Another American Adventure: down by the canal

Sunday, December 30, 2012

down by the canal

Somewhat cooler than usual in Florida, it's a good time for walks down by the canal.

This is the heron that hangs out on the back of the decoy.

An unusual looking bird on the other side of the lake (hard to see because he was so far away) ...

... and neighbor Linda's lovely fence flowers ...

It's all a far cry from the snow and below freezing temperatures that John will face when he heads back North next week. If all goes well, Jubilee and I should be up there in February, before the winter ends.

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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.