The Merry Month of May

Spring is full-on here in Southeast Michigan. Most trees have their leaves, the oaks and hickories are leafing out now, and the forest floor is covered with wildflowers. I am lucky enough to live near state land and a trail that passes through some pretty healthy habitat (not a lot of invasives). Lisa, Lori and I went for a hike yesterday and saw a wonderful variety of plants, from Jack-in-the-Pulpit to early meadow rue and rue anemone to wild geranium and blankets of trillium.

This is, in my opinion, the best time to be in the woods. The canopy is not yet filled out so the forest is bright and airy feeling. The birds are nesting and so the woods are filled with birdsong, and it's early enough that the bugs are not yet a problem. But the best part has got to be the wildflowers--we've identified 14 plants so far. Everywhere you look there's something blooming, and the woods are alive with color.

On another note, the snow leopard is getting closer to being done, albeit slowly. I am planning on entering this piece in an exhibition at the end of the month so I had better get rolling on it!

Back to work

The title of this post is a little misleading--I am always working, it seems, but not always on artwork. I probably spend less time making art than I do running the business and getting ready for shows. But this year I have managed to get into a few shows that do not allow you to hang framed prints in your booth, so I need to make sure I have plenty of originals!

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I failed to post any pics of my last piece, "Piggyback" while it was "in production", but you can go to my website to see it completed. My latest piece takes me back to my passion, big cats. This is as yet untitled but is of a snow leopard.

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There are two of these beautiful creatures at the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, and I got some great shots a few summers ago. Right across from their enclosure is the pen for the red panda (which may be my next piece). One of the leopards was up out of sight, sleeping, but the other was pacing and kept jumping up on this rock outcrop and watching with great interest the panda on the other side. I could almost hear it thinking, "If I could only get out of here...."

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Snow leopards are exquisit animals and are highly endangered. They live in the higher altitudes of central Asia and are well adapted to the climate with thick fur, a stocky build and large, furry feet that aid in walking across snow. Their tails are nearly as long as their bodies which probably helps them keep their balance as they chase prey across the mountains, and may also serve as a blanket of sorts.

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Because of their carnivorous nature and their dwindling habitat, they are increasingly targeting livestock, and are frequently killed for this. The loss of even one goat can be a tragedy for herders living in these unforgiving regions so the killings are understandable if not regrettable. The loss of one breeding leopard can be devistating for the species, so conservationists are working with herders to devise ways to keep their livestock safe and to deter further attacks.

Silence is Golden

I am in my studio watching the birds in the warm evening light. It’s been a pretty day but chilly, with a bit of a breeze out of the north. While winds from that direction keep the temperatures down, they keep the noise here down too.

Our house is about half-way up the side of a south-facing hill. About two tenths of a mile to our south is a fairly busy east-west running dirt road. Unless the wind is blowing down from the north (or northeast or northwest) it will actually carry noise from the road right up the hill to us. It’s as if we live in a huge satellite dish that funnels the noise right to our house.

I was dismayed after moving here to realize how much noise the property catches. Walk over the hill to our neighbor’s property and you hear only the loudest vehicles. One of the things I really wanted when we moved from the city was a break from all the noise. We lived on a busy street and even though our house sat back from the road 50 or 60 feet we could not sit on the front porch and have a conversation for all the traffic roaring by. I guess I became over-sensitive to it.

This brings me to a topic that is very important to me, and that is one of quiet/silence in our parks and wilderness areas. My friends don’t seem to notice noise like I do and so are not as affected by planes circling the lake when we’re kayaking, or the rumble of an expressway a half mile away from a nature trail. But those sorts of things drive me nuts and can really ruin an outdoor experience for me. We as a society have come to value a place primarily for its visual beauty and seem to have forgotten that we have other senses.

When I go to the woods or lake or fields I am seeking not just solitude and a pretty scene to gaze upon but a total escape from us, from the things made by man. To be able to hear a chickadee’s wings as it darts over my head, to hear the movements of small creatures in the duff, the creak of trees in the wind, the soft sounds of a rill running down a wooded slope after a heavy rain, are just as much a part of the experience of being outdoors as are a pretty sunset or the sight of an indigo bunting.

The great author/naturalist Sigurd Olson wrote in Reflections of the North Country, “Silence is one of the most important parts of a wilderness experience; without it the land is nothing more than rocks, trees and water.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. To really feel a part of a place, to be immersed in the spirit and the energy of your surroundings, you need to employ more than just your sight. Whether in your own backyard or on a trail in the U.P., the sound of an ATV or barking dog can be just as distracting as a cell tower or a clear-cut woodland. The difference with sound is that it is pervasive—I can look away from the cell tower and still enjoy a view, but I can’t block out an annoying sound without blocking out all sound.

The best place I have found to experience silence in the outdoors (what Olson considered the lack of man-made sounds) is in the Porcupine Mountains State Wilderness Area in the U.P. There are no roads through the park, just one that goes around its south border and one to Lake in the Clouds. Everywhere you want to go you have to walk. My partner Lori Taylor won an Artist-in-Residence there last fall and was given a cabin in the woods for two weeks. Lisa and I went up and camped, and spent a lot of time at the cabin, and I have never known such silence. Every once in a while there’d be the sound of a plane, or a loud motorcycle on a road somewhere, but otherwise it was like another world, one without mechanized man.

If you’ve never read Reflections of the North Country, you’re really missing out on what I believe is one of the most wonderful collections of essays ever written about wilderness, our place in it and our need for it. And if you’ve never been to the Porkies, as they’re affectionately called, well, you’re missing out on the crowning jewel of Michigan’s Park system and one of the most amazing places I’ve been so far. Give both a try.

Learning to ramble

I know that I should be writing more, and although I feel that I have a lot to say, my thoughts are unorganized and incomplete. I am not one who likes to ramble, despite the name of my blog. For me the need to know what I am doing before I do it supersedes just about everything else—I am a planner. I plan out what I’m going to do, say, wear, eat, etc. My mother likes to tell the story of how when I was a baby I started talking but then stopped for about 6 months. My parents were quite worried and took me to the doctor but he didn’t find anything wrong. Then, when I did start to talk, I was speaking in sentences. Guess I just had to put it all together first, plan it out.


I have a lot of things I want to explore, a lot of topics that I want to read and write about, but I feel that I need to put it all together before I put it before the public eye—small as that eye may be. I am learning about all sorts of different but related issues and philosophies that surround the idea of environmentalism--deep ecology, transcendentalism, conservation and stewardship, the place of God in nature or of nature in God, man’s own place in nature—and I want to put down here what I’ve learned and what I think about it all.


Right now I am reading two books, both very well written and informative: Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken and The Life of the Skies by Jonathan Rosen. Both these books have a nature/environmental theme. Blessed Unrest discusses how issues of social concern are often tied into environmental issues, while The Life in the Skies talks about bird watching, its history (or at least the history of the naturalist as scientist) and takes a much more spiritual angle. I mention this because I think what I’d like to do is use the books I’m reading as a jumping off point, to write about some of the points made and what I think about them, and try not to worry if I’m right or wrong or even if I know what I’m talking about. The point is to use my voice and to start a discussion about topics that concern me, and hopefully we will all learn something—about ourselves as well as the world around us.

Spring at last!

I have recently returned from a trip to the Southland, a much needed break from the end-of-winter dregs in Southeast Michigan. Mid-March is in my opinion the best time to go south for a number of reasons. First, Florida is pretty much past its cold spells, and you will rarely get those 60 degree days they sometimes see in February--not that 60 is bad when you're used to 20. The birds are migrating north so you have a better chance of seeing a roseate spoonbill or a whooping crane (as we did in the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia). But the best reason for me is that by the time you get home, spring is happening.
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The drive back north can be depressing as you travel from green to brown, warm to, well, not so warm. But as I stepped out of our old RV and onto our driveway the first thing I saw was a robin running across the front yard, the first I'd seen here all year. The next thing I noticed were the chorus frogs in the little pond across the road singing away. And when I looked around I saw that the pile of snow left by our neighbor's plow had melted. Ahhhh....
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I enjoy going to Florida, I love the ocean, the azaleas in bloom, getting to see dolphins and manatees and eating really fresh seafood, but I have absolutely no desire to live there. I love the seasons too much, love being able to walk out my door on any given day and notice something different--buds on the lilacs, territorial calls of the cardinals, the nighthawk peenting in the marsh across our road. Especially in the spring, if you are paying attention, each day will bring a new sound or sight or smell. So try to take a moment every day, perhaps in the morning when you're leaving for work, or in the evening after dinner, and go outside and listen, look around you, breathe deeply, and feel the world waking up to another year of possibilities.

The Chicken Hawk

This post is actually from an incident that occurred about six weeks ago but is not in any way outdated.

I have a real hard time forcing an animal to live in a cage. I don’t like the idea of confinement for any animal—guinea pig, bird, cattle, you name it. We eat grass-fed, free-range beef and bison. We are going to start getting chickens from a place down the road where they raise organic free-range birds. So there was no doubt when we got our own layers that we were going to let them range.
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At first we let them out a few times a day, morning and evening. While they were still small and the world was largely unknown to them, they didn't go far from the pen and were fairly easy to round up. But as they grew and became more familiar with their surroundings they began to venture farther away. It was becoming impossible to get them back in their pen, which was a problem because we also have dogs that need to go outside. The final straw came when a neighbor who lives down the road—on the other side of the road--came knocking on our door to ask if we had chickens because one was were standing on her front porch while the others were running around in the road. After that we started to let them out only in the evening, as we discovered that they will put themselves away when it gets dark, a much more satisfying method than chasing them around the yard with sticks and branches.
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We are not romantic about the chickens. We understand full well that as soon as they leave the pen they become targets for all sorts of predators and dangers. There are fox, cats, dogs, cars, and the neighbor kid with a BB gun. If you let your chickens run you have to be prepared to lose one now and then. Honey, who has only one eye, did not come back to the coop on several occasions. Because of her poor eyesight she would frequently get separated from the flock, and would run around in circles squawking. Eventually she learned how to keep up with them, and how to run a straight line, but not before spending a few nights out on her own. The first time I was frantic and searched for her all next day. Let me just tell you—a chicken who doesn't want to be found won’t be. But she learned how to get back to the pen on her own, and I learned to not worry so much about her, even though I understood that her tendency to become separated from the flock made her more of a target.
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Even though we are now in the thick of winter we still try to let them out for an hour or so every evening. There’s not much for them to eat but at least they get some exercise. They have been gathering around Lori’s studio, which sits on top of a little hill and gets sun in the afternoon, so there is not as much snow there, and they have taken to crawling under it and scratching around in the sand.
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This afternoon I let them out just after 4:00 and went back to my office, which faces away from Lori’s studio. Fifteen minutes or so later I came out and glanced out Lisa’s office window, which looks over the back yard and Lori’s studio. There was a large bird perched on the arm of Lori’s rocker that I just caught a glimpse of as I was walking down the hallway. Several steps down the hall I stopped and thought, that was no chicken. I went back to the doorway and sure enough, sitting on the arm of the chair was a large Cooper’s hawk, sometimes called a chicken hawk, looking this way and that. There were no chickens in sight. I yelled for Lisa and Lori and we gathered around the kitchen window, marveling over the beautiful bird. I of course was looking for a chicken in its talons but saw no casualties.
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After it flew away I ran outside and stood in the middle of the yard. No chickens, not a peep, not a scratch. I checked the coop to see if they’d run for cover—empty. I went over to the studio and stood quietly, listening, and finally two of the chickens came around the corner, nervously looking around, and gathered around my feet. Then two more crawled out from under the studio, and I got down on hands and knees to see who else was there. We found Fancy, our aracauna, smashed between a bale of straw and the front of the studio with her head under her wing. There were piles of feathers on the ground but we couldn't see who’d had the close call. It wasn't until I was luring them back over to the coop that I saw Honey with blood on her neck.
I scooped her up, rushed her into the house and put her in the bathroom, then went to get an old towel. By the time I got back she had already pooped on the floor—at least she didn't do it while I was carrying her through the living room. Lori helped me clean her up and it seems that the only injury she sustained was a cut on her waddle, which was dripping blood onto her neck. She sat very still and quiet while we wiped her down, and then I took her back to the coop where she picked at some scratch as if nothing had happened.
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I am amazed at how instinctively these birds behave, considering however many hundreds of generations removed they are from their wild ancestors. They knew where to go to escape danger, how to hide when they couldn't find shelter, and when it was safe to come out. They understand that they are safer as a group and sound the alarm when danger is near. While they have a brain the size of a (small) grape, they are much wiser about the wild than many of us are.


And so, I can say with a certain amount of pride,

Chickens: 1
Chicken Hawk: 0

The thaw begins

Ah, Spring. I know, the calendar says we still have six weeks or so to go, but on February 5th we passed the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and I can feel the change. The sun is higher and warmer, the days noticeably longer. Here in southeast Michigan we've gained about an hour and a half of daylight, 50 minutes of it in the evening. Even when the air temperature doesn't get above freezing the sun is warm enough to melt the snow. Bare patches get bigger every day. I start to hear the drip drip drip of spring.


I remember when I was a kid how excited I would get when it rained for the first time each year. It was a sure sign that winter was on its last legs. Winters have changed, warmed since then, and we had been getting rain at any time of the winter--a few years back we had a thunderstorm on New Year's Eve. But this winter has been more like what I remember as a kid, cold and snowy--we still have around one foot of snow on the ground. What's wonderful about that is you really feel the change of seasons, winter turning into spring seems to mean more, is more powerful, carries more excitement. It's hard to get excited about spring when there's been no snow on the ground all winter.


I know plenty of people who rejoice in a warm winter, but for me it's the change of seasons that makes living here so wonderful. I love the transition, love how each time I leave the house it's just a little bit different outside. One day I notice the snow's not so deep. Later I'll hear my first robin of the year. Next thing I know the house wren is waking me up at five in the morning, singing outside my open window. The peepers of spring become the cicadas of summer become the crickets of fall. I'll wake up one morning and there's been a frost, and I know it won't be long before the first flakes fly. The juncos return and it's time to dig out the snow shovels. And when the snow does fall again I'll strap on my snowshoes and dare winter to try to keep me inside, and listen carefully for those first drips of spring.