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Earthly Delights
Jun. 19th, 2024 03:34 pmWell, as I sit down to write this from my Wisconsin redoubt, Taurus Season has already come and gone. And it was busy enough that I didn’t have time to write, either in my perpetually (of late) behind journal or on my web log. So now, as I do, we’re already a bit into Gemini Season and the terminus of the spring season is just around the corner. The woods are getting that distinctive look they always have around this time of year, when the transition into summertime is almost complete. There are flowers on the bushes and growing wild as forbs in the ditches. There is lupine coming up in the nearby prairie, which is the only place it grows around here, as far as anyone knows. That is always the first of the flowers to come up in late spring, and there is more of it this year than I have ever seen before. Spring migration has ended, with all of the summer residents already here by the middle of May, and the leaves have fully leafed out into summer foliage, and the flowers on the apple trees are already long gone. This was an early green up by our standards, compared with previous years, and everything I would guess is about 7-10 days ahead. That’s not really surprising given the odd year we had so far, with almost no winter and a strong humid pattern since spring.
I have documented on this journal so far the dryness of the previous years and I have an inkling that this summer will not be so dry. Often, this May, my mind wandered back to specific days I remember 10 years ago in the May of 2014, so striking was the similitude. Sometimes there are years that rhyme; 2013 and 2014 were like that. They were both years with long, almost paused winters that encroached upon spring. But eventually come May there was some absolutely beautiful weather, and I spent that time, as much as possible, as was my wont in those latter days, walking in the woods or otherwise outdoors. There was also a pronounced wetness that persisted into the summertime. This of course made walking in certain areas a bit of a challenge. Ensconced in suburbia, the surrounds are usually shot full of pesticides and a walk in the neighborhood park is fine; but go down by the river or deep into the woods and the mosquitoes can quickly become intolerable at this time of year. It’s too early to say whether I’ll be right about this – it may be that this spring wetness is a fake-out and we have yet another arduous, hot, dry summer and the drought afflicting the land comes surging back once again. But there’s this urgent feeling that the pattern has flipped somehow. Partly based on superstition I suppose: There have been unusual signs this year, which might be messages from the divine that something has changed, including the eclipse which I drove down to see, and aurora borealis visible from my home, which never happens.
The spring migration felt a bit rushed this year. Often, what will happen is that there is a patch of bad weather and waves of migrants will get bottled up for maybe as much as two weeks before heading on. There was little of that this year. The juncos were gone by April and the yellow-throated warblers were already well on their way to the border with Canada by early May. I know, because I was there visiting my old “home away from home” in the central lake country of Minnesota for a funeral around that time. One of my grandmother’s old friends finally passed away. The quick migration in the spring and the passing kind of symbolize what’s happening right now, all around me. That is, huge changes. The lake country had its own pioneer families who were well-known to one another and often dwelt in the area for generations. At the funeral, I noticed that the numbers in attendance since the last ones I attended in the area – which were for members of my own family – had gone down noticeably. There just aren’t as many of the old generation around, and the number of old families as a whole has also declined. There are a lot of newcomers to the lake country, and they don’t have much connection to the old, nor do they seem much to care about it. That’s the way of things, I suppose. It’s very clear that we are in an age of transition when little can be taken for granted, and this one corner of the known world is just a local case study in that much wider trend.
I always like visiting the north country though, because the transit takes you out of your usual context, which for me this past year has been so urgent with family difficulties and business in general. It’s just far enough away that everything is different. In the lake country, there are some remnants of the old majestic white pine forest that once covered much of that land. It has a kind of primeval and timeless grandeur to it that is rarely matched by anything in this part of the world. And I greatly love this area with its mix of oak, maple and pine forests. We’re at the intersection of two worlds here in the Upper Midwest, right on the northernmost edge of the broadleaf forest which is so congenial to the imagination of Western civilization – being so similar to that of the European plain on which it began, and right on the southernmost edge of those trackless, deep, dark coniferous woods that stretch all the way up into the wilds of far Canada, and which have their Old World equivalent in the depths of Scandinavia and the East Baltic region, a land still beset by fearsome and unfathomable pagans in an age when the Western civilization was still in its infancy. Today, there still seems to be a noticeable cultural divide between the peoples living in these two parallel regions, even if we live in a much more settled and homogenized age – the land never fails to put its stamp on the people.
I suppose if I had to describe the character of Taurus Season this year, it was one of earthly delights, albeit often of a quite or mysterious or wondrous character. In the north country, I watched loons battle all morning for the attention of a female. On occasion they were menaced by an eagle, who once was described by the early settlers of this land as the tyrant of the skies, who occasionally swooped threateningly at the loons as their dance went on. Rains came and went, leaving the land filled with a lush green I haven’t seen the equal of in years. The volume was enough to wipe out the droughts of recent years and bring the river to a flood from which it hasn’t yet come down. On occasion, there were clear, bright, warm days which conjured up the spirit of a decade ago. The forest floors were absolutely filled with carpets of wildflowers, the ephemerals of spring that bloom before the canopy crowds them out of all light. Even some thunderstorms, like unto the old summer storms of my youth, moved through in recent weeks, suffusing the entire scene with a character of nostalgia, though not wistful in spite of all that has happened. So, if I have been absent from my office, which is documenting the history of my times, it is not because I was shirking – I was simply enraptured by the unfolding life around me and for the moment had let it carry me away from my duties.
Writer's postscript: Events delayed my publishing of this piece until Gemini Season was almost over as well.
I have documented on this journal so far the dryness of the previous years and I have an inkling that this summer will not be so dry. Often, this May, my mind wandered back to specific days I remember 10 years ago in the May of 2014, so striking was the similitude. Sometimes there are years that rhyme; 2013 and 2014 were like that. They were both years with long, almost paused winters that encroached upon spring. But eventually come May there was some absolutely beautiful weather, and I spent that time, as much as possible, as was my wont in those latter days, walking in the woods or otherwise outdoors. There was also a pronounced wetness that persisted into the summertime. This of course made walking in certain areas a bit of a challenge. Ensconced in suburbia, the surrounds are usually shot full of pesticides and a walk in the neighborhood park is fine; but go down by the river or deep into the woods and the mosquitoes can quickly become intolerable at this time of year. It’s too early to say whether I’ll be right about this – it may be that this spring wetness is a fake-out and we have yet another arduous, hot, dry summer and the drought afflicting the land comes surging back once again. But there’s this urgent feeling that the pattern has flipped somehow. Partly based on superstition I suppose: There have been unusual signs this year, which might be messages from the divine that something has changed, including the eclipse which I drove down to see, and aurora borealis visible from my home, which never happens.
The spring migration felt a bit rushed this year. Often, what will happen is that there is a patch of bad weather and waves of migrants will get bottled up for maybe as much as two weeks before heading on. There was little of that this year. The juncos were gone by April and the yellow-throated warblers were already well on their way to the border with Canada by early May. I know, because I was there visiting my old “home away from home” in the central lake country of Minnesota for a funeral around that time. One of my grandmother’s old friends finally passed away. The quick migration in the spring and the passing kind of symbolize what’s happening right now, all around me. That is, huge changes. The lake country had its own pioneer families who were well-known to one another and often dwelt in the area for generations. At the funeral, I noticed that the numbers in attendance since the last ones I attended in the area – which were for members of my own family – had gone down noticeably. There just aren’t as many of the old generation around, and the number of old families as a whole has also declined. There are a lot of newcomers to the lake country, and they don’t have much connection to the old, nor do they seem much to care about it. That’s the way of things, I suppose. It’s very clear that we are in an age of transition when little can be taken for granted, and this one corner of the known world is just a local case study in that much wider trend.
I always like visiting the north country though, because the transit takes you out of your usual context, which for me this past year has been so urgent with family difficulties and business in general. It’s just far enough away that everything is different. In the lake country, there are some remnants of the old majestic white pine forest that once covered much of that land. It has a kind of primeval and timeless grandeur to it that is rarely matched by anything in this part of the world. And I greatly love this area with its mix of oak, maple and pine forests. We’re at the intersection of two worlds here in the Upper Midwest, right on the northernmost edge of the broadleaf forest which is so congenial to the imagination of Western civilization – being so similar to that of the European plain on which it began, and right on the southernmost edge of those trackless, deep, dark coniferous woods that stretch all the way up into the wilds of far Canada, and which have their Old World equivalent in the depths of Scandinavia and the East Baltic region, a land still beset by fearsome and unfathomable pagans in an age when the Western civilization was still in its infancy. Today, there still seems to be a noticeable cultural divide between the peoples living in these two parallel regions, even if we live in a much more settled and homogenized age – the land never fails to put its stamp on the people.
I suppose if I had to describe the character of Taurus Season this year, it was one of earthly delights, albeit often of a quite or mysterious or wondrous character. In the north country, I watched loons battle all morning for the attention of a female. On occasion they were menaced by an eagle, who once was described by the early settlers of this land as the tyrant of the skies, who occasionally swooped threateningly at the loons as their dance went on. Rains came and went, leaving the land filled with a lush green I haven’t seen the equal of in years. The volume was enough to wipe out the droughts of recent years and bring the river to a flood from which it hasn’t yet come down. On occasion, there were clear, bright, warm days which conjured up the spirit of a decade ago. The forest floors were absolutely filled with carpets of wildflowers, the ephemerals of spring that bloom before the canopy crowds them out of all light. Even some thunderstorms, like unto the old summer storms of my youth, moved through in recent weeks, suffusing the entire scene with a character of nostalgia, though not wistful in spite of all that has happened. So, if I have been absent from my office, which is documenting the history of my times, it is not because I was shirking – I was simply enraptured by the unfolding life around me and for the moment had let it carry me away from my duties.
Writer's postscript: Events delayed my publishing of this piece until Gemini Season was almost over as well.
