Spring is near...



Ozark Native Trout Lily

Early flowers

This week I have noticed a few flowers budding and blooming already. The daffodils in my front yard are budding and starting to open. Along the creek I found a single trout Lilly blooming. In the fields and meadows I can find early dandelions. And everywhere tiny blue flowers are speckling the greenery. Today, as rain pours heavy from a grey sky, it feels like spring!

Throwing Rocks

     Yesterday was sunny and warm. It felt like spring. I let Zane roll his window down and we drove out of town. Beside a bridge, I parked and we hiked down to the White River. Zane rode on my back much of the way because the path (or lack of path) was steep, rocky, and full of obstacles. The rivers throughout the Ozarks have changed in the past two years. I remember this particular spot being a good, deep swimming hole. But even with the rain we have received this winter, it is shallow and full of bamboo and reeds. The splashing water is not strong enough to wash trash downstream and some locals must use the dry end of the bridge as a dump yard. Initially, between the shallow water, bamboo covered shore, and forgotten garbage, I was terribly disappointed. If the hike down the the water's edge had not been such an exhausted ordeal, I would have turned around immediately. But I sat to rest, and Zane began throwing rocks in the river.
     He has always loved to throw rocks in the water, since he was very young. But after two years of very dry weather, we have not had much time to enjoy this favored pastime. When I had finished resting, I suggested we leave and find a better shore.
     "No," said my three year old explained sweetly. "Zane throw rocks in river."
     I couldn't drag him away after seeing the smile on his face. So I showed him how to skip rocks and he spend a while searching for flat rocks tp throw even though he couldn't get them to skip. Time passed. I picked up my book and got lost in the story. Zane threw big rocks until they were all either in the water or too big to pick up. Then he threw little rocks. It was like a meditation to him. He was lost in a trance. He didn't speak. If I talked to him, he didn't hear me at first. I have seen such a trance come over children while playing video games or watching a movie. But Zane was simply throwing rocks.
Almost three hours went by and I was out of drinking water, so I suggested that we head back to the car. By now the rocky shore he was sitting on had become a muddy, sandy beach, completely devoid of rocks. Yet still he dug in the muddy sand in search for tiny pebbles. Perhaps it was not very good for the river, but I believe it was good for Zane's soul.
The drive home was silent and my boy went to bed peacefully.
Today he woke up telling me about his dreams...they were full of frogs.



This was taken last spring, not yesterday.
 

Spring Peepers and then Snow

     Tuesday it rained over two inches. The parched earth has been crying for rain since the great flood of 2010, in which we all wished for the rain to stop. And it did stop. It still has yet to start again.
One day of rain does not bring us out of this drought, but it made the frogs sing. Yes, frogs were singing in January! It is still the heart of winter, but the temperature was over 60 degrees and the spring peepers emerged to sing their thanks to the pouring clouds. Because I heard spring peepers in early December as well, I am a little concerned they are not getting enough rest this winter.
     Wednesday it snowed. Before the rain stopped, the temperature dropped dramatically and flurries fell. The warm ground melted the flakes almost instantly but the contrast was shocking. I wonder where those little frogs are now, on this cold night. Hopefully they fled beneath the ground and buried themselves in the mud before the earth froze again. With such a short and mild winter, I have to wonder if the Ozarks will be ready for an early spring.

Visiting the Farm

Mother sheep and twins still crusty with afterbirth

     A bitterly cold winter night in January is birthing time on my uncle's farm. His sheep seem to aways give birth at night and often during the cold months of late winter or very early spring. During the last cold snap, triplets were born. Some sheep are more inclined to birth one lamb, others birth twins most often, and some ewes will birth triplets. Though my uncle's sheep usually have one or two babies, he does not see triplets very often. Even more rarely do they all live.
     It is especially hard to keep lambs alive on cold winter nights. They arrive wet in a cold world and though their mother licks them dry, the cold wind can kill them, especially the one who is licked dry last. It seems counter intuitive to birth a lamb on a cold winter night, but perhaps it comes from a fear of something much more dangerous than the cold, like wolves. Predators are less likely to be out on the prowl if the weather is fowl, so the sheep brave the cold to give their babies a head start.

Less than a day old lamb

     It doesn't take long for lambs to start frolicking in the fields. When born at night, they are usually fairly sturdy on their feet by noon. Within a day, they are hard to catch. It is important for lambs to run from predators as soon as possible. Sometimes it makes me wonder how human babies survive, being so helpless for so long.
     Last weekend, the weather in the Ozarks was as perfect as it gets on a January day. The sun shone bright in the cloudless sky and the lite breeze blew warm air over the hills. I decided it was a perfect day to escape the confinements of the city and explore the countryside. My uncle invited us out to his farm, where the lamb triplets were only three days old.
     My three year old son was delighted as usual by the innocence on the baby lambs. He laughs when he sees them run with a glee that he only achive outside. We managed to catch one and he gently pet its tiny head while I held it. We talked about the baby with enthusiasim. He has been facinated with babies ever since my pregnant belly began to grow.

Curious young cow

The cows make him smile too. He wanted to feed them grass from the other side of the fence. Though they ventured much closer to him--being only a few feet tall--then they would to us, they were not brave enough to eat out of his hand. I see cows every day while driving, from a far. But I forget how big they are until I am standing next to one. Despite their size, they are gentle and easily spooked.
     Most days we collect eggs from the chicken house and feed the koi fish in my aunt's fish pond. Sitting on the tractor and pretending to drive is also fun, but no as exciting as riding on my uncle's solar powered golf cart. Zane was even allowed to steer the golf car all by himself.
     Though the day was beautiful, it was also short. As the sun set, the cool winter temperatures crept under our skin. I know my son enjoyed his day at the farm, but perhaps not as much as I enjoy seeing him there. So often he has his head buried in a book or his eyes are glued to a screen. I wish he could spend more days herding sheep, collecting eggs, and feeding fish. Perhaps we will have our own farm one day soon. For now, I will just keep exposing him to the country side as much as I can. 

Summer Night Song on a Winter Day

Whip-poor-will

    

     I thought I heard a whip-poor-will this afternoon. However, this small brown bird sings at night during the hot summer months, not on winter afternoons. It feeds on insects so it migrates to Central America in fall and returns to North America to breed in summer time. No whip-poor-will could survive in the Ozarks this time of year because it would have nothing to eat. I love listening to them saying their name on warm nights in July. Perhaps the sound drives some people mad, being to monotonous and constant. For me it is a sound I have heard all my life, it lulls me to sleep like no other lullaby. But on this brisk winter day, the sound took me completely by surprise. For a moment, I smiled. Then I frowned.

     Soon I determined that the very convincing whip-poor-will song was actually being sung by the mimicking mockingbird. This common songbird is the Arkansas state bird and can mimic almost any song, even a cell phone ring or car alarm. Often it mocks sounds it hears and it is not strange for it to mimic the whip-poor-will; however, I find it surprising that this bird remembered the song of the whip-poor-will and recalled it so accurately many months later. Both the mocking bird and I reminisced together, remembering hot summer nights while enjoying a cool winter afternoon.  

 

Bird Brains

Hairy Woodpecker
(I thought is was a Downy at first but it was pretty big)

     Once the leaves have fallen and the thickets have died back, the birds seem to become visable for the first time. They flutter from one naked branch to another. After a snowy night they flock through yards searching for feed or scraps. I know when the birds in the yard because my cat meows at the window. But I never let the cat out on busy bird mornings because these tiny feathered friends facinate me, especially in winter when there is so little to study.
     Birds are loved animals. Unlike their relatives, the reptiles, people don't try to run over them in their cars or chop their heads off. No one has a songbird phobia. They way they move and fly has facinated people for years. Children smile at flocks of birds.
     In the country we spot nuthatches, finches, and even a cedar waxwing. In town the chickadees, bluebirds and robins are common. Both locations we see cardinals, blue jays, and downey woodpeckers. When in the country my favorite bird to watch is the reb-breasted nuthatch. They make me laugh. They are full of energy, chirping and chasing one another from the birdfeeder. In the city I love the sight and song of a robin, especially when they are excited about finding a good crop of green briar berries.
     I have always loved birds. As I kid I told my mother that when I grew up I wanted to be a bird, perhaps a chickadee. She told me about reincarnation and suggested that I might have been a bird in a previous life. I proclaimed that I wanted to be reincarnated as a bird in my next life, even after she told me that would be a regression since humans were above birds on the road towards enlightenment. I didn't care. I wanted to be a chickadee.
     Humans have huge brains. We believe that we are smarter than any other animal. It is true that birds have very small brains, because they have to be lightweight for flying, but that should not be cause for a judgment of stupidity. Chickadees, for example, regenerate new brain cells each year. Each day they replace up to two percent of the neurons in their hippocampus—the part of the brain that deals with memory—allowing extra space for them to remember where they hid their seeds. By being able to replace its brain cells they have an extremely good short term memory without needing large brains. Perhaps birds are smarted than we give them credit for.  

Winter at Last

Last year winter never came to the Ozarks. We never got more than a light dusting of snow and the temperature hardly dropped enough to call it cold. Last summer was terribly hot and dry, so after another summer full of similar hot and dry weather, everyone has been talking about how mild the winter to follow might be. Long summers are harder to bare if there is no winter to warm up from. The cold and hot help balance each other.
This week I was pleasantly surprised that we got a cold snap and it snowed a little. I know most people are not big fans of winter (I actually don't mind it most winters) but I think we can all agree that winter is suppose to be cold and that type of normality is reassuring.
For northern states, snow is nothing special. But for the Ozarks, it is a rare and special occurrence, a gift from the heavens. Every year we get at least a dusting of frozen precipitation, but rarely is it more than a dusting. I am simply relieved that a little snow fell, that winter may actually set in this year. The cold will surely make next summer feel more tolerable.

Spring Peepers in December?

This past weekend, I woke to the sound of two spring peepers calling from amphibian ponds at Owls' Knob. Their constant peeping is a comforting sound to me in spring, but in December it is somewhat troubling. I recall having heard peepers in autumn but this is very late in the year for them to be calling.
These small chorus frogs hibernate under leaf litter in winter. They do not dig deep enough to prevent freezing so their cold blooded body drops below freezing temperatures. Their bodily functions shut down and their body partially freezes. To avoid exploding they force water out of their cells so it turns to ice in between the individual cell walls. They also create glucose, from energy reserves, that serves as a natural anti-freeze. With these adaptations their core temperature can drop to only 21 degrees Fahrenheit!
However, this December has had highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. So the spring peepers are not retreating under logs, rocks, and leaf litter, but instead singing at the edges of ponds. I worry that they will use up precious energy reserves and not have enough glucose in their system to last the winter, (if winter indeed comes this year.) Hopefully these frogs are fat and just happy to be hopping on a warm winter day.

Salamander Tadpole

Yesterday, just before the cool winds and rains blew in, my uncle took me down to his salamander pond. We found many tadpoles, their gills are like the mane of a Chinese dragon. This one was also getting its front legs. These amphibians are becoming more and more rare. That is why my uncle has dug a special pond for them to breed. We are all excited each year to see the next generation of salamanders tadpoles growing strong. Read more about the Ringed Salamander here!

Ringed Salamander Tadpoles

Thanks

Today both my belly and my heart is full. I feel such gratitude and humble appreciation.
I often talk to my students about appreciation, particularly about their appreciation for the environment. It is a notion we toss around casually. But the sheer magnitude of what our natural environment does for us is overwhelming. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and everything we buy came from the earth. We are made of earth, from the earth, and one day we will return to the earth. I am thankful for that which gives me life. I am thankful for the life and love that is all around me... the life that is inside me.
After such a beautiful day I am in awe of such beauty and splendour and so grateful that I will be waking in the morning to greet yet another glorious day. Yet, I know that so many people are not as lucky as I. Sometimes I feel guilty because I can not relieve their suffering. While so many suffer, I am so blessed. So I can not forget to give thanks for all that I have been given. It is the least I can do!
This Thanksgiving I am filled with deep gratitude.
So many of our holidays have good stories behind them but have become materialistic and Americanized in some way. But Thanksgiving is the opposite. It has a sad story. It celebrates a empty day full of empty promises and lies. If the Pilgrims and Indians came together on this day to feast, it was only followed by years of war, a great exodus, and the decline of a nation full of indigenous cultures. But like all American holidays, the story has been forgotten. And on this holiday I am glad! For me and so many others, it is not a celebration of the past but an appreciation of the present. A time to bring families together and give thanks. We need more days like today!

How to Live?

I am in a constant struggle, a battle with myself. So much of me wants to raise my boy close to nature. Yet living in the middle of no where is so difficult, so lonley. Our culture is no longer built for the small farmer or the folks living close to the land. It is an industrialized society and if you want to live apart from that, be prepared to feel alone. The loneliness ate me up, but now the city eats away at me in a similar way.
Perhaps I am cursed to be stuck between these two worlds. I was raised in a constant state of change. We always had more that one home. My parents traveled often and since they were divorced my sister and me jumped between them as well. I want both... to live in the country and have a social life.
When I live in the city, I do not live in a way that I feel good about, but I am able to teach and help others. In the country I can not have much influence on the world, but I am living in a better way.
I think.
It is so hard to know how to live...