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The Fireflies Made Me Say it: Happy Solstice

For whatever reason, summer really got ahold of me this year, like on my mind all the time, and dare I admit that I have actually been looking forward to this day, today, the Summer Solstice, all year long.

No funny Druid costumes. No somber walks among the big trees, waving incense or talking to the trees themselves. At most I might BBQ some hotdogs and crack a cold one (Yuengling, naturally).

But why is this long day so subliminally important, so that I look forward to it without really thinking about it?

I think the long summer days are when I really deeply recharge my batteries, recover the energy lost to drudgery and hard work the rest of the year. No question, long summer days really last. You can get in one more walk, one more bike ride, or do that much more lawn work. You just feel…more.

The sad thing is that after sundown tonight, the days get shorter until it starts getting dark at 4:00 PM in November.

Last night I pulled off the side of Montebello Road in Perry County, into one of Farmer Hines’ corn fields. Something caught my eye in the darkness, and when I turned off the truck and its lights, my vision was filled with a most glorious sight: Thousands of fireflies blinking all across the corn field. So many that they were beyond counting. Never before in a lifetime of watching fireflies have I seen so many.

Perhaps, they, too, are sensing the peak moment we all sense, the longest day, the greatest opportunity, and they are doing their firefly thing the most at that moment, in that narrow window of opportunity.

It was one more reason to drink deeply of these long days, to savor every moment and ray of sunshine. These times come with so much hidden magic.

Maybe a Druid outfit and an oak leaf wreath in my hair is warranted. Last night might have made a believer out of me.

 

Magic is in the air, and so is Spring

Today may be the first day of Spring, but you’d never know it, with all the snow that fell last night and today.  Despite freezing temperatures all over the east, however, there is magic in the air.  And it carries Spring on its wings.  We can take heart.  Nicer weather is indeed here.

Last night I stood way up north on a mountain side, surrounded by a silent, black, and deeply starry sky.  Suddenly faint and quiet song and voices reached my ears.  What started out as human sounds that put me on guard then became the distinctly identifiable gabble of migrating geese, high above, flying northward.

Magically migrating geese, ducks, raptors, and songbirds passing through our neighborhoods and yards tell us that Spring is here, even if our eyes and heating bills indicate otherwise. Migration is a mysterious thing.  Some of it is now understood by scientists, and appreciated by novice naturalists, but much of it remains shrouded in utter mystery.  How did these birds develop this pattern?  Was it after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago, or was it after the previous Ice Age, 20,000 years ago?  And if it was after the first one, how did they hold onto their knowledge of where and when to fly, when they spent so much time not flying at Spring time?

Migrating birds have a very thin margin for error.  Go too far, too fast, and they run the risk of freezing to death, or starving, having burned too many precious calories to reach their Canadian and Arctic breeding grounds so far northward.  If they are too slow, they will reach their destinations with too little time to raise their chicks to a size sufficient to survive the trek south again, when the winds get heavy on the border lands just a few months from now.

Yesterday, hundreds of geese and ducks shared the quieter eddies of the Susquehanna River in Liverpool.

Today, all around the borough of Dauphin, migrating black-headed vultures took up roosting positions like hunch-shouldered sentinels of death, harbingers of gloom and dead carrion, on trees, car tops, house roofs, power poles, and street lamps.  This particular species of vulture is increasingly migrating into Pennsylvania in bigger numbers, and out-competing our more common (and “more” native) red-headed turkey vulture.

All of this magic is, to me, a sign of a the finger of God, with non-believers remaining perplexed, themselves, unable to draw upon human science alone to explain what is happening all around us.  Surely my distant skin-clad ancestors stood upon a receding ice sheet somewhere, spear in hand, eyes skyward, hearts leaping for joy, as they, too, knew that this magic presaged abundant food, rebirth, new life, a new beginning for all.

Don’t take this magic for granted.  Close your eyes at night and listen to the cries of the goose-honk music.  Be part of this ancient cycle, if only by letting your heart be lifted with those of the excited geese, at the knowledge of the coming of Spring.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Snow is magic, pretty, enchanting, a pain to drive in, a pain to shovel, and a huge boon to hunters.

Snow helps hunters (animals and humans alike) see prey better, because it creates stark contrasts. When a prey animal is moving, a hunter can much more quickly spot it.  Tracks reveal where animals have been, and where they might be again.

Today was the last day to harvest a bobcat, and while I did not try to bag one real hard, I still feel a little disappointed. Our traps went out after the bobcat trapping season, and I did not get up to our northcentral PA honeyhole spot, so I can’t say I tried hard. But still, if you read enough hunting reports, you know that all it takes is that “one amazing moment” when the cat silently appears after you’ve been calling. I had hoped for that moment.

Kind of like that other hopey-changey stuff, my own hope was misplaced.

But I did take a lot of pretty photos with snowy backdrops. The white barn, dune-like ripples in the snow across a big field, dead foxtail grass waving in the deep snow…kind of like grass waving in the dunes at the sea shore. An old loop of barbed wire sticking up through the snow, with rabbit tracks hopping by on the right. Ice sheets across the stream, or nearly across, with deer tracks testing it up til its edge, and then backing away to find another route.

As I was snuck inside a field corner woods, blowing on the dying rabbit call, a giant snowy owl erupted from the other side of the hedgerow 150 yards away.  One swoop over me, and it lit out for Canada. Not even camo fools those eyes.  The last snowy owl I saw was 36 years ago, while I was out hunting alone in Centre County, walking along a field edge.  Raucous crows alerted me to something special about to happen, and then it appeared, a majestic white owl, soaring ahead of the cawing mass.  That owl just kept on going, leaving me mesmerized.

A black weasel came darting to the call inside a small wash, while I was perched on a stump and log way above.  My mind first identified it as a black squirrel, then as a mink, and then as the weasel it was, as I watched it crouched under a fallen log, watching me with glittery eyes.  I have a weasel mounted with the wood duck I shot with John Plowman nearly 20 years ago, out on the Susquehanna.  The weasel is from Centre County, and is brown with a black-tipped tail.  This is the first all-black weasel I have seen, although I have seen both an all-black fisher (in the ADKs in November) and a mink this year.  Kind of like a three-of-a kind poker hand; the fourth must be a seal…

Nature is so simply magical.  How people do drugs, I do not understand.  The sun on the snow today was enough of a “drug” for me to last all day and night and into tomorrow.  And so yet another hunt passed, without a kill, and yet, so fulfilling, nonetheless.