Larry Gibbons
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Houdini

20/1/2017

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Mountains on Warren Lake Hike
On Saturday, four of us tried to hike around Warren Lake, a gorgeous trail located in the Highlands National Park, not far from Ingonish.

Did you note the phrase, ‘tried to hike’?  Please consider this blog introduction to be a brief reminder to self and to others to always read the sign-board, located at the trail-head, before you begin hiking the trail.  We didn’t.

I didn’t because I expected to read the same warnings that are on all the sign boards, like: Don’t run if confronted by a coyote. Make yourself look big.  Play dead if you are attacked by a bear. Make a loud noise. Fight back if attacked. If charged by a moose, say five Hail Marys and find a big tree to dive behind or find a big tree to dive behind and say five Hail Marys.

Anyway, not one of us did more than turbo eye-ball the sign before we all cluelessly ventured forth and found out, after covering half the trail’s distance, that we couldn’t get over the fast flowing, very cold river which separated us from the rest of the trail. BECAUSE THE *$%^& BRIDGE WAS GONE!

The sign we didn’t read was this one: 

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***
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I have decided to change my behaviour towards another of God’s wee creatures. Mice. It is one mouse in particular who got me to change my ways. I call him, 'Wee Houdini'. This little mouse is escape talented.

Now, I want to declare, right off the top, that the mice around here have been troublesome.  Take, for example, the year I stored my spanking new snowblower in the tool shed and the mice, during the summer, chewed, twisted and bent the rubber gas line into something more amenable to a mouse’s needs.  First time I needed the blower, for snow-blowing purposes, guess what? It wouldn’t start and it was off to a small engine shop where they replaced the gas line.  The next winter, when I wanted to use the snow-blower, the belt broke. It was off, once again, to a small engine shop to fetch a belt. I’d decided I’d be the man and install it myself.

So, there we were. Me putting on the belt and Sue, using needle-nosed pliers to surgically pick wee mouse faces, feet and other sundry pieces of mouse body parts out of the belt housing.

Apparently, when I’d started the snowblower, the belt had torn the crap out of the mouse nest and the poor mice. Very sad and most disturbing, if you let your imagination run freely.

Oh, and by the way, no matter how many people tell you that moth balls keep mice away, all I can say is they haven’t worked for us. Maybe our mice wore gas masks. Who knows? But when I placed moth balls around the snow-blower motor and other parts, all I got was mice construction.


Once I sprinkled moth balls around in my hockey bag, before I stored it in the tool shed over the summer. When the next hockey season began, I received some cute remarks from a couple of hockey players after unzipping my hockey bag in the locker room let the sweet, delicious odour of moth balls escape.

One guy, who sat beside me, said, as he was breathing in the moth ball scent, “I love the smell of moth balls.”

Another fella said, “The smell reminds me of my grandmother.”  Now isn’t that cute? And he was one heck of a big hockey player.

So, I can imagine a mouse saying, “Moth balls remind me of the old Christmas cake I munched on in grandma’s cupboard.”


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BUSTER WATCHING CNN AND WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE
One year I decided to rid the tool shed of mice. So, I got the traps, baited them with peanut butter and set them in different locations in the tool shed.

Every morning I’d check to see how many mouse pelts I’d captured. I’d find dead mice in traps, traps that hadn’t been touched, traps with live mice in them or a missing trap. The last scenario was the most worrisome. Where was the trap? Was there a mouse caught in it? Was it suffering or dead? Quite an existential dread would often overcome me.

I did this for a few weeks, but because of the above worries I decided to let the mice enjoy the tool shed. In order to do this, I made sure all our valuables were in sealed plastic containers.  Of course, this disappointed the crows, who’d quickly learned that mouse steaks were appearing on the lawn like clock-work. Every morning a row of crows would perch along the telephone wires waiting for the morning breakfast bell.

Sorry crows. Life is complicated. All nuanced up to its ass. You help one species at the cost of another.

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The crows settled for the seeds dropped from our bird feeders
This year, when we knew there were mice in our trailer, I bought some simple and cheap wooden traps. I used peanut butter as bait and put a few traps inside the cupboards. These little traps were hair triggered. A light touch with a feather would cause them to viciously snap their jaws shut. But not, apparently, fast enough.

This one mouse was good. Really good. A Houdini. Because in the morning when I checked to see if I’d caught a mouse, I’d find a fat nothing. Always a big fat nothing. The peanut butter licked away as neatly as if done by a professional safe-cracker. No snap, snap, dead for this critter.


This happened three times. So, I bought another trap. A plastic one.

What you do is load the peanut butter bait inside a little compartment which has a hole in it. Then you place it under the sink, where you know they’re congregating for meals.
What should happen is that Houdini would smell the peanut butter, his addiction would kick in, and he’d carefully and stupidly stick his head into the little hole, causing the box to lift up, which would release the jaws of death and BAM!! Houdini is floating with his harp through his own personal heavenly portal.

The next morning there was the trap. It’s jaws had gone, chomp chomp, as per instructions and by the blood staining the area around the trap, the chomping had been down on a mouse. However, there was no mouse. Houdini had escaped again. What a guy! What a mouse!

That’s when I changed my tactics. I went to the hardware store and bought a live trap. It doesn’t kill.  What happens is the mouse enters the trap through a cute little foyer, walks up a ramp, steps off the ramp and is face to face with a tantalizingly delicious dollop of peanut butter. However, when he is finished chowing down he is trapped. Because the exit is sealed.

The next morning, there he was. Inside the trap.  Now, do you know how far you’re supposed to take the little fella before you release him. Two miles. Two friggen miles!

The other problem was that we were trapped in the trailer. Because we live in a snow belt, and by the way, for all those who think they are getting accurate weather reports about our area, forget it. For an accurate forecast of our weather conditions you will have to go to: www.twilightzonegrabursnowhoes.com!  
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THIS GUY DIDN’T GET THE CORRECT SNOW FORECAST!
It was very hard to walk two miles, since our road was basically closed. Plus it was very cold and I didn’t want poor Houdini to freeze his little ass off.  So, I got a box and cut a door-hole in it. Duct taped down the top, put toilet paper, tissue, and newspaper inside the box along with some bread, peanuts and cheese.  I put this box in a bag, along with Houdini and the cage. Strapped on a pair of snowshoes and merrily flip-flopped through the snow, which was in some places up to my waist. Trudged on for maybe half a kilometre. 

Took wee Houdini to a nice little place, which I won’t describe, but I will say it wasn’t a place that was owned by anybody I liked.

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Houdini's New Home

Struggled to the back of the little building, put the portable home under the structure, covered it with some snow, so as to weigh it down and then opened the cage.  Houdini popped his head out and then ran like hell.

The problem is, I didn’t take him two miles from our place and, NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! I caught another mouse last night and this morning I found the cage, empty and with the peanut butter all licked away.

Is Houdini back? Has he held escape workshops and do we now have a whole crapload of intelligent mice who have escape diplomas?  Are we, although living in a forty-five foot trailer in the woods, actually witnessing Darwin’s theory of evolution speeding up? 

Why, last night, I said to Sue, “Write it all down, my love. We’re going to be more famous than Darwin.”

“Write it down yourself, my love. I’ll edit it. That’s my job.”

Evolution. Houdini...and sometimes I wonder which way I’m evolving. 

                         Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
                         My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
                         To run under the hawk's wing,
                         Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
                         To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.

                         I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
                         The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
                         The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,--
                         All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

                                                                                    Theodore Roethke, The Field Mouse

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Enormous Waves in Green Cove in Cape Breton Highland National Park
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An Earth Memorial

29/11/2014

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Blog number thirty-one. Where does the time go?

            “I spoke a word
            And no one heard;
            I wrote a word,
            And no one cared
            Or seemed to heed;
            But after half a score of years
            It blossomed in a fragrant deed.”
                        John Oxenham, "We Never Know"

Well, I can hope that after a half a score of years, my writing will blossom in a fragrant deed, or at least a deed of some sort.
***
A few months ago we had a visitor. He wanted to inspect our river. Wanted to see if he could find a way to persuade the powers to be to come up with some anti-flooding action that would be legal for us to undertake. So we could stop the river from gnawing away at our land.

Anyway, as he was looking at the river, he said, “You’ve got a really nice salmon pool down there.”

That down there salmon pool he was talking about, was totally built by the river. There were no blueprints, schemes, or late night conferences, just the river doing her thing. In this instance her legacy was a salmon pool. Which had also become a haunt for the beavers. Life flows on and on.

However, this semi-blockade-salmon-pool place might be a little troublesome for us in the future. The pool has now become an area where large and small uprooted trees and branches loiter. That gathering of trees and branches has spread out since last week’s flood and is now blocking over half the river’s right of way.

Now, when it floods, it either roars over the blockage while pushing it further out into the river, veers to the left and roars over our hiking trail, (that’s a laugh, our "hiking trail"), or swings to the right and heads for the bridge. The force of the rushing water is awesome and I know this: the river doesn’t dilly dally.
Middle River Flood Damage
Middle River Fury
***
You know, I think we might live smack dab in the centre of the Cape Breton Wizard of Oz climate-making factory. I got a hint of this last week. The river was once again rocking, roiling and rolling over her banks. So we did what we always do when caught in a flood emergency. We grabbed our cameras and headed for the rushing water. Focus, snap, click.

Anyway, we took some pictures and then returned to our little trailer in the woods. A few minutes later, I looked out the window. My gosh, the world over the river had filled in with a bank of fog while thicker blobs were still coming down the mountain when she comes.
fog through window
Fog seen through our window
So, ?????????. Come on, you can guess. Correcto. I grabbed my camera and headed outside. And, oh man, such a chill wrung out my bones, but as I scurried down the short path to the river, (which is getting shorter), I was accosted by a sauna wave. Just like that. Boom! It was mid-summer.

That’s why I say we might be living in a special place where the invisible fairy weather-makers create the weather for the rest of the island. And I don’t have a big ego either.

***
Two Sundays ago, I climbed the steep mountain not too far from our place. The higher I ascended, the more snow there was on the ground.

Here, I was surprised to find the heights swarming with tiny brownish coloured moths. Now, these moths can also be sighted around our place, but not in such numbers.

The next Sunday, I hiked back up the same mountain. There was more snow on the ground this time but there weren’t nearly as many of these wee moths.  However, I did find many lying still on the snow. I figured that they were dead or waiting to be dead.
moth on snow
moth on snow
What affected my poetic sense was a little moth who speedily fluttered past me. I wondered, where was he going in such a rush?

To find out, I increased my hiking speed, so I could keep up with the little fella. Well, he flew a little way further, then swerved off the trail and landed on a patch of snow. There he remained still.

I couldn’t help but think that the moth was hurrying to his dying place. And it seemed so natural and so not a big deal. Probably lived well as a moth and now he was resting in his dying place. Doing what comes naturally.

Of course this is only a conjecture because for all I know he might have been preparing for hibernation. A place where he would get a minimum of a good eight hours sleep. Whereby, sometime in the spring, he would awaken hungry, jump out of bed and begin nibbling away our forest.

Maybe, he’d even shape shift and switch into a caterpillar costume. Miraculous, really. There are lots of metaphors for death, resurrection and such which may have been floating around in my subconscious thinking when I watched the little moth lay down his head.

If anybody knows what kind of moth he is, feel free to let me know.
                      
                   “Come with me
                    amongst the shadows
                    where inner wounds
                    can quietly heal
                    where anger melts like snowflakes
                    and love blossoms
                    like a warm embrace.”
                                                 John George Williams, "Come With Me"

                  “I love to pick
                    the flowers
                    that grow
                    in splendid fields
                    for those flowers
                    that I pick
                    shall never die.”
                                                  John George Williams, "Immortal Flowers"

John George Williams is a Cape Breton poet. You can find more of his poems at:   www.voicesnet.org/allpoemsoneauthor.aspx?memberid=99549
***
Last week another poor little chickadee banged his noggin against one of our windows. This time we immediately got out a plastic container and lined the sides and bottom with a little towel. Then I picked the poor little fella up off the deck floor.

This bird didn’t make a peep. I think he was super stunned. He couldn’t even sit up straight but kept wobbling back and forth like a roly poly.

However, when I placed the bird in the container, he immediately hopped up on the side and soon had his posture sorted out.

With him perched on the plastic private room, I put the container and the bird on the deck railing, so he could keep an eye on his buds. I then went inside. From the kitchen window we could see the poor bird teetering on the edge, but only for a minute or two. It wasn’t long before he squirted up off the plastic container and was soaring off into the pasty gray sky.

Now, that’s two birds in a week I’ve picked up and then watched fly away into the sky. So I suggested something. It was only a suggestion.

I just said, “Why don’t we go to a discount store, buy up a whole whack of cheap headache pills, bring them home and mix a bunch of them in with the birdseed?”

Was that such a crazy idea?
                     
***
One of the thoughts I can’t seem to shake loose from my brain, concerns the definitions I learned in school related to the meaning of the words finite and infinite. Because, you see, these two words seem so philosophically solid in their essences.

To me, infinite means there is no end to something. For instance, if there were an infinite number of moose, then we would never have to worry about depleting the moose population. Of course there might be a moral aspect to the number of moose we could shoot or kill, but we would not have to worry about there not being any more moose.

Then there’s the word “finite”. Which may not apply to our universe, although Einstein might disagree, but it surely does apply to our earth. For me, the word means, there is only so much of something and then there is no more, if we use it all up.

So you see, I can’t get my noggin around the idea that we live in a finite world and yet the wizards out there spew out theories that treat finite as infinite. There is always getting more of this and that, or we always need more of this and that. Until the this and the that is depleted and then we won’t have any more of this or that. See what I mean? Oh where, oh where has the little boy gone who said, “But the emperor has no clothes.” Is he locked up somewhere?

Up here in Cape Breton we have much natural beauty. The tourists love it and come here to get away from the places they call home. Many of them live in communities where they can find all the conveniences they need close by. However, they love visiting places that are naturally beautiful and have been mainly untouched. Uninhabitable, some of the visitors say. But they love to visit.
finite planet
Now, some of the more spectacular beauty around here can be found in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. An area that is a preserve for our finite (oops, there’s that word again) number of wild places and creatures.

To my mind, we have this wonderful preserve as a result of damn good luck as well as hard work. I’m so thankful that the people who created it and continue to maintain it had firmly implanted in their minds the meanings of finite and infinite.

However, there are, up here, some folks who plan to build in the Park a ten-storey high war memorial. Which they want to call, “Mother Canada”.  This Disney World intrusion into a spectacular, mostly untouched part of the Cape Breton National Park coastline will come with tons and tons and tons of concrete, gift shops, parking lots and I don’t know what else.

I understand the need to remember those who fought to protect our freedom. I also have an idea that some day we may have to build a gigantic memorial to remember the wild places that were lost through decisions that seemed more important at the time.

You can read a thoughtful and well written open letter by Susan Zettel, if you want to see a balanced approach to this project:  http://susanzettell.blogspot.ca/2014/11/never-forgotten-national-memorial-open.html  I, meanwhile, have nothing more to say about this project except to repeat my mantra. Finite, infinite. Finite, infinite.
***

“A light had gone out from his vanquished eyes;
His head was cupped within the hunch of his shoulders;
His feathers were dull and bedraggled; the tips
Of his wings sprawled down to the edge of his tail.
He was old, yet it was not his age
Which made him roost on the crags
Like a rain drenched raven
On the branch of an oak in November.
Nor was it the night, for there was an hour
To go before sunset. An iron had entered
His soul which bereft him of pride and of realm,
Had struck him today; for up to noon
The crag had been his throne.
Space was his empire, bounded only
By forest and sky and the flowing horizons.”
                                                     E. J. Pratt, The Dying Eagle   
***
       “The last wolf hurried toward me
        through the ruined city
        and I heard his baying echoes———--
        
        I heard his voice ascending the hill
        and at last his low whine as he came
        floor by empty floor to the room
        where I sat in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
        I heard him snuffle at the door and
        I watched as he trotted across the floor

        he laid his long gray muzzle
        on the spare white spread
        and his eyes burned yellow
        his small dotted eyebrows quivered

        "Yes," I said
        "I know what they have done."
                                                                     Mary TallMountain, "The Last Wolf"
***
moss-covered stump
Moss-covered Stump on Moth Mountain
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Fish Stories

13/11/2014

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No matter how hard we try to make our windows look like windows and not entrances to a more exciting and fantastic forest, we always have birds crashing into them. Most of the birds survive but unfortunately a few don’t.

Like last summer. We found a Northern Parula Warbler lying on our little side porch. She was a beautiful little bluish coloured bird with a yellow throat and breast and two white bars on her wings.  We looked her up and discovered that our area is definitely part of her breeding range. I also read that they like to nest in moist woodsy areas. BINGO. That’s our woods to a tree. Moist and mossy.
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Last weekend we opened the door and found a stunned chickadee lying on our deck floor. He was alive, but looked like he was down for the count. I picked him up and let him sit in my warm cupped hand. The little rascal chirped at me when I picked him up but then settled down and just sat there.

Sue brought out a box with a cloth inside. She thought it might be like a nest to the little feller. It wasn’t. To the bird it was a jail or a superbug-infested hospital room and when I tried to gently place her into the box, she fluttered away and landed on the edge of our porch railing. Then she just sat there and sat there and sat there. Perched precariously on the edge, looking around and, as I said, sitting there.

That got us into a caucus meeting. Should we go and try the box out again? We deliberated and discussed and watched the little fella through our window, just sitting there and not doing much of anything.  A motion was passed, which we put into a birdie omnibus bill, which said that we should, once again, retrieve the box and put clean water in the nest along with a bowl of black oil sunflower seeds.

It was also passed that we place the hospital room/King Cole Tea box into the woodshed where we figured the poor little bird would be comforted by Skippy the squirrel. Who we’re sure has now finished building her condo in the back of our firewood pile.

We also passed 100 other motions that had no relation to birds, so if anyone votes against our omnibus bill, we can accuse them of voting against the welfare of our birds. Democracy is alive and well in Cape Breton.

But guess what? All the plans of men and mice were for naught. The tiny chickadee looked through our window at us, with what looked like a thank you in his eyes, and then he looked up into the sky and whoosh! He was soaring off towards the trees.

Thinking it over, I would have to say that the chickadee had been down for the ten count.  We should have put the little bird in the corner, given her a shot of water from a water bottle, dried her off with a towel and given her a pep talk. “You go out there, keep your left up and punch with your right.”
***
There’s a wonderfully informative column in The Victoria Standard, our local weekly paper. It’s called ‘Strictly For the Birds’ and it’s written by a knowledgeable birder by the name of Bethsheila Kent.

I phoned Ms. Kent one afternoon and told her about some of the birds we’d seen at our feeders. Two exciting sightings were a brightly coloured Baltimore Oriole and a Red Bellied Woodpecker.

The Red Bellied Woodpecker and the Baltimore Oriole are outside their ranges. The Oriole not so far outside but I believe the Red Bellied Woodpeckers are supposed to be found south of the Great Lakes, a long way from Cape Breton. But with the climate warming thing going on, these sightings are probably just going to become more common, as long as these critters can survive our rush for lower taxes, greater wealth and higher productivity.  For some fascinating information about red-bellied woodpeckers, look here: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-bellied_woodpecker/lifehistory
red bellied woodpecker
Red Bellied Woodpecker at our suet feeder
We’re happy that we have these birds to entertain us. I’m also grateful for being able to help so many birds make it through our rough winters when the snow and ice lie thick on the ground.
                        “How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way,
                          Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
                                                                                          William Blake, A Memorable Fancy
***
I read somewhere, in some book, at some time in the last six years, that the universe has a strange and unique way of looking after those of us who, how do I put it, have our heads in highly charged fog and aren’t quite so logical and good at rational planning as others. It compensates. Puts events and opportunities and solutions in front of us, so we can at least give them a good eyeball.

And if we’re perceptive, we’ll take a good look at these universal gems and see them as important messengers for our pilgrimage through this earthly gift of life. Maybe clearing out some of the stifling socialization defaults we’ve been hobbled with.

                       “The world has room to make a bear feel free;
                        The universe seems cramped to you and me.
                        Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
                        That all day fights a nervous inward rage,
                        His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.”
                                                                       Robert Frost, The Bear

And is it possible that more of us would be aware of these connections and, dare I call them, messages from the other side, if we were more connected to nature and less influenced by the hypnotic attractions of culture, education, conventionality and unnaturalness, by which our citified population is so controlled?

As a writer, I deal in connections, happenstance, and surprise. And much like love, these things are not easy to codify. Thank God for that.

Because, if you too closely observe them through your logical microscope, there’s a good chance your desperate need to rationalize them into a neat bundle will get your brain all fired up and sweaty. Your brain warmth might then heat up and melt away these communications until they become only troublesome storm clouds lurking in the back of your subconscious.

That’s why I call my efforts at marketing, “soft marketing”. It’s loosely based on this happenstance theory. Because I know if I start too intensely pushing and jawing away about my writing, and if I start putting its source under rational scrutiny, then it’s bye-bye gut thoughts.

So, as with my marketing approach, it’s my responsibility to look at these surprises and connections and try to understand them, but it behooves me to approach them with child-like wonder and humility.
pumpkins
My Grandsons Tackling their Pumpkins
***
So let’s talk about our river, happenstance and surprise. As you know, it is prone to boiling over its banks and taking short cuts across our property. She even takes some of our property with her and carries it out to the ocean. Five acres and counting down. Four point nine, four point eight…

We haven’t really tried too hard to get something done about the flooding. We have even been told that we aren’t doing enough about the flooding. I call this soft flood marketing.
However, one day, the universe threw out a line of opportunity. Nudge, nudge, Larry, pay attention kind of thing.

This particular day I was hiking towards the trail that leads up the mountain. A man in a red pick-up passed me by. He parked in a field. Jumped out of the truck with a fishing rod.
We got talking. During the conversation I offered him the opportunity to salmon fish in our salmon pool, which the river had so kindly created, without a yes or a no from us.

At one point, the man pulled a cigar out of his pocket and reached for his lighter. “Damn it,” he said. “I forgot my lighter.”

I took off my knapsack, opened it up, pulled out a lighter and gave him the cigar starter.


Anyway, that’s when the fella told me he was a fishery enforcement officer. Then he told me that he would drop around sometime and look at our river and see how the river was treating our property. He said that after he made his visit, he would send out an official who would make suggestions as to what we could do about the flooding.

Of course, I now need to follow up. Phone him and remind him of the conversation. I mean I don’t just let the ocean roll over me without my helping it along.

Now, here comes the coincidence and surprise and being synched-in stuff I was talking about. Although this encounter was already a happenstance kind of thing.

At one point, the fisher person, (did I say that correctly?), told me that every year he wraps a salmon tag around a birch tree, at a certain place along the Middle River. It sounded like a ceremony of sorts. Maybe keeping a connection to a place he loved.

Have you followed the connections so far? How connections and happenstance and circumstance can create a story? A real story which can’t be imagined?


A few days later, we looked out of our living room window and saw two aliens walking around in the river. They looked like two salmon, who had undergone a pop-in-the-microwave-evolutionary burst and grown two feet and two arms and a head like ours. 
However, after careful observation, we realized they were two skin divers. Probably looking for relics and interesting things tossed into the river.

See what’s happening? Are you watching the connections here?
skin diver
Skin Divers in our River
Later on that day, while I was hiking towards the Wilderness Area, I saw a Fishery and Oceans truck parked at the end of our road. I thought it was the fella I’d been talking to earlier, who was doing some fishing in the wilderness area.

Anyway, I hiked to my meditation place along the Middle River. There I sat on my tiny hiking chair and listened, smelled, observed and thought about unbelievably deep things. Ha.

Suddenly, I heard voices. I turned around and there were the two evolutionary-salmon guys walking towards me. Wearing the full skin diver outfit. It was un-nerving seeing these fellas pop out of the bush.

Do you know what they were planning on doing after they plunged into the water and let the river float them away? Their heads underwater and their feet thrashing from time to time? They were counting salmon.

Do you know who they worked for? The Fisheries and Oceans.

You see what I mean? It’s like the universe throws these themes out and you don’t have to be too far above dense, or below it for that matter, to know that there are these connections going on.

Guess what else I saw?

Wrapped around a thin birch tree, in the Middle River Wilderness Area, was a blue salmon fishing tag. Are you counting the odds here?
                         “The current of life runs ever away
                          To the bosom of God’s great ocean.
                          Don’t set your force ‘gainst the river’s course
                          And think to alter its motion.
                          Don’t waste a curse on the universe--
                          Remember it lived before you.
                          Don’t butt at the storm with your puny form,
                          But bend and let it go o’er you.”
                                           Ella Wheeler Wilcox, As You Go Through Life

                                       “Your fish stories hang together
                                         when they’re just a pack of lies:
                                         you ought to have a leather medal:
                                        you ought to have a statue
                                        carved of butter: you deserve
                                        a large bouquet of turnips.”

                                       “There were no Christians among the early Gauls;
                                         they were mostly lawyers.”
             
                                                          From ‘The People, Yes’, Carl Sandburg


***
Here's a challenge for you.  Can you find the moose in this picture?
Picture
Find the moose!
Aspy Trail
Brave Tree on Aspy Trail
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