Tag Archives: nature

L’Afrique: Réflexions après coup.

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I didn’t know how to write about this trip. It’s been 5 years since I’ve been on a proper tour and half of those were spent while my life was sideways, treading water in an upside-down world changed forever by a plague and other mishaps. So in trying to compare and contrast my experiences, it dawned on me yet again that places have spirits or souls or essences that invite you in or spit you out, like Rajasthan or Istanbul or Botswana or Sardinia or Belize or Aachen or Marrakech or Amsterdam or wherever you call home…each has left its mark on me in a different way.

In Rwanda, I felt held. I felt fed – with local foods, recent history, a collective passion; with knowledge about conservation and community, with a shared compassion and humanitarian heart, eyes towards the future.

In Kenya, I felt sold-to, as if consumerism and capitalism and commercialism had woven its way into the fibers of existence there. It felt like a place that wanted to be so much of what my country stands for that they have shed their own identity. And while the pockets of the natural world there are being protected and nurtured, the delicate balance between selling eco-tourism as a commodity and believing that conservation is the right thing to do felt like a grand fuzzy line.

That said, I still had two days on my own at the end of the trip. So I spent my last couple of days in Nairobi learning more about how the country came to be, and seeing some of Nairobi’s conservation efforts for the Rothschild’s giraffe.

Stop #1 was the National Museums of Kenya (and snake house). The museum itself was a pictorial and diorama-ish narration of the country’s history from essentially prehistoric man to the present. If nothing else, the snake house was an opportunity to see their deadly (“a bite from this snake is considered a major medical emergency”) reptiles in a controlled environment.

The most disturbingly fascinating part of the museum, though, was the Birds of East Africa gallery. I wandered in, completely unaware, and was presented with what was functionally a life-sized Field Guide to the Birds, but instead of photos, each Kenyan bird was represented as a taxidermied example, meticulously arranged in plexiglass cases, labelled and numbered as in a bird book.

Stop #2 was the Giraffe Centre. What I thought would be a serene giraffe sanctuary turned out to be a breeding center and chatty tourist attraction. You are given a coconut shell full of snack pellets when you enter. Then you walk up to the viewing platform, where you can hand-feed and interact with the giraffes. It is a legitimate reintroduction program, as there are only approx. 1600 Rothschild’s giraffes remaining. They are at the centre to be bred, then released into the wild in protected parks throughout the country.

Looming large (and lovely) in the background was the renowned Giraffe Manor, where for $1000 USD a night (or more) you can stay in an enchanting stone manor that sits within the sanctuary’s grounds, as you commune with the resident long-necks. It was a weird but oddly satisfying visit, giving me hope that perhaps the commercialism of this place would help its natural beauty thrive.

Flying back home, I had a couple of distinct thoughts: I left Kenya with more things bought. I left Rwanda with more experiences sought. Yet it’s the little memories that pop into my mind as I digest my experiences:

The night I stood along the fencing separating the Lake Nakuru lodge from the reserve proper, watching a mass of dark hulking beasts make their way to the watering hole, grumbling and chatting amongst themselves in a low snuffling murmur. It was only once I shined my flashlight on the herd and saw 50 eyes staring back at me in the black night that I realised they were buffalo.

The night I went out to look for rhino in the weird Lake Naivasha camp, instead finding bushbabies skittering about (baby tree, said the night watchman). And maribou storks, dozens of the immense and bizarre creatures, using the half-dead and waterlogged trees as their base camp.

A lunchtime impromptu tour of the bush camp in the Maasai Mara, spotting hippos and monkeys and crocodiles, guided by a kind and eager Maasai warrior.

An exploration of the little paths along the park fence in Akagera National Park, wondering what might be stirring in the long grasses or what critters lurked just beyond the wires. I had a staring contest with a baboon in a nearby tree and spotted a family with the tiniest baboon baby (babette?) I’ve ever seen.

That night the Land Cruiser broke down on a long stretch of road between the Northern Province and Kigali and we were rescued (luggage and all) by a park ranger (and a veritable stranger) on his way back to Kigali.

The bicycles piled high with sugar cane. The lush hillsides. The milky way and the Southern Cross. The shoebills and hornbills and storks and kingfishers…brightly-coloured birds of all shapes and sizes.

A flash of history: We drove back from Giraffe-land past the new president’s house at about the same time the Kenyan supreme court awarded Ruto the win. The street outside his gates was lined with cars and photographers.

And the food…Dinner in the gardens at Hôtel des Mille Collines, staring out over the pool and pondering what Kigali’s people went through during the 90s. A homemade Rwandan lunch in the cook’s own kitchen, probably the best meal I had in the 2 weeks there. Dinner on my last night at an Eritrean restaurant in Nairobi, complete with injera.

I’ll come back to Africa. There’s so much more of this amazingly diverse land to experience. I want to see the Serengeti and Amboselli and Madagascar and Uganda…and return to Rwanda to hike more in the Virungas and return to Botswana and camp for longer, deeper in the Okavango. I want to eat injera in Ethiopia, and I want to see Deadvlei and Sossusvlei in Namibia. There’s probably more, not to mention the East African coast, that I don’t even know I want to see yet!

Travel is a privilege and an education. And for me, it is a prescription for the part of my soul that feels lost and wild and homeless and restless much of the time.

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois, l’Afrique !

Read about the whole trip: [Part I: Rwanda] [Part II: Jambo Kenya] [Part III: Maasai Mara]

Rhymes with Puffin: An impromptu photographic journey into tourist-land.

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Note to self: don’t go to Mid-coast Maine during 4th of July week unless armed with a bucket of money, a mask, a self-driving car and a high tolerance for touristic behaviour. If you do, take it all in stride in service to the Quest.

The Quest: I’ve always been a dabbler in myth; a sort-of romantic about knights and castles and stones and the sea…and every Quest needs a grail of some sort. So the Holy Grail of this expedition was the Atlantic Puffin. A bowling pin of an endangered waterbird that spends its time (precariously) in the cooler seas. Puffins fly back, in the summer months, to the islands from which they fledged to socialize and mate and breed new pufflings (YES, that’s what they are called!). I had never seen a puffin (or a puffling) in the (feathery) flesh, and the days I took off this week were well-earned, so I took advantage of the holiday and the season, consulted the birding bibles, and loosely stitched together a plan.

I’ve been a hermit these past few months, with work eating up my waking hours, and stress about the current climate consuming the remaining twilight before crashing after such long days… Then came the COVID. And while my case was relatively mild (it only kicked my butt for a week, but even 2 weeks recovered I’m still feeling lethargic!), I can’t imagine what it would or could have been without my being vaccinated. I’m grateful for modern medicine. Shameless plug: get vaccinated already please!

Medieval knights and castles or non, I set out to Mid-Coast Maine to see if I could at least find some puffins.

Maine. First stop on the micro-adventure was a visit with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in years. When miles and life and a pandemic all conspire to get in the way of an otherwise great friendship, it’s nice to know that there are certain humans on this planet with whom you can just pick up again as if all the intervening circumstance didn’t matter. It was one of the most pleasant afternoons I’d had in ages.💖

By the time I arrived at the little hotel I’d booked, I realised my plan to ride my bike along the seacoast the next day wasn’t in the cards. The windy, narrow, hilly roads were made only slightly more treacherous by the smattering of tourists driving too haphazardly, alternately too fast and too erratically, for me to feel safe on my bike on these streets. Time to consider a Plan B. Plan C, actually, since the following morning’s weather looked unfavorable, and I had already moved the puffin expedition out a day.

But first, the fireworks. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it doesn’t quite feel like the year to be celebrating this country’s independence. But as a tourist in a sea of red (white and blue), it felt like there were two options: watch the spectacle or go to bed. It was 4th of July after all, and the fireworks would go on regardless of whether I felt like celebrating. I used it as an opportunity to play with light.

The next morning’s Plan turned out to be quite lovely actually: I went down to Ocean Point, apparently the east-most point in these already quite eastern parts, and I recharged amongst the rocks as I gazed out at the Ram Island lighthouse and watched boats (and a small pod of porpoises) navigate the harbour. The hazy summer air commingling with the ocean breeze and its seaweed-y bouquet helped clear out some of the chatter in my brain as I meditated to the sounds of the waves on the rocks and the ospreys calling from the little island just offshore.

Find the ospreys!

What this Quest lacked in knights and castles was recompensated in seabirds and rocky outcroppings. Fingers crossed that the Holy Grail of Puffinage would come through.

It was something of a lazy day after the rock-hopping. I napped during the rain showers in the afternoon. I started reading a new novel. I walked amongst the tourists in town and indulged: saltwater taffy and a lobster roll (when in Rome…); and readied myself for the puffin adventure the next morn!

Protecting puffins…

An aside about why we need to protect the puffins and terns and other arctic waterbirds in this part of the world (they are still prolific, apparently, in Iceland, Newfoundland and the UK, and they are even a delicacy in Iceland. Tastes like chicken?). It turns out that fashionistas in the late 1800s needed feathers for hats. In fact, the Victorian-era fancy ladies wore WHOLE STUFFED BIRDS (I sh*t you not!) on their hats, fast-forwarding the decline of these species. By the early 1900s, the entire colony of puffins and terns were all but wiped out in New England. Thanks to some of the fancy ladies, Audubon was started as a grass roots effort, and the anti-bird-hat contingent was born, aka, what the crap were we thinking?

As gulls began to repopulate the offshore islands, it was a concerted effort to bring back the terns and puffins to the area, success being only as recent as the 1970s and 80s. Read more about Audubon’s Project Puffin here.

Waiting in line to board the boat, I was hoping for less Disney and more nature, so I channelled my intention on a preponderance of Puffins rather than the annoying boatmates. The fancy ladies from Florida, arguing with the boat lady about why their short shorts and tank tops would be just fine on the open ocean and why she was crazy to suggest they bring along sweatshirts. The guy in the Yankees shirt and thick Long Island accent challenging anyone who would listen about baseball (apparently a Yankees/Red Sox series was in progress). The couple with the Giant Barking Poodle (On an Audubon boat? Really?) I wended my way to the bow: fewer seats, I thought. Fewer annoyances.

I grew up around boats and the sea and I’ve been on quite a few whale watches, so I had come prepared: sweatshirt and windbreaker, towels, binoculars, and, of course, cameras. It was a relatively calm and warm enough morning as we left the harbour. I was cautiously optimistic, but certainly aware that there was a chance we wouldn’t see any puffins. But it felt like a promising day, and I even caught a glimpse of a minke or pilot whale as we got farther into the sea on our way out to the destination.

The fortress, if you will, protecting the Holy Grail: Eastern Egg Rock. This little island sits about 6 miles east of Pemaquid Point and is home to roughly 150 nesting pairs of puffins, as well as a host of other seabirds like terns and gulls. It was about an hour from our departure point in Boothbay Harbor. The “Hilton” on the island is a research station, where teams of hardy scientists spend the summer studying the puffins and their offspring.

So as we approach, our tour guide (Audubon Lady) starts spotting birds: Puffin, 3 o’clock. Tern, 9 o’clock. Puffins flying, 11 o’clock. Puffins diving, 10 o’clock. And so on… Much to my delight, it was quite the puffin-palooza out there. A plethora of puffins. A preponderance even. And like that we spent roughly 30 minutes circling the little island, getting a glimpse of terns (arctic and otherwise), gulls (laughing and not so much), and of course our fill of the enchanting little stars of the day.

Not a puffin. Arctic tern.
Puffin flies over rough seas

In our glee, what we passengers conveniently overlooked was the shift in the wind and the less-than-swell swells that we now had to motor back through to reach the dock. So, just as the captain announced, “the winds have shifted slightly and you may experience some light spray…” we did, and spent the next 40 minutes battening down hatches and bracing for the swells and spray (read: deluges), soaking deck and passengers indiscriminately. The sweatshirt and windbreaker came in very handy. The towels, not so much.

Cameras safely stowed inside, I remembered what my dad taught me about rough seas: breathe fresh air, watch the horizon, and for fucks sake hang onto something! I was wet enough that the saltwater shower didn’t matter by a certain point, so I enjoyed the sunshine, counseled a very green-looking teenager to get as much fresh air into her lungs as possible, and enjoyed the ride. It wasn’t that bumpy after all.

Being on the ocean always brings back warm memories, and this one, paired with the prolific puffin party, did not disappoint. The seas calmed as we were embraced by the harbor, and the warm sun dried salt crystals over my legs and face.

Can you spot the puffin?

I’d drive home from this adventure salty but satiated; pleasantly puffinated if you will.

Birb-spotting: adventures in Covidville.

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Not all my adventures in Covidville have revolved around cultivating sourdough starter or rehabilitating broken body parts. Last summer, shortly before I broke said body part, I bought a new camera and a ridiculously big lens. I figured that since all travel was on hold for the foreseeable future (I had no idea how long the foreseeable future really was…), I’d invest in something to help me see the local landscape and its natural wonders a little more clearly.

But, the lens was backordered. And it arrived about a week after I was released from the confinements of my sling. And, at the time, I could barely lift it with my left arm. I nearly cancelled the order a couple of times in my exasperation. But something told me to stay.

The waiting is the hardest part.

So it turned out that birdspotting became a part of my physical, if not psychological, therapy during these disheartening and altogether gloomy months. The fact that you actually need to leave the house (sorry, sourdough starter) and situate oneself in a place where there is a plethora of nature, and an anti-plethora of people, meant that I would need to spend quite a lot of time outdoors (good), in open, quiet spaces (better), where there were few people (best; on a lot of levels).

So while I know a bit about some birds, it was a new learning experience to be able to literally zoom in and see them more clearly. And so, over these past 9 months or so I’ve really birthed a new passion, or at least a new pandemic obsession.

Once again, Nature as antidote.

In the late summer and into the fall, I began getting used to the lens. It’s big and heavy, and my shoulder was healing and I sometimes didn’t know if it was helping or hurting to be hauling this thing around all the time, as I wasn’t really supposed to be lifting any weights until at least the 3 month mark. And I don’t like using a tripod (there, I said it!). And I’m really trying to shoot mostly manual these days. So a lot of the early photos were crap. And I almost just gave up on a few occasions.

Osprey in predator mode © Lesli Woodruff 2020

Then I went back and visited an osprey nest I know. Getting that much closer to these majestic beings made me better understand why, for me, photography is like meditation. I hold my breath when I shoot, focused for those microseconds on the only thing that exists in that moment: whatever it is in the viewfinder. Ospreys are keen hunters, powerful rockets when honing in on their prey, yet graceful in their strength. I’m in that moment with them, focusing on the target, learning from them their patience and perception and precision and tenacity.

The photos that came from that outing lifted my mood and made me want to get better. Physically. Mentally. Photographically.

Hummingbird © Lesli Woodruff 2020
Hummingbird

Throughout the fall, there were more ospreys and the autumnal waterbirds… and then, week by week, they began to fly south to winter. Which, of course, I wanted to do as well: fly somewhere as the days grew shorter and the Covidness became darker and seemingly unending, unyielding, unrelenting, un…….

With winter on the fringes, ospreys and egrets are replaced with a parade of literal snow birds arriving on the scene. We get snow geese and snowy owls and snow buntings, plus the wintering birds of prey like bald eagles and short-eared owls and hawks of all sorts. All of which were a thrill to see, and maybe a bit of an obsession in trying to find. And a good way to wile away the cold and dark days.

  • Snowy owl © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Snow goose © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Snow buntings © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Bald eagle © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Rough-legged hawk © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Northern harrier © Lesli Woodruff 2020
  • Short-eared owl © Lesli Woodruff 2020

And as seasons go, so do the migration patterns. With the thawing rivers and marshes, the wintering birds fly elsewhere, and longer days bring with them the sights and sounds of spring: early April the ospreys begin arriving again. Then the reeds are alive with the sounds of warblers. Then the vibrant bluebirds give way to orioles and thrushes and kestrels and waxwings and tanagers. Spring indeed is a cacophony of birdsong, plumage and mating dances.

  • I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of those talons. Osprey © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Osprey mating rituals © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Yellow warbler © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Cedar waxwing © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Eastern kingbird © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Orchard oriole (I think) © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Magnolia warbler © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • American redstart (f) © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Common yellowthroat © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Marsh wren © Lesli Woodruff 2021

One of the joys of living near the shore is the return of the shorebirds. I’m seeing an influx of the ducks and egrets and sandpipers that can only mean that brighter, warmer, longer days are upon us.

  • Green winged teal © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Snowy egrets © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Willet © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Sanderling, coming in for a fiery landing © Lesli Woodruff 2021

Which brings me to this week. Although the piping plovers return at the beginning of April, they don’t get to nesting in earnest until sometime in May. There are only roughly 7500 piping plovers in existence, about half on the East Coast of the US. Every chick is sacred, as they say. I’m very respectful of distance and restricted beaches (most of their nesting area is roped off or beaches completely closed to help protect the species), so the long lens helps a great deal!

My pandemic patience and persistence practice, as well as my affinity to avoid crowds have paid off: I’ve found some baby plovers and their relatives.

Piping plover hatchlings can eat on their own on the very first day but won’t fly for about a month. In the process, they peep and skitter across the sand like little worm-eating machines, learning about life in the big bright world as they go. And, boy are they cute!

And there are the killdeer: I’ve created something of a narrative around these birds even though they are slightly less adorable. I’ve been looking for killdeer chicks the past couple of weeks in a place I know there’s a nesting pair. A few days ago one of them was acting really strange so I had an idea there may be chicks around. I went back just before dusk on Friday and finally found them… It was like a small avian circus really. Killdeer are cousins of the plovers and so their chicks are also precocious – the technical term is precocial, meaning they can feed themselves and move around right after hatching, but precocious is more like it. Cheeky, even.

I digress.

Killdeer #1 was tending the flock (4 or 5 that I could see), and as the sun got lower s/he started to gather them underneath her to settle in. But as soon as they all seemed to tuck in, one would pop out and start exploring again…then another…and another. And then s/he had to go herding. At one point, s/he got so exasperated that s/he called her mate to take over. S/he flew off and complained to the willet sitting on a dirt mound nearby while the mate took over fledgling-wrangling duties.

The look on the poor birb’s face was something like a bedraggled mother trying to wrangle scurrying toddlers: “ffs, if you don’t get in here right now Wally, that giant pterodactyl is going to come down and grab you and you’ll never eat any of those yummy marsh grubs again!“

  • Piping plover © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Plover baby © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Greenery, for scale. Piping plover baby © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Hello, fren… do you want to be lunch? © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Mamma killdeer, frantic © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Wally, smol ostrich © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Baby killdeer © Lesli Woodruff 2021
  • Plover-ettes © Lesli Woodruff 2021

It’s been a rocky time in Covidland. I’m grateful daily for relative health and a job I love and and a modicum of sanity and the luxury of being fully-vaccinated…but I’m not taking any of it for granted because it all still feels a little precarious right now.

So my bird tales end here for the day, but the lessons I’ve learnt from birdstalking with a larger lens are clear:

  • Do the thing if you can, especially if you get to learn something new in the process
  • Find nature, experience open spaces, smell the leaves, listen to the birdsong
  • Stay focused on what’s in front of you; there’s a lot of swirling chaos out there that will exist whether or not you pay attention
  • After you’ve gone through a bad day (or a string of them), congratulate yourself for the accomplishment…nobody else may have even noticed, as their days may be equally as trying as yours
  • Bring snacks. It’s easier to stay a little longer doing a thing you didn’t know you’d enjoy if you’re not starving!

Here’s to brighter skies, warmer days and a return to adventuring in earnest.

Yggdrasil, in Newbury.

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Once upon a time, when the line between myth and history was even thinner than today, there was a tree called Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Nordic myth tells us that Yggdrasil was the nucleus that connected the 9 worlds: the world of the humans (Midgard) and those worlds of the two tribes of Norse gods (Asgard and Vanaheim), the world of the giants (Jotunheim), the primordial worlds of fire (Muspelheim) and ice (Niflheim), the worlds of Alfheim (elves) and Svartalfheim (dwarves), and Hel (well…).

Yggdrasil’s roots held the underworld down, and kept Midgard (land of mere mortals) at a neutral place, where prankster-gods like Loki couldn’t cause (as much) mischief from his perch on the upper Asgardian branches. That said, according to legend, he did his fair share. Yggdrasil was the home to myriad woodland creatures and a dragon, and was the epicenter of woodland resources. I paraphrase (and probably get some of it wrong), but if Yggdrasil were to fall, this would signal the end of days.

Oh, the irony.

So yesterday, when I wandered along a new trail and came out of the forest into a meadow on a hilltop, where this gleaming green giant simultaneously welcomed one into, graced, and held dominion over the space, I was awed. Yggdrasil is merely a symbol, of course, because gods and dwarfs and elves and giants don’t really exist. But the World Tree, whose roots tether the real world in all its fragility to the stories, and reach down into the well of Mimir, whose waters hold the depths of knowledge (sought by Odin for which he sacrificed an eye, but that’s another story), stands tall and solid and proud nonetheless.

Trees hold the keys to the wisdom of the land. One must be kind to nature (or trade an eye?) to drink from its well. But, I digress…

Norse Mythology is especially fascinating to me because if you look at it in parallel to the other polytheistic belief systems and their pantheon of gods and goddesses (Hindu, Greek, Roman, etc.), there are striking connections between their symbols and stories and philosophies, yet the Scandinavian relationship with the natural world is much more deeply-pronounced, as evidenced in their folklore (of which I’ve barely scratched the surface!).

I’m spending more time on local trails in these dragging Corona months, hunting egrets for marshy photoshoots, seeking refuge in quiet, wilder spaces (nearby, with safe social distancing and the fewer people the better); escaping the trappings of Zoom meetings and over-blocked Outlook calendars, daydreaming of the day I can hop a flight and head East. If I’m honest, where is of less concern to me right now than when.

But before I wander down a forest path and get lost in a macramé of Indra and Zeus and Thor and Jupiter, I’ll come back to my quiet present, walking these trails with flamboyant ancient characters spinning their stories in my mind, blue skies holding any thunderstorms at bay. Thanks to Surya or Freyr or Ra or Apollo or Sol for the skies on this brilliant afternoon!

So before me stands Yggdrasil, or a simple Oak (or beech or ??) standing tall, surrounded by a ring of boulders. Mind wanders to covens or whatever the collective noun is for philosophers, scholars, arborists, students or, like me, curious photographers that have stumbled upon this wonder… The tree, and its empty auditorium, stands in a meadow whose ridge overlooks the overbuilt town below. The clear day enables me to see beyond the rooftops towards the sandy shores of Plum Island, and from there, out to the Atlantic, only a few miles away as the osprey flies.

I sit in the embrace of Yggdrasil’s shade for minutes, or maybe half an hour, contemplating what, I can’t now remember. But the shriek of a quite small but very insistent human (read: petulant) refusing to move any further “or else” jolts me out of my quiet reverie and back into the real world of he who yells loudest gets the snacks. I get a “he does this all the time” look from the mother and Damien gets rewarded in the form of a juice box and cheese crackers, the bright orange ones whose cello packaging I often see littering the beach. Practice is stopping there: you don’t know her circumstances, I remind myself, and wish them happy trails as I traipse onwards.

I look to the tree as if it could understand my dismay with the world as it is, envisioning the irony of a tree offering a hug to a human, understanding its precarious footing these days.

The birdsong resumes, as does my walk. I spot a scarlet tanager, a fleeting flicker of blood-red in the lush green treetops, and I remind myself to log these outings as I do each of my dives. When we log experiences, we are less likely to take them for granted, I suspect.

I end the day with egrets and an oriole (or was it an American redstart?) and big toads and slithery garter snakes; even a curious white-tailed deer who looked on, perhaps even entertained, as I was assaulted by greenheads (note to self: leap year or non, these f*ckers are always on time).

And there it is: another Day ticked. In the logbook of my mind, I note that as with the now-waning light, we are entering into the spring of the last half of this famously infamous year. I’ll look to the gods of humility and patience and tolerance and forgiveness and humour to guide me through these next trees.

Safari-in-Place: A Lockdown Safari Story.

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There are so many places on this planet I’d rather be right now, and for so many reasons… I’ve missed my niece’s graduation and also a half-baked, not-yet-actually-planned hiking adventure with my favourite co-conspirator. I’ve put off summer plans for a photography expedition with said niece, and I’ve all but lost hope for fall intentions. I’m trying not to think more than a few weeks out right now; even that seems like a massive, whale-gray bank of fog I’m not prepared to chisel through as yet.

So to get out of my own house (and head) if only for a few hours this weekend, I made it a mission to go somewhere I’d never been.

There’s an obscure nature reserve across from a just slightly less obscure one*. I figured out how to get here last weekend, but it was high tide and I didn’t have the right boots to walk the tide-swamped chemin rocheux.

This was last weekend, and the impassable rocky path…see, it’s a little boggy in the middle?

So this weekend I decided to try again, first checking the tide tables and moon phase, which sounds like a fairly new-agey thing to do, but when a full moon can make or break an outing in these parts, it’s worth the effort. The Universe is working in my favour: I had two hours before high tide, and the moon an agreeable waxing crescent. I donned the correct footwear just to be safe**.

This place was deserted, and it was refreshing to be alone in nature, rather than alone in the bubble I’ve occupied for the past 3 months. It felt like I had an alien landscape all to myself. Actually, it reminded me of the Okavango Delta; so much so, that had an ele been foraging in the reeds, I might not have been entirely surprised. Except, of course, that this is New England, on the East Coast of the entirely wrong continent, so there’s that.

I’ll call it a Lockdown Safari; a much-needed escape from this weird hamster wheel we’ve been riding, and a reminder that it’s okay (read: necessary) to step off this merry-go-round if nothing else but to remember that there’s a “there” out there… and even though it’s not Norway or Turkey or Germany or Spain or East Africa or Indonesia or Greece or a dozen of the other places that were or would-have-been under consideration for a visit, it’s still a place I’d never been, full of vibrant springtime colours and resounding birdsong. And a field of poison ivy, the likes of which I’ve never seen…

Today I’m grateful to be able to take at least this small dose of vitamin N(ature), and I’m happy to report that my LightRoom catalogue is looking quite like a page from an Audubon book these days. I’m grateful for the technology that makes it feel like the rest of the world is still there, outside these little personal bubbles in which we’re all semi-trapped; I’m grateful for relative health and thankful for those working so hard to keep us safe. I’m thinking about my niece, whose graduation was a webcast, and my proud-aunt cheers were sadly sent via text and .gif. (Jules, I’m taking you on an adventure as soon as we are able to go!!)

My own recent Audubon collection: Red bellied woodpecker, yellow warbler, osprey, eastern bluebird, bobolink, eastern kingbird, brown-headed cowbird***

I went to sleep last night feeling that same mix of anxiety and hope and gratitude and quiet paranoia, that dull ache in the pit of my stomach I’ve felt each night of the past several months now. I know I’m not alone, but it’s vexing to fall asleep each night wondering what is this? When will it end? Is it just the beginning? What’s next?

What’s next indeed.

*This place is on the back side of a much less obscure place; that one, the more popular and now closed to car traffic one, is likely in that state because of some entitled individuals exercising their right to… to what exactly? But that’s an entirely separate rant!

**N.B.: Living in New England, I’ve noted that one needs at least 8 different genres of footwear (rain, snow, hot, cold, running, walking, mucky, working) and ditto outerwear, as seasons change haphazardly and frequently (and frequently haphazardly!) here.

***Also very cool for bird freaks, or even wanna-be bird-heads: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has put out a fantastic bird-finding app, called eBird, with photo ID, bird calls and a quick bird ID library for birds around the globe. Find it here: https://ebird.org/home.