Still Swinging at Sixty

Let me clarify the title “Still Swinging at Sixty”; “swinging”, as in, on a Tarzan swing, not as in, “swinging” at a bar. Not that anyone who knew me would EVER assume the latter, but still, for you readers who don’t know me, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea!
The delights of my new locale at my friend’s house are unfolding each day. Last week I discovered a wonderfully secure Tarzan-style rope swing that soars you out over the pond that accompanies the cranberry bog. It’s attached to a huge tree, and by skittering down a sandy slope you can hop on the equally secure knot and just sail out over the water. Wonderful beyond words, so now my daily walk is enhanced by a daily swing. I took my ladies there last week and bless them; some were game enough to try it.

Last night, after an entire day at a Wildlife Fair letting children try a snake on their lap, around their neck etc. and talking and talking and talking, I needed a break. So as soon as I got back home, I took my, more-than-anxious-to-get-out, dog, to the bog and as the sun faded I just let myself swing and swing. First pass and two huge herons lifted off from nearby, croaking as they went. Perhaps my swinging was less relaxing to them then it was to me.
Second swing and a kingfisher rattled across the pond. Third swing and a hawk lifted off. Amazing, each new swing, a new fly-by. I loved it!

Earlier that morning, knowing I would be gone all day, I had gone to the same place. The sun was just rising and mist was hovering over the pond. Clearly I had arrived just as the robins wake-up alarm had gone off and they were flying from the trees and alighting on the path in large numbers. And, as often is the case in the fall, they were accompanied by flocks of Flickers. A deluxe treat had no doubt brought them all to this site. The bog owner had just recently dredged his ditches around the bog and had spread this black, full of possibility, muck all over the paths where they were now dining. A breakfast bar of isopods and leeches and all sorts of insect larvae delights-yum!

Speaking of flocks, today after church when I was in my old neighborhood, a friend and I went questing for Tree swallows, and this time, there they were, by the thousands, swooping and swirling around the dunes. It’s a fantastic site that I have written about before, but leaves me slack-jawed every time. A river of swallows, a tornado of swallows as they get into a funnel-like formation, than head off over the dunes, sometimes flying low just skimming the sand, other times going to giddy heights. Like whale watching I simply never tire of the experience. It was glorious and will only last a few more weeks, so, anyone on the Cape reading this, “get thee to a dunnery”, any barrier beach sporting bayberries will probably do but the one I see them at is Sandy Neck in West Barnstable. Try not to miss it.

I had to go today, for by this time next week I will be with my husband and daughter in Germany and Italy. Lucky me. Then returning from seeing that daughter, I will leave for a few weeks of travel to see my other daughters and grandchildren. With a husband in Texas, all household goods in some limbo-like place and people coming to stay at this cottage, I am free to embrace the nomadic life for a while and so I shall. Internet fixes will perhaps be few and far between. But when I can, I shall write of what I see as we skip about the globe.

And what I see right now, is that during that week I was with my daughter in Baltimore, my lone lady swan took up with a handsome male. Another pond no longer safe for Wood ducks, I saw them chase one away the very morning I returned, but still, there they are looking so lovely as they glide through the sunrise light of the morning, or catch this golden light of sunset that is out the panorama of windows right now. I can’t say enough of how unspeakably beautiful life is at the moment, and how amazingly grateful I am for the friend that is letting me stay here. May golden light be gracing the end of your day too, wherever you are.

A Parallel Universe

When last I wrote, hurricanes were blowing and I was in the eye of my own personal storm; trying to empty and clean a house at a frantic pace before the family that would move in, moved in. And in my little heart I was lamenting all that I would be giving up with this change of address: my nearby bog that is the basis for this blog, places to let the dog run without the confines of a leash, my flocks of birds, who although they were eating me out of house and home, seemed like extensions of my own family and, of course, the antics of the chipmunks who race across the deck to load and reload their cheek pouches with enough provisions to get them through several winters. Oh sigh, double sigh, I thought.

But OH, I do believe in God! And the way He closes a door and opens a window in your life to show you, “Look the sun shines here too!. I am thanking God for the kindness of my friend, for at her cottage in North Falmouth, life is even more beautiful! Or, at least, AS beautiful. Her cottage sits on a rise with a wall of windows looking over a wide pond, where the sun rises mistily each morning.
A lone swan makes half a heart with its arching neck and three Ospreys circle and dive for most of their “three squares” right in front of me. Something I can watch while hanging clothes on a line to dry. I could weep it is so wonderful and most times I do. I am an easy weeper!

And for the dog, that I thought might have to rankle under leash walks, a nearby place called Bourne Farm is equal in beauty to the usual Game Farm we frequent in Sandwich. Open fields overlooking a pond are cut in places and left to grow wild flowers in others. In the middle is a huge pumpkin patch and it is bordered by some 65 acres of woodland trails. I even found the trail that leads to a cranberry bog complete with Tarzan swing for the brave and young at heart. Incredible!

I shall take my Wild Women of Weds here as soon as I am back on the Cape. Even a “crime scene” is there to be explored. Peripherally it looked like a patch of dead grass, or maybe the knotted roots of a fallen tree, but with glasses on and close up, eh gad, it was an entire body; rib cage, skull, matted fur. I would have guessed coyote, the color the fur was blond brown, but some people I met walking said there had been a sick, rabid fox in the area and perhaps this is where it lay down to die. Hmm better use rubber gloves if I want to look closer. I need to see the skull, for it is easy to tell fox from coyote but I would have to unearth it from the matted fur. And I would have to BE there to do that. I am presently in Baltimore restocking my injured daughters fridge.

And that will be the rub. Here is this divine place, but I have so many other places I must be in the next few months, to say nothing of supposedly finding a home to live in in Texas that my time there will be in short spurts. But I will treasure every short spurt moment. You will surely get blogs about it, starting with just who or what the poor dearly departed turns out to be.

So a parallel universe existed all along on the Cape. Do you think there might be one in Texas too? A parched, scorched, parallel universe perhaps. We’ll see, right now it should be one zip code at a time Pat. One zip code at a time.