Category: Brains

The Would-Be Farm...Spring Thoughts

4/19/2020

We started on this Would-Be Farm adventure with the idea of novelty: new experiences are meant to keep our brains nimble and what-not. The effort of tackling a fresh set of challenges would be good for us.

Such as driving a tractor and putting fruit trees into the ground and helping them grow roots.

Such as returning to the North Country where I grew up and re-learning that country environment. Plus introducing Jeff to some exotic charms: a bullhead fry, turkey hunting, snow.

Knowing that, unlike actual farmers, our livelihood and future is not on the line when the dam busts and the crops fail.

So, round about January of each of the past five years, seed catalogs begin to sprout in my mailbox. Deals from on-line nurseries pop up like weeds. Calls to branch out into new crops... I won't belabor the metaphor any more than I can...bear. Muah ha ha.

My ambitions surpass my skills in general, and the Would-Be Farm is no exception.

Since we are intermittently present, only the hardiest and most independent of plantings have survived. The brightest of shining stars have thrived and multiplied.

The aronia and apparatus have flourished. A few of the pear-trees look perky.

And though they toil not nor do they spin, day-lillies and other decorative bulbs have been impressively productive. The walking onions are unstoppable.

The 20 or so new apple trees we planted aren't happy. The existing apple trees (100+ scraggly old trees, mostly likely Empires, Macintosh, and a yellow-skinned number that might be a Golden Russet), have their bad years and their not-as-bad years.

We've attempted to rehabilitate the old groves, but a few superannuated fellers have simply dropped their leaves and given up the ghost after our kindest of intentions...if not kindest cuts.

That's some asparagus. And the elderberries look good too.

The old orchard and some former apple trees.

Round about April, it's become our happy habit to make our ways North. I try to get there in time for my sister's birthday early in the month, and Jeff generally follows after sailing Charleston Race Week. We usually get a snowstorm or two, maybe an ice-storm, just to remind us that we are mere tourists in the North Country.

It's too early for planting in early April, and it's more than a bit nippy –– though we do have a WOOD STOVE this year!

Still, even with a crochet throw of snow, you can see the rocky bones of the land early in early spring. And it's an exciting few weeks while plants wake up out of the cold clay and yawn hope into the landscape.

We're not sure when we'll get there this year. What with the Pandemic and all. Of course I ordered plants before COVID-19 was no more than a small cloud on the horizon.

I can't resist those colorful packets of optimism that promise poppies, lupins, chamomile. Plus garlic and seed-potatoes (thrifty hint: if your potatoes sprout in the fridge, put them in the ground -- you'll generally get a smallish bonus harvest a few months later instead of adding to the landfill).

And, because the larger fruit have not flourished under our neglectful stewardship, I have ambitions for Chinese chestnut trees, red currents, bush-cherries, and yet more elderberries. Although elderberries are not a favored deer browse according to experts, empirical evidence suggests that some deer will "sample" an elderberry bush to within inches of its life.

As with so much recently, we'll just have to wait and see. We'll shelter in place and I'll let my farming daydreams slide me along a little longer. I'm not complaining.

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Odd phobias

4/7/2020

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Everyone knows someone who is irrationally (well, that's all in the perspective, right?) afraid of, say, legless reptiles or eight-legged wall-walkers.

Not just slightly averse to these creatures, but seriously, panicky, clawing-a-way-out-the-window fearful.

Each of my parents had one. For my father and his siblings, having survived a canoeing accident as children where they and their mother clung to an overturned boat while long strands of seaweed brushed their legs, the fear was snakes.

Daddo would refer to them as "serpents" because even the word "snakes" was dreadful to him.

While enjoying a spaghetti dinner at our house, a neighborhood kid joshed offhandedly about how it was like red snakes slithering up into our collective mouths. My father dropped his fork in disgust and stalked to the other room.

Toward the end of his life, he'd say that if we really wanted to be rid of him, just toss a plastic serpent into his lap. He promised it would be quick.

Daddo was not kidding. Probably.

I never noticed Mumsie's issue until that first summer at the cottage. We'd gone to take a quick look at what they had purchased –– waterfront! as is! Bill Bailey blue! furnished with toys and musty furniture! –– on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ended up just staying all summer. Daddo went off to work downstate during the week while the three of us swam and read books and played with the neighbors (each according to her tastes. Mumsie was not much for running around pretending to be horses).

Naturally, given the body of fresh water, the long Northern summer days, and the untenanted nature of the cottage, there were spiders. But it was a summer cottage. When sweeping, you directed the little pile of debris down that knot-hole in the floor in the hallway. On Thursdays, before Daddo came up, we'd eat ice-cream for supper. It was a Platonic ideal of summer cottage life.

Except for the spiders. One morning, we all scooted out of the house while Mumsie sprayed some sort of aerosolized poison. We must have been gone all day. Or maybe it was stormy when we returned, because while my sister and I, diminutive then, walked into the shadowy cottage without incident, our mother entered to a suspended carpet of deceased arachnids. All hanging at about eye-height from the ceiling. The horror. The horror.

In college, I pestered Mumsie for an explanation.

She had a scientific mind, fearless and nature-loving.

She rehabilitated birds of prey, talked unhesitatingly about the facts of life, and if you stepped on broken glass and were pretty sure you needed stitches? All the kids knew to skip their own parents and go straight to her. She'd say, mildly, "Oh, don't bleed on the linoleum," and patch you up.

Grinding over long-term depression and agoraphobia, she held down a job to support herself and her youngest child. She solo-camped as a newly divorced woman in her late 30's.

But spiders freaked her the hell out.

Eventually, she dredged up a memory for me. "It might be this," she said, draping her paperback over her knee. "When I was very little –– on the farm in Springville –– I was playing in the creek." [The word "creek" in the geography of rural northern Pennsylvania was pronounced "crick." A thing I miss from her.]

She turned her head in the same questing way as when she was trying to recall the details of a dream. "I was splashing the water with a stick and there was an enormous water-spider. I hit it and it burst open and dozens –– hundreds?–– of baby spiders spilled out."

Gulp. Okay then.

My sister shares the distaste for spiders. We've often agreed that should there be an unfortunate single-car accident in her life, it's a near certainty to have involved a spider emerging from under the dashboard and landing on exposed skin.

I'm not fearful of snakes –– Not wanting to be afraid ever, I seized the opportunity in high school of grabbing up a handful of cold, writhing serpents as they emerged from their winter hibernation.

I carried the ball of them around at arms length, thinking if I could do this, I was snake-proof for life. Mumsie, gardening a few yards away, said, "Yes, well, put them down before they start biting you."

It's plastic, okay?

As for spiders? I understand they won't actually kill me, but I find it hard to casually look away once I've noticed one nearby. I find their globular bodies shudderingly distasteful.

Be that all as it may. I actually meant to write about weird phobias. There's no shortage of oddity in the world. And phobias are the most common of mental illnesses.

Mental illness. Huh.

I've felt claustrophobia. Couldn't get into an elevator for two years. It was a side-effect, I think, of a dreadful boyfriend and asthma.

Once I nearly fainted –– and me a farm kid! –– at the vision of a big splinter protruding from someone else's finger. All the blood and guts in the world, and I was about to keel over from a splinter. I couldn't even help her yank it out.

But that's pretty mundane stuff. What's more intriguing is the fringier fears.

For instance, I have one friend who cannot bear, to the point of vomit, not just the texture of the cotton plugs found in aspirin bottles -- but even a discussion of the dusty, squeaky cotton found in aspirin bottles. A full-grown man with his fingers in his ears, chanting, "Nah, Nah, I can't hear you!"

Another who runs –– runs! –– from praying mantis. One who cannot shower in an empty house.

While there's one pal who claims to be petrified of the music produced by the barrel organ, I'm less sure it's fear. Annoyance maybe.

One of our elders has what's known as "White Coat Anxiety." Whenever confronted with a doctor or medical professional in a clinical environment, her blood pressure goes sky-high.

I worked with a woman who couldn't stand scissors. We'll call her Peg. Another co-worker, Liz, a capricious but observant creature, had noticed that Peg invariably moved books and files so that a pair of shears on a colleague's desk would be hidden from her view

Peg was not a particularly pleasant work comrade; she tended to hover, to micro-manage, to mouth-breathe and offer unwelcome suggestions on how better to do one's job.

Liz, a graphic designer, took to asking Peg to hand her the scissors or the Xacto knife she needed when Peg came near her desk. In less than a week, Peg stopped hovering and micromanaging anyone in the graphics department.

I should be ashamed to admit that I, too, began leaving a pair of shears, gaping open, on my desk in editorial to ward Peg off.

Harnessing the power of fear.

It's what we're all doing right about now, indulging in our inner germophobia*. Which is fine, unless it's someone else pulling those strings.

*Technically, it's mysophobia or verminophobia but that's just me showing off.

Be strong, my friends.

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Art Safari in the Big City

3/12/2020

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For those hoping for an overview of the 2020 Everglades Challenge...that story is still coming. The team is safe, which is the main thing, and engaged in their next adventure. I hope to post a report early next week.

Meanwhile, something completely different from that...

My sister Sarah, an actual working artist, invented a thing we do called "Art Safari." I've written about it before.

We grab our cameras and drive or walk around some downtown or another.

It's all rather silly. We look at stuff through the viewfinder and laugh a lot.

Still, the physical act of focusing encourages a metaphoric focusing on what's right in front of us.

It's an exercise in seeing rather than just looking. A useful practice for a writer as well as an artist.

There's stuff to see if you just keep your eyes open.

We spent a long weekend in Manhattan recently –– summary: a bunch of us were were going to Italy to celebrate Sarah's birthday. Along comes Covid19, and poof! Manhattan it is!

The gang took taxis and subways, saw shows and shoes, walked Times Square and wandered museums. It kind of felt like every activity was going to be retold with the preface, "Back before the Pandemic, you could..."

Anyhow, wandering at will through the chic-chiciest of boroughs, especially wandering with artistic types like my companions, made me look twice or three times.

A few highlights of what caught my eye...

Frankenbarricade?

Elmo say "Please don't collide with delivery bike!"

No, please don't wake!

I looked.

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A New Year...More New Projects

1/2/2020

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My favorite skipper and I eloped when it came time to get married.

He'd been through a big wedding already and I wanted neither the pouffy dress nor to stand at the center of that kind of social attention.

The legalizing deed was performed at the Wee Chapel of Love, which used to lurk on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa.

On the way to the Wee Chapel, we did a quick pre-nup. "I'm going to buy boats and forget to tell you," Mr. Linton said.

After a considering moment, I came back with "I'll get fruity furniture, like chaise lounges, and I just don't want any lip about it."

We both found these demands reasonable. And so it has gone.

This fall, between Flying Scotting, Sunfishing, and warming up Spawn (and then repairing the damage), himself started sailing a 2.4 Meter.

As a boat design, the 2.4 Meter looks very much like the old school America's Cup boats: a classic pointy bow and sweetly curved belly. Those yachty yachts of Newport Rhode Island fame. Dennis Conner and that gang.

Only, 2.4 meters comes out to a diminutive 13 or so feet long. So it's an America's Cup boat considered from the wrong end of the telescope.

The boat is large enough for a single person, who sits inside the hull with not much more than a noggin showing above decks.

As if Paul Bunyan had taken to the high seas, or as if a person had inexplicably shrunk down into a shoe.

The boat has been used in the Paralympics, as well as for the able-bodied; it's difficult to sink or flip.

It's got a mass of spaghetti line controls in the cockpit and Jeff will be using his feet to steer.

Of course he's excited for the new adventure. The man does love a new sailing challenge.

He went halvsies on a 2.4 Meter owned by a friend and began working on it, as he does.

Gelcoat, fiberglass, carbon fiber, epoxy, refiguring hardware, rejigging lines...it's all good.

A bigger project maybe than he expected, but intellectually stimulating.

In December, he got invited to a regatta in Port Charlotte, Florida.

One of the 2.4 Meter guys had a nearly brand-new boat that he'd lend Jeff for the race.

A nice shiny new boat.

Mr. Linton came home with an particular, peculiar expression on his face (or maybe it's the way he holds his neck).

An expression I have come to identify.

I said, "Did you buy that boat?"

Yes. Yes he did.

Happy New Year!

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Returning to: Modern Hazards

8/5/2019

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I posted this blog back in March of 2017. How I wish it were not still apropos.

I was tootling along in my innocuous Honda minivan, possibly singing, when my life flashed in front of my eyes.

As it does.

A montage of really good stuff, actually. Kind of like the Sports Center Highlights Reel, only the soundtrack wasn't great: just my own voice, repeating a filthy variant of "Oh, fiddlesticks!"

On a sunny morning on the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, a late-model muscle-car –– a Shelby or a Mustang (my apologies for blasphemy to the car-guys still reading after three paragraphs) –– almost smoked his tires stopping by the side of the road ahead in the distance.

Flinging open his door, the driver jumped out and assumed the classic shooter's stance: dominant arm outstretched, holding, with the other supporting, legs square, eye to the sight. The tiny, deadly, dark circle of muzzle pointing at me.

It's a testimony to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that adrenaline hits the system quicker than the brain can process the need for it. I was already ducking a little (as if my steering wheel would offer any real cover!) before the thought of how fiddlestickingly stupid this was as a way to go: death by sniper.

Adrenaline grants the sensation of time dilation. My irritability about gun culture was accompanied almost simultaneously by a fleeting regret about the very LONG list of things left that I'd hoped to accomplish. And the lightning-flash reel of life highlights.

And then, quicker than a blink, I processed the shooter's details: a fit man in a tan uniform, sunglasses hiding half of his dark face, the light shining off what I really, really hoped was a lawman's badge. I hoped that he wasn't a man in the grips of mental illness, uniform or no. And then, the last thing I recognized: the hair-dryer shape of a radar gun.

Half of South Tampa passed before my heart stopped racing like a rabbit.

I was horrified not simply by the experience but by how I interpreted the situation without the slightest doubt or hesitation.

It felt inevitable that I would be a victim of random gun violence. Of course a shooting was going to happen. A shooting is always going to happen. Why not on the Lee Roy Selmon on that morning? Why not to me?

Weeks later, still trying to find the funny, I consider the radar gun. My minivan's speedometer tops out at 160 miles per hour, which offers a nice element of the ridiculous ("But officer, I seriously forgot to pick up the kids! At Pit Row!").

Still, that dark barrel? Pointing my way? Felt like doom only temporarily averted.

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The Would-Be Farm...The Build Begins

6/18/2019

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First-time visitors always ask why we don't renovate the little old farmhouse that's slowly surrendering to gravity at the Would-Be Farm.

It's kind of cute. And the top-line is as straight as a ruler.

Well, we say, shouldering open the door so they can see for themselves, it's only about 20 feet from the road.

And the floor is collapsing into the cellar, which is –– in turn –– earth-to-earth returning. Things roll and gather in the low spots, including the signs of many a wild animal.

Oh, they say, peering in from the doorway and sniffing gingerly. Oh, I see.

Base Camp –– a slightly tarted up camper-trailer that's perched on a bluff at the Would-Be farm –– has served our housing needs with economy. Five years into this adventure, the initial cost and renovations make Base Camp work out to something like $250 a year.

I've nannered on about Base Camp here. (Cliff Notes version: Jeff worked hard and I showed that white paint will cover a multitude of sins)

Cheap yes, Base Camp, but also an excellent starting point: there's a propane stove for cooking, a bathroom with a door, pressurized water, a solar panel that keeps the 12-volt batteries topped up, screens.

After we built a shed roof over the whole production, it doesn't even leak.

But there's one thing.

Well, a couple of things, but the one thing about which I shall complain this day?

An elderly camper trailer has very little insulative chutzpah. Wind whistles through the windows. When it's chilly, an optimist would call it excellent sleeping weather.

But in the morning, when the time comes to emerge from that cozy nest of down-filled comforters, hot-water bottles, and wool blankets?

If it's 30 degrees outside, it's 30 dang degrees inside Base Camp!

While waiting for the little propane heater to take the edge off (in its vaguely hazardous way) one spring morning, I said to Mr. Linton, "Whatever else we might want, I think we start with a wood stove."

And so the Farm will be getting a dwelling. A Cottage. A Cabin. As the locals call it, a Camp. A Woodbee.

Something larger than a tiny house, but smaller than the average American home structure.

Say 600 square feet, not including a wide, big porch.

We've lived through a large home improvement project, but we never hired someone to build from scratch before. Or at this kind of long distance.

It proves a predictably nerve-wracking experience.

I send a check and got a description of the new well (420 feet deep! Dang!) and the pump. Months pass.

The contractor is abstemious with the photos, which might be a strategy for managing his customers.

The piers go in!

I send a cheerful, encouraging text: "Don't be afraid to send photos, even if nothing is going on!"
The contractor replies "K!" And maintains radio silence.

For a Christmas present, my sister takes a field trip to the site and snaps some photos.

Late in January, the contractor sends an exciting visual update:

The suspense! The planning! Ooo la la.

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The Would-Be Farm: I Twig That.

5/7/2019

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Reluctantly stepping away from the dusty hallway that leads to a discussion of deverbal nouns, I give you the word "twig."

It's a stick, AND it's a verb that means "to understand."

Okay, maybe just one tiny step down that hallway: twig as a branchy bit of tree derives from Germanic Old English. It's related to the word "twain." As in, to be cleft in two.

Okay, okay, hustling it along: the verb twig comes either from theives' cant or from Gaelic (not pointing a finger, but come on, English scholars, really?!) "tuig," meaning "to understand."

Photo courtesy Mary Tone Rodgers.

Twig is also the name of a genre of decoration. Twig tables. Twig chairs. Twig frames.

Those enormous Adirondack camps, white birchbark stuff, bent willow rustic chairs? All twig.

I picked up a reference book on the subject at the library book sale over the winter and took the instructions at face value.

As one does.

I wanted to construct a couple of chairs for the gazebo, and the book had a nifty-looking pattern.

A folding twig chair based –– so the author claimed –– on a Hopi design. Rugged but comfortable, held together with metal rods that bend slightly to accommodate a rounded human form.

Heaven knows we have plenty of twigs at the Would-Be Farm. And a crafty project is right up the alley for the Farm's stated goal of helping foster fresh neural pathways.

Though it looked "funny" in print, I went ahead and cut the 37 or so pieces of wood –– carefully following the directions.

Do NOT follow these instructions.

And then re-measured and cut most of them again, using my trusty loppers and a measuring jig Daddo would have been proud to see.

Precision is not my middle name, but I was quite careful.

It did not work.

At the end of Day 1, I sat on my heels and considered the challenge of threading eleven twigs onto a quarter-inch rod when the neatly bored holes simply did not line up –– by INCHES.

On the second day, following my favorite skipper/rough carpenter's advice, I started with fresh material and drilled holes to fit the threaded rods.

Ah, so much better!

Until it came to the question of legs.

A full 50% of the chair's legs left unaccounted for.

The diagram I'd been trying to follow simply did not mention how to incorporate the two back appendages.

I should not have been surprised.

Even knowing that the instructions were crap, I couldn't help but bemoan the injustice of it.

Instructions that don't.

Measuring guides that don't.

Reference that isn't.

Jeesh.

Eventually I wandered over to the square yard or so of good cell coverage at the Would-Be Farm –– in the middle of the field –– and Googled some help. Huh. Common theme of the Amazon reviews of the book:

A farther scouring of the inter web revealed many many distractions.

Yet, near the distal reach of the digital universe, a couple of nearly related YouTube videos and websites that at least helped me figure out how to get all four legs integrated into the design.

Day 2 ended when I tested the chair and inadvertently converted it into a recliner.

No blood no foul, but for pity's sake --!

By Day 3, I was grimly determined to best the beast. I studied physics in college. I have been making things by hand and by brain for some years now. I will not be thwarted!

It was so. darned. close. to being there.

Mr. Linton lent his good hand (short story: don't drop a Sunfish. And if you do, don't let your hand be caught underneath the fiberglass boat.) and practical cleverness to the effort. He was the one to suggest using the planks of the deck to square up the legs.

This time when I tested the rake of the chair-back, my own old quads suspended me.

Crouching builder, hidden sand-trap.

By gum, at the end of Day 3, we had ourselves a twig chair.

A bit battered. Not rated to hold an actual human. Handy for keeping my gardening gloves off the floor.

Still, it's a prototype suitable for the next round of construction.

And I can barely wait to begin again.

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The Big Parks Trip: Grammar in the Wild

10/23/2018

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I read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey only after we'd hiked in Arches National park in July.

The book formed my reward for a long day's walk. The book and a pizza. One cannot live on books alone.

The bookstore on the main drag of funky Moab, Utah (Back of Beyond Books) naturally, features the work of Abbey, who worked as a ranger in the area in the late 1950's.

Abbey wrote this about Arches National Park:

"The air is so dry here I can hardly shave in the mornings. The water and soap dry on my face as I reach for the razor: aridity. It is the driest season of a dry country. In the afternoons of July and August we may get thundershowers but an hour after the storms pass the surface of the desert is again bone dry."
Desert Solitaire, p 142.

A fleeting puddle along the Devil's Garden Trail.

We started the Devil's Garden trail at 6:30 perhaps –– the sun was up, but the shadows were long when we left the paved trail at Landscape Arch.

Bonus travel tip: Even in the busiest and most popular national parks, we found that by hiking a few hundred yards down nearly any trail*, we could leave most of the seething mass of vacationing humanity behind.

Sad truth: few tourists do more than meander to overlook, snap a photo, and then roar off in an air-conditioned car.

Edward Abbey was right: "What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener."
Desert Solitaire p 290.

*Exception to the trail rule? The Narrows at Zion. It was kind of the only game in town after the landslides of 2018 (aside from scaling bare rock faces). That hike –– a wet, awe-inspiring meander up the slot canyon –– did fill up considerably come lunchtime. Early morning or off-season recommended.

So, back to the dusty devilly trail.

Devil's Garden trail is nearly 8 miles there-and-back again. A good scramble up red sandstone rocks, along ledges, through dusty piñon pine groves. We ran into families of deer –– the females showing ribs and the fawns leggy and curious –– a couple of parties of human hikers, lizards of various stripe, intriguing tracks in the sand, and the odd path marker.

Some markers odder than others. To a certain sort of thinker, this is an ambiguous sign:

I read it first as a series of nouns: road + leaf + laundry.

Clearly wrong.

A series of verbs: follows + goes + cleans.

Er, nope. Because, you know, why? But interesting. Return to this thought later, I told myself, tucking the camera back into my pocket.

I stopped for a sip of water a hundred or two hundreds yards later. The words transposed themselves: Trail Wash Leaves.

That seemed nearly probable: maybe the trail had a new name. The National Park people seem to engineer their signage so that visitors can have a more genuine park experience, complete with navigational anxiety and an understanding that maps are imperfect representations of the truth.

Maybe. But probably not.

It's a long walk, and I kept puzzling over these three peculiar words. Wash. Trail. Leaves. Perhaps I was a little dehydrated, guzzled gallons of water notwithstanding.

Most human language follows a predictable formula: Noun verbs an Object. Dog bites man. Woman reads book about a desert.

Leaves. Trail. Wash.

The pieces fitted together a half mile or more later: Alert, hikers: your trail, which has followed the path of this dried stream-bed –– known locally as a wash or a gulch –– is about to diverge from the stream-bed.

Oh. That.

Huh.

For the rest of the walk, series of words started presenting themselves. Triangular structures, each side a simple word that goes both ways: One can trail one's hand on the trail. One can leave the leaves behind, one can wash the wash.

Stone Ride Ice.
Rein Plant Saddle
Mount Slide Hollow.
Chant Riddle Stop.

Then we arrived back at the start of the trail.

And in the blink of an eye, we were addressing ourselves to pizza and cold beverages and a bookstore on the funky little main drag of Moab.

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What's the name of that...Whatsit?

6/7/2018

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Pariediolia is the name for the native human tendency to construct faces out of random patterns. Like Arcimaboldo's work, but by chance rather than art.

The word comes from the Greek for something like "wrong image." Spotting the face of St. Lucia on your flatbread pizza –– mental illness notwithstanding –– is bonus in our evolutionary heritage of pattern recognition.

It's related to the way that when confronted with a paper plate decorated with bull's eyes, a wee bitty baby serves up the same charming goo-goo eyes for the plate as he gives to actual human faces. Survival of the most charming.

Which tells me that the point of imagination is to actually and genuinely save your life.

But what's it called when you spot horses everywhere?

The local osprey population LOVE using scraps of black polyethylene from construction sites for their own building projects. Naturally, it gets away from them. They don't use nearly enough fasteners. We end up picking a bale of this stuff off the lawn –– and out of the trees –– every January.

References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-check/201111/11-11-11-apophenia-and-the-meaning-life

http://www.slate.com/blogs/how_babies_work/2013/04/03/babies_and_the_new_science_of_facial_recognition.html

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The Would-Be Farm: Late Spring This Year

5/21/2018

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A long winter, a late spring.

We arrived at the Would-Be Farm a week or so early this year.

Early by the season, if not the actual calendar.

Not even the hint of buds on the trees, lakes still frozen, plenty of snow still on the ground, and a solid weekend of ice-storm.

The shape of the land shows like the ribs of a hungry animal this early in the spring.

Waiting for the arrival of spring, Mr. Linton and I blazed a couple of new trails. It's easier to make a way without having to part that modesty-drape of leaves and grass.

Naming the trails is surprisingly difficult, for what we end up calling them.

At the risk of self-conscious whimsy, there's The Road that goes all the way to the beaver pond, past Porcupine Falls and Long Meadow.

New Trail leads out the northern end of New Pasture past Hickory Corners to Blueberry Hill.

Loop Trail links New Trail to the Road. Thag creates fire!

Gah. I feel as if I missed some important lesson about place names.

All those jokes about housing developments named for the thing it displaces (Osprey Reach, Dolphin Cove, yadda yadda). Ironic.

Anyway, a few days and a few yellow blazes later, we now we have Dead Possum Trail (named for the skeleton we found, natch) and what I first thought would be Trillium Trail.

Then we noticed this:

So, Broken Wagon Trail it is.

Okay, yes, it's not technically a wagon. Neither is it precisely broken. But Abandoned Hay Rake Trail doesn't have the same ring, does it? Plus Mr. Linton named it, and what he says, goes. Sometimes. This time.

Back to the narrative.

Late spring this year: even the old oaks seemed to be having a hard time waking up.