Cleanse ye your eyes, so that ye behold no man as different from yourselves…. See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends, for love and unity come hard when ye fix your gaze on otherness. ~Baha'i
Author: Rising Over the Smoke
Rising Over the Smoke is me looking for larger patterns, hidden meanings in what goes on all around us. The world gets more conflicted and confused from one year to the next, or so it seems. Some days life feels fresh, open, energized, connected, others more nuanced, confused, distanced, lethargic. To me writing is a way of exploring my place, and perhaps that of others.
I am Baha’i, thus my thoughts are affected by my faith. Beliefs include independent investigation of truth, equality of men and women, the essential harmony between science and religion, that there is one God from whom all the world’s religions spring, that we diverse humans are all of one family. The Baha’i Faith is unlike other existing world religions as it does not claim to be the only “true” path or religion. The Baha’i Faith acknowledges all sacred traditions and religions as equal.
The tune for this blog name goes along with the fine and impressive aria O sole mio.
As a token of my appreciation of the new ear worm in my head, I give you, for three minutes and twenty one seconds, Signor Luciano Pavarotti, no twiggy build himself.
My unexpected area of focus on the day of my breast cancer surgery (June 13) was — embarrassingly — my weight. A scale in the surgical prep area was the first one in a dozen years that I’ve been able to stand on, crutches and braces along for the ride. It had a broad, non wobbly base and a strong railing around it.
My moments on the device disclosed that I am some twenty pounds heavier than I thought I was. Er… pretended I thought I was, if we are being honest. And what would be the point of fibbing to my blog?
Photos taken of me on such occasions as my daughter’s wedding and a pleasant trip to Fresno’s Japanese Garden gave me to speculate that I might be reaching more of a barrel shape than the woman shape I previously thought I had. The surface mind poo poo-ed the notion that these images depicted the actual Emily.
The Inner Emily, nonetheless, was deep into panic mode. Because, well, how DOES one shed weight when so many hours a day are spent in a lovely power wheelchair?
Here, for your studious picturing of me lounging around in my upcoming new, attitude-laden wheelchair is the manufacturer’s image of it and its capabilities:
Quantum Tru-Balance 3 Edge 2.0
Twenty pounds is a great deal of extra personal real estate for a very short person to cart around.
Here I lie in the recovery room, groggy and fuming… Feeling like a dirigible. My daughter took the photo.
Thus about the time I groggily noticed that the world was still there as the anesthesia wore off my mind began plotting means of dropping the excess Me.
The problem has not been that I eat too much. My vegetarian diet has included almost no refined grains, little fat or sugar, lots of fruit and veggies, for years. So maybe there’s been rather too much cheese, but who was counting?
Never slim because that’s not my body type, with or without the polio, my okay weight began shifting into bad three and a half years ago when my shoulders started with severe issues. The doctor thought this would be either rotator cuff injuries or the wear and tear of walking around with wooden crutches for sixty five years. Or both. Didn’t make any difference to me what the cause was — I was, due to the incapacitated shoulders, quite unable to push myself up into the cab of my faithful pickup truck and get myself to an Albuquerque medical center for an MRI.
So I pampered the shoulders for a few months until they stopped with the hurting. However, once recovered they were weak and unable to bear much weight. Or allow me to walk around for long before my arms would start to go numb.
That sort of thing took away much of my ability to do things like yard work that had once given me pretty good workouts. Less walking around is an obvious calorie enhancing activity.
So here I am.
For now I am doing the Dr. Fuhrman Eat to Live diet, which helped in the past when I also wasn’t equal to much exercise. It’s vegan, with very little fat or sugar, tons of veggies fresh and cooked, plenty of fruit. Legumes, a few nuts and such are encouraged.
I’ve been at it for over a week now and my clothes feel slightly looser. Wahoo!
Meantime, Fresno temperatures have been in the range of 108º for days, rather quelling even the dogs’ enthusiasm for outdoor exercise. But we have managed to record a few of the lovely flowers and trees around us. Very healing enhancing, these lovely things are.
108º heat keeps the dogs in the shade on their mid day walks
Silk tree flower in the neighborhood. AKA mimosa tree. Photo by my daughter, Jericha Rendon.
It came as no surprise, really, yet when I read earlier today that the President of the US has decided to get the United States out of the historic Paris Climate Accords, the news returned me to that same sense of incredulity, shock, dismay, and finally deep swamps of sorrow that I felt last November on election night.
But now I am meeting a second big struggle with a disease in my life, since my breast cancer diagnosis a couple of weeks back. In considering today’s news about this withdrawal from shared international responsibility it feels as though those who would jump in to do their parts in working out solutions are being hindered by the cancer of ignorance.
I hope — believe — that the innate creativity and optimism shared by many people in the United States will find ways to navigate around the stones of ignorance now impeding the flow.
My hope is for the greater world, for the staunch hearts and minds of Americans whose love for their own country does not mean withdrawing into it in oblivion to what goes on around it, who are kind, generous, hard working, hopeful, creative, caring, responsible people. Capable of seeing the shades of grey that define so much in lives well lived. Incapable of believing, among other things, that neighboring countries are crammed with evil minded people intent on doing all sorts of nasty things in the US as soon as they can just sneak in. That we ought to build a colossal great wall along a border to try to stop them.
Here is a wall that it is hard to go through — it is some feet underground, cut through solid rock. Even so, somebody with the tools and experience can, indeed, pass through it.
Never in life have I been a political animal, and I don’t intend on ever becoming one. So this is not a partisan rant of any kind. But I am a lover of and believer in science, plus a life time member of the Baha’i Faith with its profound emphasis of the interconnectedness of all human beings.
And the beauty and general awesomeness of Earth with its varied systems of life, its relation to other planets, the galaxy it is a wee part of, the billions of other galaxies — many so much larger and more impressive than ours — it’s been at the heart of me for as long as I can remember.
When I was going through the pain, the enormous changes in my physical capabilities that paralytic polio had left me with at the age of five, something that contributed hugely to my good recovery was thinking of the beautiful wooded areas, the little streams and ponds, the myriad colorful insects, birds and fish that we saw all around back home. A few loving friends sent me such hospital-acceptable gifts as a small palm tree in which the exoskeleton of a cicada cleverly perched. How many hours my twelve year old self, locked inside a body cast for long months as I had to lie in bed, spent extrapolating whole systems of life, glorious forests in tropical regions, summer choruses from the Massachusetts katydids I was familiar with, flights of amazingly colorful birds in tropical palms, from that little tree and empty bug husk.
Years later I was sufficiently impressed by the rather ghastly movie, Soylent Green, that I still haven’t forgotten it. And I fervently hope things never come to such a pass that the closest people come to nature is to be allowed to watch films of long-gone scenes of forests, rivers and creatures as they are euthanized when old or sick.
Paris is directly linked to a process the US administration deplores. Yet globalisation is a process that cannot be turned off. Something to work with, rather than turn one’s back towards. Humanity has evolved and invented technologies and systems which necessarily link together all sorts of countries and cultures. No one is prepared to easily roll back the internet or medical breakthroughs, as examples.
With the advances of globalization come changes in economies that hurt some people for some time, yet offer opportunities to create and to work in new, emerging jobs and fields.
And then comes this “America First” rollback into old ways, possibly in the interest of extractive industries whose better days peaked decades ago, which were key to the climate damage addressed by the Paris Accords.
Despite nostalgic Christmas cards and love for Laura Ingalls Wilder stores, how many of us honestly would choose to live a century or two ago?
As the Industrial Revolution unfolded people had to make the same sorts of tough choices regarding their livelihoods that we do now — in pretty much every country, every culture, every epoch of history. Adaptability is what slowly carried the human race away from cave dwelling.
It will continue to do so. It’s a time to be creative, to see what we will make out of the challenges ahead. I, for one, can’t wait to see. I have faith in people’s ability to move forward when there is a big need.
An ancient Hawaiian petroglyph. Photo by my daughter, Jericha Rendon, on Oahu. It reminds me of a similar Hopi symbol, which indicated the people going outward.
Change is the one constant in the universe.
So, to me, the whole idea of “America First” slogan is based on shifting sands.
Which brings me to the campaign cry that “maybe there is something true about the idea that humans may be affecting the climate somehow, perhaps, possibly, but we need more research — a lot more research — to know anything about that.”
Yet it is widely accepted that independent scientists around the world have firmly established the poisonous role fossil fuels play in Earth’s shallow atmosphere. Poll after poll indicate that this is what the majority of Americans believe.
Resistance to the cancerous apparent ignorance of politicians can be swift and to the point. Researchers just published a paper refuting, handily, the uninformed arguments of the current EPA director, who questions human-caused climate change. Yet it has not swayed that individual’s opinion.
What can be the justification for withdrawing the country — a decision made, apparently, by a small cadre of people in the executive branch — from the Paris Accords? Only two — TWO — other countries are not signed into those accords. Syria was too busy with its internal vast war, and Nicaragua didn’t see that it had much to do with global warming one way or another.
So the bedraggled United States of America goes down a rabbit hole, averse to any leadership it could have had, leaving the other 195 — oops, 194 now — countries of the world working in an organized manner to create systems which can slow down and eventually halt the forces that contribute to planetary warming.
Much is to be learned from working with others, little in building great walls along our borders and slinking off the world stage, washed up leaders in the technology and creativity that will lift the world out of the atmospheric disaster threatening all of us.
It is a fine thing that there are talented people in other parts of the world who are ready to step up to take care of what the US won’t, now. As a country, of course — there are innumerable businesses, organizations and individuals who will work all the harder to combat global warming now.
These are thoughts zinging through my mind as I write down these few, in my semi-measured response to today’s Very Bad News. Good that will eventually come of it. Could be disasters, too. I don’t expect to be around long enough to see how things play out in the long, long run. I do care, very much, about all the people, creatures and systems that are affected by what we do, or don’t do. My own grandchildren and their descendants alongside everyone else’s.
At least let’s be scientific about it.
Of course the planet takes care of itself, in geological time. It’s the human race that stands to learn or lose by this enormous common climate challenge that we have — some of us — brought on ourselves.
I respect the views of others. There is so much to gain through consulting objectively, listening carefully, thinking long before responding to unfamiliar ideas that come from people who look different, speak other languages, practice strange ways of living.
Those differences are what makes the process of change so exciting to be party to.
“The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.”
“See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends, for love and unity come hard when ye fix your gaze on otherness.
A rose that bloomed in front of my apartment in April
These things I am about to explain would be happening during the Merry Month of May…
While all has been quiet this past month on the blog, much has been happening in my life. Things not so easy to bring into words from those nonverbal spaces in my mind where hidden fears encounter my normal optimistic outlook for regular show downs. Or unresolved differences of opinion.
Back in early May there was a mammogram, then a biopsy, followed by a doctor’s surprising announcement that the lump I had discovered back in February qualifies for the undesirable name of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.
I will skip over the reasons why it took three months to get something done about this lump. Some of it had to do with Medicare’s byzantine system of obfuscations and deliberate delays. Nevertheless, living in this country at this particular time I am quite grateful to have regular health insurance.
So here I am, with loved ones who have two feet and four feet, at this the place where an old Polio Survivor gets to try out for a second award, Cancer Survivor. And feeling very blessed that one of the four-footed ones nearly left us this month, but is now restored, snoozing alongside me. All bright and sparkly once again.
Hardly anyone knows what polio was all about any more — thankfully. Yet back in the 1950s polio was the same sort of dreaded, poorly understood scourge that AIDS later became, and Ebola is now. It killed many, left others permanently paralyzed in differing degrees — and is now known to revisit its survivors many decades later, causing joint and muscle pain and increasing weakness.
The month of May in past years has occasionally brought me other not-so-great life changing events. Such as my twenty year old brother being killed in a car wreck on May13, 1970. Such as my beloved daughter coming down with bacterial meningitis on Mother’s Day when she was just four years old. It turned out to be pneumococcal meningitis, a particularly nasty infection in which there can be a short buildup of illness followed by an abrupt bacterial population explosion that carries the sick person swiftly away.
Spring weather was unusually cold that year. My daughter became ill during the night, and when I called her pediatrician’s office the next morning the nurse told me to give her tylenol for the fever and keep in touch. Over the next twenty four hours her symptoms of nausea, fever and photophobia increased, as did the nasty weather. More calls asking for doctor time as well as suggestions, and the nurse began suggesting that I was “just a little nervous, which some new parents can be ….” That about put me over the top, since I did not consider myself to be any such thing. And, well, she was four years old, which hardly made me a new parent.
After speaking with that unhelpful medical professional (who was soon summarily dismissed) I happened to be gazing out my daughter’s window where my landscaper cousin was at work on his small excavator in the backyard. As I watched through a fine drizzle the scraper accidentally struck the new concrete back step he had poured a week earlier, cracking the corner where my daughter had left her palm print.
That was my now or never moment. I got my soundly sleeping child out of her bed, fever now touching 105º (40.5º C). Since a mother on crutches cannot possibly carry a little one regardless of how much she longs to, I basically bullied her out the door and into the car. Again out of the car and across the doctor’s completely filled parking lot. Again and again the tiny knees would begin to buckle, and I would urge her on towards the door. When we finally reached it, in she tottered, collapsed on the rubber mat, as I went off to fetch someone from the doctor’s office for help.
A spinal tap established, via cloudy fluid, that this was a hospital emergency, not something the doctor should handle on his own. So off we went, a nurse driving, to where Jericha was quickly attached to an IV with antibiotics, and I took to her bedside chair day and night, with relief shifts from my husband. Leaving, sadly, my Alzheimer’s stricken mother at home alone with the cocker spaniel much of the time. Happily, with only short visits from us, Grandma got through the four days we spent at the hospital quite well.
She still had it in her to rise to the occasion when a need arose.
On the second day in the hospital the doctor called me in Jericha’s room to say the pathogen had been identified. It was bacterial rather than a virus, and one that “was about to explode in her. You very possibly saved her life by getting her in just when you did,” he told me.
Thus lovely May with its glorious flowers, singing birds and fresh fruit has a created a mental knee jerk reaction for me when there is a medical problem.
Some of the many, many roses at Fresno’s Forestiere Underground Gardens. These particular ones are along the driveway that enters a tunnel soon after. The underground home was dug over some forty years by a Sicilian immigrant, Baldissare Forestiere in the early 1900s. He had the good idea that living below ground level would cool down the fiery Fresno summers for him. Since he had grown up tending his father’s orange orchards in Italy, he wanted trees near him. So he punched holes up through the rock that passes for ground in the area, allowing sunshine in for his own trees and flowers.
With my cancer nearly everything lies ahead. A surgery, radiation, recovery. A mammogram of the other breast seems to have evoked more medical concern, as at the very beginning of this holiday weekend I received a letter from the hospital informing me that “it is recommended that you have a surgical consultation”.
And I was just beginning to feel as though the problem might be resolved by nothing more drastic than a lumpectomy and a period of radiation. Since it is a holiday weekend there is little to be done other than waiting for further information later in the week. Perhaps another biopsy?
That little that remains to be done, however, involves nursing a precious family member — Elf the Corgi. A few days ago she suffered a serious bout of diarrhea. As the day moved into darkness there was also vomiting. Then diarrhea that was pink, then red. A trip to an emergency veterinary hospital ensued, as her regular vet had closed for the day.
By the time Elf got in the doors at the hospital blood was coming out both ends in a most alarming way. The dog has a bad habit — shared by many of her species — of scarfing up roadside snacks during her walks. Some of them are utterly disgusting. We had her tested right away for Parvo. Although she and Opus are current on their vaccinations there is a newer strain of the disease that could still have affected her. Luckily, though, that was not it. Pancreatitis and “obvious” masses were quickly ruled out as well. Some form of gastritis it was.
She stayed in the hospital for about 36 hours, on IV antibiotics for what the vets decided was mostly likely an infection, probably from something she had grabbed during one of her walks.
On Friday morning she came home feeling much more like herself, despite a lingering sleepiness.
Jericha and I had just enough time to buy and cook up a batch of boiled chicken and white rice (I normally keep only brown on hand) for a light meal for her, and to give her one of her various new medications — before it was time to rush off to my first Oncology appointment.
This feels a bit more like a big old wail than a proper blog post, yet I hope it will serve to explain my long silence.
I who firmly believe that Everything Goes Better If You Write About It was flat out of words.
Namasté and tally ho, we will get through this one, too. One way or another.
“Whatever competent physicians or surgeons prescribe for a patient should be accepted and complied with, provided that they are adorned with the ornament of justice. If they were to be endued with divine understanding, that would certainly be preferable and more desirable.”
(Bahá’u’lláh, from a Tablet – translated from the Persian)
One of the Forestiere tunnels. Baldassare, an intensely religious man, broke every one of these rocks (and many thousands more) with his own hands and the mortar from dust. He must have been one of the most persistent human beings ever.
Olives and oranges dot backyards and some sidewalks here in Fresno. In lots of other California localities as well. This is, however, a bit of an anomaly for Elf, Opus and me, being fresh from New Mexico where neither tree grows, much.
Whoever thought these dogs might find themselves No-No’d for trying to snack on the fallen fruits?
A corgi is a
serious sort of dorgi
Funny and regal by turns
^^^
Dachs-terr, one bundle
Of snuggles and heart tugs
Soft eyes shine with joy
We have begun The Official Birthday Month of Elf the Corgi and Opus the Dachshund/Terrier. Elf having been born seven years ago as of April 8, Opus twelve years as of May 1.
I figured there is no harm in giving them an entire month (almost) of being special between their natal observances this year, our first in Fresno, California.
These days when the two set forth on their trots around the ‘hood the fragrance of orange blossoms is powerful along the driveway behind out apartment compound and the lovely homes behind us. The olive tree marks its presence by dropping lots of black — very, very black — olives all over the backyard in which it stands.
Feral cats and brazen Mockingbirds, as well as the occasional tiny little chi-dog zooming by in its minuscule sweater, give E & O the urge to leap after them. Alas, they have pretty much learned the hard city lesson about walking on bungee leashes.
Elf has been with me since the first few weeks of her life. Opus for exactly half of his. Do they ever miss the lovely dog door and fenced back yard they had in New Mexico? Hard to be sure. I suspect the company of my daughter, Jericha, and her husband, Francisco, goes far to dim any memories of the pleasure of running in and out at will. Their outings are certainly more varied and far ranging than they were in our former little back yard.
In fact, we have all made a pretty good adjustment to city life, in California to boot.
Happy birthday, you little ones. May your paws long take you through pretty vistas, where Mockers sing you their dazzling repertoires and olives might tumble on your innocent heads.
Silvio Rodriguez, the long-time Cuban poet/folk singer, often provides background music for me when I am a creative mood. I love his gentle, thoughtful music and musings. So today I am including ¿A Donde Van? (Where Are You Going?). It’s a delightful wondering about what becomes of us, and things. For an amusing insight into what it might mean, try using Google translate to give an English approximation of the Spanish lyrics. For example:
What will my old shoes be converted to?
Where did they go to give so many leaves of a tree?
Today her humans are celebrating the birthday of one of Elf the Corgi’s best friends, name of Jericha. Spirits are light, brightness sets the air a-sparkle, and Elf’s eyes shine as well.
But earlier in the week she was struggling with unfamiliar pains in her lady-dog bits. It hurt to pee, and the stalwart corgi was at her wits end about getting the problem fixed. Much as she steadfastly kept on keeping on, this was getting worse, not better.
Eventually things came to a head, as they will do in such cases. Jericha, who has been hemophobic off and on from a tender age, was leading Elf and Opus around the big block they now inhabit in the city of Fresno, California when Elf squatted to pee for the third time of the morning. Why did this normal thing hurt so much?
Jericha happened to glance at Elf’s back end during the process.
Turning white, she asked Elf’s human, who is Jericha’s mother, “Do you see something red?” Uh oh, Human sure did. Bright blood both on the ground, and around a certain spot on the corgi’s iconic, rounded backside.
Jericha had also caught sight of the red spot and pretty quickly she was sinking to her knees, right there on the sidewalk. Human took over the dog leash, a coupler shared by Elf and her partner in dragging humans along, Opus the Dachs-Terr. Elf’s human does not walk the dogs on the coupler as the pair of them, in deciding to take off after a taunting squirrel, might just pull her out of her power wheelchair.
So the three stood by as Jericha gradually recovered from her near faint. Up she stood, off they stepped — for about ten feet, till Jericha again caught sight of the small dog’s rear and went down again. The process was repeated another time or two before the four of them regained the Human’s apartment, allowing Jericha to lie down on something much more comfortable than a sidewalk for a good long while.
Opus in a favorite spot
Opus, aware of the center of attention his canine companion had become, calmly climbed up onto a sofa and went back to his preferred indoor occupation — snuggling under covers.
It was now Elf’s human’s turn to turn white, as she reflected over what blood in one’s urine often means for human beings. Web searches revealed that in dogs the top cause is urinary tract infections (UTIs) and bladder stones, though the horrible malignant possibilities are also present.
Time to find the dogs their second brand new veterinary hospital in seven months.
Being a sensitive little creature, Elf spent her next hours commiserating with the woman lying so pale and listless on the sofa and the one staring rigidly at the laptop screen in the den. Absently they would reach down and rub her big ears and the itchy spots around her neck — but she was not fooled. The were scared, and nervous. About her.
Several hours elapsed before she found herself being loaded into her traveling crate in the Human’s van, hurtling up State Highway 41 to the new vet’s office. There, after what seemed an interminable wait punctuated by a prancing, if sickly, boxer, an adorable little ginger colored chihuahua who was a ferocious biter of human hands that tried to pet him, and a cat craftily sneaked past the dogs in a crate by a vet tech, she was deposited onto a high steel table to have her vitals measured, notes vigorously typed into a computer over her head, and lots of absent minded petting by her humans.
The light tone of the vet tech did not fool the corgi at all — these people were worried, markedly worried. She was too — about missing her dinner time.
Elf looking frightened, as Jericha comforts her
Eventually a silent big woman carried her off to the back regions, leaving her people alone in the examining room. The woman put her on her back on a strange table with a depression in the middle, turning her one way and another for some mysterious process called X-rays. Then her lower tummy was wet down with isopropyl alcohol, she felt a prick and saw the woman looking pleased to see a lot of red fluid flowing in some sort of tube coming out of Elf’s belly. She was glad when that part ended and she was escorted back to her humans — relieved, and none the worse for the wear.
She did not fully understand the words the doctor said, but she well grasped the relief the humans were showing. He had told them that, while nothing could be ruled out, this looked more like a UTI than anything.
Her humans got a supply of antibiotics for her, and to her immense delight she did not miss dinnertime.
For the next couple of days Elf spent as much time as possible sprawled by the humans as they carried on with the long process of moving her particular Human into the new apartment. Numerous heavy boxes of books were emptied, books lined up on shelves in various areas of the spacious apartment.
Surrounded by the familiar smells of the furnishings that had accompanied herself and Opus from their longtime home in New Mexico, to Mountain View in the Bay Area for seven months, and finally now down to California’s Central Valley, the small dog began, at last, to feel an easing of a long time tension in her humans.
Elf takes up guard outside the Human’s den
She was healing, getting that warm cheese with a funny little hard thing in the middle twice a day was a fantastic treat, and what’s more, Miz Jericha was remaining firmly on her feet during every walk.
Bring on the squirrels.
Meanwhile, the Human is seeing a new doctor in Fresno, and hopes to get a good bill of health, herself, after all the tests he feels she needs. He is a Sikh, and wears a turban. This is a most interesting development in Human’s nearly lifelong closeness to medical professionals. It’s been a while since she’s had a serious medical review, and this doctor seems intent on getting that job done.
Ow, it will take a great many squirrels to ease the Humans’s mind!
A song for the mood here… Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez, ¿QUÈ HAGO AHORA?
In case you are wondering about the lyrics:
¿dónde pongo lo hallado,
en las calles, los libros, las noches ,
los rostros en que te he buscado?
¿dónde pongo lo hallado,
en la tierra, en tu nombre, en la biblia,
en el dia que al fin te he encontrado?
¿que le digo a la muerte
tantas veces llamada a mi lado
que al cabo se ha vuelto mi hermana?
¿que le digo a la gloria
vacia de estar solo
haciendome el triste, haciendome el lobo?
¿que le digo a los perros
que se iban conmigo en noches
perdidas de estar sin amigos?
¿que le digo a la luna
que crei compañera de noches
y noches sin ser verdadera?
¿que hago ahora contigo?
las palomas que van a dormir a los
parques ya no hablan conmigo.
¿que hago ahora contigo?
ahora que eres la luna, los perros,
las noches, todos los amigos.
Hanging around in between other people’s doings is what I am doing these days. First my daughter’s wedding, then my move to Fresno, where she has moved with her new husband. The apartment I have dibs on is not yet ready. Thus I spend long days still in Mountain View, fitfully packing, chatting with Elf and Opus, and watching Netflix…
So here’s Part 3 of my series from a 1990s blog in New Mexico, about the seasonal habits of roadrunners. These characters are so much fun to observe, and their interactions with donkeys sometimes almost caused me to choke from laughing so hard…
Lying in wait in the depths of our big wisteria tree, this roadie was so fixated on a bird feeder hanging on a lower branch that he never moved as I filled it. The sneaky posture is so snakelike it seems quite natural that Roadrunners frequently catch and devour large rattlesnakes…
Roadies in Winter
As the cool days and icy nights of the high desert winter shrivel plants, send the largest grasshoppers and crickets to arid sandy sepulchres and deliver lizards to hibernation recesses inaccessible to roadrunners, the omnivorous birds scout food over widening areas. They crouch in tree limbs near bird feeders, scoot along fence lines where windblown detritus is most likely to contain torpid insects and snakes, patrol hay stacks for mice, poke around manure piles for edible larvae and large insects lurking in warm compost.
The first lemon and peach lights of a midwinter’s dawn sky often reveal large flocks of crows gathered in the donkey paddock. Like a gaggle of pokey window-shoppers in a mall, these somber suited birds meander through dead weeds, pausing to drink at the stock tank.
The long grey sword of a beak brandished by the roadrunner cleaves the flock in twain as crows drop their dignity to squawk and scatter. Body gliding, legs pedalling, the dashing bird rides an invisible bicycle, shooting into the heart of the crow flock. Beak aimed for a sleek, black chest, topknot ruffled high, the roadrunner drives like a missile to the target. No matter that the moment he scatters the crows one will inevitably swoop back to tap his long downcurved tail, causing him to spring to a fence for safety. He has to pace dogs, spook donkeys and charge crows.
Why?
Because it is the nature of roadrunners to indulge in activities which baffle the rest of us.
As the desert sun steams crystal ice off crisp brown weeds in the paddock, the agile roadrunner foots a mile between himself and slow-motion crows, scooting along the dirt side of a drainage ditch looking for breakfast.
What a pity his beak won’t grin.
*********
Over in California’s Bay Area right now, here is a resident rodent (sort of sounds like roadrunner, doesn’t that?) doing what it loves — teasing Elf and Opus during a mid-day walk.
Death Valley is certainly its own kind of place on Earth. When my daughter and I spent time there back in February, 1998, we were living in New Mexico. Which also features that sort of wide, wide, open, open space that feels as though nobody will ever occupy it on a full time basis. Thus I am intrigued with the way DV felt to a person who lives in upstate New York. She noticed the lack of green. When we were there DV had enjoyed a mite of moisture so flowers had shot up and shoved aggressively colored blooms towards the sky, ready to get pollinated and set seed before the soil would crack open again.
For fun I am reposting this blog. Death Valley is a great spot, wherever we come from to visit. One day I’d like to check in on it one more time. 🙂
The world stretches wide open. Badwater Basin, Death Valley, CA.
Once in my life I could truly say I was at my lowest point. The lowest point in North America, that is, at approximately 282 feet below sea level in Badwater Basin. And it wasn’t a bad thing at all. Instead it was a journey I’ll never forget, a trip to Death Valley several years ago that changed my idea of what natural beauty meant forever.
The desert had never held much fascination for me. I’d been to Arizona a few times as a child, and remembered finding it interesting but so very brown. I love trees and green, growing things. And the arid landscape I recalled in my mind’s eye always seemed to be lacking somehow, in life, in shade, in mercy.
But then I travelled to Death Valley, California. And though green and growing things were few and far between, life was still there, waiting.
Life of a Family Dairy Farm. Senior aged husband and wife. The good, bad and ugly of the business. We love it and will try to present an ongoing tale of what happens here. Meet some of our animals and characters born here. Enjoy!
The world stretches wide open. Badwater Basin, Death Valley, CA. 