the back of the lighthouse
There were lots of sparrows chirping and flitting about, making it feel like a spring day. We found a sundial in a corner of the yard but it was too cloudy out for the sun to tell us the time. It might have been accurate, too, because we are not in daylight savings time. I wish they would do away with the time change. We’re only under “real” time for about four months out of the twelve…
small sundial
gray skies to the east
Looking west on our way down to Stonington Point we saw a moment of blue sky! From the end of the Stonington Borough peninsula one can see two lighthouses in two different states.
Latimer Reef Light Fishers Island, New York
Latimer Reef Lighthouse, which was placed on the western end of the half-mile-long rocky reef, consists of a prefabricated, cylindrical, forty-nine foot-tall, cast-iron tower with a cast-iron, concrete-filled foundation. … There were a number of other lights built around this time using the same design and employing the same construction methods. They were initially referred to as “Coffee Pot” lights because of their shape, but a few decades later, after the internal combustion engine was in common use, these towers became more commonly known as “Spark Plug” lighthouses. ~ Lighthousefriends.com website
A good portion of the parking lot at the point was still covered with the snow deposited there from the blizzard. It blocked a lot of the views! But in the distance between these mounds (above) I spotted Watch Hill Light, which we visited in October. So I walked across the waterlogged lawn area and used my zoom lens to get a picture of it from Stonington Point. (below)
Watch Hill Light Watch Hill, Westerly, Rhode Island
Our plan to keep our shoes dry failed completely! But at least they were less mucky than they would have been had we gone for a walk in the woods.
winter at Stonington Point
Years ago I used to be a member of the Stonington Historical Society but discontinued my membership when paying the dues didn’t fit in our budget. But it was there that I found a letter written to the Society by my great-grandmother in a file. Emma Flora Atwood was asking them if they had any information about her husband’s parents, William Martin White and Ellen C. Hill, who lived in Old Mystic, another village in Stonington. I don’t know what their reply might have been, but the folder had little else in it. It was exciting to handle a piece of paper that she had touched, too. I like to think my great-grandmother was as interested in family history as I am. She was my mother’s Grammy and that’s why I wanted to be Grammy to my grandchildren. ♡
The other thing I learned while I was getting the Society’s newsletter, was about my 2nd-great-granduncle, Pvt. Rufus C. White, brother of my 2nd-great-grandfather, William M. White, mentioned above.
Rufus C. White, born 6 June 1839, died 16 May 1864, age 24, at Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia. Rufus served as a private in the Union Army, Company E, 21st Infantry Regiment, Connecticut and was killed at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff. In the 1860 census, Rufus was recorded as a farmer with a personal estate of $100.
The following is from Stonington’s Forgotten Heroes of 1861-65 by James Boylan:
The second large Stonington unit was Company E of the 21st Infantry Regiment, which was recruited in the summer of 1862 from eastern Connecticut. About seventy Stonington men served in Company E, under Captain Charles T. Stanton, Jr., of Stonington. Like Company G of the Eighth, this company became involved in the fogbound battle of Drewry’s Bluff, in which Stanton was severely wounded, and the siege of Petersburg, where Captain Henry R. Jennings of Stonington was wounded. Partly because its term of service was shorter, it suffered fewer casualties.
And there was another pleasant memory, which Tim & I recalled as we passed the Society’s Captain Palmer House Museum on our way home. It must have been in the early 2000s, when I read with great interest, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. I am distantly related to some of the sailors he wrote about on that ill-fated voyage. Imagine how excited I was to attend a lecture he gave about his book at the museum. Tim and Larisa came with me and we had a brief conversation with him afterwards.
It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines something more important than woodlot politics, and the news of the wind and weather. This is especially likely to happen on some gloomy evening when the snow has buried all irrelevant detail, and the hush of elemental sadness lies heavy upon every living thing. Nevertheless, my pines, each with his burden of snow, are standing ramrod-straight, rank upon rank, and in the dusk beyond I sense the presence of hundreds more. At such times I feel a curious transfusion of courage. ~ Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology & Conservation)
Properly bundled up for the weather, we had a nice long walk in this 44-acre nature preserve a couple of days ago. It was originally part of 500 acres given to Capt. John Gallup in 1643, a reward from the royal court in England for his part in the Pequot Massacre.
the first colonial stone slab bridge we saw
lovely moss greenery in the dull landscape
path cutting through one of many stone walls
looking up into an old oak, a “wolf tree” a relic from farms of the past when trees along the edges of open fields could spread their branches without competition from other trees
leftover autumn leaves
Tim was captivated with this tree, which grew sideways before it grew up
windswept pine needles
backlit oak leaf
pine sapling nursery
There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are. ~ Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk)
tangled up
breaking down
Pequotsepos Brook running under another colonial stone slab bridge
It was a sunny day, 41°F/5°C, with a feels-like temperature of 34°F/1°C, due to a moderate wind from the northwest. Connecticut’s positivity rate jumped to 8.33%. Sobering, indeed. So grateful we still have the woods to explore and fresh air to breathe.
For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace it nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present. ~ Alan Watts (Does It Matter?: Essays on Man’s Relation to Materiality)
When I came across this quote the other day it made me think of the art of saying good-bye. I want to give everyone a quick hug, say good-bye, hop in the car, rushing to get the painful separation over with. Like ripping off a bandage quickly, I tell my husband. But Tim tends to prolongs the misery. Announcing that it’s time to go, yet staying in his seat for another half hour. Slowly getting up. Dawdling! It takes forever to gather his things while new conversations are initiated and we linger inside the front door for extended periods of time.
I’m good at hurrying and he’s perfected delaying. Long ago we stopped judging each other and do our best to compromise. (Different doesn’t mean better or worse, good or bad, is one of our rules of thumb.) But this quote got me thinking, what would the proper timing of a good-bye feel like?
Maybe the way we used to say good-bye to my grandparents when I was a little girl. We said good-bye with hugs in the kitchen and then went out to the car. After we got in our seats, no car seats back then, my grandparents would stick their heads in our windows to see how we were set up for the journey home. And then my father would drive down the driveway while my grandparents stood arm in arm on the porch, blowing kisses and waving until we were out of sight. I can still see them standing there, after all these years.
But from Labor Day through Halloween, the place is almost unbearably beautiful. The air during these weeks seems less like ether and more like a semisolid, clear and yet dense somehow, as if it were filled with the finest imaginable golden pollen. The sky tends toward brilliant ice-blue, and every thing and being is invested with a soft, gold-ish glow. ~ Michael Cunningham (Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
When we were young and feeling the need to prove ourselves, we generated heat and energy like the noonday sun. But now we take time to reflect the Tao and bathe our world in soft silent beauty like the full moon on an Autumn evening.
An abundance of opinions will generate heat but accomplish nothing. You no longer have to comment on each and every little thing. You can observe events with a detached serenity. When you speak, your words are gentle, helpful, few. Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.
~ William Martin (The Sage’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life)
“Flower Girls – A Summer’s Night” by Augustus Edwin Mulready
As imperceptibly as Grief The Summer lapsed away — Too imperceptible at last To seem like Perfidy — A Quietness distilled As Twilight long begun, Or Nature spending with herself Sequestered Afternoon — The Dusk drew earlier in — The Morning foreign shone — A courteous, yet harrowing Grace, As Guest, that would be gone — And thus, without a Wing Or service of a Keel Our Summer made her light escape Into the Beautiful — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #935)
So, last year we visited the sunflower field at the end of the harvest and I got a lot of pictures of blossoms past their peak, all still beautiful in their own way. This year we changed things up and went on the first day day of the gathering in and at a different time of day, evening instead of morning. Also unlike last year we’ve had plenty of rain while last summer we were dealing with a drought.
not much of a sunset…
Each year we plant over 14 acres of sunflowers and harvest approximately 300,000 blooms for your viewing pleasure and to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Connecticut, a non-profit organization dedicated to granting wishes to children with critical illnesses. Sunflowers are available while supplies last. We offer cut your sunflowers with a $2 per flower donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Connecticut. ~ Buttonwood Farm website
There’s a small hill to climb to get a pretty view over a large field and then several paths to follow through the sea of sunflowers. This year I became fascinated with all the blossoms getting ready to bloom and wound up taking more pictures of them than the ones at their peaks!
feeling like we were behind people in a theater looking at the stage!
The crop must drink; we move the pipe To draw the water back in time To fall again upon the field, So that the harvest may grow ripe, The year complete its ancient rhyme With other years, and a good yield Complete our human hope. ~ Wendell Berry (This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)
head and shoulders above the rest
view from one of the paths
busy bee
When celebrating, always take your cue from nature and adapt your rituals to circumstances. … Adapting to circumstances, like actively observing on your walks, brings you into rhythm with the natural world. And soon, checking in to a festival becomes second nature, as you remember past experience. … May the spiral of our seasonal journey be blessed. ~ Penny Billington (The Path of Druidry: Walking the Ancient Green Way)
more and more clouds
vapor trails ~ photo by Tim
Can you tell we’re under the flight path from New York to Europe?
It’s hard to believe that a year has passed and we’re still struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, in spite of being fully vaccinated. The delta variant is running rampant through the stubbornly unvaccinated population, but the concerning part is that even the vaccinated are at risk now. Here in Connecticut we’ve had 854 vaccinated people with breakthrough COVID cases, and 150 of them are hospitalized. We’re back to wearing masks in the grocery store and many indoor places, like our doctors, are still requiring them. So much for eating inside our favorite restaurant for a while… It’s a good thing we’ve gotten used to finding things to do outside!
