Burnished

     Sue’s dog Vesta—the one that another dog attacked some months ago—has decided that Rascal con be trusted.  In fact, she rather likes him again.  All other dogs?  Not so much.  She’s making progress, but other dogs still mostly freak her out, a state of being she announces with prolonged barking.  Seeing another dog approaching as we walked along the river this morning, Sue whisked Vesta off on a side trail.

     The other dog passed us peacefully by, and I turned to give Sue the all clear.  And there she was, in her blue shirt and tan hat, leaning over talking to her Sheltie and framed by wildflowers mostly taller than she is.  The two of them in that setting on this sunny day were memorably lovely.

     I told her so, and then told her about two lovely sights Rascal and I came upon in Thursday’s perambulations.  I had chosen a route that would take us past the little no-name pond at Nixon and Dhu Varren.  The last time we’d passed that way, an egret had posed for us on top of the tall tree stump that natural progression has left standing at the west end of the pond.  Yesterday, the action was higher up.

     It was, in fact, the most bluebirds I’ve ever seen at once, perching on a wire.  Granted, the most bluebirds I’ve ever seen at once is not very many bluebirds.  We don’t see that many around here, and certainly not in numbers.  I was surprised enough to doubt their identification.  Could the birds be swallows?  Backlit by the sun, the shade of blue on their backs wasn’t easy to fix.  No swallow tails, though, and swallows don’t sit around in any case.  Besides that, all the birds had orange patches on their chests and, truth be told, looked exactly like bluebirds.  We stayed there so long admiring them that Rascal lay down in the grass and made himself comfortable.

     A bit farther west, from a field of shoulder-high wildflowers, a goldfinch rose.  And then two goldfinches.  And more, in ones and twos and threes.  There was no urgency to the birds’ actions.  It was almost slow motion, like tiny gold balloon ascensions, bright bubbles rising from deep within the flowers, little finchy voices providing color commentary.

     At the other end of the spectrum, a shadow passed over us as Sue and I walked today.  A big shadow.  Loud, too.  It was a great blue heron, blocking out the sun and croaking.  When my husband and I first moved to our house near Thurston Pond, herons frequently flew over the house at night.  We knew this because they punctuated their overflights with croaks, which would wake us up and make us laugh.

     We used to imagine herons giving each other points according to the number of people they roused from sleep.  “Hah, great one, Fletcher!  That was at least an eight.”  “Thanks, Daedalus.  You give it a go.  Try for a nine!”  We rarely hear herons at night anymore.  We still see them on the ponds near us, but not in the numbers that used to be common.  There’s been a lot of construction north of here for the last several years, rendering the whole area less wild, so habitat loss is a likely culprit.

     Our path along through Bandemer Park this morning took us past rowing clubs’ boathouses.  Folks have been rowing in that Argo stretch of the Huron River for well over two centuries.  Seeing the shells outside brought to mind the time one of our daughters spent on her high school crew team.  Some of the shells are forty-four feet long and sixty-two feet long.  Even carrying them down to the river takes coordinated effort.  The only sculls on the water today were singles, a mere twenty-seven feet long, but still a delight to watch.

     Here and there, in ponds and the shallows, we see mallard families with ducklings.  We saw such a family along the Huron today.  Mostly, mallards raise one brood a year, but if something happens to that brood, the ducks may try again.  Which is how, sometimes, mama ducks end up with little ones this late in the summer.  No doubt it’s projection on my part, but those second-brood mamas always look tired to me.

     Late August in Michigan is summer in its maturity.  The sun is high, in a sky not yet darkening to the cobalt of autumn.  Flowers are tall.  Birds are in full summer plumage, their families mostly raised and their food supplies plentiful.  Tree fruits are visibly ripening.  It’s lovely here.  The world seems burnished.     

18 August 2023