BY RICHARD DEROSA
New Year’s day I headed out for my customary four-mile walk.
The onset of a new year has never captivated my celebratory imagination. I agree with Thoreau that waking is a daily effort to throw off sleep and one of the ways I do that is by walking.
It never matters what state of mind I might be in at the start of a walk. Rare is the day that I do not head up our hill feeling as if bothmind and body have been sanitized by clean and unfettered thought.
A favorite essayist of mine writes that her aim, whether walking or thinking, is to get “beyond intellect.” I figure if I can come out of a walk feeling a lighter, more buoyant sense of being it has been well worth the effort.
Most days I can.
There are failures. They occur when I can not clear my mind of the vitriol and incivility that characterizes contemporary life these days.
Fortunately, those days are few and far between. Perhaps it is because I have tuned out as much as possible, relying primarily on printed texts.
The virtue in that is not having to listen to the self-righteous blather that often accompanies political discourse these days.
On this first day of the new year I did not see any new birds, which I am always on the lookout for, or observe any unique natural phenomena.
But what I did experience was the power of memory to call up, unannounced, the significance of previously experienced occurrences.
As I walked down the road just around the corner from our place, I looked up at a spruce pine bough about 20 feet above the ground.
Sitting there, as if he had never moved, was the great horned owl I had seen there about a month ago, eyes locked on mine, clutching a dead crow in its claws. We stared at one another for about 30 seconds.
Then, with little fanfare, he dropped the crow and took off into the darker regions of the woods.
Of course, what I saw that morning was an image. But for me that owl will always be there, sitting on that bough, our eyes locked in some sort of primal conversation.
In retrospect, I wished I had not worried him so, since he abandoned his hard won breakfast. I checked that spot several days later. No crow. I like to think that he came back. Who knows? One of nature’s immutable laws is first come, first served.
One morning last spring, about a mile from where I had seen the owl, I heard some splashing just around the bend.
I walked slowly toward where I figured the sound was coming from, trying to muffle my footfalls.
There, swishing its long beak in the shallow water of a roadside slough was a woodcock – an amazing bird in so many ways. I had neither seen nor heard one for quite a few years.
As soon as it spied me it stopped, shook its beak back and forth, spread its wings, popped up in the air helicopter-like, and flew arrow-like into the woods. Woodcocks are famous for their high diving aerial displays, as well as their mating rituals.
I have witnessed these shenanigans only once. But now, every time I walk by that spot I relive the experience again.
These pictorial renderings of past experiences are often more sharply defined than the original incident. It is as if the mind has a built in editing and retouching mechanism that reshapes images in such a way to enhance their significance.
One of my favorite walking routes takes me down a steep hill to a wetland that used to hum with waterfowl and beaver activity. But since the dam was breached several years ago the beaver seem to have moved on.
About a month ago I watched as a muskrat tiptoed through the mud nosing around for chow.
There is a venerable old maple about midway down the hill that I often linger next to before moving on.
There is something about gnarled old-timers that I both admire and am fascinated by.
Late fall about a year ago while having one of my silent conversations with the tree I saw some movement in a branch about 10 feet up.
Moving closer while adjusting my binoculars, I saw a male yellow-billed cuckoo; the first I had seen in quite some time. A sighting I had never expected in my neck of the woods.
Now, every time I approach old venerable that cuckoo is there. I can see him as clearly now as I did when we first met.
So, I shuffle my way into the new year fortified by past experiences, buoyed by the significances that they represent.
RICHARD DEROSA writes an occasional column from Hawthorn Hill Farm.
Columns
Hawthorn Hill: The owl, the woodcock and the cuckoo
- Columns
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
Time to bring you up to date on Fly Creek’s happy clambering into Spring. First, the eatery scene. “Is Jerry’s open yet?” The answer is, “Oh, yes!” The porches are freshly stained; the lawns a uniform green, and the hop vines are already climbing the posts on the covered side deck. Blue and I went up there to lunch earlier this week, and I celebrated spring with my traditional bacon, onion and Swiss cheese hamburger. We two sat on the deck, enjoying the broad view and some spectacular clouds marching across, up toward Schuyler Lake.
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In These Otsego Hills: More from 1986 ...
This week we continue with the discussion of telephone service from the pre-dial days. On March 12 we noted that: “No one has yet produced a telephone directory from pre-dial days, but Doug Preston of New Hartford recalls that some business (which one?) in the village had the phone number 7.”
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Home Notes: Celebrations abound at the Thanksgiving Home
April was a month of celebrations and much to appreciate. We had a 90th birthday celebration for Wanda Noyes on April 4 including her family and friends. Personal care staff Dee Bouck worked with residents to hand paint Easter eggs for the tree in the activity room.
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In These Otsego Hills: 1986 continues ...
This week we continue our journey through the columns of 1986 with the answer to the question “for whom, according to tradition, was Hannah’s Hill named?”
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Book Notes: Baseball book features local contributors
Baseball is part of the nation’s fabric. Most kids have a memory of the game either from playing Little League, attending a major league contest or meeting a favorite player. In Cooperstown that feeling is magnified since we are the official home of baseball. We get to see firsthand what has made the sport the national pastime.
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From Fly Creek: Ya really wanna know?
SETTING: Fly Creek General Store. CAST: Assorted seated geezers, drinking coffee. [Door opens, enter heavy-set geezer; walking slowly with wide stance, maybe prostatitis.]
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In These Otsego Hills: Returning to 1986 ...
For the past several years now we have undertaken sharing some of the area’s oral history we have collected over the years that we have written this column. Therefore, this year, we would like to go back to 1986 to share that rather unusual year. Those who were here then no doubt remember that it was that year that the village celebrated the bicentennial of its founding.
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From Fly Creek: For reasons unknowable
[Jim’s reached back to 2002 to share one of his favorite columns.] My father was born as the last century began into a river village in tidewater Maryland. He told me once of a man there in his boyhood who, like so many, made a thin living tonging for oysters in the cold months and, in the hot and humid ones, crabbing and raising vegetables.
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In These Otsego Hills: CCS balancing act ... side two
Last week we shared a number of activities in which students at CCS can participate. We thought it was an impressive, if not overwhelming, list. And we are indeed pleased that the young people of our area have these opportunities. However, we think it is also important to keep in mind that these undertakings do have a cost associated with them. They are not free. In fact there are, no doubt, those who would say they do not come cheap.
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From Fly Creek: A graceful crowd
Make of this what you will, friends. I feel I’m really meant to share it with you. Despite good medication for my Parkinsonism, every four or five weeks I can sensethe symptoms building up on me, giving me more than ordinary trouble. Lately it’s been falls, and last week brought a typical one. I’d gone out to get the paper, moving along with penguin steps on the snowcoved ice patches, and usingmy spike-tipped cane the waya climber uses an ice axe. But circumstances overcame me. Parkinson’s wipes out the possibility of multi-tasking.
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In These Otsego Hills: This and that and the other side ...
We note that the CCS Class of 2012 is presenting its senior class play, “Snow White” by Tim Kelly, this week with performances 7:30 p.m Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30, and at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31. All performances will be at the Nicolas J. Sterling Auditorium at the Middle/High School.
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In These Otsego Hills: That green thing ...
Of late we have noticed that our email inbox has been much busier than usual. In fact, we find ourselves hard pressed to keep up with all the various messages we receive. As a result we suspect we have not answered some in as timely a fashion as might be thought appropriate.
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From Fly Creek: What you need to know
In their last Sunday’s bulletins, all 84 churches of Otsego County were to have carried announcements of an important meeting; most of them did. But because the announcement is so important, and not just to the churched, here it is again.
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Book Notes: Living the magic of ‘Hoosier’
A lot of people consider “Hoosiers” the best sports film of all time. The 1986 classic follows the exploits of a fictional small town Indiana high school basketball team in 1952 as it attempts to achieve the impossible dream of a state championship. The story is inspired by the true life achievement of the 1954 Milan team, who with an enrollment of only 161 students shocked big city power Muncie Central on a last second shot to win the state title. It’s the kind of sports story that represents something that is hard to grasp unless you live in a small town.
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In These Otsego Hills: The most perfect village... home to heavy industry?
We suspect we would get a whole lot more accomplished if we spent less time thinking, pondering and musing about things. In fact, there is a good possibility we might actually have completed our goal of cleaning the basement if we only focused on the task at hand, instead of trying to figure out the world around us. It almost makes us wonder if it is possible to think too much about things. We certainly hope not because should that be the case, we are in deep trouble.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: The past in the present
Clichés abound about the value of photographs. Most are probably true at least to a certain extent. What I do know about an image is that it represents something of the past that is not the pastitself. But that is the power of any image. It represents something that once was. The beauty of an image, revisited, is that it functions as a catalystfor reliving in the present a past experience. My own view, one that I thank the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges for, is that all we ever can experience is the present.
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Home Notes: Workshops held for Thanksgiving Home residents
We welcomed Linda Keller, Ph.D. of the Bassett Research Institute and Ida Baker of NYCAMH who presented a six-week workshop for residents and staff.
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From Fly Creek: Late-winter hamlet news
Well, at least I’m “guessing” it’s late winter now — in the winter that wasn’t. But, if not snow, I can provide a flurry of Fly Creek news to share with you, scooping Associated Press, Reuter’s, and United Press International, not to mention all local news services except our General Store.
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In These Otsego Hills: Waiting for spring to have sprung ...
Difficult as it to believe, both January and February seem to have flown by and we find ourselves turning the calendar over to the month of March, which we have long thought is one of the more dreary months of the year. Of course, as in the pastthere are signs of spring as reflected by the tapping of the maple trees. For many years, the trees sprouted buckets to capture their all important sap. However, we now know to look for the sap collection lines that are strung from tree to tree.
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Book Notes: Kennedy: a unique individual
It’s been almost 50 years since the Kennedy assassination shocked the nation. Since then much has been written about President John F. Kennedy and whether he would have achieved his destiny (whatever that may have been) if he had lived. It is said he inspired young people in a way that has never been equaled. And there is the notion of Camelot, espoused by his widow Jackie, that there will never be a time of hope and promise like that again.
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
