October 10, 2010. Sunday.
Situation: Dusk is falling when I get home from work, sometime around 6:30 or so. But still enough light out, I think, to take Mway for a quick walk.
State of the Path: Five jet trails like comets in the western sky. Crescent moon northwest of them. Actually this is what I see coming down O__ C_____ Road. By the time I get my walking clothes on and get walking, I see nothing but a splotch of quickly graying pink on the horizon. I still hear a jet plane -- must be the sixth one going west -- somewhere overhead, the thrum of cicadas, the trilling of an owl -- sounds like it's coming from somewhere in the old orchard. Moi has suggested I fit a headlamp flashlight to my safari helmet (which she adjusts so it points downward), so I have a spot of light on the ground in front of me guiding me forward. Mway turns left to head to the clearing, but since I feel like I’m property outfitted I lead her down to the creek. In the dim light whitish stalks of dead grass bend over into the path. Occasionally a bunch of fleabane or a fallen spike of fuzzy dead goldenrod fall into the spot of light. I hear what I at first think is the chirp of crickets but then realize is the chirp of birds. Above the ridge a scared bird flies away from me – and here also my headlamp alights on a bunch of asters. As I head down to the creek, I worry that we might come upon the stirring of some nocturnal animal, like a raccoon, and coming up from the ridge, Mway stops dead in her tracks for a moment, like she’s almost frightened to go on. She lets me pass by, and I march up to the clearing. If there’s some animal lurking in the weeds, I don’t see or come across it. Suddenly I see patches of what seems like smoke floating around the rim of my helmet – could this be fog rising from the ground caught in the light of my headlamp?
State of the Creek: The stream of water snakes along to my left as I walk along. At the narrows I see a ripple in the water, but I have no idea what might have caused it.
The Fetch: As I come up into the clearing, Venus appears in the eastern sky. I pitch the birch branch just a few feet within the clearing, concerned that Mway might not be able to find it. But she easily tells where it’s landed by sound. As she runs back to me with the stick in her mouth, her eyes shine in the light of the headlamp, a ghastly electric blue. Perhaps she’s spooked by the headlamp, or maybe she simply feels it’s too dark to fetch anymore, because she runs right past me and heads back to the house. As I walk down the path along the sumacs, I see the crescent moon again, now sunk among the bare branches of the black walnuts in the old orchard. I walk along as fast as I can, but suddenly I stop near Moi’s garden pond, when the light from my headlamp falls upon a wooly black caterpillar, about six inches long, slinking in the dead leaves.
3 comments:
I think we scared the guy away. Yesterday I had the feeling all day that Moi was going off somewhere, but she never did. MM.
Yes, she and Barb Dennehy were going to go down to the protests in Harrisburg, an offshoot, I guess, of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been making the news lately, but she ended up spending the day cleaning the very filthy rug in the music room – I don’t know how closely you follow the news – I’ll look for a news article on the protests for you to read. I’ve been looking up at the house just beyond our driveway, where, amazingly, it seems that comment from a couple days ago came from. I look for someone staring out the window, but all I can see are the dark windows of the gray vinyl-sided house, staring back at me like vacant eyes.
Occupy Harrisburg protesters make plans for 'the long haul'
Published: Sunday, October 09, 2011, 11:13 PM Updated: Monday, October 10, 2011, 7:40 AM
By MELANIE HERSCHORN, For The Patriot-News
The fledgling grassroots movement Occupy Harrisburg plans to line the steps of the state Capitol at 12:01 a.m. Saturday for 24 hours to help mark the National Day of Protest.
More than a hundred people, from teens to octogenarians, turned out for the group’s second meeting Sunday night at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
The goal was to get organized.
Alex Knapp, the meeting’s moderator, presented supporters with five choices of work groups for them to join to improve the social movement’s efficiency. The committees included general logistics, public relations, protester morale, health and safety, and movement development.
He also told the packed room that Occupy Harrisburg has opted to stick to protesting national topics such as the political system and corporate structure, as laid out by the first of such groups, Occupy Wall Street.
“We’ll use those until the local movement assembles its own doctrine of beliefs and demands,” he said.
Occupy Wall Street, which began last month in New York City and which has spread across the country, pledges to help “strip the corporate culture of its power and return it to its rightful owners, the citizens of the United States of America.” Its mantra, “We are the 99 percent,” seeks to mobilize people against corporate greed and the country’s persistent economic troubles, which members of the movement believe stem from the nation being run by the richest 1 percent of Americans.
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