What the Coyote said to the Loon

You may know the story of the Lewis County man whose snowmobile hit a boulder in a drift softened by a January thaw as he was on way to his cabin near the Lake Bonaparte State Forest quite a few years back now: about how he lay there unconscious for he would never know how long, but it could not have been too long, because he didn’t die; and he didn’t die because the next thing he knew he was deep in a talus cave with a sow Black bear who had dragged him there by the hood of his snowmoblie suit …. the story of how he escaped, which was not too hard as the bear had reentered the hybernation state and the cave was not far from his cabin, of how the she Bear came looking for him when next she turned over in her cave, of the unprescented relationship between the two that resulted … and so on. Well anyway, I wrote the story. I mean that I literally wrote the story, not that I lived it, but it is surprising to me now that I have NOT been dragged off and adopted or eaten by a bear myself, considering that in my early middle ages, heedless of that particular danger, I made so many bicycle trips between Ithaca and the Adirondacks, even to Boston and back, pulling off the road at so many bridges over so many creeks, to roll out my sleeping bag, maybe make a lttle fire on the creek bank to cook my favorite rehydreded oxtail soup or if it rained, just rolling the plastic ground- cloth around me, and eating a stick of cheese. So a bear attracted by my cooking or my cheese-breath could well have come along and dragged me off or eaten me right there like a burrito; and somehow that never happened. In the Summer if sevety eight when I arrived at the banks of the Slate River in Colorado, it was probably someting like four or five in the morning. I had walked the last mile or so after being left off by my hitched ride, a guy on his way up to wrangle trail horses he kept at the foot of Crested Butte. Eric and Kathleen’s cabin was on the other side of the creek, along with a few others, all reached by a foot bridge where their several cars were parked. I decided that I shouldn’t come knocking at their door like a bear in the night so I got out my sleeping bag rolled it out there by the bank of the Slate and sat up, not expecting to sleep before morning broke, excited as I was, with mountains behind me and mountians sloping steeply up from just across the river flats, and about a mile further above sea level than I had ever been, it wasn’t so much the sky above me, as my head was in the sky with the unblinking stars. So THEN I heard the call of a loon: familiar enough to me from the East; but the call of the loon echoed off one or the other or both the mountians across the river and behind me; and then a COYOTE answered the Loon. And sure enough the loon answered the Coyote …and to remove all doubrt, that went on for a while. And I am sure that if I had ever leaned what to make of it, that experince would have by itself changed my life forever, but I didn’t and much to my surprise when I woke, I had been lulled…or somethinged to sleep. Since then Coyotes have become common in the East, but I have only heard them conversing with Dogs. And though I answer to them, they do not answer to me.

Know I am there

I always know that I am there, because this rude guy announces me everywhere

Nest of my Nest

I had tied Bones, the scarey B. word Bird up in the nest I made in the Cherry Plum tree to maybe keep others....like the neighborhood tiger for instance...from squatting in it, because that is my damn catbird seat.. But I go up there...and what do I find? A little nest in my nest. It is lined whith cherry plum blossoms, whatever bird not impressed by old Bones. Okay then. Okey Dokey. Think I'll see how things look on the roof where the Grackles have been bowling horse chestnuts. Then take a walk.

Pinhead Catches the Rays

The air was cold, the sun was intense, and about as soon as Pinhead left the shadow of the chicken house this morning, she flopped down in that radiance looking like a bird that had died crossing the deseert, but for her gently breathing feathers, and then the great kerfulffel when Blue Jay came by.

Weeping Birch Chicken Blues

She thought she saw a Fisher Cat: