It's here again: fall, the season of transition. It bridges the vast chasm between sultry summer and winter's austerity. Nature's gorgeous swan song, fall reaches a grand crescendo before its blazing colors are finally extinguished. The leaves have begun to turn, with bursts of ochre and russet punctuating the drive from country to city. I have always found this time of year especially poignant, for we are witnessing the demise of all that we saw come to life these past months. It is the natural order of things, and it is bittersweet. My dear friend, the talented illustrator and creative director Jan Richter, captures the intensity of fall's colors in these gorgeous illustrations of the season's glories.
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I had my first guest-post on a kindred spirit's blog this week. The visionary Peter Buchanan-Smith honored me with a feature on his fascinating blog, Best Made Projects. We share an interest in the natural world, so when he asked me to review a field guide, I chose one by the naturalist and early environmentalist Roger Tory Peterson (seen above holding a movie camera mounted on a gun stock). Peter has kindly allowed me to re-post my review in its entirety here.FIELDING QUESTIONS: A Review of Roger Tory Peterson Field Guides - Eastern ForestsReturning home to Sullivan County from the stinky summer streets of New York City brings a surge of relief and gratitude: the cool night air filled with the rustle of leaves and the throbbing drone of cicadas is a tonic. The woods I now call home are not the same as those I grew up with in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. Fog-shrouded sequoias and wild surf are here replaced with blazing summers and snowy winters among the hawthorn, hickory, maple and pine. The Steller’s jay of my youth is now the equally brazen blue jay of my mid-life. The fence around our small property does little to keep out all the critters that also live here, and long rambles on our kind neighbor’s thousand acres have led to countless discoveries, animal, mineral and botanical.
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We're seriously considering buying this piece of land that was brought to our attention by a guardian angel up here in Sullivan County. The idea would be to build our dream house on it one day. It's a nice-sized 5-acre lot that starts with a gorgeous meadow and rolls down a hill to a breathtaking reservoir. The best thing is that across the reservoir is all state-owned land that is a protected sanctuary for the bald eagle. We put the canoe in there the other day and it's absolutely stunning. The prospect of being able to live in such a place seems almost too good to be true.So you can imagine how my heart broke when I watched Josh Fox's gripping documentary, Gasland, on HBO the other night. It was a hit at Sundance and I imagine it will get theatrical distribution at some point, but I urge you to see it now; you can watch it on HBO On Demand. Hot, bitter tears rolled down my cheeks during most of the film, which is about fracking—the hydraulic fracturing process that is being used to free up natural gas from within vast shale deposits. Natural gas is being touted as the ideal "transition" fuel that will take us away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources. In fact, this extraction method is entirely unregulated, thanks to a loophole created by Dick Cheney, that evil and calculating sonofabitch. He even convinced the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that is supposed to look after 264 million acres of pristine public land—that's OUR land—to allow drilling.
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I am grief-stricken. Here are just some of the innocent creatures currently dying because of the gulf oil spill: Birds, Reptiles & Amphibians, Fish, Invertebrates, Habitats & Plants, Wetlands, Marine Mammals and Terrestrial Mammals, including but not limited to pelicans, sea otters, tortoises,  seals, shrimp, oysters, plankton, sea gulls, plovers, algae, turtles,  dolphins, egrets, insects, crabs, herons, fish, manatees, sea lions, whales, jellyfish, porpoises. This is an outrage and a tragedy: one that could have and should have been avoided. And yet further evidence that this country must turn away from fossil fuel consumption and toward a future of alternative energy sources.

This weekend was full of interesting animal friends. Pulling off the road to get a closer look at some baby geese, we wound up near a swampy pond where we saw a big osprey nest poised on top of a tall, limbless dead tree. With the binoculars, we could just make out the top of somebody's head and then, sure enough, mama (or daddy?) came swooping in with a big fish dangling from its talons! And just then, lumbering across the field and heading straight for the water was this big dame—a snapping turtle with a long tail like an alligator's, big beady eyes and plenty of attitude. She must have weighed about 20+ pounds, but they can get up to 45!
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That's sure what it sounded like some time after midnight last night, when this tree came crashing down onto our little barn. We were just drifting off to sleep when we heard a few strange squeaks that we thought might be some new sort of nocturnal visitor. (In retrospect, I think it was the straining of the wood before it split.) It was windy last night, powerful gusts blowing in the rogue snow showers predicted for early this morning. Suddenly there was a loud wrenching thud, the sound of damage. G went racing out with the night-vision goggles and reported back that a major tree was down. In the morning we were greeted with this grim aftermath...
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You won't believe this, but there was ANOTHER bear in the yard and this one was ENORMOUS. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a picture because it was night. (This one is an approximation I pulled off the web.) We came home late and I was puttering in the kitchen when I heard some loudish crashing noises outside. Thinking it was G, I called out to him but he was in the bedroom, on the other side of the house! He immediately ran over with the night-vision goggles (the best birthday present I ever got him) and spied a huge bear UP IN THE TREE behind our house. It was trying to pry open our metal bird-feeder to get at the black sunflower seeds we've since learned are a bear favorite. (The feeder is now dismantled. Sorry, Tweety.) Then I looked through the goggles and was TERRIFIED! The bear was looking right at me and, because of the night vision, his eyes were like big green saucers. My heart was pounding and it didn't help that the sister-in-law was giving me a blow-by-blow over the phone of how a bear broke into David Letterman's house and ripped the door off his fridge. WTF? Our house started to feel like a cardboard shack. G said the bear was over 7 feet tall!!! But eventually it scrambled down and lumbered away, and later I fell so sound asleep I didn't even hear it come back in the middle of the night. Good thing G stays on the alert...
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Today is Earth Day. I remember the first one, back in 1970. We planted trees at Delaveaga Elementary School. Mock plum, if I'm not mistaken; something with lots of pink blossoms. Do you feel at home in the great outdoors or, like Woody Allen, are you "two with nature"? If you don't live in the country, I encourage you to head out to the biggest park you can find and take a walk, or just sit for a while. Open your senses and take in the beauty. In this consumer society, we are continually made to feel as though we (and our fat thighs, stringy hair, deficient pecs and shabby clothes) are the center of the universe. The opportunity to see where we actually fit in—our place in relation to the vastness of the ocean and sky—is truly invaluable. Show this to your children (live, not on TV).
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Last weekend we took our houseguests exploring in the woods behind our house. The air was fresh and clean, the sun was shining, the woodpeckers were tapping out a beat and there were plenty of newts and tadpoles to ogle. It's amazing to think that just a couple hours out of the city you can be an entire world away. (Or at the designer outlets at Woodbury Commons, for that matter.) The last photo, of the snake, was actually taken in our front yard. The first garden snake of the season...
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Now that spring is here, most mornings G and I will head into the woods behind our property where all manner of goings-on have us totally intrigued. Are you as fascinated as I am by the wonders of nature? Ever since I was a small child I have been content to rummage around on the forest floor or at the water's edge, searching for bugs or plants or animal life of any sort. (We have a little cabinet of curios in our cottage where we deposit our most precious finds: a discarded locust's shell; a papery wasp's nest; a boldly-patterned turkey feather; a chunk of a turtle's shell. I'll get G to document these for you sometime.) Anyway, I think I've mentioned the vernal pools before, right? They are small shallow ponds or enormous puddles that form because of the melting snow and heavy rains of early spring, creating marshy areas as seen above. The wonderful thing is that these are breeding grounds for frogs, newts and salamanders!
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