Appreciation

Recuperation…

Home Again

by
Norbert Blei

Well, the ‘third part of the journey’ (operation bad esophagus: enter, probe, cut. remove, stretch stomach, stitch…close) completed and successful well over a week ago.

Now for recuperation. Recovery. Putting some meat on these bones.

But not before ‘thank you’s’ to everyone for the healing, the hope, the love sent via prayers, visits, phone calls, cards, gifts. Family and old friends, local ministers (Rev. Michael Brecke and Rev. Phil Sweet, my two favorite men-of-the-cloth), shaman, astrologers, Native American medicine folk, meditation people of every belief. It all worked. Blessings.

Yes, all the bigness of heart, wonder of words worked—plus the golden hands of surgeon, Dr. James Maloney, University of Wisconsin Hospital, who walked into my room one week after the operation and said I was ready to be released. Everything in order. The cancer gone. A new order/pathway intricately cleared to consumption, digestion, better health. A new man.

A writer with a loss for words ? Guilty. How to honor and thank a man, a surgical artist, for handing your life back to you with a smile?

“I heard you were the best,” I said, voice breaking, eyes watery…

“It’s not me,” he said. “It’s the team.” Teams of physicians I encountered from day one, months ago, at the UW Madison facility. I am forever thankful to all of them.

To leave every aspect of ‘hospital stay’ behind, especially the air one breathes in such a state of lingering anticipation of confinement/release, the order of odors from medicinal to stale atmosphere…and to then suddenly walk away (be wheel-chaired away) from it all…find oneself sliding the car windows open on a journey back home…freedom, alive again, inhaling/exhaling deep gulps of rural Wisconsin pastures, fields, woods, wind, the possibility of thunder showers, the freshness of air breezing off lakes and rivers…oh sweet on-my-way-home-Wisconsin…dazed by cows and cattle, red barns, white farmhouses in the shade of old oak trees, corn fields, tractors turning up earth, hay bales, and horses lazily grazing in a bucolic dreamscape drifting into nap-time…my i-Pod plugged into Bach…my partner, my woman, my caretaker, Jude at the wheel, glancing at me every minute…”You okay?”…a pat on my hand. The smile I feel on my face, answer enough.

To finally turn down the road I call mine, the road I can’t wait to be walking (maybe tomorrow?) again…to pull into the driveway, welcome the new lawn compliments of my son, Christo, and daughter, Bridget, after the new well destroyed my yard… Ah, the trees, the woods, the bird bath and feeder, my old rocking chair on the deck, the flowers in bloom…the very house itself, which I truly love, a perfect habitat…every room—kitchen, kitchen nook, dining room, study, upstairs bedrooms, cellar—every Persian rug, every piece of furniture, and pottery, all the art objects that hold my attention…my books, my beloved walls of books, soooo good to be back in my chair, everything I need within reach–pens, notebooks, scissors, stapler, magazines, newspapers, films, current books I am reading…phone, phonograph, i-Pod dock, television…all my clocks tick-tocking and striking (all the wrong time). Who cares? The time is now.

Recuperation is a long word that stretches out for who know how many days, nights, weeks, months…? I welcome it, however long it takes. Just a little improvement each day will be fine.

I sleep the first night in my La-Z-Boy, propped up at a thirty degree angle (as I must now for the rest of my life) and sleep good, well, perhaps even profound.

My eyes open to early morning sun light drifting along the very tops of the beautiful white birch and maple trees across the road. I love to watch this play of light at dawn…how it drifts slowly down the tops of trees, from branches to trunk as the sun climbs higher above the great lake, and the smaller one at the end of my road. The front door open to cool morning air and the sound of birds. No one on the road at this hour. Nothing…nothing but the serenity of silence…natural sounds.

That moment comes when I dress…a chore in this recuperation mode. Every move takes forever, brings a little pain. But I gather myself together the very first morning upon my return from the hospital and take to the road.

The road which is already undergoing subtle change. The cool shadow of fall in the air. Leaves and grasses no longer expressing the bright freshness of May or June green, but grown old, tired, discolored, on their way to russet, amber. Some of the branches of the maples already exhibit transforming shades of green-yellow…green pink and bright red. Autumn, stealthily working its way across the landscape.

My roadside, ditch garden has turned to mostly white Queen Ann’s Lace bobbing in a gentle breeze, some straggling blue corn flowers, purple clover, spikes of golden rod, and here and there black-eyed Susan’s taking a peek at me.

A huge V of honkers fly over me and makes my day. I catch myself about to wave and say to them on high: “I’m back! I’m back! Good to see and hear you guys again!”

So caught up in the moment, I am amazed to find myself completing my usual long walk (which I have not done in months), and on my way home again.

As I approach the gravel driveway, I am aware of Jude in the kitchen getting my ‘liquid diet’ breakfast of juice and cream of wheat ready on the table in the nook. We will sit down together and eat, laugh, gossip, tell stories, make plans.

Of all those in my thoughts throughout this health ordeal, she reigns supreme. I could not have made it this far without her ‘intensive care.’ All the time and energy she has devoted to me day after day, night after night, hospital after hospital. All my moaning an groaning, ups and downs. She has a better perspective on so many more things in life than I will ever have. I envy sometimes her pure joy in daily life.

One small measure of thanks: I recently purchased a print for her by Mary Hamilton called “Simple Pleasures” at a local gallery. Every image in the print speaks of her. I wanted her to know that , “simple pleasures” is one of the things I most love about her…and all that she has brought to my life these past years.

I am reminded too of our many simple picnics (“a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou singing in the wilderness”) which we have shared in our favorite Door County parks. I long to be well enough, soon, to get back to that…to stop at Annie’s TOP SHELF gourmet shop in Sister Bay, buy a loaf of crusty fresh French bread, small portions of some exotic cheese, a bottle of wine…and head to a picnic bench in Peninsula or Newport Park.

I am reminded too of my friend Reverend Phil Sweet’s life-long search for meaningful religion in our age (from Christianity to Buddhism and beyond), a faith he has honed into six simple words as he continues his personal search: “To love and to be loved.”

If I were to leave the planet tomorrow, may my last expression be a smile upon my face.

It’s all good.

It’s that simple.

Norbert Blei | Photo: Jude Genereaux

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Roadside Gardens, Birdfeeders, Wind Chimes, I-Pods…Silence

(Notes from No-Man’s Land #3: On the Road to Recovery)

Though I’ve never been much of a gardener, flower or vegetable, I appreciate their presence in my midst, whether from a distance or visiting friends with flower gardens glowing in color throughout the seasons, not to mention gifts from vegetable gardens–asparagus, beans, spinach, lettuce, green peppers, onions, strawberries, raspberries…and oh those sweet juicy red tomatoes.

But it’s the flowers I find especially appealing every year down my road, which I still can’t walk the distance I’m accustomed to…still too exhausted to reach my usual turn-around spot, heading back to the house.

I missed my old neighbor, Charley Root’s field of sweeping, deep-gold coreopsis waving hello in the morning breeze this year. Never saw one prairie rose. Or one yellow lady slipper. But the daisies are dancing as I walk by. The spring trillium, long gone, remembered in my short walks. The delicate Queen Anne’s Lace is beginning to make its presence, and mullein plants reaching up to bloom as well. The myriad of other small flowering plants/weeds which I could easily identify if I could only remember each name or looked them up in my wildflower books. I seem to prefer for now instead their nameless colorful shapes, their small moments of surprise, pleasure and harmony along my wild roadside . If only the town would stop mowing them down just as they reach perfection. I wish for more summer mornings of sweet scented clover—a wild fragrance most divine. And dearest to me, of all, a blossoming of fiery, petaled tongues I await each year: two thick patches of tiger lilies bursting in the late afternoon sun, flowers which I ‘protect’ with a sign: DO NOT CUT. (Always remembering my heated argument years ago with the town’s roadside maintenance man who hollered back at me from the tractor as he mowed them down: “Dem ain’t flowers! Dem is weeds!”)

I speak then for the presence and preservation of ubiquitous roadside gardens that give each year freely, in full measure, scattered bouquets of color, form, and scent, just waiting to be ‘taken in.’ No gardening required by the onlooker, only an occasional prayer for rain in a dry season. They are my true love. The natural, the always surprisingly predictable, which sustains me spring, summer and fall—even winter, with the skeletal sculpture of the milkweed plant, reaching above the dead fields, each plant graced with fresh, soft, white snow beckoning a moment of beauty and remembrance in so spectral a season. I speak too beyond the private pleasure of my own roadside garden. There are those times when I take to the car for the pure pleasure of ‘the hunt’– seeking certain swatches of wild flowers in bloom at those certain times when I know exactly where to find them on certain Door County back roads, which will remain in the privacy of my own watch.

Often these days, going or coming from the coop, I pause for a momentary rest in my old rocker on the deck. I contemplate the afternoon, the early evening …checking on all manner of natural things which give me pause, give me comfort–the sunlight, the trees, the wind…especially in these trying times of regaining good health and energy. I wait and watch for the birds at my feeder. Whatever their nature and movement, I’m glad to see them stopping by at my place. I delight in robins splashing in the bird bath. Wary woodpeckers checking in. The constant going and coming of chickadees. The plaintive call of mourning doves pecking at cracked corn on my gravel drive. Such pleasure and delight of feathered creatures, their airy freedom of wings which I sometimes follow to the tops of trees, or the overarching blue, where I might catch a solitary white gull, aglow in the sun, heading toward the lake down the road from me. And just yesterday, a sudden flock of goldfinches lighting up the yard, flashing their irresistible color as they descend upon my feeder like a blessing.

Sometimes these natural meditation moments on the deck are enhanced by wind chimes…a Zen call to silence impossible to describe except for that delicate sound in the company of soft breezes which take one to that solitary home again, every bare room and window open to peace, serenity, a sanctuary of nothingness. Nothing more, nothing else. Only now.

There are times too, when today’s technology might rear its ‘disturbing’ head, calling for a different form of meditation: an escape into music: classical, jazz, folk, opera. Mozart to Miles, Bach to Brubeck…pop, big bands…James Taylor, Maria Callas… I admit to bowing to the times, owning a magic i-pod with AM/FM (the daily pleasure of public radio), and presently more than five hundred pieces of music, only a touch away. I fix my small headphones. Go to ‘albums’ on the pod.. Hit ‘shuffle’. Close my eyes…say goodbye for now to the birds, the green trees, the blue skies, and let the music wash over me…carried away by beautiful voices, lyrics, instruments, rhythm…where time disappears.

And sometimes. late afternoons, I go into the house to rest, to try again to ‘nap.’ I climb the stairs to the upstairs, front bedroom–my old studio/office which I occupied for years when both kids slept in bunk beds in the same downstairs bedroom. A small room facing south, two small windows level with my desk, a funky little room I loved to write and paint in (actually a dormer) with all kinds of strange angled walls and filled with light.

I stretch out on comfortably on my back, arms behind my head, eyes focused lazily out both windows open wide to the wind, taking it all in…the tops of trees, blue sky, rolling clouds, bird song…everything out there in fervent conversation …maples in dappled sunlight talking to the birch, beech, oak, and ash, waving to one another, swaying in harmony, joyfully turning over their leaves to an under-light of glowing sun, flashing one way, then the other, tangling the stems of playful branches as stronger gusts of wind take them by surprise and carry them even higher to the heavens…the pines ponderously in place, stifled sentinels to the spectacle of the play of light and wind.

All this invites me into a silence, the language each season speaks, to further define itself from wood pecker chatter to howling winter wind…to the ease of slumber when a spring rain may patter on the roof…then a deeper slumber as I drift off to maybe Europe Bay, down the next road from me, where the gentle summer-blue waters of Lake Michigan lap the shore, ripple the sand in their old lullaby rhythm of back and forth, in and out, here and now, today and tomorrow… and tomorrow and tomorrow… –Norbert Blei

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On this Father’s Day, this father chooses to honor his children, now both adults with lives and families far away from here. Yet here, this house, this coop, this woods, this road down to the lake, this place holds my fondest memories of them. I can almost hear their childish voices, almost see them on a tree-swing that once hung from an old maple tree near the road, almost see my son throwing a basket ball into a small, much too low, ring that still remains attached to the garage today…and almost make out the strike-zone I once painted on the outside of the garage door, where my son and I pitched a soft or hard ball to each other: “Batter up!” He was tireless…I was always exhausted. And I still see and delight in my daughter living her life full in the imaginary world of dolls and babies, taking to them, singing, pulling them in a wagon down the road…playing house.

I have written very little about either my son, Christo (Christopher) or my daughter Bridge (Bridget) in all the words and articles, stories, poems, books I’ve penned since I first began to write seriously around 1961. I’m not surprised by this. But I am aware. I don’t have any explanation for this—then again, if I may speculate…

Somewhere in my crazy ethnic, Eastern European origins and blood lines, I harbor the gene of ‘secrecy’. I saw it in grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles…from early on cautioned: “Don’t tell anyone!” The Catholic church with it’s rituals and ‘confession box’ (an apt metaphor) only enforced this darkness within. Just between me and the big guy up there. Nobody else need to know. And when writing first began to take hold (late high school, early college), it was all about secrecy, privacy, finding yourself in an imaginary world that no one need know—till you felt the need to share the words in publication. A hard lesson.

To this day, I harbor more secret rituals about my work and life than anyone would imagine. I never show a manuscript to anyone prior to publication other than my publisher and/or an editor.

Most perplexing, confounding, almost unexplainable (undoubtedly a big factor in the loss of a long marriage) was how ‘the secret’ becomes ‘the secret life’ which is impossible for the writer to reveal in any other way than words on paper.

All this to explain the double-life. In my case, the middle class father outwardly living the life of wife and family and all that it entails to insure loving care, proper parenting, the straight life and above all, ‘protection’—from the other life of creative craziness within where freedom reigns and the writer is most alive, constantly on the edge of bursting out, ready to sacrifice anything (marriage, children, job, profession, religion, middle-class friends and values) to remain forever in this state of grace, his true self.

Bless you both, my son, my daughter, for all you have brought to my life.

Love,
Dad

Bridget’s Bouquet

June 30 – I have no time, it seems, even for flowers along the road. Those weeds already in downy fullness to match the full moon last night. The orange and yellow hawkweed dotting the roads and fields in perfect free¬style flows of color. And the white daisies, singularly, the most beautiful petaled flower. These my daughter secretly gathers in a small bouquet for my desk. Through the white daisy we both speak summer, though the act is one of silence. I will enter the coop, usually in the early shadows of morning, flick on the desk light, and there, in a white vase near the typewriter, a small bouquet of daisies. And that will set the day—a child’s gesture of unexamined love.

Games Upon the Road

October 30 – I’ve played these games upon the road with my son for more than 10 years now: baseball in spring, football in autumn, hockey in winter. In fall, especially, I’ve watched his shadow grow into mine in the always setting sun behind his back, felt his arm strengthen and his pass aim sharpen. He plays to win, to seek a perfection beyond the old man, while my passes grow shorter, and my runs are all too soon out of breath. I play to be outside in these dwindling hours of autumn, to hear the missed pass rustle through the leaves, to consume the sky above his head in such a glow of gold and lavender, the softest flush of pink. We toss passes till the light is gone, till the ball must be arced considerably toward the receiver’s hands. Until I call “time to go in,” knowing this fall may well be our last chance at autumn games, the shadows having merged and boyhood disappeared.

[from DOOR STEPS, Ellis Press, 1983]

The OLD MAN, looking back, looking forward.

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Notes from No-man’s Land, Week 4

Today I try to walk my road again toward the lake at daybreak, at least part way. My energy level remains low, my spirit in high gear.

I am greeted at the door by moist clay pots bursting with “Mexican Red” geraniums up and down the wooden steps, the work of my partner Jude, who sees to it that color return to this place in the woods, window boxes, deck, garden, after a season of winter white. She makes the house sing in spring.

I am reeling in images of RED, RED, RED GERANIUMS… remembering mornings in Mexico, New Mexico, a sun-drenched landscape almost surreal.

The air is cool still, with a hint of mist, humidity waiting for mid-day.

I take the last step down, touch the good earth, one foot at a time in the brilliant green grass…pause briefly in the yard…inhaling, bathing, showering, swallowing, gasping, drinking in the air saturated with the fragrance of three old lilac bushes.

Drunk again in lilac-time…can’t get enough…give me more, more, more…hang in there, please, yet another day…deep purple, lavender, white…too soon, too soon the lilac light swoon dissipates into the thickness of summer.

The road greets me with the first rays of morning sun. I step into it, onto it, away …past my green woods, my coop, waiting for me, tucked deep old trees, hidden amongst the maples, beech, and birch at this time of year.

Bird song: a chorus of robins, one squawky blue jay, a wren, my early morning woodpecker drumming up the sunrise. Clouds of the bluest forget-met-nots running alongside me in the roadside ditch…a few trillium still trumpeting their white presence…and ah, ah, the sweet smell of wild clover. But no sign yet of the prairie rose, a particular favorite…

I make it to the old garden, pause awhile, remember seedlings sprouting, the rows of vegetables…the agony and ecstasy of growing anything in this northern clime of stony earth…the garden gone back to weeds and wild flowers…no longer tilled by me, worked over and into spring, summer, fall… religiously, lovingly, by the woman once my wife, mother of our two grown, beautiful children living their own lives far from here…the marriage ended amicably, gone our separate ways almost ten years now. I see her bent over in the garden still, attending each growing plant…miss the snap beans, green beans, potatoes, lettuce, kohlrabi, beets, squash, green peppers, egg plant…and oh so fresh, red sweet tomatoes.

Crossing to the other side of the road at the end of the garden, under the shade of a towering old maple…I resume my inspection of the ditch for any evidence of blushing pink prairie rose…check the progress of two grand sweeps of tiger lilies that grace my morning walks in season…discover them still reaching, thrusting toward blossom.

The sun behind me, lighting my way back home, I walk slowly into my own shadow, moving us both into another day.

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Drawing from the sketchbooks of Charles Peterson.

The Solitary Walker

A walk with someone else beside you, in front of you, behind you, qualifies your
steps, your direction, your meaning and mood.

Though the walk to the lake may be familiar, it is never the same.

Time of day and weather conditions, though unmentioned, immediately affect the
walkers.

What one sees, though it be familiar, is also not the same.

A walk, to be most meaningful, most meditative, most astonishing, must be
solitary.

Talk destroys quiet perspective.

Thinking, the mind in a muster of images or memories to be talked out,
diminishes reflection and surprise over the most mundane rock, weed, bird, tree,
or farm in the landscape that seeks the solitary walker’s attention.

The delicacy of both sound and silence are lost to walkers.

The walker alone becomes these.

[from DOOR STEPS, Ellis Press, 1983]

Editor’s Note from No-man’s Land: What I miss during these says of illness are my morning walks. My energy level barely gets me from the house to the coop without tiredness setting in. I sit at the desk and view the road from my window, wishing to be on it, breathing the crisp air. To leave the house and meet the new day on the road as the sun is breaking. To sense the light washing down upon you brightening your every step. Sounds—the whole symphony of spring. Getting inside the new day as it opens and begins to shape the words you will write today. –Norbert Blei

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Tracklist: Door in Winter: December Entries: 1. 29th Going for Milk 2. 30th A Remberance of Red 3. 31th The White Path 4. Christmas Eve in Door

All selections from DOOR STEPS © 1996 ELLIS PRESS, P.O. Box 6, Granite Falls, MN 56241

The Quiet Time: Door County in Winter. Readings from Norb Blei’s DOOR STEPS (The Days, The Seasons) Original music for guitar by Jim Spector.

In five seasonal essays and a daybook of 365 entries, Norbert Blei records the passing of days and seasons in Door County, in his life, in our lives.

A delicate balance between the rugged Door terrain and the author’s inner landscape, the entries of DOOR STEPS (the second book in Blei’s Door County trilogy, which also includes DOOR WAY and DOOR TO DOOR) range from objective, almost naturalistic observations to pure poetry.

Jim Spector is best known for his passionate solo flamenco recordings and his inspired concert performances. He has arranged, composed and recorded the soundtracks to award-winning documentary films and music from his compact disc recording “Flamenco Passions” (DCV002, Door Couniy Voices) has been featured on American Airlines. In this collaboration with Norbert Blei, the text provided the images to inspire a musical setting for sensitive, evocative readings.

Produced by Door County Voices, a division of Open Door Productions, Inc., P.O. Box 517, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235. Readings performed by Norbert Blei. Original music composed and recorded by Jim Spector. Recorded at Sound Fanners, Sturgeon Bay, WI. Produced by Mark Thiede. Executive Producer: Cy Rosenthal. Photography by Dan Hatton.

Much more on Norbert Blei can be found on his web sites: Norbert Blei & Basho’s Road & Poetry Dispatch & Other Notes from the Underground

Download listen to Norbert Blei & Jim Spector | 29th Going for Milk

Editors note: This recording was originally released as cassette and is not longer available. Norbert Blei was so kind to send me one of the very last un-played tapes. Digitalized as mp3 in 320kps | 44100hz | Stereo quality by Markus Mayer in Vienna, Austria.

If you are interested in buying this digitalized cassette please click here…

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Yesterday, May 1st, neighbor kids, the Brandts, quietly left a small bouquet of colorful flowers on the writer’s door as they do every May Day, brightening the moment considerably. Calling attention to the ordinary life, the quiet gesture, simple beauty, the greater good.

The writer prays this particular fish tug, minutes from where he lives, will always be docked in this harbor. Its very name gives him great joy.

Now here comes, there goes the ailing writer, May 1, off to the coop, (rough days ahead, for the next five weeks), waving “Hello,” “Goodbye”…with faith in the word, uppermost in mind…determined that all his stories ”be continued”…

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I would like to hit a number of notes with this piece. Today is Earth Day—what better moment to celebrate the life of an old friend, former Clearing student, Emma Pitcher? Then there’s The Clearing itself, where I have taught writing almost every spring since the 1970’s, and where my own life has been considerably enhanced because of the true nature of this place.

I received a call on Tuesday afternoon that Emma Pitcher had died. I had lost touch her with the past few years, but she always came to mind whenever I recalled earlier classes. Which is more frequent that one would imagine.

Always it’s the students. The uniqueness of each one whatever the age or gender. What they bring to a class setting. What I earn from them. Whatever writing spark I may be able to provide for each of them.

There was a hint of the old ‘school-marm’ about Emma that took a while getting used to—for both me and other writers in class. A touch of the scold. The right way and the wrong way from every thing to the choice of words, Latin names for plants, to photographing a flower. She was more than a little bit above it all—in education, intellect, life-experience, seeing/doing things her way. But once you got past this—she was pure gold. Her laughter was infectious. Her intimate friendship knew no bounds.

Her particular expertise was nature: flowers, birds, trees, the whole earth. She loved the Clearing, the Indiana Dunes, the entire Midwestern landscape.

I’ll leave the details of her life for her official obit. Personally, I was aware she was divorced very late in life and this was a wound that would never quite heal.
Only nature—and writing offered any balm.

She came to my class already an accomplished nature columnist for the Kalamazoo Gazette. All I was able to do was suggest she start publishing her columns as books…plus provide some direction through fields of poetry, which would eventually loosen some her prose, give her more wing-span. For this, she was eternally grateful.

I love smart, sincere, real, adventurous, humorous, open women—both young and old. Especially older women with life experience, love of art and nature, and a spirit that can rise to any occasion.

Emma didn’t need the feminist movement. She knew exactly who she was and her place upon the earth. She left her mark in words, in everything she touched, in every friend she made and held fast to the very end.–Norbert Blei

Illustration by Elizabeth Henderson

Verbs for Birds

by
Emma Bickham Pitcher

What verbs would you use to describe the move¬ment of birds? We all know a duck waddles because his legs are situated so far back on his body. And a mute swan trying to get his twenty-five pounds airborne has to thrash and thrash the water heavily. What other verbs immediately remind you of some particular avian experience you have had?

The word bounce connotes a sprightly reaction— the thing a tennis ball does after being hit by Pete Sampras or Martina Hingis. I think a saucy-demeanored black-capped chickadee bounces—he levitates in defiance of gravity. Its almost as if there were built-in springs in his legs that make possible his fast takeoffs. Bounce has other meanings relating to bad checks, night club guards, office dismissals, illness recoveries, but I like best to think of it describing the effortless verve of a chickadees departure from a feeder.

Some bird groups explode, really frightening an unaware passerby. Ruffed grouse and Gambel’s quail broods, cornered or threatened, will burst out suddenly from under one’s feet—birds everywhere, flying in a dramatic distraction display.

Hovering is fascinating avian behavior to watch. You wonder if you re seeing things. If an airplane were to try standing still on air, it wouldn’t work; its aeronautical dynamics would be destroyed and it would become an FAA statistic. But some birds—from hummers to rough-legged hawks, including terns, kestrels, and kingfishers—can hover, beating their wings rapidly to keep the same position while checking out a possible meal. Hummingbirds, the most successful of all hovering species, seem to stand still as they suck nectar from a flower, maintaining the position with as many as seventy beats per second, wing beats too fast for human eyes to see anything but a blur. A belted kingfisher poises, wings beating hard; then, when ready to dive, he closes his wings tight to his body and plunges into the water. He may also perch motionless in a conspicuous place, waiting for a meal to appear before he dives.

Eagles may dive from high in the air, making spectacular plunges several feet into the water. Gannets, too, do high dives, fifty feet or more, when in search of quarry.

Thornton Burgess, and other children’s authors who anthropomorphised many animals, wrote of Sammy Jay strutting and swaggering. I think swoop is a fitting verb for him. Many birds approach feeders in short reconnaissance stages, making sure the runway is clear, before making the final approach. But not the blue jay. He swoops rapidly, gulps down one to fifteen seeds, and vanishes, scattering smaller birds willy-nilly.

Pounce is another descriptive but useful verb describing particular bird movements. A robin will cruise around a lawn in dignified fashion, head cocked, but when the right moment occurs, that yellow bill goes after the worm with considerable strength and style. He pounces on it. Similarly, a perched barn owl or great gray owl studies the ground intently, and then, with a graceful whoosh, the bird plummets down, and another rodent becomes dinner. Kestrels on telephone wires have similar performances.

What is it to soar? Is it to float through the air, wings rigid, stiffly extended, body hardly moving, taking advantage of wind currents to maintain or increase altitude? A barely discernible rocking or tilting from side to side helps maintain position. To see hawks endlessly circling in larger and larger arcs as they rise on thermals, the heat currents coming up from the land, is always mind-boggling to me.

Anyone fortunate enough to find adult birds feeding their young experiences perfect examples of begging. With mouth agape and wings flapping wildly, the fledgling entreats a harried parent to feed him immediately. One can almost feel saliva running, so violent is the activity.

During May migration, enjoying a small flowering tree alive with wood warblers—black and white and yellow flashing everywhere—is to experience the act of flitting. We were watching such an enchanting tree once, dashing back and forth, binoculars up and down, shouting excited “oh looks”, trying to get one set of wings in focus, when an unknown cartoonist s prototype of an elderly female birdwatcher in tennis shoes said to us;

“Forget your binoculars. Stand still and just watch for field marks.” Her advice worked. We let the birds do the flitting.

A nighthawk in dramatic courtship display flight booms with his wings as he makes a spectacular plunge from high in the air. The sound is the rapid rush vibrating the feathers.

Birds that spend most of their time in trees generally hop with both feet whether in the tree or on the ground. This is tiring because the entire weight has to be lifted every time. Ground nesters such as meadow-larks are more apt to walk, one leg moving at a time, and the entire weight is never suspended. Brown creepers and white-breasted nuthatches creep up and down and around trunks while woodpeckers hitch their way up.

To see a flight of gulls leisurely beating their way down a wind-driven, sunlit lake is a pleasant sight, evocative of summer days. The effortless flight is the evidence of having a complete set of all the necessary equipment and having it in perfect working condition.

A male ruffed grouse drums with his wings, using the whirring sound to stake out his territory, repelling other males and attracting females. Many birds glide effortlessly into landings, making no body movements, just coasting downhill, wings extended, legs down ready to make contact.

Black skimmers skim and roadrunners run and. . .

[from RAMBLINGS, Reflections on nature by Emma Pitcher, illustrated by Elizabeth Henderson, Beech Leaf Press, 2001, $11.95]

Emma Bickham Pitcher’s serious nature interest started in the early 1950s in the Indiana Dunes where she began bird and flower watching. Moving there in 1980 from Chicago, she wrote and taught about the dunes natural features, enjoying photography and field work. Since 1987, she has devoted many hours to the Kalamazoo Nature Center: studying the trails, teaching and writing. A naturalist at a 180-acre private nature preserve and a licensed bird bander, she took courses at Michigan State University and Western Michigan University.

An Illinois native, Pitcher raised a family and then worked at the University of Chicago. At retirement, she was Dean of Students of the Graduate School of Business. Her writings include Up and Down the Dunes, Of Woods and Other Things, and articles in midwestern Audubon publications. Over the years, various awards in recognition other volunteer activities have come her way, including those from the Michigan Audubon Society, the National Park Service, and the State of Indiana Order of the Sagamores of the Wabash.

Emma Bickham Pitcher | Photo by Norbert Blei

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Photo by Norbert Blei

The Ways of Old

Through the years I’ve been called a curmudgeon, a coyote, and worse in these parts.

Once they even took my job away as local writer–when writing about something used to matter around here.

But all I was suggesting in the onslaught of overdevelopment was preservation.

I pined away for years at my old friend Ed Abbey’s sense of time: “Why can’t we just leave things the way they were?”

I thought of that again today driving the sunny backroads of the rural landscape I’ve come to love…checking up on things: hawks high on trees, crows in cantankerous chatter, horses standing at attention, a farmer leaning on a fence post bound to nothing…

I was looking for confirmation, signs of the way it used to be.

For years I’ve been bemoaning the disappearance of my favorite harbinger of spring: maple syrup time. Tapping the old trees. Cool nights, warm days. The sap dripping into metal buckets. Another lost way…

Something almost prayerful in that sight.

Then, there they were…

Glory be to buckets of pure maple sap.

–norbert blei

Photo by Norbert Blei

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I was even more fortunate in that almost every editor I worked with on city newspapers and magazines (especially the Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, and Chicago Magazine) let me do any story that interested me. I didn’t need the approval of a board of editors and managers. I merely called from the street…let’s say, John, at the Chicago Trib…and told him: “I’ve always wanted to do a story about guys who sit on benches in city parks all day. I think I found one.” The answer was always: “Go ahead.”

Fast forward from Chicago then to Door County now, where I have lived a long time. (Still with a lot of Chicago in my blood.) It’s an unusually balmy early spring here in this rustic, rural northern neck of Wisconsin. About mid-afternoon yesterday I went over to a place called Ellison Bay Bluff Park to check on a spectacular view: the ice moving out. I lingered a long while in the silence and beauty of watching blue water return.

When a stranger stopped to talk I handed her my camera. “Take a shot “ I said, “for my son and daughter. But take it from behind me, not in front. I want them to know I’m okay. Still a dreamer. And that I’ve reached a certain stage in life. I’ve become a classic bench sitter.” –norbert blei

A Man on a Bench

At four every morning Innocenzo Bonelli is up, partly because of the pain, partly because a ninety-year-old man does not sleep long. He eats in his room at the Wells Grand (“Men Only, No Transients”) and usually by six heads for a bench in Grant Park.

All men are not bench sitters. Young people, especially, seem to have no use for the furniture of city parks and small-town courthouse squares. It takes an Innocenzo Bonelli, a classic bench sitter, to give the pastime the grace it de¬serves. The buses roll by him down Michigan Avenue, the early morning traffic is ponderous, but he has the grass, the pigeons, a newspaper, and his bench. He is a study in tranquility.

“I come down here just to pass the time,” he says. “I don’t do nothing. I go home eleven o’clock and make something to eat. Afternoon I take nap, or I read some books… any book I find. Sometimes I walk down to the lake and watch somebody catch the fish. I like to be by myself.”

Bonelli. a retired baker, has lived in Chicago almost seventy years. “I come from Italy in 1910,” he says. “Never was back. No want to. I don’t care for the old country. It’s pretty good here.” There are long pauses in the conversation. To bench sitters, what is said is not important. You do not find a bench for yourself in the park to converse. But should a stranger come by and share your time and bench, you may make small talk.

“I get $184 from Social Security,” Bonelli says, rubbing his chin. “For me, is enough. I cook, I wash my own clothes, I cut my hair. Sixty dollars for rent. The landlady is nice.”

Bonelli has never married and has been in bad health most of his life. “Every month I go to the doctor to take blood pressure,” he says. “I can’t sleep only three or four hours a night. I had an operation here,” pointing, “by nose . . . here, by ear… and down here, prostate. I get medicine. But about six weeks ago they tell me they pay too much already. Last hospital bill, $3,000.”

Pigeons flutter around him. The sun is getting higher, and he pulls down his cap to protect his eyes.

Some coffee, Innocenzo? Some breakfast? On me.

“I don’t want nothing from nobody,” he smiles, opening his newspaper. “I just say thank you.” Then he disappears into the silence of his art. –norbert blei

[from CHI TOWN, Northwestern University Press, 2003, first tradeback edition. First published, hb, by Ellis Press, 1990.]

Norbert Blei | Photo made by A Passing Stranger

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