Archive for the ‘Country weekend’ category
Fall Snow (Snow Fall)
October 29, 2011“Philosophical” (Ha!) Autumn Haiku
October 9, 2011
What is real? What is
reflection? One way to know
for sure: take a plunge.
Menace then glow.
September 4, 2011
Earlier tonight, the sky turned menacing.
Not more rain! We could hear the heavy machines still working down below on the damage from the last storm (Irene.)
Soon water rifled the sky, punctuated by a couple of huge booms.
The distant growl of machinery cut off; men shouted. Inside the house, the dog stepped from her small bed, tail down.
As suddenly, it stopped.
Inside, the dog lay down. Outside, an afterglow of storm lit up the grass, the trees, the sky, even my socks.
Not just my socks.
Not stranded in Catskills Anymore. (Darn.)
September 4, 2011
Reconstruction in Catskills Post-Irene (Stream-Cleaning?)
September 3, 2011The above video may only be really interesting if you are a child (probably male) who really likes the 1939 classic Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I am not such a child. Even so, seeing (live) the machines working on the stream up here in the Catskills has been pretty extraordinary in the last few days. The crews are working with speed and good humor, and seem almost as enamored of their big machines as fans of Mike Mulligan.
Disaster conditions apparently allow for a lot of tugging and pulling. I told the two guys above that their coordination was like a ballet. My husband, who had noticed the large Harley-Davidson tattoos on the workers’ forearms, thought that was not perhaps the most appropriate compliment, but the guys seemed to like it just fine.
P.S. – the little shriek in the middle of the video is me being surprised (stupidly) by the possibility of flying debris.
Wishing to Say “Goodnight Irene”, Instead Goodbye-Hello – The Evacuee’s Plaint
August 28, 2011Above is the place where a driveway used to be. This driveway belonged to an upstate house to which we fled when evacuated from Zone A of NYC before Hurricane Irene.
Which brings me to:
The Evacuee’s Plaint
From the frying pan into the fire,
the saltine into the soup,
the thick to the thin, the baby in the bathwater to the baby thrown-out
with the bath water–make that roiling water–
from puddled embankment to muddy rapids,
dim to dark,
maybe to absolutely,
the flooding to the washed-out.
It’s still raining here
where we’ve come
to be high
and dry. All feet
are cold
and damp,
but with
five toes wriggling.
Make that ten.
Irene – Out-of-the-loop Style Rain
August 27, 2011
I am a couple of hundred miles (at least) from the epicenter of Hurricane irene, and, thanks to evacuation, unlikely to be ever closer than a hundred miles from that center.
All day the sky has felt like a petulant child in the back seat of a car. At the risk of disclosing my age, I am thinking of a 1950’s or 60’s car i.e. not air-conditioned–so the sky (in my mind) was a sticky child, forehead moist with sweat, slightly motion sick, asking endlessly when the traffic would move and if we were there yet, a child whose face darkened and contorted steadily with a kind of holding-his/her breath irritation.
It has started (at last) to rain here.
The sky is no longer dark except with night–the clouds now lie like stoles along the shoulders of the landscape; the air, though damp, breathes easily.
The rain is gentle for now, slowly getting stronger, but not lashing, not pelting, quite content, it seems, to be out of the loop.
Hope you are out of it too.
Bear v. Handgun v. iPad 2?
August 23, 2011
I missed the earthquake today because I am in upstate New York, a bit too far both from epicenter and traditional panic centers for awareness. Later this afternoon though I faced more typical local dangers as I walked–I hesitate to call my slow trudge a hike–up to a woodsy area increasingly known for bear sightings.
I don’t know if there are actually more bear here than there used to be; there do seem to be a lot more sightings.
Some people, in the light of these sightings, have advocated a policy of carrying a hand gun on a hike. This is not a policy I could ever imagine myself adopting: (i) I hate guns; (ii) I don’t own one; and (iii) the only moving target I would ever be capable of hitting is my foot.
No, I realize as I step into the woods, MY first line of defense is my iPad 2. The plan: if I run into a bear (worse yet, a mama with cubs) I’ll turn on the sound as loud as possible.
I am not in fact listening to music right now, I don’t typically have it on when I walk, but my iPad 2 (which I carry snugly in a vest pocket) has an annoying habit of switching on its iiPod music app whenever I cross my arms. (On this walk, I’ve already had to turn off “You’re the Top” twice.)
I recognize, of course, that there are potential snags in my bear-blasting plan. First, if a bear actually confronts me, the iPad 2 may not magically turn on (and certainly not at high volume) even if I forcefully cross my arms. I may have to pull the iPad 2 from its snug wedge in my vest pocket, open the cover, activate the iPod app, turn up the volume.
The plan may also be flawed (fatally) by the possibility that the bear will not find Cole Porter particularly intimidating. Especially since my recordings are not sung by Ethel Merman.
Hmm….
I carefully, and very very quietly, redirect my feet towards home.
(Would it work better in an earthquake?)
Standing Up For Commuting
July 11, 2011
Bird-brained While Blogging
July 9, 2011
Some people think of bloggers as couch potato types, making pronouncements (or little elephant drawings), while hiding out from from the physical (i.e. non-computer-lit) world.
Not so. The prime example I can give of the active, physical-world-exploring, blogger is my daughter, Meredith Martin, a forest science student, who is currently posting a really fascinating blog about her field work in the Peruvian Amazon, http://countingcamu.blogspot.com.
Okay, so Meredith has written of the difficulties of hammocks on vibrating river boats and poorly permathrined trousers in beautiful but mosquito-crammed dusks, but recently I had my own encounter with blogging peril.
It happened last night, shortly after I arrived in the countryside of Upstate New York. Since I was staying in a house without internet access, I determined to hike (about a mile and a half) to the yard of someone with a good router. I was warned of rain, so carried a large ziplock bag for my iPad, The fact that it was rapidly growing dark was also brought to my attention, and that there was a car I could use. But my legs (ahem!) were really tired of sitting.
I walked fast, rolling along in the weird MBT shoes that I am pretty sure are causing severe knee problems. My knees were fine in that moment though and the occasional drops of moisture in the air seemed to have blown rather than dropped my way.
Sure, it was pretty dark under the canopy of trees on the long driveway I had to walk up, but I could see the yard with internet access in the near distance, and it looked lighter there.
Then, boom, something soft but big hit me quite hard in the side of the head, and then brrrmmm, ruffled on.
I have to admit the hit came as a shock. A bird flew into my head? Then the word “bat” came to mind. And “rabies”. And with rabies the image of dozens of shots in my bare (jiggling with fear) belly.
Maybe walking up here in the near dark had not been such a good idea after all.
But, if you are determined blogger, what do you do?
The only course, of course, was to proceed to the online access. (I’m sorry if whatever I typed in last night didn’t make much sense. All the time I was troubled by a throb both on the surface of my head–where I’d been hit–and on the inside: was it a bat?)
My brain filled with sad commentary from my prospective funeral–if only she’d gotten the shots; if only she’d taken the car; if only she hadn’t posted her silly blog that night.
I walked back onto the long dark drive, vest draped over head. I held my arms over my head too, clapping lightly. Noise of some kind seemed called for–I thought of turning iTunes on, but my habitual favorite “Anything Goes” didn’t quite go with all this.
As I walked by the spot of the dive-bombing, I heard a heavy brrrum of wings to my side.
After the instantaneous clutch, my heart lightened. So, bird then, definitely bird, must be a bird; bats don’t brrrmmmm.
A turkey, my husband said later. (And he wasn’t talking about me.)
ManicDDaily 
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