The Antlers On The Shed Door

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on February 6, 2016 in animal and plant life, Fiction, Travel

February 6, 2016, Prescott- I have “a day off”, today- no commitments, until 7 PM, and except for getting a much-needed haircut, no real accomplishments. Nonetheless, time has been put to good use.

Let us return to the Winter Scavenger Hunt

18. garden shed, moon, antlers,

Damian was an iconoclast. His family was made up, almost entirely of PETA activists. Everyone was for animal rights, except him. Damian didn’t despise fauna. He just thought it was their lot in life to serve the needs of people.

In that vein, he was opposed to poaching, and to the excessive slaughter of any given species. It was, Damian would tell anyone who listened, a matter of balance. “Kill off a species, and it’s like pulling a linchpin out of a Janga tower.”, he once told a Chinese traditional healer, who’d come to Damian’s part of Alberta, to kill off and transport as many Grizzly bears as he could manage.

Damian had a thing about elk jerky. He killed his quota of buck elk and shared the meat with his kindred spirits, saving a fair portion of it, to cure for his own snacking, over the winter. There were several racks of antlers hanging throughout his property, always discomfiting his mother and siblings, on the infrequent occasions that they came by to visit.

The one that bothered them the most was the rack that hung above the entrance to Damian’s garden shed. He had a full, varied garden plot- growing everything from sunflowers to soybeans, and all free of both Genetic Modification and chemicals. Damian also believed in letting different parts of his field lie fallow, each year, so as to allow for soil recovery.

None of this prepared him for the night of the Full Moon, in late January. Around 11 PM, Damian was awakened from an early slumber, by the bright light of the orb that shone through his bedroom window. It was not the moon. That shone on the other side of the house. This orb was a vehicle of some kind. It landed, carefully, in a fallow section of field.

Damian watched in awe, as a door opened, a ramp lowered to the ground, and three figures walked slowly out, their hooves-yes, hooves, clanking on the metal surface. These elk walked upright, on two legs. Even more astonishing, they were blue.

A short time later, there was a sharp rapping on Damian’s door. The shaken, but still curious, man opened the door. The lead cervine figure spoke, though in a language not heard on this Earth. Yet, psychically, he made his wishes known to the Earth-bound human.

“We are from a planet under the sway of the star Sirius. We have observed how homo sapiens sapiens treats its fellows, and its planet-mates. We have adopted the form of the elk, so as to impart a message: ‘Let your animal friends be. They are part of a Universal schema. They must be allowed to live out their lives,in balance.’ Furthermore, you, Damian Elkins, must give us all of your antler collection, that we might create new creatures for our own planet. We can do this, through use of the Deoxyribonucleic Acid in these antlers. Elsewise, we must take you, yourself, to our planet, and create a species, that we will exploit and hunt, for sport.!”

Damian delivered up all of his antlers. The visitors left. Two days later, Damian joined PETA.

A Touch of the Rio Grande

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on February 3, 2016 in animal and plant life, Hiking and Nature, Spiritual

January 31, 2016, Albuquerque- One of the places Penny and I liked in the Duke City was Rio Grande Nature Center. As the name implies, it celebrates the great river that plies Albuquerque’s west side, on its way to becoming the Rio Bravo and a feeder for the Gulf of Mexico.

The last time I was here, it was summer, my wife was alive and well, and our son was about 8. Now, it’s winter, Penny has been at rest for nearly five years and Aram is pushing 28, doing just fine on his own.

I’m good, though, because of places like this. These refuges, with their waterfowl and raptors, tangled trees of the bosques and True Believer hikers and bicyclists, work their magic, regardless of how bare the trees are, or how turgid the river tends to be. The majesty of the place lies in the comfort it gives to the birds, and to those, like me, who can sit and watch their antics, for hours on end.

I didn’t have, nor take, those hours, today. There was a storm to outpace: One that the locals here were expecting, but which was still churning from California to western Colorado. Nonetheless, this visit gave me a bench by the river, a picnic lunch at that bench, and the joy of watching the ducks, Canadian geese and lesser sandhill cranes compete for the silver minnows and other fish that Rio Grande serves up.

Without further ado, here are a few scenes of the Rio, its feeder Silver Minnow Channel and the bosque, in its own state of repose.

Entrance to Visitors’ Center, Rio Grande Nature Center

View of Silver Minnow Channel, from Rio Grande Visitors’ Center

Rio Grande, Albuquerque, NM

Ducks, trying to stay warm, Rio Grande Nature Center, Albuquerque

Sand bar, Rio Grande, Albuquerque. These spots are good places for insects, and other food sources for the birds, to hunker down and wait out the cold.

Somnolent trees, along Bosque Loop Trail, Rio Grande Nature Center

Rio Grande, Albuquerque

Jetty jacks, salvaged from Silver Minnow Channel, Albuquerque

Rubber heart, Aldo Leopold Trail, Rio Grande Nature Center

I have seen this river run higher, and have seen it at a trickle. I have stood on its banks near Brownsville, TX and near its headwaters, in the mountains known as Sangre de Cristo. Nowhere does the Rio Grande reach out to comfort its patrons more than it does here, at the western edge of a bustling, but heritage-laden metropolis.

Sleep? Whazzat?

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on January 19, 2016 in animal and plant life, children, Fiction, Striving

January 17, 2016, Prescott-

It had been about four months, since the last sighting of the fishermen. Nadia, a red head among Romanians who had mostly jet-black hair, could feel the energy of those African fishermen, as they stared at her, and at the two, equally-ginger toned wolf-men who alternately barked orders at her, sometimes literally, and led her, tethered at the neck by a leather-collar, which they had devised from the hide of a small eland they had captured, about five months earlier. Rather ironic, her plight, Nadia thought- a woman being walked about by wolves. It all reminded her of an old Korean film she had seen, “To The Rose Inn”, she recalled, in which a man leads his female captive around on a leash, she walking on all fours. “At least, I am allowed to walk upright”, she mused.

Narcolepsy was affecting the were-creatures, especially as they had discovered the local beer, which they were foolishly imbibing even in the the throes of a full moon. They had stolen a goodly amount of the brew from some inebriated fisherfolk, whom they found snoozing in midday, about two weeks earlier. It was this act which led to Nadia Donescu’s recovering her freedom.

On the morning of a waning gibbous moon, Nadia awoke to find her captors snoring, and lying in a copse, about 40o meters away from their usual spot- which was practically right next to where she was tethered. Across the glade, she heard strange noises: It seemed someone was slashing brush with a machete, but she couldn’t be sure. The noises got louder, waking the two brutes. The vocalist became clear: It was a bull elephant! The wolf-men looked at one another, then at the pachyderm. They chortled to one another, in delight. Not paying the slightest mind to Nadia, they each grabbed a roughly-hewn atlatl, which they had fashioned from local flint, and attempted to encircle the snorting beast.

Nadia had her eyes on the elephant, too, but was more concerned with loosening the collar around her neck. With the men otherwise engaged, and the bull warily eyeing them, she was able to extract herself from the shackle, and dart behind a baobab tree. The bull elephant suddenly made for the man to his right and lifted the shrieking werebeast clear off the ground, throwing him into the cove. A Nile crocodile had an unusual lunch, that morning.

His partner-in-crime readied his makeshift atlatl and aimed for the crazed bull. The weapon grazed the animal on his left temple, further maddening him and directing his attention to the now-hapless werewolf. The man could not outrun the elephant, but tried to shimmy up the baobab. The mad bull wrapped his trunk around the man-wolf, threw him to the ground, and stomped him, in one fell swoop.

Nadia wasted no time in clearing out of the disheveled camp, and ran towards the road she remembered from one of their infrequent forays into the fishing camps along the lake. In short order, she happened upon a Chinese construction worker, and his two children, sitting by a koi pond they had devised, in which the children’s pet goldfish were happily at play. The older child, a girl, took two of the goldfish, placed them in a plastic bowl with some lake water and covered it with wax paper, secured with an elastic band. This, she proudly offered to the disheveled Nadia. The father spoke some German, as did Nadia, and offered to take the newly freed woman to the nearest town. Nadia was only too happy to accept.

The Odd Fishmonger

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on January 15, 2016 in animal and plant life, Fiction, Striving

January 14, 2016, Prescott- (The following is based on a Scavenger Hunt prompt including love letter, werewolves, taxi service, lost key, fish sticks.)

Laszlo had grown up in a Hungarian community in Constanta, a port on Romania’s Black Sea coast. So he found it second nature when, as a young backpacker exploring the outer limits of our world, he decided to stop a while on the island of Lamu, off Kenya’s golden shore.

He camped on the beach, filleting and grilling the fish that he caught, each morning, and bringing it to a local woman, who dipped the meat in a spicy batter and baked it her beehive oven. She then sliced the fillets into fish sticks, which were sold to German tourists, who reliably showed up for a quick lunch, each day, nearly ten months out of the year. Lasz got enough of a percentage from these sales to allow him to live a simple, but satisfying life, under the radar of the National Police.

One day, while walking the beach, with a metal detector he had purchased, Lasz found a lost key. It turned out to fit the trunk of a taxi, and had been lost by a former Somali pirate who had also settled on Lamu, and used his vehicle as sort of a Lamu-style Uber. The taxi service was quite lucrative, and the grateful ex-pirate offered Lasz a partnership, making him an alternative driver, three days out of the week.

This, once cleared with a suddenly attentive Kenyan police captain, involved a bit of “gifting” to the captain. Lasz drove the captain’s children to school, free of charge. In return, he got a work visa. Between the fish mongering and taxi service, Laszlo was becoming a fixture on Lamu.

He wrote his long-ago sweetheart, a Romanian girl, who had studied at the London School of Economics, and who was casting about for a future. Nadia was intrigued by her dear friend’s love letter, and made arrangements to travel to Kenya. On the night before she was to fly from London to Mombasa, she was approached by two rather scruffy, but suave, men. They learned of her plans, and asked whether they might accompany her to Africa. They did not seem to have any ulterior motives, and were not threatening to Nadia, so she agreed to meet them next morning, at Heathrow.

The men showed up on time, documents and tickets in hand, and the three boarded the plane together. It was a delightful flight, from London, over Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa and Sudan. As the plane flew over Uganda, however, night fell. Then, the two suave, scruffy men started to transform. Somewhere over Lake Victoria, encountering a full moon, the werewolves appeared.

Laszlo waited several days for his Nadia, until a news flash from the BBC reported that a plane had gone down, with 300 aboard. All but three were dead. The three missing passengers were not found, but the word among tribesmen on the north shore of Victoria is that two hairy wolf-apes, and their captive white woman, are occasionally spotted in the rough terrain above the Lake.

Snake Eyes

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on January 12, 2016 in animal and plant life, Inner Struggles, Service Activities

January 11, 2016, Prescott-I had a job today, then it was cancelled. In honour of that, I tended to small business items, like getting the drivers for my printer re-installed in my laptop. Now, however, it’s time for a tale about a turtle, a bull snake and their minder.

Prompt # 3: “It was most assuredly NOT my doing!”, fumed Dr. Pletenick, the lead herpetologist at San Saba Reptile Sanctuary. The broken glasses, which belonged to his chief assistant, Gret (short for Margaret) Artursson, were a source of minor tension around the center, as she had left them on his desk, by mistake, before having to unexpectedly head home, yesterday. Gret, at only 22, was facing cataract surgery, in a month. Her other pair of glasses were at home, 27 miles away, east of San Saba, which, as anyone familiar with the area knows, is tantamount to going to Timbuktu.

Ross Pletenick, for all his expertise about things reptilian, was a bit of that ilk himself, when it came to dealing with human beings. Gret thought to herself that, were it not for the lucre coming from her job, and her own love of turtles and tortoises, she would be far away from THAT creature, and THIS place. It was not the first time old Pletenick had dismissed her plight. Yet, the insurance was bounteous, and would make her surgery that much more affordable.

Her unusual medical history was outlined in some obscure records, some of which were written in Icelandic, regarding her father’s line. “There aren’t too many of us Arturssons in the world”, thought Gret, “but we are said to be descended from the old Anglo-Saxon king, himself. How his descendants got up to Iceland, I’ll never figure out. Maybe some of them drifted over to Ireland, after the Norman invasion, and went north with the monks.”

Her reverie was broken by the nudge of one of her favourite turtles, Micah. The juvenile leatherback had been rescued from the Gulf, off Dauphin Island, following the Deepwater Horizon fiasco. The Mid-Texas desert was an odd place of refuge, indeed, for a sea creature, but here he was, having been brought out here by a Gulf native, who had relocated to Odessa, but had no room for a marine turtle.

“Let’s play some nudge the beach ball, Babykins”, Gret cheerfully chirped to her chelonian friend, “then I must get over to check on the Aldabrans, referring to the three Indian Ocean giant tortoises who had been brought here by the Bush Brothers, following the Tsunami of 2004. So, the two rolled the beach ball back and forth,for about 30 minutes, it being Micah’s favourite pastime. Then it was back to the salt water pool with him. Dr. Pletenick, for his part, was busy tending a pregnant bull snake, whom he goofily referred to as Cow Snake. Gret rolled her eyes quite frequently, on this job.

Twenty minutes after setting the sea turtle back in his safe haven, Gret was sitting out on the deck, relaxing with a cool iced dark roast coffee. That was one saving grace about Dr. Ross Pletenick. He knew how to whip up a mean pot of Joe. “I think I will come back here, after the surgery”, she mused, “after taking out a pair of dice, and randomly rolling snake eyes.” Then, she called her father, for a ride home.

Owls in Winter

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on January 7, 2016 in animal and plant life, Poetry

January 7, 2016, Prescott- This is a short ditty, in honour of a friend’s Winter, 2016 Scavenger Hunt. (You realize this means I may do two posts a day, for the near future. )

Eyes doing a two-seventy

Surveying the snowscape

for signs that a small, gray meal

might attempt an escape.

Silly raptor,

the meals are all underground

Safe and warm,

in their nests nicely bound.

What is left for an owl to do,

but let out a plaintive

“HOO, HOO,HOO, HOO”?

The Road to 65, Mile 296: Where I Stand, Part 2

Posted by Sagittarian Seeker on September 20, 2015 in animal and plant life, Hiking and Nature, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities

September 19, 2015, Prescott- For the next several posts, I will be centering my comments on 16 principles, developed by Four Worlds International Institute, in Surrey, BC. It is led by a man for whom I have a lot of respect: Hereditary Chief Phil Lane, Jr., of the Blackfoot Nation. All quotes herein are from the document, The Fourth Way: An Indigenous Contribution to Building Sustainable and Harmonious Prosperity in the Americas, Update, October 2008.

Nobody asked me to do this, but I share both genetic memories and spiritual values with the Aboriginal Peoples of the Americas, specifically with the Penobscot Nation, of central Maine. There is no barrier between us, except those that people choose to put between each other. So, let me begin.

Principle 1: “Human Beings Can Transform Their Worlds. The web of our relationships with others and the natural world, which has given rise to the problems we face as a human family, can be changed.” –

The author, savant and change agent, Star Hawk, has written that, for Man to regard himself as divorced from nature, is an arrogant mindset. In fact, we in our physical state are very much connected to the rest of Nature. It’s pretty much a given, to me, that each and every thing we do in this life is a matter of choice. Some choices are more difficult than others, but they still need to be made. So, with regard to relationships with others, we can choose to respond to people, or to ignore them. I have found that I can only ignore those who irritate or are disagreeable to me for just so long, before one or the other of us presses for a resolution. The converse is also true.

How much more is this true, with regard to nature. One can, in the name of stockholder profits, order the spewing of poisons into the atmosphere, water and soil, for just so long, before the toxins find their way into the Web of Life- with cancer, dementia and neurological ills becoming pandemic. One may, in the name of Science, release Genetically-Modified Organisms into the food chain, while demanding that the rest of the planet toe your line, or face crippling litigation. Then, because living things are just not ready to digest your products and therefore, in the case of humans, RESIST purchasing them or, in the case of scavenging rodents, birds and insects, just IGNORE the stuff, you redouble your efforts, getting shills to write articles that ridicule those who won’t buy GMO’s, and prodding normally thoughtful, even-minded people to jump in the fray and try to analyze the case against your products, with a view towards “talking some sense into those who would starve humanity, for the sake of romanticism.” Still, the illnesses, and the wreckage, pile up.

My plans, with regard to relationships, are these:

Accept all offers of friendship, unless and until such offers prove to be based on ulterior motives.
Respect those, online and in real time, who indicate they wish me to not contact them, either for a time, or permanently.
Be a trustworthy person, more than I have been towards some people in the past.
Listen, listen, and listen some more.
Own the mistakes I have made with people, and do better by them , and others.

My plans, with respect to Nature, are these:

1. Tend the seeds I have planted, in my back yard.

2. Honour animal and plant life, wherever I encounter them.

3. By all means, continue hiking and other acts of personal exploration, both in my home area and further afield.

4. Carry a trash bag in my pack, so that the unwarranted intrusion of the thoughtless may be mitigated.

5. Recycle, as much as possible, while recognizing that not everyone regards this practice as truly beneficial to the Planet.

I have gone on longer than usual, but these matters are very basic to my human and natural states of being.