In this third installment of my series on the Azores, I’ll take a short flight from an otherwise long excursion. As always, feel free to comment if you like. I’m always open for the chance to start some dialogue.
The Azorean bullfinch, the Portuguese Priolo, is endemic to the mountain woods of Sao Miguel’s east end. Like a fool who seeks the rarest bird in all of Europe, I am hoping that the island’s thick-billed finch may re-connect me somehow to a long forgotten being still alive within a green secluded glen, a shadowed grotto of the mind. A poet warns me that to search for such elusive things, for the strange and wonderful, is to stir up suffering and doubt. He says it’s better to seize the day, to be here now, before the rare one flees forever to the soul’s abyss. I grab the moments by their ragged necks, climb through misted woods and pause at open ground where yellow flowers offer seeds to stocky black-and-white finches. April speaks and tells me that the time is still too early; it will ripen and arrive when I am gone. The song will be here, the nesting ground surveyed. The rare bird will be known.
I tried the misty mountains, looking toward the bird’s preferred habitat, the native laurel woods. No luck, but the fun was in the searching…
lighthouse, Sao Miguel
pillars in the wind and rain…
Caldera Grande, Furnas, Sao Miguel
Grey Wagtail
Europe’s only tea plantation (one of two on Sao Miguel)
at the pineapple farm
the Azores, ocean floor to mountaintop, are Himalaya high… at our stay in the northeast of Sao Miguel
The following is my second of three or four installments for the Azores series. If you missed “Wild Rainbows, the Azores,” you might want to check my previous post. Mt. Pico is the highest mountain in Portugal, reaching nearly 8000 feet above the surrounding Atlantic. Unfortunately, at the time of our visit, the mountain was pretty much obscured by clouds, so a photo from me isn’t available here. We did have one glimpse of it, though, in sunlight; a delightful vision of a sub-tropical mountain crowned with snow.
Pico not visible from this high mountain lake/preserve, extremely windy
The wind and rain on Pico Island are like centuries warring with each other in the moment. Their intensity will break apart eventually, allowing the sun to shine on farm and mountain, on the crashing ocean surf that breaks through grey wreaths of mist.
our Pico cottage
A tropical garden, ripe with oranges and banana, adds to the unusual ambience of our stone house built from bricks of ancient lava. The blackbird’s song and the chaffinch rattle tell me that the day is not exotic but delightfully real. We’re the visitors and these colorful houses seem to welcome us. I think of Thomas Hardy and his poetry of crushing human life and brittle hope, but pause here finding peace among the Portuguese isles, a striped canary perching on a cow fence sheltered from the wind.
European robin (a common warbler)
I imagine my old age grown youthful now, an infant grapevine sleeping on the black volcanic soil. I feel secure among these cribs of rock. A sea of wine surrounds me as I dream. It laps at the shores of this small island nestled underneath the snowy crown of Pico, cone-shaped and imperial, the lord of time.
ocean view from cottage, Sao Jorge island at top left
a kinder, gentler windmill
If all the lava vineyard fences on Pico were straightened end to end, they could circle the Equator about two times. A UNESCO World Heritage site.
big wind, big surf
a calmer day, black beach, Sao Miguel, waiting for the sunStone Face, Picothe famed (for its architecture) Wine Cellar bar on Pico the renowned wife-beer-daughter combo, Sao Miguel…
I’d like to present several posts from a recent trip to the Azores (April 3-April 11). The following is a first installment. As always, thank you for stopping by and feel free to comment.
Stepping into some of the loveliest water I have fished anywhere at any time, I wonder who brought these rainbow trout to this locale, the fish gone wild over numerous decades, to the Azores of Portugal. Who transported a fish native to the far Pacific regions to this mid-Atlantic archipelago, to this lush green island known as Sao Miguel? I imagine someone like a refugee from Western civilization who enjoyed fishing in the state of Oregon or Washington, or maybe some homesick military officials who were stationed nearby in the early 20th-century. In any case, I’m sure as hell pleased to be casting into a magnificent pool beneath a ribbon falls in a wooded grotto close to the Atlantic. We are staying in a renovated miller’s house constructed, along with mills and mill runs, in the 1600s. I’ve descended to the trout stream on a steep stone staircase, and I’m fishing light.
I didn’t make this family trip to the Azores just to fish for a species I can catch quite handily at home. These islands are not known for trout fishing, but to find wild rainbows is an angler’s sweet discovery, available for a bit of research. I came here for a respite with the others, a retreat from Trump World, if you will, a step back to a simpler, quieter and healthier time.
our 4-day home, The Old Miller’s House, middle structure, top
This park, a large natural reserve, is mostly mine this evening. Wagtails, blackcaps and canaries flutter from the streamside as I cast a bead-head nymph or dry fly into cold, deep water. This small river, with its series of gushing springs, its curtain and ribbon falls, is loaded with small rainbow trout averaging eight or nine inches long. I catch and release them quickly with a short glass rod that dissembles into four miniature sections. I’ve carried a few artificial flies along with a tiny Hardy reel and three-weight line in a pocket of my jacket. It’s all that I need for a pleasant entry to Ribeira dos Caldeiroes, in the wind-blown mountains by the blue Atlantic.
I crossed a small wooden bridge where Black Creek drains Keeney Swamp and slides quietly toward the distant Genesee. A great blue heron rose, clumsy at first, its long sinuous neck unfurling like a snake, to circle with an awkward grace downstream.
eagle nest, winter
Green diversity bird and frog and lily pad– the creek’s burbling song
It was here that Keeney Swamp displayed its richness. From aquatic vegetation to the bur-marigolds at my feet, from the wood duck nesting boxes to the insect-chasing kestrel at the forest edge, Keeney offered wonders for investigation.
Monarch butterfly through honey-scented air– tones of balsam fir!
I climbed from the glacially established balsams (unique to the region) to the hardwood forest laced with spruce and hemlock, cushioned with banks of fern where deer paths met the gravel road. Flies buzzed and a strand of spider work collapsed across my face.
opening, slowly
Snap a brittle stick– no need to be so quiet– humans live here, too!
I picked up a discarded bottle and retrieved a plastic bag. Hauling bits of garbage was an inconvenience but the least I could do to demonstrate my gratitude for beauty. Soon, attention redirected to the clatter of spruce cones bouncing down the branches where a red squirrel was at work.
Drum beat of a grouse upon a mossy log replays spring desire
From the summit of Fitch Hill: old memories of Keeney Swamp. A northern shrike once perched on winter balsams. White-winged crossbills fed on hemlock cones beside a beaver pond. Virginia rails clicked summer warnings from the cattails’ edge, and red-shouldered hawks circled on the warming air.
Rare spring migrant found by observers on a count– Kentucky warbler!
My favorite bird count at the swamp occurred in mid-May 1996. The land was lively with both resident and migratory species– 86 for the day, a personal record at the time.
Haunted by sounds from air through outspread wings– wood duck’s whistling flight
I found a colony of small yellow flowers on the surface of a marshy pool. The greater bladderwort, Utricularia vulgaris, is a rootless carnivore resembling a miniature snapdragon growing on a pinkish stalk, mysterious and beyond my comprehension.
Afloat in the pool bladderwort entraps its prey– a quick draw sucks you in!
Our wetlands need to be protected and (hopefully) appreciated. We have lost too many through the years. They lock up carbon and prevent its leaking into the atmosphere. They trap and stabilize our run-off and pollution. Wetlands buffer and control the floodwaters and, biologically speaking, are producers equivalent, acre by acre, to the Earth’s tropical rainforests.
Bug and frog and bird at the wooded water’s edge– our home at the marsh
Will Christman (1865-1937), an upstate farmer/poet influenced my own approach to poetry. An article in a small rural newspaper from the 1930s inspired the following prose-poem on a possible way that W.W.C. got his start with a new career…
In 1924, William W. Christman, Helderhill farmer and family man, was 59 years old. He had yet to write a serious poem, but a pre-dawn incident changed him like an aubade filling a despondent lover with a song. He woke to the clatter coming from his chicken coops. He rose, naked as a blue jay in a lilac bush, and snuck out with a 12-gauge scattergun. Two figures, laden with bulging sacks, rushed out from the henhouse. “Halt!” demanded Will. “Hands up now, or else!” The figures, probably frightened, maybe not so much, ignored the future poet cutting to the chase. They ran. The gun raised, and the buckshot from one barrel split the morning air but only grazed a runner’s neck and face. It missed the sack of cackling poultry.
On they raced, coming to a stop at the Delaware & Hudson railroad bridge near Quaker Street. Eventually, a sheriff intervened and, later, found 15 Plymouth Rocks and 15 Rhode Island Reds recuperating in the back of Earl and Oliver Snyder’s beat-up Packard hidden in Williams’ Hollow.
Christman, at 59, had apprehended the notorious Snyder boys, destined for an upstate prison. Christman, the lifelong farmer, grabbed the plow of poetry and pushed it toward a John Burroughs Medal awarded in 1934. He wrote invitations for a homecoming to the pine tree and the wild bird and the women he had loved. His chickens lived contentedly, emerging from the coop each dawn to peck for the corn tossed near a poet’s door.
* * *
one part of a seasonal poem
I cut brother Pete’s photo of himself (a family chicken) from an old college yearbook– he doesn’t like his human picture taken, “Personal photos rob the soul!”
The first four lines from Christman’s poem, “Peter Westfall”: He was all earth, its sand and grits and clays–/ A big, hard-handed man, brawny and browned, / Who wrestled with corn whiskey round by round/ Like Jacob and the angel in old days…. And now–
* * *
For some robbin’ bank & chicken poachin’ bluegrass fun with Michael Hurley & the Unholy Modal Rounders, click on the following You Tube vid & stomp! The whole album, in fact, has been a fave since 1976… “I love robbin’ banks/ tell the teller thanks, uh honey, for me…/ I love poachin’ chickens…/ I love drinkin’ whiskey/ makin’ me feel risque... ye hah!
I’ve had a difficult but productive winter in New York. I don’t mean Big Apple difficult. New York City would be difficult for me in any season. I mean here, in Bootleg Hollow, 300 miles from NYC. Generally, I like this season and its possibilities of snow, of which we’ve accumulated more this winter than in recent years, but it’s been relentlessly cold, with an almost ceaseless breeze or wind. I’ve had it pretty good, however, reading and writing with more fervor than usual, and striving to hold the line against old age infirmities. Now, the wild birds start to call and twitter in the early light of day; the ice begins to loosen, for a while, and maple sap begins to inch up toward the boughs. It’s nice to be out walking once again.
looking up Bootleg Hollow
Looking through our study window at the feeding stations underneath the spruce, we witnessed the flight of birds, explosive and chaotic, as a sharp-shinned hawk swooped in and sank its talons into the sky-blue feathers of a jay. I saw that the newcomer was a sharpie, not a Cooper’s hawk, because of its long squared-off tail (the similarly sized Cooper’s has a rounded tail). The two birds battled one another on the snowy ground, and a different struggle whirled up in the depths of me. I fought off an instinct to step out and save the victim, but the avian action, slow but fierce with bird determination, was a natural play for which I would have no entry, beyond the sense that I had set the stage. One bird was doomed, and one bird would be less hungry for its efforts. We humans, who may not have a problem ordering chicken sandwiches from a fast-food joint, shouldn’t have an issue with a scene like this.
unclear photo, taken thru window
The blue jay, nearly as large as the predator on its back, shook itself and fanned the air with fiery beak and claw, but the hawk had its talons and a hooked spear working in overdrive. After several minutes, at least, the jay relaxed, and the hawk flew up and outward toward the barn and spruce grove with its heavy load. I stepped out, somewhat thankful that the victim wasn’t one of our smaller and less numerous species like the cardinal or the tufted titmouse. Blue jays are a very common and rather raucous sort in Bootleg Hollow, thriving on our bird seed and the suet we provide all season. I don’t make it easy for the hawks or the wandering feral cat. I place evergreen boughs for shelter close at hand, but then again, I don’t begrudge occasional forays by a sharpie or a Cooper’s for a devastating strike.
unclear, but ready for takeoff
It’s Nature, red in tooth and claw, and we who see it on a regular basis are a part of one big picture that is inspirational, at least for some. For now, I remain in the grip of an upstate winter that appears to be relaxing just a bit. The grip is sure to tighten once again, but for now I see the slow flight of a season toward the exits while a new light seems to strengthen day by day. I can wish that your own days are enlightening, with your thoughts and actions rooting like seeds of change.
P.S. I opened up my dad’s copy of the ancient Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and found one quatrain that I’ll modify a bit (the last two lines, with apologies to O.K.) for the purpose of this post:
Ah, to make the most of what we yet may spend,/ Before we too into the Dust descend; /Into the Snow and under the Dust, to lie,/ Sans Wine and Snow, sans Song and Singer, sans– the End!
[Four years ago, I posted an earlier version of the following sketch. This re-do is included in a book that I’ve been bringing to fruition, a work about my life with birds. There’s a certain timeliness to the raven tale that suggested I present it once again for your enjoyment, hopefully.]
The first days of the new year were an icy mess, although I still had a pleasant walk on the paths developed near the house. I hadn’t been keeping an active bird feeder at the time, but I needed the company of winter birds, so I made my daily foray on the hill, no matter if the birds seemed scarce as January dandelions or if the weather seemed inviting as a trip for dental surgery.
The earth was dirty white with rotting snow and ice. A walking stick probed the ground as my boots crunched awkwardly along the sloping acreage. Crows called from the distance of the valley. I may have heard the nasal outcry of a nuthatch or been cheered briefly at the sight of a chickadee in the evergreen boughs, but mostly I perceived the winter emptiness– the solitude defined by the departure of autumn birds and foliage.
An outing wasn’t necessarily a sad affair. I had friends and family, music and writing. In my walking meditation, however, I looked around me for the words to fill an inner silence…
Two ravens flew across the valley battling the strong winds high above. Two ravens soared and circled, climbing the winter thermals, screeching once or twice, their wings breasting the currents, their eyes apparently reaching the horizon, their great beaks opening– Krah!
One of the ravens seemed to fly from a myth, perhaps from the stories told by Native American elders. I recalled a multi-faceted character, a creator spirit and a trickster from the far Northwest. For a moment I imagined wings reflecting the sun, a gift for the world. The second raven was the noisy one. I listened to the piercing squawks, the croaking on the wind, medieval overtones, a link to the anonymous English poem, “Twa Corbies.” Two birds disappeared from view, but a raven dialogue remained…
Raven, the Consumer: He looks no bigger than an ant down there. Walkin’ along, puny man. What does he see in birds like us?
Raven, the Creator: Birds like us pull him up and out of who he is. He can soar with pleasure, man; he can see!
Raven, the Consumer: We can peck his eyes out when he dies. We can shred his brain, all the gray stuff and the red. All the questions and the wonder, till the wind licks everything clear and clean.
Raven, the Creator: Keep on flyin’, brother. Don’t forget– we created him and all the world. We allowed him to dream of us up here; we let him think that we can speak with human words. You’ll pick his carcass one bright day, if you’re patient and your breath holds out. But wait– he’s gone already, in the snow. Krah! In the snow.
I felt lucky to be alive and feeling well– a lone rambler near my home and not the slain knight of an ancient lyric where twa corbies (two ravens) worked at his dismemberment and the whitening of his bones. It was good to walk another day on Earth, to know a pathway linking the distant past to an hour in cold January. I could populate the vacant air with avian existence, even though the vast majority of birds were living in far terrain. In freer moments I might even try composing a new poem about those ravens of a myth, those dark birds of the present time.
writer’s desk
kitchen window, Parmachene Belle
the Henry Bridge, western PARaven’s night, Greenwood, NY
Years ago, I received a special letter from my late friend Mary Stiver, a poet living out her last years in South Carolina. The letter was a copy of some gentle criticism sent to her in 1958 from the renowned writer William Carlos Williams, who encouraged Mary to “write, write, write and use blue pencil to get rid of the redundancies or every word and phrase which does not add to your meaning.” Williams continued with this caveat: “But do not tumble into that hole of total unintelligibility. We’ve already had enough of that, although it did have its uses.”
kinda short, but you get the picture…
These days my blue pencil tends to be a blue fine-point pen, but the tool is one that holds a similar purpose. I can jot down my thoughts regarding Mary, W.C. Williams and another inspiration– H.D. Thoreau. I don’t know if the author of Walden ever mentioned a blue pencil in his works, but I sense that his immense Journal was a great companion to him, an encouragement to “write, write, write” about what he saw, rather than what he merely looked at. He could write about the power of the wild, for instance, in the treasure of a weed.
The treasure of a common winter weed. Tan and broken by the wind and snow. I saw the drab tones of a goldfinch perching on a weed stalk, small bird swaying side to side, spearing the diminutive seeds with a stubby pointed bill, sustaining its life, not unlike the blue pencil of an artist or an editing writer, scratching off the surplus of a year. Now, redundancies are gone; the moment is as lean and modest as it gets. A simple weed contains the gold of nature.
[This post is a rather quick follow up to the previous one portraying my best fish of the season so far. Check out the earlier post, if you haven’t looked there yet. With this, I close my northern visits for the year and give thanks to the spirits of a wider life where love and inquiry and togetherness still prevail.]
The big creek had a sparkling cast, a chattering rush of power, as I suddenly noticed a pair of medium-sized fish. The brown trout seemed nearly evanescent, flickering in and out of view, as sun and clouds exchanged position in the sky. I had been rereading John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’sWoman and thought of the author’s “one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.” With that in mind, I made short, repeated casts upstream of the fish, allowing the large fly to drift deeply toward the shifting shapes in what I hoped to be a personal creation– my first good catch of the day.
In Fowles’ Victorian meta-fiction, the narrator spoke at one point about Charles Darwin’s concept of cryptic coloration, a biological survival technique allowing a species to blend in with its environment. Stepping from my own position near the creek bank, I connected with a cryptic image of a shimmering November trout and felt the tug and drive of something very strong. I didn’t need that something to survive; I didn’t need to consume that awesome energy; all I needed was this self-bound moment to affirm one small part of the world’s creation. It was freedom, then, a god-like feeling given by a 20-inch beauty coming to the net. I was pleased for this encounter, grateful for the chance to photograph another splendid being, for its quick release, its freedom, my thanksgiving.
With nothing much to celebrate this autumn, I looked back to a more colorful time for me, October days with friends and family near the woods and oceanside Rhode Island (Block Island), fishing the Great Lakes region, trying to stay aboard with who I am and who we are as a people. Not an easy job for anyone with half a mind, of course, but compensated by alignment with the arts and nature. I recall…
a good flow of water
The morning sun felt warm, and the breeze was up. The stream was flowing stronger, thanks to an infusion of water from the autumn draining of the Erie Canal. I was two-plus hours from home and feeling better. Earlier, I had sensed the loss of my key fob to the car. Had I dropped it on the road or in the river? I had to trudge back upstream to the car, a real blockhead fearing the worst, to look desperately for the object that I finally brought to light. Yes… from the bottom of a hip boot where the starter had fallen when it took a wrong turn at the pocket of my jeans. Anyway, after losing an hour of fishing time, I regrouped among the brown trout and the salmon.
I waded downstream to a deep riffle where some sizeable fish danced in and out of view. I worked them unsuccessfully with every trick and time-honored fly that I could conjure. Minutes passed, or maybe an hour passed, before I switched to a pattern that I mostly had no use for on the Lake Ontario tributaries– a white Woolly Bugger. A king salmon grabbed it, bolted for the provinces of Canada but spit it out. Moments later, a large brown materialized from the shadows, bit the same piece of fakery, leapt sideways from the water and reflected its broadside blend of hues, then disappeared.
kype (male jaw) and all
I thought I saw the sunset in that big trout’s momentary jump and would have been haunted by the vision for a long time if I hadn’t been compensated shortly after by another massive trout, or possibly by the same fish looking for retribution. Just before the second hook-up I had seen a young fly-fisher downstream who got some rod-bending action that took him for a walk around the bend. I would meet him later, after I finally landed, measured, photographed, and released my best fish of the season.
thank you, Mr. Brown
The young fisherman approached me at the stream bank, and we spoke in calculated terms about our recent success. The brown trout that had pulled him down around the bend, that came to his net for a photo and release, was several inches greater than my own fish, but an equal in the eyes of riverine majesty. I related how my brown trout took what I considered to be an unusual fly for me, so rarely used, then stood amazed to learn that the fellow had taken his 30-inch trout with the same pattern, a white Woolly Bugger. He had just tied it to his leader after having had no luck with other patterns.
27″ along 9-foot rod, released
Rhode Island
I looked for troutBlock Island seascapeI don’t recall its nameat the north enddepartureand Roxy Music’s Sunset; splendid video & meditative song; the end of my day…
Rivertop Rambles 