![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
If I had a rope and pulley, I'd enjoy the breeze more fully
I am experiencing inchoate feelings about New England, which if I am lucky will resolve in a poem and if not will likely persist until or through Thanksgiving. In any case, having received some ambivalent news in the afternoon, I went for a walk. I didn't make it into the Great Meadows proper because of the density of walkers, joggers, bikers, skateboarders, and one person on a kick scooter who had decided the weather was warm enough to forget about social distancing again, but I did get some trees.
Entering even the smallest stand of trees at this time of year makes me think of Angela Carter's "The Erl-King" (1979): "The woods enclose and then enclose again . . ."
I had no idea of the name of this stream which ran alongside the thin trail I was walking. I assumed it was some kind of tributary of Mill Brook. It disappeared through a stone-lined culvert under Fottler Avenue, which according to this walking tour distributed by the Friends of Arlington's Great Meadows strongly suggests it was Fottler Brook.
It flackered off behind a screen of bushes before I could get a picture of it, but I saw a squirrel as black as our cats, which made me so happy that I called to tell my mother about it: we had them in the back yard when I was growing up. I had been taking a picture of this gate, which I would not recommend ducking under, when I heard it leaping lightly but not soundlessly through the dead leaves.
Probably Fottler Brook, looking photogenically leaf-starred.
The Meadows themselves, as close as I got to them. They are a compactly diverse combination of swamp, marsh, and wet meadow, and I always forget the area was mined for peat in the mid-nineteenth century. To my knowledge it has turned up no bog bodies, which I really feel is letting the side down. Eleven years ago some acres of the dryer portions burned and my parents' yard filled with ash-fall like Pompeii.
Four teenagers were setting up some kind of video shoot on the path right where it widened into a yard and then met the bike trail; all were masked, some eccentrically costumed, and none of them thought to move out of my way. They were arguing as I passed about which one of them was best suited to play "the Boomer." While I was waiting to see if they would actually notice me, I took a picture of some nice lichen on a nearby tree with a better background than I had planned.
It turns out I didn't sleep through this morning's earthquake after all! I've just become so used to obnoxiously rumbly trucks idling on our street that I mistook our local plate tectonics for one.
Entering even the smallest stand of trees at this time of year makes me think of Angela Carter's "The Erl-King" (1979): "The woods enclose and then enclose again . . ."
I had no idea of the name of this stream which ran alongside the thin trail I was walking. I assumed it was some kind of tributary of Mill Brook. It disappeared through a stone-lined culvert under Fottler Avenue, which according to this walking tour distributed by the Friends of Arlington's Great Meadows strongly suggests it was Fottler Brook.
It flackered off behind a screen of bushes before I could get a picture of it, but I saw a squirrel as black as our cats, which made me so happy that I called to tell my mother about it: we had them in the back yard when I was growing up. I had been taking a picture of this gate, which I would not recommend ducking under, when I heard it leaping lightly but not soundlessly through the dead leaves.
Probably Fottler Brook, looking photogenically leaf-starred.
The Meadows themselves, as close as I got to them. They are a compactly diverse combination of swamp, marsh, and wet meadow, and I always forget the area was mined for peat in the mid-nineteenth century. To my knowledge it has turned up no bog bodies, which I really feel is letting the side down. Eleven years ago some acres of the dryer portions burned and my parents' yard filled with ash-fall like Pompeii.
Four teenagers were setting up some kind of video shoot on the path right where it widened into a yard and then met the bike trail; all were masked, some eccentrically costumed, and none of them thought to move out of my way. They were arguing as I passed about which one of them was best suited to play "the Boomer." While I was waiting to see if they would actually notice me, I took a picture of some nice lichen on a nearby tree with a better background than I had planned.
It turns out I didn't sleep through this morning's earthquake after all! I've just become so used to obnoxiously rumbly trucks idling on our street that I mistook our local plate tectonics for one.
no subject
I didn't know New England ever had earthquakes.
no subject
no subject
Me, too, now!
no subject
I believe ours are melanistic grey squirrels. I first remember noticing them in high school—I have always assumed one was a spontaneous mutation and soon there were more.
I didn't know New England ever had earthquakes.
They are not actually uncommon in the region! They just don't usually do much. The 1755 Cape Ann earthquake, which may have been remotely triggered by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and could be felt from Halifax to the Chesapeake Bay, is sort of the gold standard for seismic activity in New England, by which I mean everyone devoutly hopes we never experience anything like it again because the City of Boston would more or less literally liquefy. There was a lot less fill in the eighteenth century.
no subject