Post-Irene Paddle

The first thing I noticed was that my usual launch in Tivoli was over a foot thick with water chestnut, laced with bottles, Styrofoam and other debris. The water chestnut pulls up in the fall, forming green rafts on the water. But these plants had been ripped off by the winds and water of hurricane Irene (or tropical storm Irene?). So I slipped my kayak into the water at the small dock. It had weathered the storm—still in place—but was slick with a layer of mud. Clearly it had drowned in the storm. The water was chocolate brown, more silty than usual and scanning the wide river I could see flotsam, logs, and other debris drifting swiftly south with the current.

I stepped into my boat, noting the cold at my ankles was not the fall-warmed water of a few days earlier.  I struck south, passing a wooden dock, sloshed up on shore. Swallows zipped across the water and landed on the wires next to the train tracks. A great blue heron took flight. In many ways, it was just another day for the birds, and for the baby map turtle I saw taking in the last of the day’s sun. But for me, the river was transformed. I recognized everything: the Catskill mountains in the distance, the puff of trees in front of me that is Magdalen Island, the houses on shore that peer down at the river. But the texture of the river was foreign. There was a sense of dereliction, I want to say of lawlessness. It was as if the river itself was not following its own laws, but also that those who live in and on the river had given over to new ways of being, one where anything could and did float off in the river.

The raft of logs and sticks laced with debris was so thick at the entrance to the north Tivoli Bay that I could hardly shove my way through. The water poured out of the narrow entrance to the Bay, pushing me quickly south. There, just a hundred yards off of Magdalen Island was a small island of river junk. A long wooden dock. A large refrigerator and a small refrigerator both knocked against the wood. A pile of sneakers stacked on top of one end of the dock. On the far end, a submerged motorboat, engine still attached was lashed to dock. It too had been dragged south.

A man motored in on his own boat. “I get stupid when it comes to collecting crap,” he said, pulling out a toolkit. That’s what this was, crap. He set to work removing the cleats attached to the dock. “These are worth twenty bucks a piece.” I watched for a while, taking inventory of what was there. “This morning there was a kayak washed up on the end.”  A kayak? Now, a kayak I’d like to find. “But it wasn’t a nice boat like yours,” he said. I smiled. “Don’t you want to get out and help me or something?” he asked. I didn’t.

So I headed south, seeing a brilliant orange red scarlet tanager in the late day sun, several king birds, and a kingfisher. I thought I might scoot into the North Bay from the southern entrance. But the water there, which I know to be sweet, often placid, was so fast, so violent I knew I couldn’t make my way against the current. So I headed north, taking to the river side of Magdalen Island.

As the sun set I saw the same colors I knew well, slurping down the back of the Catskills and I started to feel this was the river that I knew. And then I heard the engine of my crap collecting friend’s boat as he slowly towed the sunken boat home.

Why I Love a Storm

At six thirty in the evening my young friends Sasha and Liza knock on my door. I have a headlamp attached to my forehead to guide me in making dinner, something exciting like rice and beans. “We’re collecting food that might go bad and making dinner at the bar,” Sasha explains. The bar has gas burners so they can still cook. Many have electric powered stoves so they are out of luck. We are not supposed to have power for the next two to three days so things will no doubt start to turn in the fridge. It’s a great idea. But I have almost nothing in my fridge. So I take them out to my garden and give them tomatoes and chard, some basil. Who knows what they will cook up, but I love that what they want to do is feed everyone after a long day of wind and rain.

In a big storm, birds are pushed north, ahead of the winds. For a birder this is a chance to find rare birds, that is, southern birds not usually seen in these parts. So Peter and I are up at six, and soon driving through a grey, torrential downpour toward the Hudson River in Kingston. The roads are littered with debris from trees: twigs, leaves. A few downed trees block roads. Lights are out at intersections but there is little traffic at this early hour, so the road is ours.

As we navigate the streets of East Kingston we spy the white truck of our friend Mark DeDea. He has spied us as well, and backs up to join us. I love this, that the only other car on the road is a nutty birder, doing what we are doing: stomping around in plastic boots, soaked to the skin looking for birds.

As we walk down an abandoned train track to peer into the grey mist, a flock of birds circle in the distance and both Peter and Mark get excited. These are good birds. They are Hudsonian Godwits, birds with long upturned bills heading north, into the wind but away from the storm. How do they know to do this? And will they escape the fury of this storm? I feel my heart constrict as I think about this remarkable flight.

We drive north, dodging downed trees and listening to the radio that tells us to stay home. I couldn’t stay indoors and miss the wind that knocks the floating docks against the shoreline at Glasco. We look into the grey, straining to see some birds. And as we stand there cars circle into the small town park. Everyone wants to see the waves, the rising water. But few get out of their cars to experience the wind.

Wind! That is why I love a storm.  

The day after the storm it is all blue sky, all smiles, as if nothing has happened. But there are still trees littering the roads and in the river the most amazing range of debris: a fuel tank, a bar-b-que, hundreds—thousands?—of bottles, an entire dock, all of the water chestnut that has ripped out and rafted south. There are many without power and further south there are people who have lost their lives to this storm. Everyone is pitching in after the storm, friends calling me to be sure all is ok, and me calling others to learn that all is ok, and everyone there to help out if help is needed. There is good will and gratefulness and, I dare say, even love. Love for this world, each other, this life, the birds, the wind.

Estampes, part five

Sunday morning. It rained in the night, so it’s cool in the morning when I head out south on the main road, intending to drop down one of the narrow roads that take farmers to their fields. Corn and sunflower fields give over to empty fields, filled with birds lively in the cooler air: the great tit, swallows decorating the power lines that seem to run everywhere I look, tree sparrows.  I flush a pair of woodcocks, who sail off in a flurry of wings. Then I cross a small bridge, and on the other side am in a new department, the Haute Pyrenees. When I was a child, we often walked to the bridge after dinner, hopping from one side to the other, saying, “now I am in the Gers, now in the Haute Pyrenees.” There was no difference, the line entirely political. But we loved it, as we loved those evening walks.

 I look down a narrow passageway, between two corn fields, and spy two fox trotting toward me. They don’t see me right away, so I watch them through my binoculars, their long legs taking light, wary steps. And then they turn sharply and vanish into the corn.

As I near the Boues, the river that carved this valley, the land flattens out. This is an area that Odette refers to as La Plaine. The plains. It is where they grew their hay and wheat. In the summer Becky and I would help Stanis and Odette bring in the small bails of hay and straw. We’d shove in a pitchfork, then in a swoop, lift them above our head to land on the wooden cart pulled by the tractor. Stanis would arrange the bales of straw or hay, as we walked by the slow moving tractor. In the evenings, we’d return home, our hair speckled with straw, straw down our backs and in our bras. And happy.

I come to a stand of trees. I have been hearing woodpeckers on this trip, but had yet to lay eyes on a bird. There was a time when I wasn’t fond of the woodpecker in Estampes, as they drilled holes in our wooden shutters, slowly destroying them.  But now, of course, the woodpecker—a favorite. And there in this small area of dense oak trees, with its bright red flanks is the great spotted woodpecker (wish I had a photo!). Soon after in a field I spy more cattle egret, and one lone grey heron (very much like our blue heron) hunting in a field.

I pass three farmhouses, all beautifully fixed up, new shutters still closed on this Sunday morning. The tractors sit idle; not even the resident dog is there to bark at me as is usually the case. A few collared doves flutter about.

These roads I’m walking are the same roads I taught my niece and nephew to drive on. They were perfect learning roads in that 99% of the time there are no other cars. The downside is that when there was a car, there was little room for two cars to pass. So Alice or Thomas would stop, let me take over the wheel as I inched by the other car. On both sides dramatic ditches threatened to swallow a car.

I spy a hen harrier, grey-white high on a pole, then it swoops off. In a field to my right, a deer, the fifth one I’ve seen on this walk. I have seen deer in the past, but not so many. So the question is: are there more deer, or am I simply seeing them?

My return is quiet until a falcon comes zipping in overhead and slams into a magnolia tree. There’s a rumpus of squawks, then quiet. The falcon got its meal.

And I’m thinking about my lunch as well. So I drive into Mielan, the nearest town to Estampes, where there is a small Sunday market. I tell the melon man from Lectour that I want three melons, one for tonight and two for Monday. He numbers them in black ink so I’ll know which one is ripest.

I arrive at a small vegetable vendor just as he sells off the last of his lettuce. “Come to my house,” he says, “I have lots more lettuce.” So I get in his car and he takes me to his spread of a garden, overflowing with flowers, melons, tomatoes, and lettuce. He’s  retired, so this is a bit of a hobby, but he’s a gardener who likes to experiment. There are some peanut plants he hopes will grow and five corn stalks from seeds he found down by the river. I tell him he should grow sweet corn. He can’t, he tells me. When he was young, he worked inspecting farmer’s milk machines. Often the farmers would invite him for lunch. They would kill a chicken and serve it to him. Sometimes he’d find grains of corn in his chicken (someone should have cleaned their chickens better!). Corn is for chickens, he explained, handing me two large bouquets of flowers: dahlias, marigolds, black eyed Susans, gladiolas.  Flowers, whether in the US or in France, are always beautiful.

Bicycling the Gers

The road that leaves the D 146 and climbs west, uphill, is narrow and steep. It is there that Olivier and Becky are waiting for me, resting against their bicycles. “You missed seeing a Hen Harrier,” I tell them. They look less than interested as they stand in the shade of a farmhouse, a bit red from exertion and the sun. “The thing is,” I say, by way of trying to get them to care about my excitement, “is that my life is better for seeing this bird.” I’m joking and they laugh, but the truth is I kind of believe what I’ve just said.

I saw the Harrier hovering over a wide field. It looked like it was suspended from the sky itself, staying miraculous in place as it targeted the ground. There was a glint of red, and a fanned tail. Then it dropped, like a ball dropping from the sky and vanished into the grass. I figured it would take a while for it to conduct its killing business so I bicycled on, not wanting to keep my sister and brother-in-law waiting too long. 

We all shift into low gears as we prepare for the steep uphill ride that will take us up and over into the neighboring valley. The road is narrow, one-lane, gravelly, and winding. As we bike—slowly—I admire the pink and white cosmos in bloom by the side of the road, the queen anne’s lace that spreads across fields, and the acacia trees with their wispy red flowers. To our left, in the distance, we see the outline of the Pyrenees, especially the dramatic rise of the Pic du Midi. The houses of Antin thin and we’re soon surrounded by woods. There is a false summit, with a miniature valley positioned high in the hills. A few houses sprinkle the landscape, so isolated from the rest of the world. “It’s these inter-valley communities that interest me,” Becky says. And me too. The people who live here speak their own patois, live with little contact with their neighbors. It’s amazing to think of the isolation in such a busy country. Every small farm house that we pass has its own odor depending on what they are raising: Geese and ducks, an odor that is sharp in the back of the nose; beef cows, a flatter smell that mixes with the earth; milk cows, all sweetness.

Soon, we are sailing downhill, the breeze cooling the sweat under my helmet. We stop at the bottom of the hill to sit on a bench by l’Arros, a stream that flows out of the Pyrenees. We’re in the town of St. Sever, known for its Abbey.

St. SeverOn the return we take the D38 toward Villecomtal, then head back east on narrow back roads. I see a buzzard soaring over a field. It’s possible to get lost in these back roads, some of which dead end in fields. But we’ve all biked and driven them enough that we know to turn left or right at the statue of the virgin Mary, or at the grey house.

My grandmother loved taking this road through the woods to visit Villecomtal. They went with horse and buggy, she would tell me, taking the whole day for the visit. And then an uncle of hers owned a small shop in town, a shop that sold bonbons. There, she would get to eat as many candies as she pleased. What would she think of her grandchildren bicycling this same route in the heat of day? She would think we were nuts.

At a turn in the road, Olivier and Becky are waiting for me, though I had told them to go on, so I could stop and look at birds. They are snacking on blackberries, growing by the side of the road. And, Becky wanted to be sure that I saw the lamas in the field, napping in the sun. Lamas, like the donkey, are new to the area.

Becky leaves her bike and wanders to the side of the road to pee. She unzips her pants, and begins to crouch when she leaps into the air, screaming. In all the acres of land, in all the miles of road, she has decided to crouch to pee, right over this: