Notes:
4:33 a.m., or so. You are so damn precise with your clock.
I pulled into the Cove Island Park parking lot, my headlights illuminated her…sleeping. Hold that thought.
It’s been 770 consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk. Like in a row.
I was going to share a different story. A running story. I page through the dates of my prior posts to find my last running post: June 6, 2020! MY GOD. It’s been 2 years! And, this back and these legs carrying 12 lbs more. Yep, I decided to lace up the shoes and run. 2 days in a row. My body is so tired, that it couldn’t lift my fingers to the keyboard to tap the words out. So, we’re going to hold this thought for another day.
Back to this morning’s walk. A spectacular morning. 60° F. 5 mph breeze. And it had the three elements of a perfect morning. 1) Low tide. 2) 30-60% cloud cover. 3) No Humans. So we have ALL of this going for us.
And I spotted my Swans, George and Grace, feeding.
And I spotted a black-crowned night heron, a mime, frozen in place; this morning’s twilight, the finest, lightest bulb, illuminating its thin, light white plume. “Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.” — T.S. Eliot, from La Figlia Che Piange.
And then there’s my spirit bird. Plural, Birds. A flock of cormorants. Must mean that I’m going to have a great day.
And on the back side of my walk, I stalk a white-tailed deer, and snap a few shots of her. It’s a her I think. In this world of pronouns, I’m sure I stepped into it again.
So, you can pick any number of these moments, and hold them, for a moment, the day, into next week. Yet…one moment stands alone, higher above the rest.
It was 1 hour after I had first spotted her, and she was still sleeping, in the same exact position, undisturbed.
I’m going to remember this. [Read more…]
My Swans @ Daybreak. 6:37 am, April 9, 2022. 47° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.More photos from this morning here.
DK @ Daybreak. 6:44 am, April 3, 2022. 38° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.
Ukraine. Russian invasion. Wintery Mix followed by freezing rain. 28° F, feels like 18° F. Best to just stay in bed, and ride it out.
Photo: DK @ Cove Island Park. Friday, Feb 25, 2022. 6:06 a.m. More photos from this morning here.
Went out yesterday afternoon in a flash winter weather advisory (a 20 minute snow squall / white-out) to be welcomed by another most pleasant surprise. Backstories on my Swan here.
7/ 3/ 54. I keep myself going with various kinds of dope: books, written and read, dreams, hopes, crossword puzzles, the sentimentality of friendships, and real friendships, and simply routine.
— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)— Patricia Highsmith, Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995
Notes:
6:10 a.m.
Dark. 12° F, feels like Nasty. Wind cuts through all the layers. Shiver.
I’m driving down Weed Avenue, eyes scan The Cove.
When she’s here, even in the blackest of Nights, there’s no missing that White Coat, those 25,000 feathers, that Beacon.
“Sadness, I need your black White wing.” (PN*)
I drive on, now 500 yards from the park.
There!
I pull off the highway, grab the camera, and approach.
I offer her a soft, short whistle.
She pops her head up, “Hey there Mister, All Good Here.”
Then, she tucks her head back under her wing, and back to sleep.
I pause watching her for a moment, and then glance up at Polaris, shimmering overhead.
Yes, O.K. All good here too.
This World can keep on, keep spinning on its axis.
Notes:
5:35 a.m.
Dark. Wet. Rain. 43° F. I pan through the hour by hour Weather Channel Forecast:
5 am: “Light rain.”
6 am: “Light rain.”
7 am: “Light rain.”
8 am: “Light rain.”
and so on, hourly until 7 pm.
“Wintry mix likely for the next several hours.”
I sit up in bed. No chance, you are going out in that.
Mind drifts to my Swan. She’s out there. Rain, raining down on her coat.
I google ‘swans’ to find Biology of Swans. “Swans have about 25,000 feathers on their body – the vast majority of these are tiny, little feathers situated round the head and neck.”
Somehow this puts me at ease. For a moment.
25,000 feathers must keep her warm, as she dives to feed in the frigid waters of The Cove. She can’t be cold. She can’t be hungry. 25,000 feathers.
I pull the covers up, and close my eyes. Damn it. I need to get to The Cove. [Read more…]
The first shot of her was taken yesterday. Mid-morning. The others, from this morning.
I went back out yesterday after my daybreak walk, the winds were howling. Like I hadn’t had enough of this?
She was 50 yards out. She spotted me, and there was no doubt of her intentions. Human, Food. She tried to crawl up onto the ice and get to the shoreline. Unsuccessful. I walked further down, she was in full pursuit, like she was panicked that I would leave. Come on Man, I’m hungry. I kept walking. She followed. I had nothing on me. Nothing.
I turned, got into the car, didn’t look back. Couldn’t look back. You do know that feeding them is wrong, right?
It was colder this morning when I went out. Much colder.
A large part of the cove was frozen over.
She was on my mind. She hangs with a flock of Canada Geese. I haven’t seen her mate in months, likely basking in the Gulf of California.
And there she was. Sleeping soundly. Ice solidly formed around her.
And I stand, watching.
She responds to a whistle, but I couldn’t disturb her. Both hands in my pockets, the right scooping half a cup of itty bitty Nyjer seedlings, which I sift through my fingers.
Another day Girl. Another Day.
Notes:
5/24/41…
After all that, the change … was like the sudden, unwelcome awakening from a glorious dream. An awakening on a Monday morning when, with one’s castle and clouds and the silver sea dissolved into a sordid room, one realizes that one has to get up and dress in the cold night in a few minutes and plod through a weary day.
— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)— Patricia Highsmith, Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995
Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:52 a.m., November 22, 2021. 48° F & Rain. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Related Swan posts: Swan1
Birds @ Daybreak. 4:58 to 5:18 am, May 21, 2021. 55° F. Weed Ave / Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Related Swan posts: Swan1
DK @ Daybreak. 5:20 a.m. May 13, 2021. Weed Avenue, Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Related Swan posts: Swan1
I never cared much for swans until the day a swan told me I was wrong. It was a cloudy winter morning and I was suffering from a recently broken heart. I sat myself down on a concrete step by Jesus Lock and was staring at the river, feeling the world was just as cold and grey, when a female mute swan hoist herself out from the water and stumped towards me on leathery, in-turned webbed feet and sturdy black legs. I assumed she wanted food. Swans can break an arm with one blow of their wing, I remembered, one of those warnings from childhood that get annealed into adult fight-or-flight responses. Part of me wanted to get up and move further away, but most of me was just too tired. I watched her, her snaky neck, black eye, her blank hauteur. I expected her to stop, but she did not. She walked right up to where I sat on the step, her head towering over mine. Then she turned around to face the river, shifted left, and plonked herself down, her body parallel with my own, so close her wing-feathers were pressed against my thighs. Let no one ever speak of swans as being airy, insubstantial things. I was sitting with something the size of a large dog. And now I was too astonished to be nervous. I didn’t know what to do: I grasped, bewildered, for the correct interspecies social etiquette. She looked at me incuriously, then tucked her head sideways and backwards into her raised coverts, neck curved, and fell fast asleep. We sat there together for ten minutes, until a family came past and a toddler made a beeline for her. She slipped back into the water and ploughed upstream. As I watched her leave something shifted inside me and I began to weep with an emotion I recognised as gratitude. That day was when swans turned into real creatures for me, and it has spurred me since to seek out others.
— Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (Grove Press, August 25, 2020)
Photo: DK’s Swan. Sept 11, 2020. 6:15 am. The Cove, Stamford, CT. Related Swan posts: Swan1
Live & Learn 