The Eagle of Respair
I traveled for the recent holiday, and I left my camera and field glasses at home. I had my bike on the back of the car, and when we stopped in North Carolina, I took it to some great mountain bike trails. I never get tired of seeing the mountains from my hotel’s breakfast room in Asheville.
I enjoyed how nature-loving folks are in Brevard. At The Hub, a great little bike shop with the Pisgah Tavern attached, I found a shirt that celebrates a rare local amphibian:
Also known as the Snot Otter! They do kind of resemble otters, brown, large, and predatory in the water. I hope to see one someday, but I won’t touch their slimy bodies, lest I injure them. I don’t go looking for newts as often as I should. Gussie Fink-Nottle I’m not.
In Louisiana, I heard a Belted Kingfisher scolding another bird, from my mother-in-law’s lawn. If you recall, I spent nearly a year trying to spot this bird at Timber Creek, not far from my home in the New Jersey Pinelands. And she’s got them in her front yard! There’s a small lake nearby, where it must do its fishing. I enjoyed seeing it chase away another bird, as unafraid of humans as Blue Jays are in my neck of the woods.
A different bird that used to be rare, but is becoming very common all over the state of New Jersey is the Bald Eagle. I saw a juvenile at Timber Creek a few weeks ago, and often mistake them for Turkey Vultures, which are everywhere now. This is a terrible phone photo, but this Eagle was perched atop a cell phone tower at our town’s municipal building, over a small park with a running track and a playground. Not far from Timber Creek, where they can fish, and many busy roads, where they can scavenge roadkill.
If you look closely you can see the white head, which was more visible to the naked eye than the CCD of the phone at max zoom. It reminded me that despite all the backwards behavior of our fool would-be-king, we’ve made a lot of progress and should not despair. We will outlast him and overturn his foolish policies.
There’s a truckful of goodness at the end of the rainbow:
Taken at a rest area in Alabama, I think.
Here are some good reads in the nature realm to keep you respair:
Salmon are everywhere, after the dams came down over the Klamath:
no, it’s not out of ideas, but it needs to be embracing some of the newer ones… fearmongering and begging for money, and never shouting the successes we’ve made, is not the way to go…
Even the little chickadee is a cause for joy:
respair, n. (plural respairs)
Fresh hope; recovery from despair.
Verb:
To recover from despair.
The dictionary says it's obsolete... but we're bringing it back to life!
‘Gussie Fink-Nottle I’m not.’ And which of us is? But it asks the question: which member of The Drones are you. Or do you see yourself. My feeling is that since no other member fills in 'writer' on their census form (Gally Threepwood intends to confect his coruscating memoirs, but does pen ever hit paper?) you are left with Bingo Little. As am I. I even had a partner, long ago, whose initials were RMB, a la Bingo's soulmate Rosie M Banks, but let us leave that there. You may, natch have alternative suggestions.