THIS HUNCHED OLD JACK PINE has greeted every dawn here on Fawn Island for—well, for a long time. Not much left of it now, as a summer storm took its top a couple of years ago. Only a few gnarled boughs still retain their greenery. But the little tree holds firmly to its place on the bedrock as it has
ROCKS SPEAK. In their own way, to those who have ears to listen. I have long thought that every stone is a teacher and every breeze a language. Boulders have lessons to impart and stories to tell. Each of these great stones, within 25 yards of our island cabin, is a ‘glacial erratic’, dropped where it stands by a retreating
ON THIS SUNDAY at the old cabin in the Church O’ The Pines, it is a fine day to be a goose, gabbling from the river. Or my favorite songster, the wood thrush, singing ethereal songs from the deep woods. Or my old friend Sparky the Cardinal singing his own heart out, or a flame-sided orilole flashing across the yard
ON A LOVELY MAY DAY, it is a pleasure to wander a trail verged with ferns. Here at the Church O The Pines we walk among the graceful, arched Ostrich Ferns, delicate Lady Ferns, sweet Sensitive Ferns and the modest Wood Fern. Along the way, it is good to kneel down for a peek at Jack-in-the-Pulpit as well. It has
SCENES FROM A WALK in the woods with Road Scholars on our Bluff Country expedition. Here at one of my favorite woodland trails along Trout Run Creek in Whitewater State Park. Jacob’s Ladder, Wild Geraniums, Trillium Grandiflorum, Buttercups, White, Yellow and Purple Violets, Wood Anemone, and Wildwood Phlox all brightened the trail sides. Meanwhile we added to our two-day count
MANY, MANY of these gorgeous and lively little birds visiting us this week, and mingling with the congregation of the Church O’ The Pines. They love the suet feeders and Kathy gives them little meal worms as well. The yellow-rumped warbler, long called the Myrtle warbler, is one of the first spring migrants among the warblers. (Who don’t actually ‘warble’
ON EARTH DAY: If you woke up on Earth this morning, it is another Earth day. As a young lady said to me this morning, there are so many things to fret about, so many things to grieve, many reasons to feel anxious. Many people who don’t care. But there are also successes: bald eagles nesting in our woods where,
EVEN WITH A CAMERA, even if I’d been ready, I could not have caught it. Would not have been quick enough to begin to follow the black streak across the snow. It was simply too fast. Way too fast. Here’s the story. A pine limb had fallen in the yard during the last snow/ice storm. I decided it was time
SCENES FROM PINE POINT/Church O’ The Pines, April 1, 2023. So beautiful.… But there is ice under all that snow, and we can’t help worrying about our owls’ and foxes’ ability to hunt. About our eagles in their pine-top nest, and about doves and robins and other migrants who have returned. As for ourselves, we worry about the spring flood
THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING and we are reminded of renewal. Of a green and living world. Of softness more than harshness. Of the flow of things rather than the locking down of things. Of returns and cycles and aspiring growth. Although here in the North these things have not yet arrived upon the landscape, they are on their way,