The Sound of Water

After school on a spring afternoon, the warm sun, the melting snow, the sound of water falling over rocks into a small pool, the adventure of playing in a woods with a little stream.  Those memories come flooding back even now when I hear the sound of water flowing over rocks…

Great Blues

When I was in the Boy Scouts in the early 1960’s we gathered late one winter northwest of town out by what is now Menuez Sand and Gravel.  We hiked back in to the Great Blue Heron rookery.  Their nests seemed to occupy every available branch on a huge sycamore tree and the air was full of their squawking.   At once it was a very special place to us and you could tell that it was to our adult leaders too.  We all stood in silence as we watched the birds come and go from that ancient tree.  Then we left quietly.

Fifteen or sixteen years later I went back and took some photographs which were published in the local newspaper.  It was still a very special place…the old tree still held so many birds and nests.

Sometime later, in the late 70’s or early 80’s, they clear cut that area.  They might have left a couple of sycamores but the big one either was taken down or came down on its own.  It made you sick.

Today as I rode my bicycle on the Trail north of town I could only see one lone sycamore with just two small nests in it where that old rookery used to be.  A little further up the Trail where it enters the wetlands again I noticed a Great Blue gliding in over my head to land in the swamp.  With their long legs stretched out behind them and their long neck curved back upon itself as they fly on those huge wings they are as majestic as they are mysterious.  To see a Great Blue Heron flying slowly, high above the land, coming in for a landing, or stalking along the edge of a pond or ditch always brings deep feelings of peace and of things, at least in some places away from humans, being as they are supposed to be. 
 

Balancing

 

I worked for many years as a noise and vibration specialist for a well-known floorcare appliance company.  I used to tell people (and still do, I guess) that one of the most enjoyable and satisfying tasks I had in that work was balancing motors, even though it was a minor, even negligible, part of my job.  We used a kluged together system consisting of a semi-ancient commercial balancer, some slightly more modern vibration sensors and conditioning amplifiers, and even a couple of strobe lights.  There was considerable setup involved with lots of tools and equipment to gather together and then lots of wires and cables to hook up.  The proper technique involved as much art and skill as it did science and engineering.  But it worked.  Those motors would start off feeling pretty rough but after a couple of measurements, some strobe flashing, and some clipping, grinding, or drilling they would be running very smoothly.  You could lay your hand on them and feel the improvement.

The new company took all of the equipment that I had used over the years to their new facility.  That was good because I assumed that someone there would take responsibility for it, use it, and take care of it the way I had.  But they didn’t want the old balancer.  I kept it on a bench for several months after everything else had been moved…just in case they changed their mind.  In the end I had to hang a scrap tag on that old balancer and move it out onto the factory floor where they were staging the scrap equipment.  To them it was just junk.  To me, it was an old friend. 

A week later I was gone too.  I guess they lost two old balancers.

Continued Utility

I grabbed my hammer to build a small wooden box for my dad last week.  We have other hammers around but this one is mine.  The hickory handle has that soft patina that you can only find on old tools, a naturally hand rubbed oil finish, the oil from my own hands.  The handle has a slight bend in it caused by my right-handed use for forty-some years.  Over the years the handle has formed to my hand, to my swing.

I worked for my dad when I was in high school.  Every summer we would fix the flat roofs on his business.  I needed a hammer.  I rooted around through the junk drawer and found an old, dirty, starting to rust hammer head.  I cleaned it up and took it uptown to Millersburg Hardware.  It was an old-fashioned hardware.  They had a good selection of hand tools and wooden bins and drawers full of nails, repair parts of all kinds, and other hardware.  No dainty little plastic bags with ten screws in this store.  I picked out a new hickory handle for that hammer head and took it back to the sales counter.  Mike Schlegel rang it up for me… $1.99 plus $0.08 tax.  I paid him.  Did I want him to put it on?  Sure.  We talked about stuff while he worked.  Mike and I had played little league baseball on the same team a few years earlier.  I went back to the shop and helped put a new roof on the building using my “new” hammer.

That hammer has fixed houses, built toys and furniture, built a barn and a chicken house, mended fences, and put on more roofs in the time since then.  There were a lot of opportunities to replace that hammer over the years.  In fact I think I might have once but the new one didn’t feel right and I went back to this one.  I expect to drive the last nail I drive using this hammer.  It’s a good one.

Autumn Evening Walks

Our evening walks allow us to watch the progression of the seasons.  Since August we have been keenly aware of the shortening days as fall and winter approach.  We have watched the sun set a little earlier and a little further south each week.  We have watched the leaves on the trees color and fall.  Through the summer we watched the corn sprout, grow, and mature.  Now we listen to the autumn wind rattle through the dry stalks.

The encroaching darkness allows us to reacquaint ourselves again with the evening sky.  We have watched young moons set and full moons rise.  We have imagined the ecliptic by fitting an arc across the sky in our mind’s eye, through the planets and the moon. We watch the constellations as they slowly march across the sky from night to night and are always glad to see the Milky Way in early autumn with the tiny dolphin of Delphineus leaping out of it.  As, in time, we also look forward to seeing the familiar bright stars of Orion rising in the east on the rare clear night of the approaching winter.

Bicycle Recycle

Two of the things I wanted to do this fall after I was done working were to 1) spend some time at the repair bench at Save and Serve, our local thrift shop and 2) ride my bicycle on the Holmes County Trail.  I haven’t done too well on either count.  The first afternoon at Save and Serve I cleaned up three bicycles, among other things.  They were all pretty rough but there was a black Schwinn Collegiate 3 that held some promise.  Both tires had disintegrated.  I told the manager that it would make a good bike for someone to ride on the Trail but it needed two new tires and some TLC.  I also told her that most people today want at least 10 speeds, more if possible…this one only has three.  She put a price tag of $15 on it.  I said that I might be interested in it if it didn’t sell.  They were having a sale that day…bicycles were 50% off.  When we closed up she said it was still there…$7.50.  My wife would kill me if I came home with it.  I left without it.  To make a long story shorter, my wife bought it for me.

I put two new tires and tubes on it, cleaned it up a little more, adjusted and lubed it.  Last Sunday the weather forecast showed rain and snow all week after Monday.  If I was going to ride the Trail this year I needed to do it on Monday. 

Monday morning I went for my ride.  I rode north from the Depot.  It was easy.  The rear tire had a flat spot on it; the bead hadn’t seated.  I rode about five miles anyway to see what else needed attention.  When I turned around I found out why it was so easy…a stiff, and rather cold, southerly wind.  I was beat by the time I got back to the Depot.

I have ridden every day this week and I’m up to 10 or 12 miles yesterday and today.  My muscles are getting stronger and only one part of my body, you know, really hurts.  I don’t know how far into winter I can ride but next week the forecast is for warm temperatures, although with rain.  This bike fits my personality better than an expensive eighteen speed racer.  It’s a beaut.

I’ll be back to help at Save and Serve…if I can stop riding this bike.

Lost

Lost innocence.  Lost cuteness.  Just plain lost.

I had already ridden a couple of miles on my bicycle for the first time in many years and had loaded, unloaded, and carried 200 pounds of water softener salt into the basement.  I was ready for a cup of coffee and a little time in a comfortable chair. 

As I headed into the house I looked up in the east pasture…what an idyllic scene.  All the sheep were lying down up there, resting peacefully.  All but one, that is.  A lamb was bleating…not a lying down sound.  I walked up the hill to the north gate and listened.  The lamb was not with the rest of the flock.  So much for the cup of coffee.  Over the fence and up to the top of the hill.  There in the pine trees was the little lamb, on the wrong side of the fence.  I knelt down and spoke softly to him.  “What are you doing over there, little lamb?  Don’t you know it is dangerous over there?  There are coyotes you know.”  He just stood and looked at me…not a good sign.  I slowly got up and walked along the fence and climbed over it.  As I went back to him he bolted, running along the fence, first this way, then that. 

The brush outside the pasture is thick and he headed into the thickest part of it.  I went in after him.  This was going to be a losing battle.  I climbed back out into the pasture and ran past him.  I opened a gate so it would funnel him back into the field if he ever got down that far through this brush then circled back around and went back into the brush after him again.  Scrub trees, greenbriars, and multiflora rose bushes…how can he get through this stuff?  Finally I had had enough.  As I climbed out into the pasture again I saw him come through the open gate.  Yes!  He looked up and saw me and took off at full speed into the pasture, still bleating for all he was worth.  After I closed the gate I tried to drive him back to the flock but he went back to the top of the hill.  Me too.  Eventually he saw them and headed back to them on a dead run, looking for his mom.

Finally…coffee time.

Natural Time

Sometime back in the fifth or sixth grade I started reading books on astronomy and the measurement of time.  I remember pouring over those books looking at the descriptions and crude sketches of earth, sun, and stars, of revolution and rotation, of horizon and meridian, of zenith and nadir, of latitude and longitude, just a kid here on a “flat” earth trying to make sense of it all.  A year or two later, I bought a Hallicrafters short-wave radio receiver out of the Allied Electronics catalog that I could tune in to WWV, Fort Collins, Colorado to get the most accurate, official U.S. government time.  Time is really a link back to the astronomical world we live in.  Most of us don’t think about time that way…it’s just a number, nowadays usually conveyed by digital clocks, that tells us when our next meeting is or whether we are late for work.  At least the old analog clocks and watches still suggested the cyclical, circular nature of time.

A few years ago, I made a sundial as a gift to my wife.  I designed it specifically for our latitude and longitude.  I put it out in her flower garden on a rock and leveled it up with some stones underneath it.  I aligned the gnomon to the meridian the best I could but then I “set” it to the official time by rotating the dial slightly, taking into account the Equation of Time.  Last evening, I had already set my watch back to Standard Time when I happened to notice the sunlight falling on the sundial.  I checked it and thought, “The dial is about 15 minutes fast. I wonder what the Equation of Time is for November 3rd?”  I ran inside to look it up…Dial Fast by 16 minutes.  When I went back out, the sun had set enough to turn the dial off for the day.   When I got up this morning the display still wasn’t functioning, a persistent problem in cloudy northeastern Ohio, but I know that the clock is still running just fine.

So as everyone else sets their digital clocks back this weekend, I am thinking about the earth, sun, and stars, about revolution and rotation, horizon and meridian, zenith and nadir,…

It’s the time of year

White-tailed deer are commonplace on our farm (where are they not?) and now the autumn rut has begun.    A couple of years ago, two sizeable bucks did their antler locking, neck twisting display of masculinity in the field across the lane, not much more than a hundred yards from our front door.  Last fall there was a young buck with just a couple of little spikes for antlers chasing the does around the pond.  They seemed to be genuinely annoyed by his youthful exuberance but he was intent on trying to extend his own little corner of the Odocoileus virginianus genome into the future without going through all that neck twisting stuff.

For the last two days there have been antlered bucks running all over our farm.  One pretty big one watched me from the pine trees as I walked down the lane to get the mail on Wednesday while another one of equal size ran through the lower north field and cleared the fence and half the lane in front of me.  On Thursday I had to cut up a tree that had fallen on the fence in the northeast field.  Two smaller bucks went north and one went south as I walked over to the downed tree.  Today, Friday, I didn’t see any.

Every so often, maybe once every four or five years, a really majestic big buck will walk out of the woods.  They seem to appear out of nowhere, make their appearance, and then disappear, never to be seen again.  Maybe they go back into some parallel universe inhabited by magnificent animals or maybe they just end up on somebody’s wall.  Either way, they are a mystery.