Missing Autumn

Where Are the Autumns of Yesteryear?

We’re well along in the second of my two favorite months — September…..   October….   But something’s very wrong.  Green is everywhere.  Unwelcome green!  June and July are well past – but their temperatures and their very colors are with us still.

Essence of Autumn

Someone brought and enormous bucket of purple iris to D&R Greenway this week — iris is a spring herald, not fall’s.

Once I wrote a poem about stubborn autumn leaves:  “They have had their chance.  Now I want them down… since they would not play tapers to our waltz….”

Autumn Frames Canal and Delaware River, Near Prallsville Mills

I don’t want them down in 2017.  I want those colors to flare and flame so that one thinks that level of scarlet and crimson and gold and even purple would put out the night sky itself.

Whatever happened to autumn?

We know the answer, But we are mandated to call its cause a myth.

Where are the autumns of yesteryear?

 

“Mellow fruitfulness” at Russo’s in Tabernacle in the Jersey Pine Barrens:

 

Keats says it for all of us.  He dares counter to spring, telling my favorite season, this autumn manque, “thou hast thy music 

To Autumn

John Keats, 1795 – 1821

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
  Steady thy laden head across a brook; 
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? 
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Red Cranberry Vines at Chatsworth, New Jersey

 

 

 

 

Lumberville (PA) General Store — Unique, Even Outstanding Foods and Welcome

http://thelumbervillegeneralstore.com/ [sign up for notices of SPECIAL events…]

 

One of Winter’s Welcoming Fireplaces, Lumberville General Store, PA

How can one be homesick for a place that is not home?  Or actively miss a place, when one is there every few weeks?  This has been my fate since I ‘met’ the renovated Lumberville General Store, on ‘The River Road’ above New Hope.  This emporium of excellence has been eincarnated by brilliant Laura Thompson, aesthetic genius behind the Black Bass Inn across the road.

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Bass Inn, Venerable ‘Parent’ Establishment Across Route 32

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A Florida friend and I had set out for Bucks County with Christmas presents for one another in hand,  planning for breakfast at a traditional Lamberville morning restaurant.  Now that she lives in the South, time together needs to be timeless and quiet.  Our destination, that morning, turned out to be rambunctious and raucous, with a line out the door into December’s gelid air.  “We’re not doing this,” I announced.  “I’ve read about new chefs at the Lumberville General Store.  Let’s give it a try.”

Ice Floes Race Down the Delaware River, Out Lumberville General Store Windows

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Welcoming Lantern on the Mantel

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Window Decor, Lumberville General Store Haven

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Fireplace Tile, Lumberville General Store

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Even the Fire-Tending Gloves are Decorative!

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Scotch Woodcock (home-smoked salmon), gossamer eggs, cloud-like roll, home-fashioned-and-smoked sausage with ginger and sage — and the most ethereal (so-called) hash-browned potatoes of our lives — [Chef Anton’s secret being pre-preparation inspired by The French Laundry] — an hour and a  half  sous-vide… and, o, yes, “We finish them in butter.  Everything’s better in butter.”

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One chooses a room, a table, a fireplace.  One picks up a handy compact clipboarded menu in the main room of the General Store.  One agonizes between their own bacon, quiche with crust that levitates, scrambled eggs in the form of the omelets of France, triple-berry or cheese scones, hearty breakfast biscuit, and the like.  I cannot count the number of friends I have taken there or met there.  All are astounded — even at lunch.  This attention to detail, to sources (“We’re between Manhattan and Philly — purveyors are glad to serve us.”) I seem to remember Anton’s delight in the storied Viking fisheries of LBI for salmon and other fish; and local eggs whose provenance resembles that of works of art.  Their legendary soups are also available frozen to take home, as are those remarkable quiches.  Tall sturdy glass bottles with metal and porcelain stoppers hold (free) refrigerated water for your table, by whatever fireside, or outside, setting you may choose.

While Amy and Charlie and Anton banter with you behind the counter, you can create mixed coffee concoctions to meet your morning needs.  Everyone’s pride in his and her work is palpable.  Their delight in one’s presence is as though you’re guests and they’re cherished hosts in the warmest of homes.

We’ve done any number of Christmas and birthday rituals, wrapped in timelessness that is not the norm in this dire century.  There have been celebration of having recovered visits and even sympathy returns.  Hale or not, merry or sad, by the fire, or with backyard breezes wafting in as guests feast at the sturdy outdoor tables — in this historic setting, one feels blessed.  As well as gastronomically enchanted.

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And afterwards, in most weather (once, even in black ice — a short jaunt), one can walk the foot(e)bridge across my beloved Delaware and its Pennsylvania canal, to Bull’s Island in New Jersey.  There’s even a successful eagle nest visible when trees are less leafed out, one mile below the New Jersey entry to Bull’s Island.  This hefty structure crowns a massive sycamore, almost on the river.  And another eagle nest may be found on the power tower near the Lambertville toll bridge — whose three young fledged on the Fourth of July weekend!  For a long time, the Homestead Farm Market on the Lambertville hill had its scope trained on the nest where these hefty young were “branching” — testing their wings.

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Canal and Towpath, Pennsylvania Side

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Canal and River Alongside/Below Black Bass Inn

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Winter Canal, “Down By the Riverside…”

NJWILDBEAUTY readers well recognize that this haven, which extends far beyond a mere restaurant, constellates most of my passions:   beauty, history, authenticity, gastronomy, and Nature herself — especially my cherished Delaware River.

Places such as Riverton and Burlington NJ, and Perkasie and Sellersville, PA, remind us, along with Lumberville:  Without preservation, we would have little or none of the experiences and photographs on this ‘page.’

This canal was connected to our D&R Canal by an aqueduct at nearby Raven Rock.  Much of New Jersey was settled, in the canal era, beside canal towns.  Before that, the Delaware was the main artery.  Lumberville was named for the trees harvested there and floated down the river to build Pennsylvania and New Jersey in those centuries.  It is a miracle that not only beauty, but even artifacts of those time, let alone buildings, remain.

NJWILDBEAUTY readers know I celebrate living in the Delaware Valley, because it is so easy to get to beauty and wildness, and HISTORY, within an hour’s drive or less!  It wasn’t like this in Michigan, which became a state in 1837…  Open your eyes and your tastebuds newly to our surroundings.  Give yourselves these memorable gifts.

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From their web-site — you see, yet another passion, art in general and Delaware Valley Impressionism in particular…

HISTORY

As you can see from the original date stone on the front of the store, our beautiful building has stood on River Road since 1770. Over the years – with ownership passing from local family to local family – the General Store has always honored the same fundamental tradition: providing a place for the community to congregate. While our visitors may not be relying on us for their weekly groceries these days, we’re proud to still maintain the cozy, communal feel that has defined our store’s history.

PAST

This once-sleepy area alongside the Delaware River steadily developed over the course of the late eighteenth century, and with it, the General Store. In 1775, Revolutionary War hero Colonel George Wall, Jr. acquired the land and began personally overseeing the store. He also (modestly) renamed the area “Walls Landing” and created two lumber mills, a grist mill, and a surveying school. By 1825, the store started to serve a dual purpose as the post office of the newly renamed “Lumberville” – a moniker chosen by Jonathan Heed and Samuel Hartley in response to the successful saw mill operations. As the eighteenth century turned into the nineteenth, the General Store exchanged hands between the Livezey family and the Heed family.

Over time, Lumberville became a bucolic haven for artists, such as Martin Johnson Heade, who was originally a “Heed” before leaving for Europe to study painting. His romantic landscapes experienced a resurgence in popularity the 1940s, with pieces selling for up to $1,000,000. When the daughter of his nephew, Elsie Housely, became the owner of the General Store in 1939, she ensured Heade’s continued recognition after disassembling his sketchbook and selling the pages to eager dealers and collectors. The store remained in her capable hands until 1973, when the ownership changed again.

 

PINELANDS ~ PIPELAND: Road to Ruin – Poems of This Imperiled Region

Pump House, Clouds and Lilies in Waters of Haines Cranberry Bogs, Chatsworth

A trio of poems, arrow’s in this activist’s quiver:

Probably all NJWILDBEAUTY readers know that, last Friday, the Pinelands Commission DARED approve the first pipeline in New Jersey’s Crown Jewel: The Pine Barrens.  This one is “The South Jersey Gas Pipeline Project.”  A pipeline by any name would smell as foul.  The Pinelands Commission was founded to preserve, protect, even enhance this 1.1 million-acre wooded region, sited atop the legendary 17-trillion-gallion Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer of highest quality water.

Traditional Cranberry Harvest Tool

 

Former NJ Governors Brendan Byrne, Jim Florio and Christine Todd Whitman joined forces to file a Friend of Court Brief to overturn approval of the Pipeline.  But the forces of greed have won anew, and New Jersey will never be the same.  Our beautiful state is being turned into a Sacrifice Zone, and who is to arrest this destruction?

 

Essence of the Bogs, Chatsworth

 

Once, I lamented to a caller, “I’m a poet.  What am I doing at the barricades?”  The activist on the other end of the line retorted, “Carolyn, that’s where poets belong.”

I’m not good with barricades.  Although I support and thrill to effective protest marches, they are beyond my physical/spiritual/mental/emotional strength.

 

Pinelands’ Pristine Tannic Waters, Batsto

The only arrows in my quiver are Pinelands poems.  Here are a few, to remind NJWILDBEAUTY readers of what we are about to forfeit:

This was one of the original “Hot Poems by Cool Women”, a favorite of what we came to see as our poetic groupies, as our various new volumes reached the public through readings:

 

IT ALL STARTED

 

when we came upon

carpets of stars

cranberries in flower

trembling white below

the ice blue sky

 

along the hard-packed dikes

slumbrous bees

formed golden pyramids

on gleaming amber boxes

 

dawn’s pollinators

here to burst all bonds

course among broad acres

of waving stamens

 

at day’s end we stood on tiptoe

plucking first blued berries

from among the mauve and pink

at the tips of overarching bushes

 

tucked among hollies and sheep laurel

through thickets and tunnels

we made our way to the sea

mouths awash in warm berries

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

Cool Women, Volume I

 

RESURGENT

 

I long to slip into
peat water

watch my long legs turn
orange, then burnt sienna
bathed in tannins of old leaves
and newly desiccated needles
having steeped over the centuries
between primordial banks

I belong to the Pines and its peat
whether striding or swimming
requiring levels and mystery
–silent liquidities
–eloquent duskiness
even on bright days

over there, on a low branch
a slim snake twines
somnolent and sure

overhead, in the pine tops
winds echo ocean
near yet far

time keeps these waters warm
enough to welcome legs
too long denied the Pinelands

see how my limbs flicker and flash
–burnished in peatwater
–flames in the depths

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN
US 1 Fiction Issue,

D&R Greenway Poets of Preservation

Written in Princeton Hospital
Immediately post-op  – 11 11 11

CRANAPPLE PIE

 

I’ve gathered apples of our Barrens

to blend with bright cranberries

sparked with honey of dawn’s bees

we two once awakened

on Chatsworth’s sandy dikes

 

I craft a random European tart

— ragged edges, coverless

in honor of your world that I so crave

in memory of ragged days, uncovered nights

 

the luminous glaze

oddly recollects

your ignited gaze

thrown back at me

in this new solitude

 

every inch of rooms you cherished

becomes apple-fragrant

our joyous kitchen above all

 

my fruits become a brigand’s cache

–rubies tossed with fine abandon

as I once flung caution to wild winds

when you stretched out fine hands

luring me, pirate-like, to irresistible back bays

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

                                                Cool Women, Volume Two

 

Jersey’s Jewels, Sugar Sand, Chatsworth

 

Once, I carried books of others’ poems into hearings at Prallsville Mills, in my futile, idealistic attempt to convince decision-makers not to allow “The Villas of Tuscany”, –currently “Barclay Square” –, towering condos.  to profane our cherished, historic D&R Canal and Towpath.

I read words of Paul Muldoon and Gerry Stern and friends who later became the Cool Women, insisting that art is born in New Jersey beauty.  Trampling her open spaces, defiling sightlines of the canal — for these travesties are visible even deep down upon her waters in a kayak — destroys not only habitat for essential wild creatures.  It also spells the end of inspiration, the cessation of art catalyzed in these storied reaches.

Pipelines are nonessential, destructive, temporary in terms of jobs provided, and threaten ignition of the Pines and fouling of the pristine waters of the Pine Barrens.

Don’t let this happen.  Use whatever arrows are in your quiver to preserve, protect, and even enhance our entire state!

 

Cranberries on the Vine, Chatsworth

Pine Barrens Just-Picked Dry-harvested Cranberries as Sauce Extraordinaire, Back Home

Cranberry Dry Harvest, Early November, 2015

This rich harvest tour took place through Pinelands Adventures: http://www.pinelandsadventures.org;

Which organization has come into being under the auspices of ever-militant, thoroughly vigilant Pinelands Preservation Alliance:  JOIN THEM — they turn around damage to the Pines, week after week after week:  http://www.pinelandsalliance.org

Batsto Barn – Pine Barrens’ Mercantile History, Legendary Iron Forge Village

Without  “The Iron in the Pines”, from forges such as Batsto and Allaire and Martha’s Furnace, and beyond, George Washington would not have had cannon balls nor wagon wheels for Revolutionary Battles.  Pinelands shipbuilders and ship’s captains effectively fought the British and the Hessians, boldly advertising auctions of stores of captured ships in Philadelphia papers.  Mullica Rivermen rowed with muffled oars to change the course of history.  It is said, we would not have a country without the Mullica, without the Pine Barrens!

 

SUN-SEEKING, Literal and Metaphorical

Is it November, –or is it THIS November–, that renders sun a memory?

What images, what journeys hold light so crucial to me, ever more essential, every day?

Autumn Along the Stony Brook, 2016, November

 

Key birding buddy, Mary Wood, and I ‘hiked the day down,’ –mostly wordlessly, often birdlessly–, after the election.  November surprised us with remnant vividness.

Walk with us.  Climb with us.

 

Birding Platform Over the Wetlands

Map – Charles Rogers Refuge – off Alexander, near Princeton Canoe and Kayak Rentals

 

Likely Birds – Red-wing Heaven in Springtime

 

We owe this lovely restoration to Winnie (Hughes) and Fred Spar, and Tom Poole.  I know Winnie through U.S. 1 Poets, and Fred and Tom through D&R Greenway Land Trust, where I work.

Finding these images on this gloomy day reminds that all that matters in my life is preservation, — of nature, of beauty, of wild spaces.

Oh, yes, and freedom.  For the wildlings and for us.

Winnie and Fred, in their fine new signs, give honor to legendary birder, quintessential birdwalk leader, Lou Beck, of Washington Crossing Audubon.

We all give credit to everyone who reaches out, through whatever non-profits, to save the wild while we can.  Thoreau was right, you know:  “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

 

Restored Wetlands — Note Return of the Cattails, and Purple Martin House and Gourds

 

“September, we’ll remember…”

Upside-Down is Better than Right-Side Up

 

 

Finale, Rogers Refuge and the Stony Brook

 

“From Both Sides Now”

 

November Tapestry in the Stony Brook

Memories of this refuge especially include green herons.  Not this day, not this season — but often.  Sometimes, kayaking nearby, one spots green herons mincing along the banks of the (D&R, of course) canal, then lofting up into Refuge trees.

 

Green Heron by Brenda Jones

 

Spring Species, Rogers Refuge

 

Spring brings not only winged miracles. This refuge is yellow-flag and blue-flag Central in May.  Wild iris of the most vivid hues, The Rogers is worthy of a journey for ‘flags’ alone.

 

Blue Flags from Versicolor on Interniet

 

Invasive species had driven out cattails essential to territorializing red-winged blackbirds.

Male Redwinged Blackbird, Territorializing, by Brenda Jones

Seemingly inescapable phragmites, — bush-tailed grasses beloved of decorators–, are too frail to support the weight of males, ruffling scarlet epaulets, vocalizing welcome to females and banishment to rivals, in these woods and wetlands.

Phragmites Height from Internet

Restoration, a key facet of preservation, is visible in the final scene of Mary’s and my November walk.

Late Light in the Cattails

SEPTEMBER SONG — Autumnal Signs

Autumn Mimics Christmas Along the D&R Canal

Is anyone else more impatient than usual for autumn crispness?  Do others feel as though that “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” will never arrive?  Might you be “making a list and checking it twice” of early proofs that there really is such a thing as fall?

Autumn’s golden gifts brighten a dreary canal

I have begun my own Autumnal Chronicle.  Despite assiduous attention, however, this tally is pretty meager.  It is particularly challenging this year to differentiate between the season for which I am longing and the effects of drought.  Sycamores are turning.  But, these puzzle-trunked beauties require ‘wet feet’, almost as urgently as willows.  No New Jersey trees are receiving sufficient moisture in dire 2016. Shocked by dessication, sycamores began dropping huge loud leaves in August.

I’m seeking first wild spurts of scarlet and crimson: Virginia creeper, otherwise known as woodbine; and its usual neighbor, poison ivy act as restaurant signs for migrating birds.  These vines employ the most vivid hue the minute they’re ripe enough to nourish.  In nearly mid-September, both species remain relentlessly forest green.

Autumnal Carnegie Lake

My fall list begins with the very loud, entirely too audible, crunching of crisp leaves under my car wheels along Fackler Road in Lawrenceville.

Spill of Crisp Leaves — Carnegie Lake Dock

I was forced to acknowledge autumn as I passed the Lawrenceville Community Garden.  Every towering sunflower is bent and spent, like people who neglect osteoporosis.

Driving past Loews to reach Trader Joe’s, there was the first inescapable bank of mums.

As I carried TJ purchases back to my  car, however, I thrilled to an endless river of dark birds, coursing and coursing as though they fleeing an impending storm.

I realize that none of these examples contains the ecstatic outpouring I would expect from myself as the season turns.  And that NJWILDBEAUTY readers have come to expect from me.

Sweet Gum Leaves in Autumn Finery

This year, the coming season is marred by the very serious illness of my 20[year-old great nephew, James Weitzel.  His heroism is striking.  But this shining young man; this consummate, initially intuitive musician (percussion especially); this person who’s touched the heart of everyone with whom he interacts in Springfield, Illinois, has been abruptly stricken in his prime.  Now James has a bald head, and not because it’s chic.  Now James has to relearn the very simple process of walking.  So my own heart and feet are not skipping.

Delaware River Footbridge from Black Bass Inn in Autumn

Autumn meant new beginnings, for this foolish one who couldn’t wait for school.  I lived for first lavender smoke rising from chimneys, and especially from towering bonfires of leaves we’d raked all day..  And harvests were the heart of the matter.

Trenton Farmers’ Market Bounty

I

Today, I’ve tried to fill a treasure chest of autumn memories.  Maybe it will lift NJWILDBEAUTY spirits, as well as my own.  Maybe you’ll even comment on favorite aspects of this laggard season for you.

 

Trenton Farmers’ Market Apple Crop

Parties meant bobbing for apples and sipping new cider. Popcorn turning white and sometimes a little black in the long-handled black corn popper over coals in our family room fireplace.  New loves began at pep rallies and the subsequent Homecoming Ball.  Happiness swirled in on every fresh breeze.

Maybe, seeing these NJ fall views, you’ll get out on (preserved, of course) trails, and create new memories.

D&R Greenway’s Cedar Ridge Preserve — Terrestrial Box Turtle Among the Leaves

Maybe it’s color for which I am longing.

Or is it that September and October represent constellations of change?

SIGN UP FOR FRIENDS OF THE EARTH & SAVE THE PLANET

Exquisite, Now Healthy, Barnegat Bay, thanks to Preservationists / Environmentalists

Some of you surely wonder why I’ve spent 11 going on 12 years at D&R Greenway Land Trust, at this phase of my life, and, yes, so poorly recompensed.  The answer is, my life mission has become to save the Planet.

New Dune, New Dune Grass, Protecting Beloved Bay Head, New Jersey, April 2016

If you ever check me out on Facebook, that’s basically the only kind of ‘posting’ I do.  Once friends and I fought with minimal success to save Kingson’s Princeton Nursery Land from being sold and developed through Princeton University, into what was Villas of Tuscany and is now Barclay Square.  Hundreds of towering dwellings went in, where magnificent trees used to thrive, and so close to our Canal – drinking water for thousands locally  These condos are visible from the D&R Canal and Towpath, which is absolutely forbidden – and yet, and yet… significant exceptions were made.  The developers had the Princeton Nursery Lands deemed officially ‘nonhistoric’, triumphantly showing the signed and sealed document at a critical hearing concerning ‘Villas of Tuscany.’  ‘Nonhistoric’ although Washington had marched there with his barefoot troops after the first Revolutionary Victories, the two in Trenton and the one in Princeton; then, again, en route to crucial Monmouth and yet another win.  Abraham Lincoln rode the Camden and Amboy Railroad through that land en route to his Inauguration and his grave.  The Princeton Nurseries were the finest in America and some say in the world in its day.  The Canal, Towpath and that railroad defined New Jersey, determined its essential towns.  You can see the Barclay Square dwellings, symbol of our defeat, when down in a kayak on the water.

I mourned, just before that distant meeting over on the Delaware River (so no one could attend the hearing without taking precious scarce vacation days to be there) to one of the fellow protestors, whom I didn’t even know: “But I’m a poet.  What am I doing at the barricades?!?”

His answer propels almost everything I do these days, including walking into D&R Greenway in 2006 and saying, “Am I supposed to work with you?”

“Carolyn,” this stranger answered on the phone, “The barricades — that is where poets belong!”

Heading South from Alexander, 5 to 6:30 on a golden Sunday evening

This serenity is the norm on the D&R Canal, except where Barclay Square looms.  We did manage to save enough land to create a preserve, carefully watched over by the Friends of Princeton Nursery Lands.  My heroic fellow barricade-contenders in that long-ago fight are still in the forefront of saving and keeping Kingston and its sacred Revolutionary War and Industrial and Canal and Towpath and even Camden and Amboy Railroad sites as safe as they can possibly be from rapacious developers.  We have Karen Linder, Anne Zeman, Mark Peel, Tari Pantaleo and Robert von Zumbusch to thank for Kingston successes.  In fact, join Friends of Princeton Nursery Lands whether you ever set foot(e) in Kingston or not — for that canal and that river flow into the Raritan, its sacred Bay, and the sea, mantle of our blue planet.

Great Egret Fishing the D&R Canal,  by Brenda Jones

The following thank you note just came in from Friends of the Earth.  The 21st Century can seem so hopeless, climate-wise, Planet-wise.  But small acts by committed people, as Margaret Mead asserts, are still changing the world.  “Indeed, this is the only thing that ever has,” she continues.  Read this.  Sign up of Friends for the Earth yourselves, financially and electronically.  Let’s prove all the skeptics wrong and save our Planet.

Read the effects of courageous acts by committed people, 21st-Century paradigm changers:

(bolds mine)   cfe

Dear Carolyn Foote, I was just thinking about all we’ve achieved together in the past few months and I wanted to thank you for making it happen. Your activism makes a difference! In fact, the activism of Friends of the Earth members like you in Maryland was crucial to passing the nation’s first law to ban bee-killing pesticides. Without your emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings with local legislators, the law wouldn’t have passed. Now, it’s time to take the fight to other states with similar bills on the table — and build momentum for national action on bee-killing pesticides. On the national level, you’ve driven progress in our work to keep fossil fuels in the ground. The White House recently put a moratorium on all new coal leasing — which you helped make happen by signing petitions and writing to the President.  And that’s not all — the Obama Administration has also postponed five oil and gas lease sales — taking a total of 125,136 acres of public land off the table for now. We’re gaining momentum thanks to the constant drumbeat from people like you telling President Obama to protect our public lands and climate. But we won’t stop until the President keeps ALL our fossil fuels in the ground. By taking action online and in your community, you are saving bees and butterflies. You’re preventing the worst impacts of climate chaos. From local victories to progress on national issues, you’re driving our work forward. So thank you for all you’ve done, and keep up the good work! Thanks for being a Friend of the Earth. Warm Regards, Erich Pica, President, Friends of the Earth

 

 

 

“VISITATION” ~ Eagle Poem

Princeton’s American Bald Eagle, Monarch, by Brenda Jones

Long ago, when Ilene Dube asked me to create a Princeton Packet Blog on nature, she particularly asked me to include some of my poems.  In Cool Women readings over the years, “Visitation” was a favorite.

‘Princeton’s’ American Bald Eagle and Sculler in Morning Fog, Lake Carnegie, by Brenda Jones

It was written, frankly, to a very vivid vision.  You can tell from the tactile descriptions how supremely real this scene was to me.

‘Princeton’s’ Mated Pair of American Bald Eagles, by Brenda Jones

It was years ago, and wintertime, when eagles court and nest, as they are now, all over our state.

Eagle Gathering Nest Material, by Brenda Jones

At the time, there were no Princeton eagles.  But, within weeks of this vision, I came upon ‘our’ female, on a tree near the end of the sculling race venue on Carnegie Lake.  How serene she was, awaiting her true love.  How peacefully, majestically he soared around that point, float-coasting onto a tree not too near.  It was as though she had always known he would arrive.

Majestic Soaring American Bald Eagle over Carnegie Lake, by Brenda Jones

It was January 3rd, my real sighting.  My dear friend Janet Black’s (one of the Intrepids) birthday.  The sun was going down, but the curtain was rising on the courtship  of the male and female bald eagle who would then begin, successfully, to raise and to fledge young, each year on the shores of our fake but essential lake..

Immature ‘Princeton’ Eagles, Side-by-Side at Carnegie Lake Nest, by Brenda Jones

As dusk triumphed over the January daylight, for the first time in my life, I heard the eagles, ‘our’ eagles, singing love songs.  I was very aware that this courtship meant that our waterway had been preserved and healed enough to nourish eagle generations.

‘Princeton’ Immature Bald Eagle, One of its first flights, by Brenda Jones

But “Visitation” is not a hopeful poem.  Published in Cool Women, it is my own song of despair over habitat despoilation.

‘Princeton’s’ Juvenile Eagles, ‘branching’, by Brenda Jones

But, sometimes, despair can be conquered by life itself.

Brenda Jones, fine art photographer, has given me great gifts of bird images over the years.  I send you her eagles, ‘our’ eagles, to remind you, as Brenda and her husband, Cliff would do, to support your local land trust; to save land and water in New Jersey every chance you get. 

Because saving land is saving habitat. 

Because saving land is saving huge swathes to absorb CO2 and slow catastrophic climate change. 

 

Because eagles, frankly, are essential. 

 

Here is “Visitation”, after whose writing, despair turned to delight:

VISITATION

 

I finally reach

a windy crest

my turquoise jacket

welcome against

spring’s late chill

 

I feel more than see

the eagle settle

upon flat granite

to my right

he gulps that entire landscape

at one glance

 

slow, steady,

I extend

my arm

so he can step determinedly

onto my padded sleeve

 

my eyes are not one inch

from his

so gold, flickering

flames surrounding the dark centers

as coronas ring an eclipse

gaze steadier

than any

I have ever known

 

gusts ruffle

his dark shoulder feathers

stirring blue glints in sun

the air could not be more electric

if he were bearing

thunderbolts

 

he rests his left cheek

against my own

 

inside my heart

small fists tattoo

within that rosy cage

some prisoner

implores escape

wakens me

to life without eagles

 

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

 

 

TWILIGHT KAYAK IDYLL – MID-AUGUST

Entry from the Turning Basin into the D&R Canal

My new favorite kayaking hour has become 5:30 p.m.  Although a life-long morning person, the twilight hours have lately come to enchant me on these sacred preserved waters.

Stillness surrounded us, as yet another ‘virgin kayaker’ and I glided out of the Turning Basin at Alexander, heading south on the shimmering D&R Canal.

On both sides, and reflected in curiously profound waters, the banks were still garbed in high summer’s uninterrupted green.  Lush and bountiful ‘wine-dark’ greens negated hard trunks, melded single leaves.  It was as though some mad decorator had strewn enormous sofa cushions all along our route.

At outset, there were few clouds — but that billowy forest did a superb and startling role as stand-ins.  Here and there, the long red throats of trumpet flowers (hummingbirds’ favorites) punctuated the text of the forest.  As clouds arrived, their reflections and those of canalside trees, reminded us first of Monet, then Constable.

The old maritime word, ‘williwaws’, came to mind, as gentlest breezes wrinkled first one side of the water, then the other.

Its color fascinated — various rich tones of grey, beyond pewter to black pearl.  One or two curled gold leaves had somehow materialized, bobbing along like miniature watercraft, turning this way and that against the darkness.

Silence was everywhere.   Time stopped.

Ever since Sandy scoured these historic banks, we have been deprived of many wildflowers and most turtles.  Reparations brought in new stoniness, so far inhospitable to most blooms.  Furious torrents swept all the slanted turtle logs downstream, (up-canal).  Downed trunks have yet to reappear, making it hard for turtles to emerge from the depths, bask in the light.

Marsh mallow was our first floral gift.  Because it was twilight, pink blooms, then later white ones, were “folding their tents like the Arabs.”  Twined, from a distance, these towering hibiscus-like plants seemed more lily than mallow.  I told my (enormously skillful already) kayaking companion, “The Lenni Lenape made a sweet out of their roots, which was white and sticky.  We named marshmallows after those roots.”

Goldenthread vines wove in and out and over and under on the banks to our right.  It seems to smother the plants that it covers.  But late light on gold webs was stunning.  Long ago, a woman from Jamaica told me, “We use this plant to treat prostate problems in my country.”

A few double kayaks of new paddlers gave us pause along this usually empty route.  Their skills led them repeatedly toward the tangled banks, rather than up-canal or down-canal.

I was deeply aware, listening to their laughter, of the sounds we were not hearing — no wood thrushes, though evening.  No kingfisher, rattling in his fishing dives.  Not a goose yet — proving again that we are still in summer’s hands.  Not even a mourning dove, although neither of us unfortunately ever needs to be reminded of mourning.

Only a few round tight golden spatterdock blooms remained among the lily pads.  About the size of ping pong balls, these waterlily blooms will never enlarge.  They seemed to be playing hide and seek in the shadows.

I had alerted my traveling companion to be on the lookout for shy cardinal flower.  Fondest of deep shade, often solitary, these slender stalks hold tiny trumpet-y flowers the color of the bird for whom they are named.  In sunlight, they can be visited by ravening hummingbirds.

She found the first stalk, and most thereafter, until my eyes adjusted to such minuscule splashes of crimson hidden in underbrush.  It reminded me of snorkeling – when you don’t even realize there are tiny fish at first; and then, they are everywhere.  We lost count of cardinal flower last night.

For all the high heat days we have had lately, the canal water was surprisingly cool.  I always dip eager hands into that secret-keeping surface, ritually baptize my legs with her waters.  A certain communion with the canal is essential.

This night was the most contemplative of all my shared ‘rides’.  There is such a thing as ‘walking meditation.’  I think we were given ‘paddling meditation’.  Occasional companionable talk, –of art and of camping, of books — drifted from her chartreuse craft to my cardinal-flower-hued one.

Two deer, mirrored in the canal, strolled down to sip.  Being in their calm presence was either mirage or tapestry.

I had told her, “If we’re lucky, we might see the green heron at this hour.”  Riding tall and proud as a skilled Lenni Lenape, her bright eyes missed nothing.  My friend discovered this wild herald, high overhead, exactly matching leaves in late light.  Silently, it coasted more than flew, from its observatory branch, angling down along the bank to our left.  The lowering sun was taking on subtle flame hues itself, highlighting its coppery feathers.

We had been wondering what would be our turning point.  The green heron was the deity we had awaited.

Heading South from Alexander, 5 to 6:30 on a golden Sunday evening

FIRST KAYAK IMAGES D AND R CANAL SOUTH OF ALEXANDER

I’ll soon be writing an article on this for the Packet, for Anthony Stoeckert, a delight of an editor, on the first kayaking of Spring.

But I must let NJWILDBEAUTY readers know, I made it out there on our canal last evening, (Sunday, May 3) from five to 6:30.  There may be no lovelier way to end a day!

‘There’ is the Alexander Road station of Princeton Canoe and Kayak, canoenu.com, (also up at Griggstown, where I learned.)  I’ll give you more info later.

Meanwhile, welcome to Tranquility Base!

Kayak Still Life, Princeton Canoe and Kayak at Alexander Road, Princeton

Entry from the Turning Basin into the D&R Canal

Heading South from Alexander, 5 to 6:30 on a golden Sunday evening

First Great Blue Heron, who did not make his squawk nor fly away – I left before he did

Homeward Bound, heading back toward the Alexander Road Bridge

It’s kayak time — what are you waiting for?  (609-452-2403)  Ask for Steve and tell him Carolyn sent you!

STILL SEEKING SPRING — AVIAN SURPRISE

Spring 2015 defeats me.  I have stopped looking for its arrival in natural settings.  When an entire week goes by without wearing my ski jacket. the new season will have arrived.

Here is a photo essay of a recent bi-state excursion to find the vernal:

View from Footbridge from NJ to PA at Bull’s Island below Frenchtown

Last week, in quest of spring, I spent more than three [but fewer than four] hours at Bowman’s Hill Wildlife Preserve, below New Hope, Pennsylvania.  You know from my recent post that most of the world in that exquisite refuge was brown, with some courageous and welcome exceptions.

That Delaware view was taken mid-river that same day.  I walked west from Bull’s Island over the Delaware, because interstate walking is a rare past-time for someone from Michigan.

As you can see, on the New Jersey and the Pennsylvania sides, most trees remain bare.

Beautiful Bridge Structure, Empty Trees

Spring on the Delaware River Footbridge at Bull’s Island

Ultimately, on the footbridge, the winds were so fierce, I did not set Foote in Pennsylvania.  My mother would say, “You turned tail and ran!”

However, NJWILDBEAUTY readers who know me in person remember that I tend to ask, perhaps too often for some, “Where is the Gift?”

Come with me on the Bull’s Island Towpath and answer this question in mid-April in New Jersey/Pennsylvania.

Emptiness of Spring — Bull’s Island Towpath mid-April 2015

Alluvial Plain near Bull’s Island Towpath Trail

Mile Marker 21 – Bull’s Island Towpath Trail

Farmhouse Opposite Bull’s Island Towpath Trail

Alluvial Plain Adjacent to Bull’s Island — When the Delaware Floods, This is Where She Goes, What She Nourishes

Endangered Species Ahead

American Bald Eagle on Nest, in sycamore – a first for me:

6/10 Mile Below Bull’s Island Sign

That tiny head is pure white, in person.  See for yourselves!

If any of you still wonder, why preserve?  The above hint of an eagle sighting is our answer.

This parent is strong, serene, vivid.  She faces our benevolent yet powerful, and yes, fish-ful Delaware River.   This eagle pair is likely to raise healthy young, so there will be more eagles on more nests in our riverine future.

Never forget that, in the 1970’s, there was but one eagle nest, at Bear Swamp, near the Delaware Bay, and it was unsuccessful.  DDT thinned their eggs, which therefore cracked and could not hatch.  Brilliant and committed people, beginning with Rachel Carson in her seminal, earth-changing “Silent Spring”, turned this around.  Naturalists in New Jersey went to the Chesapeake for healthy eggs.  They gingerly carried these treasures to the Bear Swamp nest.  Those unknowingly surrogate parents raised and fledged young, who returned to the area.  So the eagle Renaissance of New Jersey began.

This day, of Bowman’s followed by Bull’s Island followed by Lambertville, [through the spotting scope set up at Homestead  Farm Market (across from the CVS and Rago)], then to ‘our’ Princeton Mapleton eagle’s nest, brought me three eagles on three nests in three towns in three hours. 

The Lambertville eagle nest is on a power tower in the River, visible from the toll bridge when driving to PA from NJ.   The other two are in preserves.

I suddenly realize, if those Bull’s Island trees had been leafed out for this person longing for spring, I might never have spotted the nest, for the warning sign came south of the impressive  nest…

WHY PRESERVE!

Princeton’s Eagle Nest, Mapleton Avenue, Above the D&R Canal State Park