Nature is Never Spent

A bit late, but merry Solstice! I went to the river to watch the sunset and as well as having a few lovely moments with the sky and water, I discovered buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), which has really interesting spherical clusters of blooms.


( Sunset under the cut )

It was even before that day that I picked and ate my first wild blackberries. I have to check my records, but I know that last year, the blackberries were ripe a lot earlier. We had an early spring that year and a late one this year.

Here's a deep summer thing: a lawn, a little wild with the grass gone to seed; the sun low and red-orange, trees casting long heavy shadows, and the spaces between flooded with syrupy pink-amber light; these tanks of light populated with a thousand dragonflies, their transparent wings glowing as they buzz across the lawn.

Back at the park today, the sun was shining over a ridge through the bare branches of the trees in long, pale streams. The trees were so tall, their shadows stretched across the ground forever. Early on I noticed that when the wind would blow, seeds spiraled down, spinning slowly: maple seeds, just now falling from their heights. Later, fluff from the balls that compose the sycamore's seed dispersal system was floating through the air, all of it shining specks flying through the sun.

I went out this evening to stalk birds in the front yard. Of course when I walked out, the doves whistled away and the flitting birds flitted off and everything went quiet for awhile. But I sat down and settled my back against an oak at the bottom of the yard, and in a couple of minutes the birds started returning -- sparrows first, then cardinals and nuthatch, and finally the doves. It was that time of day in the middle of winter when the sun is well on in its short march across the horizon, the light is bright but a bit watery and it makes the colors and shadows stark. It's lovely for being itself.

All of the photos I was taking of the birds were turning out to be blah, though, so eventually I moved up closer to the birdfeeder, behind some shrubs I hoped would screen me. It was a long wait before I realized the birds weren't buying it. They knew I was there and didn't want to risk coming back around.

For a photography session, it could have been disappointing, but there's always something. After a minute or so I noticed the tip of an odd-pinnate leaf hanging down from the shrub I was hiding in. One leaflet was red and dying the others were still green, and there was the barest thread of spiderweb clinging to them. The way they glowed, backlit by the sun, was a jewel in the day.

The French mulberry (beautyberry) are still pretty and pink, but they've lost most of the leaves now, so it's just the berries on the stalks. At the zoo, they're still draped with the "cobwebs" used for decorations at Halloween, and the small bit of frost or condensation that accumulated overnight is glistening on the "webs."



Everywhere else, the leaves are glowing in the low amber light.

The weeds growing over the wall by the stairs where I teach are making taller and taller shadows every morning. They're goldenrod, and they're about to bloom.

I'm at the farm, where we have an attic fan and the windows and doors open and cool air, but not mosquitoes, flowing through the screens. Last night was even more delicious than the day. In the morning, I took the dogs for their walk through the woods and I was a little surprised to see the clearings, which were low and brown two weeks ago, full of tall green weeds and saplings and revived flowers. The sun coming through the trees is always so pretty.



On one of the woodland sunflowers was a small brown butterfly. I stepped slowly closer to see if I could get a picture of it with the little camera I had in my pocket, and it didn't move. I thought I was awfully lucky to have found a sluggish butterfly, so I got closer and closer, until I saw, with a start, the eight green legs of the butterfly's killer, locked in the death embrace.

The embrace, linked for the squeamish

For the first time in two weeks I am back to my normal workday schedule of waking up at 0600. Because of the two-week gap, I suppose, I noticed a difference from two weeks ago: it is still dark when I wake. Well, mostly dark. The sky isn't bright, and the sun certainly isn't beating down on the balcony by the time I'm eating breakfast.

This summer, I taught some students from an equatorial African country. I always ask students at the end of the semester to tell me something that surprised them when they arrived here. These students said they weren't prepared for the fact that it didn't get dark until nine o'clock or so. "How can children go to sleep?" they wondered. In their country, they told me, the sun comes up around seven and goes down around seven every day, all year.

It's such a fundamental routine, seasons and day length, so ingrained when you've spent a lifetime taking it for granted.

On Saturday morning, I got up earlier than one would like, for a Saturday -- 6:30, at the insistence of my cat. Once I looked out the window, though, I wasn't sorry. There was dew on the grass and the light was as clear as I've ever seen it in summer. I went outside, barefoot, toting my camera. While looking through the view finder — I don't know if I would have noticed otherwise -- I discovered that the colors were so pure and brilliant, things almost looked plastic. Did I not expect nature to have colors so intense?

I think it's just that the light rarely lets me see those colors. Later in the day, the sun is so strong, I have to wear sunglasses or close my eyes, so I see darkened colors or something so washed out it's barely visible through my squint. At other times of year and times of day, the angle of the sun is different, the color of the light is different. It affects how things look. Not in a bad way ‐ my favorite light is the long, amber slant of light. But at that moment, before 7 in the morning at just about midsummer, the sun was already high but not too strong. It was perfectly complementary to the colors of the earth. It loved them.

A couple of years ago, a construction project along my usual route to work forced me to find another way. The alternate route I discovered passes through a neighborhood I've since been advised never to stop the car in. The construction project has long since been finished, but I haven't changed back to my old, reportedly safer, route. I like the new one because it also passes through an urban natural area. By far more compelling than the condition of the neighborhood are a broad, shallow creek, which during storms collects the runoff from the whole southern part of the city and swells to twenty times its usual size; the tall wading birds that visit it; the way the marsh grasses silhouette black against the silver surface of the water; the power line above the creek where sometimes kingfishers, sometimes a hawk perch to watch for prey; and the woods that shade the road from the morning sun's glare, except for a few beams shafting through the summer haze. I saw the hawk again this morning, only a few yards from my car, and it reminded me that this is definitely the way I'd rather start my workday.

I'm also glad the city didn't decide that a better way to collect and direct rainwater runoff was to build a massive system of concrete-lined canals. The natural way is beautiful, provides a place for birds and people to go fishing, and does the job it has always done.