Black Horse

Yesterday morning I was about four minutes into my drive to work when I crested a small rise in the two-lane, and standing there, peacefully grazing on the side of the road, was a ginormous black horse. I pulled to a stop next to it, and rolled down the passenger side window to...what? Talk to it? Confirm that it really was a horse? Ask it what the hell it thought it was doing on this side of the fence?

Window open (apparently it was 13 degrees outside, according to the car), engine idling, I looked up at the horse and briefly, it looked down at me. Then it went back to cropping the closely-mowed grass along the shoulder.

I tried to remember what one does in this situation, from previous early morning close encounters. Call animal control? Wait, that means calling the Sheriff's office. Call the owners? Wait, I don't know who they are. Call our friends who I'm pretty sure know who the horse people are? All moot, because of course the phone won't connect where I'm poised...ON A HILLTOP WITH LINES OF SIGHT IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

Now, at this point, the early dawn is breaking and the sun is teasing a glow in the east; the light is barely beginning to illuminate the massive flanks of this towering, beautiful beast. Steam appears to gently rise from it; the breath from its nostrils hangs heavy in the frigid morning air. It was all very "Michael Clayton." (Minus the car blowing up...)

Finally realizing the obvious, I simply drove down the long and hilly gravel drive to the appropriate house, a place I had never seen in a decade of living on the same road, and knocked at the door. I was assured my knocking had registered by the stentorian barking of a very large and very peeved German Shepard which appeared almost immediately at the sidelight. Unfortunately, it seemed no human was there to assist the poor dog.

I was almost back into the car when I heard the door open and a sharp whistle sound. I walked back to the house, introduced myself, and over the vehement protestations of the shepherd, let the bleary-eyed man know his fence had somehow gotten on the wrong side of his horse. I think he thanked me, but with the dog translating it was hard to tell.

And then it took me two @#$% hours and forty @#$% minutes to get to work. @#$%^^&*(!@#!!! If I had realized the best part of my day was over by 7:15 AM, I'd a just gone home.

Bushwhacking

So I've written a bit recently about our trails and the trailwork we've been doing. But a few days ago we did the alternative to trails, which is bushwhacking.

It's a weird word, oddly specific and descriptive, which confused me as a kid. I guess I heard it in the context of old movie westerns and TV shows, and took it to mean some kind of guerrilla warfare action. I might have conflated it with 'ambushing.' Anyway, it was an action that initially looked bad for the good guys but ended up worse for the bad guys, because those were the moral imperatives of the kind of movies in which 'bushwhacking' took place.

Bushwhacking, in obvious opposition to trail walking, is walking cross-country without the benefit of a path. We did this in two different places: the first was in the bottomland, the flood plain where our two streams converge. It's several acres of fairly flat ground, bounded on most sides by rocky hills that rise steeply and abruptly. It's a forested cathedral, populated with a variety of trees that don't mind having their feet wet--sycamores and planetrees, a solitary cottonwood, some black walnuts, the ubiquitous maples and yellow poplars. And the interstices are filled with a tangle of multiflora rose canes.

In the bottomland, bushwhacking is a slow, drunken meander where one foot moves forward and may make several feints before settling to the ground. The way forward through the canes is not easy to envision, and there are many false starts and backtracks for every foot of forward progress. A path may appear, only to peter out in a vicious tangle of thorns a few paces ahead. Trial and error is the method to use, and rather than a means from getting from Point A to Point B, bushwhacking often results in Point C being chosen as a perfectly valid alternative to Point B.

The second place we bushwhacked was on the eastern flank of the hillside, beginning from the stream trail just upstream from the upper crossing. Mary worked her way uphill through the woods; I could not see the way she chose from where I was. I chose to explore a small ravine (ravine may be too grandiose a word for it, really more of a rocky wrinkle in the hillside). The ravine, wrinkle, whatever, run with a small rivulet after heavy rains and in wet spells; it's the early expression of the low, damp saddle through the pines, which in itself is the early expression of a tiny spring somewhere on the neighbor's property just adjacent to our property line.

The ravine is rich with big chunks of white quartz, and runs pretty directly up the steep hillside. There appears to be a trail worn by deer or some smaller animal tracing its right bank; I begin working my way up the ravine along this route. Here is where upland bushwhacking begins to deviate from bottomland bushwhacking (...that sounds kinda dirty, doesn't it?). There are still stickers and vines to contend with, but your natural tendency is to pull yourself along from sapling to sapling. But you'd best look carefully, because what you find is that about half of what you're likely to grab are not saplings, but former saplings. Rotten little sticks that just haven't gotten around to falling quite yet. Grab one of those to hoist yourself up and you're in for a rude shock.

I've noted this little ravine since about the first time we walked the stream trail, nearly ten years ago. It amazes me it's taken this long to get around to exploring it--this is exactly the kind of place I would have lost myself in as a callow youth. The higher up the ravine I climb, the more the rocks beneath are exposed. Where the hillside meets the more gently sloping top, there are some impressively large quartz pieces, some mantle in rich verdant mosses.

I call out to Mary from the woods near the powerline, and am surprised to find that she is below me on the hillside, having followed a different path--possible an old cattle path or even older road. These woods have mostly swallowed up and obscured the traces of their history, of those who we tend to forget lived here before us. Some of the signs are right there to be seen in the scraps of barbed wire embedded in the tree trunks, on in one case, growing out of the inside of a hollowed out tree. If you look carefully, there are paths and trails to be seen; some might have carried horses or wagons or carts; some might have carried some of Stonewall Jackson's 70,000 who crossed at the ford just downstream. a century and a half ago. I'm sure some carried the barrow Indians heading down to the river to fish or swim.

Progress is slow when you bushwhack, nothing at all like hiking on a trail. It is a different experience; meticulous, time-consuming, thoughtful, not as energetic (though frequently much more strenuous and aerobic). Bushwhacking is contemplative, and proposes a different, nonlinear approach to exploring the world.

I rejoin Mary in the woods. From here it is just a short walk up through the cleared area and back into our pines. I'd like to make a point--maybe a New Year's Resolution!--to try and go out bushwhacking more often.

Irruption

We caught a glimpse of a bird a couple of weeks ago along the back road which has become our default route to the city. Mary saw it; I was driving, so I only caught a fleeting impression of it. It was starkly white against the grey winterscape of bare trees and fallow fields,

Our first thought was of a seabird blown far inland by the recent rough changes in the weather, but it was solitary; then we recalled the other brilliantly white bird we had seen nearby, the Cattle Egret. But somehow, this didn't seem to be that.

Yesterday morning I drove the same section of road, and crowning one of the jagged trees that arched over the road was the largest, whitest bird I've ever seen. It's hard to describe why it appeared so white; maybe it was the dull grey sky it had for a backdrop. I've seen bigger birds, and I've seen whiter birds (though not by much) but this bird took some kind of prize.

With what in hindsight was a foolish recklessness, I slammed on the brakes, pulled over onto the grassy shoulder, put on my hazard lights, and jumped out of the car for a better look.

Stopping put me square in the bird's blind spot. And as I discovered alongside the wintry backroads of South Dakota three years ago, big raptors don't much care for having people in their blindspots. It took wing in an instant.

Fortunately for me, it flew across the road and away in the direction I was facing. It swooped down low over the frosty ground before rising up to settle on a slender branch near the top of the tree. The flare of its tail and spread of its wings revealed no trace of pigmentation that I could discern.

Only as I write this do I remember the pair of binoculars that have rattled around under the seat of the car for a couple of months now. This would have been a good time to make use of them, I believe...

When I report my sighting to Mary, confirming the presence of the mystery bird, she recalls a salient detail from the previous week's sighting that did not register at the time absent a broader context--the white bird dropping directly from its perch to the ground below--likely seizing a furry morsel from the dry grass.

Yep. Pretty sure it's a Snowy Owl. Like Harry Potter's 'Hedwig.' But I really can't tell you much about it from the roadside a good quarter-mile from where it now sits. But Snowy Owls are one of those boreal birds that undergoes irruptions*. Irruptions are Malthusian events, driven by the ebbing and flowing of populations of prey and the things that prey feed upon. They are not migrations, but relatively brief and unpredictable forays beyond normal territorial ranges.

Snowy Owls are not entirely unknown in our area; an irruption over 2013-2014 brought many Snowy Owls to the mid-Atlantic area, and apparently a Snowy Owl sighting is a big deal to be able to add to your birding life list. I feel very fortunate for my early morning encounter. Hell, it was the high point of my day, and it came at 7:35 in the morning!

*Interesting word, with an intersting etymology.

Seven Crows

We were puttering around beside the big shed as the barely-warm January sun got tangled up in the treetops. Somewhere off to the south, down in the valley by the bottomlands, there was a fierce cry, the single piercing alarm note of a crow. It repeated over and over again as it drew closer, setting off the turkeys in a mad dash, and continued as the bird finally came into sight, winging fiercely over the garden. It wheeled overhead, and suddenly its call was joined by another voice, then another, and when it had finally settled down into the top of the poplar tree above the graveyard, seven crows were perched throughout the tree, bobbing and calling raucously.

We watched them for a moment, puzzled by this mysterious and cacophonous summoning. Then, to our amazement and to the furious rage of the crows, a hawk—bigger than any hawk I can recall seeing around here—took off from the weeds at the base of the poplar, and alighted in its lowest branch, directly below the murderous bunch. At this, the crows erupted, swirling and diving in a roiling cloud of angry voices. The hawk appeared almost bemused, certainly not particularly disturbed by the display. It adjusted its stance, fluffed out its feathers, spread its tail wide, then hopped to another branch before dropping back down to the ground. The crows dispersed in an angry boiling mass, circling about to cast malevolent glances backwards at their enemy of legend.

The hawk is big, no doubt. It poked about briefly the general vicinity of the graveyard and the pines. By its size, I’d guess it’s a hen, and I hope it’s the hen from a year and a half ago, or perhaps one of her eyasses, come back to nest in the ancestral aerie. There’s still a lot of it left in the big pine tree, certainly enough to make the nucleus of a new nest for a pair.

The big hawk’s appearance a couple of days ago has spooked the chickens for sure; they’ve spent much of their days since cowering inside their house, only dodging out for food or water ever so briefly then ducking back into safety. I feel their pain, and would be more than happy to keep them locked inside if necessary, but they have cover and better wits than some of their predecessors, and have the turkeys around to keep a sharp eye on the sky on their behalf. They can deal with it. I think it would be more than a fair trade if we can watch a nesting pair raise and fledge a second batch of little hawks in our backyard.

Happy 2016!

So Happy 2016 to y'all. The daffodils and Lenten Roses are blooming.

Close Encounters...

It was nose-hair freezing this morning when I went out in my long underwear and slippers to warm up the car—about six below.
I stepped out onto the porch, and something in the turkey pen caught my eye. The birds were milling around as they usually do when it first starts to get light and they see one of us come outside, hoping that maybe we're bringing breakfast and warm water. But one of them was hunched down on the roost all alone, looking small and haggard and bedraggled and pathetic. We had been keeping the guineas inside the shed during the bitter cold, and I was worried that maybe the extreme cold had stressed one of them past the point of no return.

But it wasn't a guinea. I looked at it, and it looked up at me. It was a Red-Tailed Hawk. On the turkey roost all by itself. Inside the netted turkey pen.

The milling about wasn't because I had come outside; it was because THERE WAS A FRIGGIN RED-TAILED HAWK SITTING ON THE TURKEY ROOST.

I went back inside, dropped the car keys, called to Mary to grab the camera, her coat and the fireplace gloves, and hustle outside ASAP.

When I came back outside (still in long underwear and slippers, mind you) the hawk took off and immediately flew into the net roof; he hung there briefly, then dropped to the ground, regained his footing, and flew to another roost in the distant end of the pen. The commotion his passage created among the pen's residents was remarkable for its intensity and fervor.

I snatched the bird net—a long-handled fisherman's landing net with the net bag shortened by half, which I had just gotten a couple of weeks ago to make guinea wrangling a little easier. I went into the pen, and slowly approached the hawk on the roost, looking it directly in its brilliant dark eyes and talking to it quietly the whole time.

 As I got closer, it went into full threat-display mode*, beak agape, eyes filled with rage, and wings held up and spread. It held this posture, never breaking eye contact, even as I slowly lowered the net over it on the roost. It actually rotated backwards, sliding off the roost until it hung by one ebony talon upside-down, never altering it defiant display. It dropped gently onto its back, and I held it to he ground supine, while Mary brought the foundry gloves over.

Holding the landing net down with one hand, I slipped the gloves on one at a time, then slowly reached under the net to secure both of the hawk's shins in my left hand. We never broke eye contact (the eyes are right next to the supremely daunting looking pointy bits), and once I had a firm grasp of its legs, I lifted the net away. (When you have them by the shins, their hearts and minds will follow). I expected a flurry of flapping and struggling, but it never altered its posture a whit; wings spread defiantly, beak agape yet never striking.

It seemed strangely frozen, and perhaps it was exhausted and frightened; if it had misunderestimated the resolve of the turkeys, it may have had a rough time of it before I showed up and intervened. But there was no obvious evidence of a bird-on-bird struggle, and no one on either team showed any overt signs of damage.

Mary took a few pictures of the magnificent bird, and I walked it slowly into the back yard, where I had no option but to place it on the ground on its back, wings still spread wide. It
would not look away from me and would not turn its back on me; it lay inverted until I had been inside the house for half a minute. Then it righted itself, and in one swift and balletic motion, took to the air and swooped down the yard and away into the frosty pre-dawn forest.

*At that very instant, I realized that in my whole life I had never realized that the Great Seal of the United States  presents the eagle in a 'threat display' posture. That's not exactly flattering, is it?

Snowpocalypse Porter post-mortem

Well, the time spent in the bottle did the Snowpocalypse porter no favors.

Hard to describe, but it had a thin flavor profile which did little to bolster and round out the smoke notes. 'Phenolic' is a polite way to describe it, and like the description of the apocryphal book, "...once I set it down, I couldn't pick it back up again!"

So bottle #1 was poured and languished in half-drunk mugs in various places around the room until the following day. However, phoenix-like, it (along with bottle #2) was resurrected that evening in a simple but hearty stew of ox-tail (okay, really cow-tail, but a convention is a convention) which was absolutely awesome.

I'm pleased. It was fun to brew at the time, pleasant enough to drink along the way, a fun reminder of a unique time, and it met a good end. What else could you ask for?

Now on to other brews. Two all-grain batches teed up for February...

A Perfect Day for Some Trail Work

Last Sunday was cold, dawning in the teens and barely topping out at freezing. But it was clear, with few high clouds, and the harsh bitter winds had calmed down. So early in the afternoon, we set out to do some long-postponed trail work along the stream near the northern property line.

The first order of business was a recent deadfall across the trail at the big pool. We had been watching the tree’s increasingly perilous posture for some time, and finally, a month or two ago, it let loose. It crashed into the fork of a nearby oak, briefly wedging itself high across the trail before gravity finally broke its back and settled it to earth. With a few quick cuts, we cleared the way and set the cut section alongside the trail.

Our big task was clearing a good-sized dam the recent heavy rains had formed just above the second stream crossing. A stately sycamore, rooted in the bank of the stream with water rushing over its roots, had caught several sections of massive logs, which formed the armature of a dam of brush and debris. The dam funneled the rushing water hard against the western bank, eroding and flooding the stream crossing, and eating away the bank and trail immediately downstream. The vast slack water it created upstream has also allowed the streambed to fill with sand and silt, obscuring the rocks we had so diligently placed as stepping stones in the warmth of summertime.

We paused at the upper crossing and changed from our trail shoes to high muck boots. And what an outfit: Woolen cap, ear protectors with face shield, thick layers of warm fleece, chainsaw chaps tucked into/over knee-high rubber boots, and idling chainsaw. I crossed the upper crossing, walked down the bank, and waded into the icy rushing waters. The waters swirled around my calves and undermined the sand on which I stood.

Mary began tearing the dam apart from the western bank, using the larger pieces to shore up the eroded trail edge. While she did that, I started attacking the middle of the dam, grabbing handsful of leaves and muck with one hand while holding the growling saw in the other.

With the loose debris gone, the spine of the dam was laid bare. A tree trunk maybe six or eight inches in diameter that spanned from well onto the east bank to the roots of the sycamore. I was able to easily saw chunks from the center and pass them end-over-end to Mary, who placed the chunks strategically along the stream bank where they would do the most good. The heart wood was a beautiful deep rusty color like cedar, but without any noticeable odor and much denser than cedar would have been.

We cleared more of the loose debris from amongst the logs, tossing the mouldering leaves and twigs into the swirling waters downstream to disappear. Bit by bit, we picked that dam apart, and as we did, the slackwater energized, resuming its temporarily impeded drive towards the river. As it accelerated, it slowly and deliberately scoured away the accumulated sand and silt, reclaiming its deeper channel and gnawing away at the impudent banks.

The heart of the dam was a stout section of tree trunk, maybe ten feet long and fourteen inches in diameter. It appeared scoured and beaten, as though the stream had brought it to this place from some distance, or perhaps has relentlessly scoured it here once it lodged in place. This wood resisted the saw, and I had to work with some effort to free sections from it. Somehow, sand from the stream had found the saw chain and wreaked havoc with its edge, forcing me to push the saw harder than I would have liked, driving the acrid smell of hot wood from kerf, and reducing the ejecta to a dusty rain rather than the confetti-like curls that are the mark of a keen blade.

Once freed, the four-foot long sections were massive and unwieldy, and it was all both of us could do to roll them awkwardly into place downstream, filling a hollow the waters had carved where the trail had so recently passed.

With the heart gone, the remnants of the dam slowly dissipated with the fast-flowing waters, leaving just the worn root ball, stranded high and dry nestled against the sycamore. Together Mary and I wrestled it loose and sent it over the edge into the stream below, to dam or be damned once more. When we were done, we were both feeling the day’s cold in the bottom of the narrow stream valley, with the sun already disappearing behind the grey trees and high flanks of the rocky hills. We abandoned our ambitions for any further trail work for the moment, succumbing instead to the lure of a warm fire where we could dry out and warm our extremities once again.

We have yet to go back and see how matters have settled out since our reengineering efforts. Maybe this weekend: it promises to be cold once again, but this time with rain, sleet and snow as well. Perfect weather for getting outside and doing some trail work, I say.

So Freaking Ready for Spring...

Right now I am watching it snow out my office window, piling up to about the four inch mark at twilight after beginning around dawn—light, fluffy, powdery snow that blow away with a breath and periodically cascades down from the trees.

This is our second big snow of the winter, and the first snow of the new year. The previous snow—some fifteen inches accumulated over a Friday night-Saturday-Sunday morning storm before the holidays in December—had not completely melted away from the mounds where the plows had piled it or the hollows where it had hidden away, and now it's got reinforcements.

That magnificent snow was the biggest snowfall we have experienced since moving here from the suburbs, and it was quite an experience. We walked our woodland trail through the new-fallen snow, plowing through snow up to our knees and making the very first sets of tracks. It more or less stranded us for a time (though in an emergency we could have gotten out with the help of Henry) and we had the coziness of the woodstove to keep the chill at bay.

But by cracky, I AM SO READY FOR SPRING...and it's barely the end of January.

I am ready to burn every light in the house to fend off the wintry gloom and bolster the ever-so-slooooooooowly lengthening days. I am ready to burn every stick of firewood and kindling and every gallon of propane to keep the place warm, and today, I even tried to heat the house by filling the crawlspace with hot water.

Hey, the fifteen inches of snow was great; it fulfilled a life-time dream of mine to be here—in a place like this—under those circumstances. But frankly, I consider that itch to be officially scratched; I have crossed it off my bucket list. Enough is enough. Is it too much to ask for a crocus or two, maybe a snowdrop?

Our minds and spirits are already in spring mode, with seed orders done and the vanguard already arriving. Chicks of various flavors have been ordered to arrive in late March, and the groundwork for St. Patrick's Day dinner has been laid. All we need to do is get the @#$%^& snow to stop falling, and we'll be that much closer.

Sigh. A person can wish, right?

Comic Gold

When burning brush on a cold, grey, blustery winter day, and you suddenly smell singeing hair, this may or may not be an appropriate and/or effective thought process:

1. ...Where is the dog?
2. ...What fabric is my shirt made from? Is it wool, perhaps? Hmmm; No, it is not.
3. ... 
4. OW! DAMMIT! (Begin slapping head furiously)

The only thing that could make this better would be 5) Larry spraying me in the face with a seltzer bottle or 

6) Curly beating me upside the head with a shovel.

A Verdict...

The Sorghum Ale?

Awful.

Thick, acrid, sour, sludgy. Possibly the worst thing I've brewed in memory. It reminds me of that monster from the end of "Dogma." But with less personality.

Your Attention Please:

The traditional New-Year's Day ride has been cancelled due to a lack of interest in going riding (alone) when it's twenty degrees outside and it's nice and warm inside by the woodstove, and three big goofy dogs keep wandering past in search of adventures and there's a big pot of black-eyed peas simmering in the kitchen and soon there will be cornbread in the oven and there's a big pot of coffee and a bunch of wonderful, groggy, bleary-eyed people stumbling around trying to make sense from their hazy recollections of last night.

Go ride your own ride.

That is all.