Black Squirrels

The Shad is in bloom and the countryside is white. Down in the bottoms, the pears have dropped their blossoms, soon the redbuds, and in the forest, the dogwoods. No dogwoods on the ridge, all killed in a succession of ice storms; I still find the occasional dead one, and carry it home for firewood. It's among the very best firewood. Saw one of the black squirrels, and it's always such a shock, a split second when you don't know what something is. It must be a recessive gene, so I don't know why it continues to exist, but I know two families of them. Spent all morning wandering about. The end of this week could see the first morels, the conditions have been very good for an early season. I made a new collection bag for this year's foraging, a yellow woven lemon bag, with a draw-string and a small clip that attaches to a belt loop. One of the rules of foraging is to keep both hands free. I usually have a walking stick in one hand, which I can drop or use as a defensive weapon as the case may be. Watching Ronnie pick blackberries is a lesson in efficiency. He keeps a gallon pail, tied around his neck, and picks with both hands, using fingers that are calloused against the minor pricks of mere thorns. I constantly caution myself against adjectives, but I often do mean to refer to a particular sub-set. My three crows come back, and I have mice for them, they love me when I give them what they want. I could be cynical, if I gave it any thought. Ryan said yesterday that he had already noticed, after one winter, that when his friends came out, taken a walk, had dinner, that they almost immediately over-romanticized 'life in the woods', having no idea of what the challenges actually were. Still, the rewards are high, I saw a Flicker, for the first time in years, then a Woodcock, flushed from the bottom; I was over near the graveyard when I flushed a Grouse and I thought my heart would stop. It waited until I was about five feet away, then drummed up and out, under the tree branches, downhill. Not very good flyers. A bowling ball with stubby wings. There's no other sound like it. Easter, so I put on "St. Matthew's Passion" while I made pate with the deer liver and store-bought mushrooms. It was small deer, the yearling, and the liver was small, so it was a small batch. Took an hour to clean up afterwards, but the country pate was good, and I ate it all, during the course of the day, with gherkins and olives, and a British double-cheddar. When I enjoy one of these grazing days, I sometimes imagine I'm at a cocktail party, and have conversations with imaginary guests. Early on, I got called on to mediate between some problems between 'talent' and management, I was good at this, for reasons not to be understood. I'm a good listener, for one thing. Gerry Mulligan was married to some actress that was appearing at the playhouse, a horrid play, a British drawing-room comedy, and they were having a spat. Easily settled as I had access to very good hash, and after the show that night, Mulligan played a solo set, over an hour, for an audience of twelve. I've heard the cello suites that close. Sweat slinging off the bow. But never anything with that sense of improvisation. Who could approach that? Miles, of course. I mean really, just leave out almost everything. Bitch's Brew is one of the great examples of ensemble playing. So after Bach, getting dark, rain moving in, I listened to Miles. Thunder and lightening, I shut down, curl up on the sofa with a good book, a Scandinavian mystery/thriller that is quite interesting, deep into the psychology of the characters. Aware of the world, the wind is howling (a full gale) and the rain is running across in sheets, but I have my protection, a roof and certain folk-tales.

Any given bloom,
cherry or pear or apple,
seems to say something.

I don't buy in to that, but wind force 10, when lawn furniture becomes air-born, is a very real state. I duck behind a low adobe wall, concentrate on not becoming air-born, and batten down the hatches. Burrow down into a ditch.