Goodbye.

Northern Mockingbird - Fitchburg, MA.

His Majesty

Her Majesty

Bald Eagle

The Last Barred Owl Posting

Snow Crystals on a Branch

THOREAU COUNTRY

White-Tailed Deer - Fitchburg, MA.

These two deer were driven to the fringes of downtown Fitchburg looking for mid-February sustenance. It was a sunny day and oftentimes, when they weren't startled by nearby sounds, they both rested in the frozen snow presumably waiting for cover of nightfall to make their exit.

Hunger Moon

The Hunger Moon means winter kill. Winter kill. It sounds almost benign. Until you realize it's a euphemism for weeks of slowly starving to death. The deer have lost their fat and the cold saps their energy. They sleep more and forage less. Their movements become hesitant. Their walk unsure. Slowly their bodies begin to break down until an adult deer is diminished to the point where you can pick up and carry the remains. And, eventually there is the sleep that ends all suffering.

The coyotes and the wolves will eat. As will the foxes and the flock of ravens that circles overhead everyday like winter vultures. In a normal winter, about 15% of the deer herd is winter killed. In an extreme winter, as high as 45%...of about 200,000 whitetails in the province. In nature, there are no seniors homes for wildlife to live out in time in relative comfort and die quietly in their sleep. The only time death is not slow and brutal is when it is fast and brutal.

And the same was true for people in years gone by. Some of my plant reference books are full of references to "starvation food" - what you ate during The Hunger Moon. The cruelest moon of all.

Snow Moon

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines."---Henry David Thoreau

Late Noon Snow Clouds

This appears to be a black-and-white night shot, when in fact I took this color photo at the spur of the moment dismissing it as something that would probably not come out all that good. In fact, I found it was rather atmospheric. No retouching was necessary for this natural effect of the sun behind some thick snow-burdened clouds.

"It was a dark day, the heavens shut out with dense snow clouds, and the trees wetting me with the melting snow, when going through B____'s wood on Fair Haven, which they are cutting off, and suddenly looking between the stems of the trees, I thought I saw an extensive fire in the western horizon. It was a bright coppery yellow fair weather cloud along the edge of the horizon, gold with some alloy of copper, in such contrast with the remaining clouds as to suggest nothing less than fire. On that side, the clouds which covered our day, low in the horizon, with a dim and smoke-like edge, were rolled up like a curtain with heavy folds, revealing this further bright curtain beyond." Thoreau, Journal - January 5, 1852

"The Sun is but a Morning Star."

"I do not say that John or Jonathan, that this generation or the next, will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." ----Thoreau, Walden's conclusion, Draft F

"The Moon"

The full-orbed moon with unchanged ray
Mounts up the eastern sky,
Not doomed to these short nights for aye,
But shining steadily.

She does not wane, but my fortune,
Which her rays do not bless,
My wayward path declineth soon,
But she shines not the less.

And if she faintly glimmers here,
And paled is her light,
Yet alway in her proper sphere
She's mistress of the night.

Henry David Thoreau

Reach, reach out
through the fire,
through the storm,
through winter's icy rind.
Elongated, twisted, like a finger
rubbed through ashes
and smeared across the virgin
shell of frost. Seek my
comforts there.

Haunted Land
Cursed with Silence
and the
Hum of Life.

"Contact! Contact!"

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

"I shall never be poor while I can command a still hour to take leave of my sin." - Thoreau, Journal February 14, 1841

New England Ice Storm

"I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. i fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one . . .but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! - Think of our life in nature, -daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it, -rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?" - Thoreau, "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," 1848.

Valentine Mourning Doves

Dark-Eyed Juncos Hiding During a Snow Squall

“How often they may be seen thus flitting along in a straggling manner from bush to bush, so that the hedgerow will be all alive with them, each uttering a faint chip from time to time, as if to keep together, bewildering you so that you know not if the greater part are gone by or still to come.”
----- Thoreau

"The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work,the only sound awake 'twixt Venus and Mars,advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields." --- Thoreau, "A Winter Walk"

Peterborugh Center in the Monadnock Region

With frontier strength ye stand your guard,
With grand content ye circle round,
Tumultuous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;—
Firm argument that never stirs,
Outcircling the philosophers,—
Like some vast fleet,
Sailing through rain and sleet,
Through winter's cold and summer's heat;
Still holding on upon your high emprise,
Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
Not skulking close to land,
With cargo contraband,
For they who sent a venture out by ye
Have set the Sun to see
Their honesty.
Ships of the line, each one,
Ye westward run,
Convoying clouds,
Which cluster in your shrouds,
Always before the gale,
Under a press of sail,
With weight of metal all untold,—
I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,
Immeasurable depth of hold,
And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.
Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
In your novel western leisure;
So cool your brows and freshly blue,
As Time had naught for ye to do;
For ye lie at your length,
An unappropriated strength,
Unhewn primeval timber,
For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;
The stock of which new earths are made,
One day to be our western trade,
Fit for the stanchions of a world
Which through the seas of space is hurled....

Barred Owl Activity

February and March begins the courtship of Barred Owls, the forests are filled with their hooting rituals. This particular owl was actively chasing doves but wasn't succesful in making a successful catch.

One anecdote about Thoreau and his relationship with Harvard is that he refused to pay the $5 fee for his diploma. He also turned down a master's degree that was offered to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college." Thoreau’s comment was “Let every sheep keep its own skin.”

The Workings of One Mind

The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

William Wordsworth: "The Prelude":

Book Six  (Cambridge and the Alps)

It Beats Within

Winter Snowfall - Swallow's Hill Pond, NH

Various Angles - Immature Red-Tailed Hawk

Taken during a drizzly, gray February thaw, the hawk was cast against a stark white sky so it appeared to me on the ground as no more than a silhouette. Therefore, extensive retouching had to happen to make this thing visible at all. Still, it was a good catch in Leominster, Massachusetts as it sat overlooking a Home depot parking lot.

Icy Thaw - Leominster State Forest

Snowy Thaw

Stream Close to Rowlandson's Redemption Rock

Thawing Ice in Pond - Leominster, MA.

"You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sandheap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain." --- Thoreau, Journal (January 25, 1858)