Year Round

   New collections appear along the trail: designs of nature and creatures of God. Spring is full of surprises!

   Evidence of tail dragging can be found. What began as one turtle crossing mark turns into a proliferation. Low amplitude sine waves connect the meadow side of the path to the bank of the creek. Dual tracks cross with a central X – major turtle activity. 

   Further up on the path a folded white paper receipt has absorbed moisture from a fine intermittent drizzle. The words YEAR ROUND can be read, and a price $2.52.

   Near picnic bend, a heron wades, then fades away in flight.

   On the way back is a circle of bark without the wood of the tree in it – like a wrist cuff without a break, a wide bangle. I take footage of this, it is unusual.

   A egg-headed heron stands on an overturned tree of great girth that goes across a tiny tributary of the creek. It stays put, assuming the Pose of  a Flamingo, although lacking its coloration.

  A dead field mouse lies on the path, poor dear, and I take its body to the edge of the woods for safe keeping.

   At the World’s Cleanest Grocery Store, I pick up some juice from the ever dwindling frozen concentrate selection – the same kind I always buy that has gone up another ten cents in price, two cans of cat food to feed the clan and a French demi-baguette that will be breakfast with the jam at home.

   Self serve terminal 3 is open but not accepting of cash. Cash is all I have.

   The clerk at number 7 rings my $4.14 sale.

   “Would you like to buy pretzel rods for a dollar a package?”

    I note several packages emblazoned with the name bran UTZ, placed in the bagging area for convenience. White speckles of the bark of the pretzel trunks are conspicuous and suspicious.

  “Sea salt or regular?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “No, thank you.”

   At home I feed the kitties, finish coffee, prepare the toast, sit with the cats and read. My concentration is broken by surface guilt; it bothers me to have said no to the cashier. This will haunt me all day, making her feel badly when she was following a company directive for increasing add-on sales.

   An unpaid gas utility bill from yesterday rests in my calendar/planning book. I head out the door to pay it at the grocery. I plan to go stop at checkout seven and purchase some pretzel rods – it’s a contest and she gets credit for the sales. My purchase can help make her day.

   A bird flies near the front door as I step out of the house. Its wings are firm and outspread. Light peeks through fanned feathers. A tattered black bird, what do you know?

Moms Love Car Wash Booklets

  and other prominent sayings are on display at various venues around town: a car wash, a storage facility and other businesses that escape immediate memory and might be noted in my sketchbook which is momentarily separated from its owner.

   Did you know you can now buy stainless steel straws to help reduce the number of plastic straws in the wastestream? Do you know how many varieties of solar lighting are on the market? Do you know what fun it is to shop Oriental Trading? It’s bazaar! 

   One heron spotted this morning, in flight at 8:44. None to report from over the weekend. Hope you have a good week. I like I’ll Have Another in the Derby.

Digital Red Emery

   A red emery board lies on the asphalt, parallel to the yellow line that marks one of the spaces at the post office. As I fumble with the engineering compass to obtain the heading of the man-made arrow to find out if it is pointing north, I get a reading of 330: it appears to be shy of north by 30 degrees west. How did it get here? How did I get here?

   Today I am doing bullet work. There is just one thing that must be done today and that is pay the Target bill. I have accomplished that and more. Here is my account.

   I slept from (blank) until (blank) on the couch in the living room. When I got up I played guess the time .

   “It’s between two and three,” I said, traversing the dining room to bedroom and kitchen, where the clock on the stove read 2:27 in digital red.   

   I fed the cats, changed to go out and went out. I stopped at the bank to withdraw money. I drove toward Target. The sky, which delivered light rain this morning, now was the color of a bleached heron. An unbleached heron flew, flapping eastward, in the sky over Spring Ridge at 3:11. It made me glad to see one.

   Morphine was playing on the radio when I arrived at the shopping center. At Target, I picked up a lighter someone had dropped inside the store. It was filled with lighter fluid. It was light. It was pale pinky-orange-red. It was a cheap one. It had no markings. It lay on the carpet between the food area and the dollar deals section where the indoor carts cluster. A lighter would not be the kind of thing I would want running loose in my store. I gave it to the individual who processed my payment, which was for twenty per cent of the total and six times the minimum amount due. Exited without further excitement, leaving the lost light lighter behind, and photographed a round sticker with a happy giraffe face next to the pedestrian crossing area with its multi-stripes of safety yellow-orange that run at a diagonal to the curb kerb.

   Next, visited the library jonesing for a computer and suspecting they were in possession of my library card. Yes, they were holding. Was assigned a public computer next to a man who has been searching for a job from there for weeks. The computer monitor in front of him contains his resume.

   During a check on business, I learn Target has dropped Amazon Kindle. I learn I have an order to be fulfilled. The computer next to displays a letter to Human Resources. I go home to the fulfillment center and process my order. I learn about the evils of sugar by perusing a book, like when you go on a vacation you take one last look at where you’ve been. At 5:37 the package is taped and ready to go with me to the post office. I drive like a conservative bat out of hell to get it off by 6:00 p.m.

   “Take the Skinheads Bowling” plays in the radio during the drive on the expressway in Reading PA, much to my amusement. My amusement, My amusement. The package I busted ass to send off will arrive next Thursday, Next Thursday? Next Thursday!

   Read my memory. A red emery board is in the space I pull into at the post office. This is how it got there.

Cast Rite Metal

   A Cast Rite box truck is on the road the same time as I travel by car to walk. Cast Rite Metal is located in Birdsboro, from what my reading of the lettering on the vehicle tells me.

   My arrival at the park is greeted by something the crew has deposited in front of the dumpster: a crumpled 50-gallon steel  drum. The cast away container stands upright, yet is a third of its normal circumference. No longer round, its outline is irregular.

    The color, possibly once green, is now rust. Its patina is that of having been submerged in the water for a while. It looks like some of the crew dragged it out of the creek, there is the thread of a weed across the top, stuck on a jagged edge.

   It looks like a sculpture that an artist would make of a steel drum container – one that might cost a good sum. This is the original.

   As for this morning’s walk, there are no herons along the creek that I can see under the overcast light gray sky and clouds that bring intermittent rain. Trees and shrubs are filling out, the forest is filling in with new, green foliage and wildflowers such as Philadelphia fleabane and wild geranium polka dot nature’s dress.

Copy Paper

   A cardboard box, empty of paper, has been sitting next to the railroad tracks for a couple of days. Earth Day was yesterday. Many were celebrations held over the weekend. Our schedule permitted attendance at the Reading event Saturday April 21 at Riverfront Park.  

   A band was playing as the shadows lengthened on the grass. The Main Stage lineup board indicated Umami was on. Umami has a cool sound, including an oboe and some of their songs sounded like Dr. John or else they were playing Dr. John.

   In addition to the sounds, there were sights:

Hippies with hula hoops and Long flowing skirts.

 Girls painting on each other’s skin.

A man with a well-behaved brindle Great Dane. The pair was magnetic and attracted comments like “he’s as big as a horse.” The dog wore black leather accessories with studs as if coming from a Harley Davidson fashion runway.

   Most of the vendors had cleared their tables under the information tent. A small separate canopy housed bicycles. The sandwich board listed six cycles and a trailer to the other side carried the slogan It’s a Solar Thing – You Can Understand.

  Most of the food vendors were shutting down and the choices has dwindled. Several people scooped colorful Italian ice which has almost no aroma. A  woman clad in short shorts performed with a hula hoop accented with about five flaming wicks distributed around the circle and many videographers truned their attention her way.

   A green cloth was hung on a line tied on two trees. The cloth was printed with words and a couple of globe shapes that gave the impression of batik. The words were Hope. Happiness. Save. Throw away your cash. Before and After, Eliminate Drugs, Help save our earth. Two young women were about to break camp and noticed I was writing in my notebook. One of them described the origin and the process of the fabric work – it was made by children in an outreach program and they used  glue and acrylic paints to create the piece. Ever since then it keeps occurring to me how fortunate it is the young women and the children got together. It would be nice to make something like it.

    Feeling tuned up, I returned home by way of the River Place trail along the Schuylkill river near Reading Area Community College (RACC). Piles of stone, baled with wide plastic strapping, have been placed under the Penn street bridge. The Penn street bridge, when you look up, is crumbly but maybe not as badly as the Buttonwood street bridge. Where the stone belongs is unclear.

    “This has been here for twenty years!” a man cried out as we passed the stone pallets. “ Twenty years they’ve been sitting here and the city is crying for money.”

  I copy. Do you read?

Four D’s

  Car bearing a Berks Gymnastics Academy decal with a figure silhouette and three words beginning with “D“, or so I thought. The world wide web site includes four d’s: desire, discipline, dedication and determination.

   During the afternoon acquired an exciting world wide bird reference book, bound to have a heron in it!

   At library, couple exits a pretty Mazda 3. A note is attached to the dashboard: a piece of lined notebook paper with large cursive sriting in blue ink: Do Not Speed!

That’s What She Said and a Flower Walk

Bumper sticker pathling: That’s What She Said. Cute cat figure on train – part of graffiti. Low Tulpehocken creek level again, and zero herons. The area hosted a symphony of spring peepers frogs making music and boasted two toads on the trail and a pair of wood ducks hanging around a triangular rock in the middle of the creek. Garlic mustard plants are taking over the wildflower spots. Other flowers blooming are the striped violet, creamy white with faint black stripe, the bluebells and spring beauty, dainty peppermint striped flower.

Sunday afternoon walked with a group led by Dr. Susan Munch, who with a plant tome in hand and a large dose of enthusiasm. introduced us to leatherwood and jet bead shrubs and pointed out shy trilliums, tiny puffy dwarf ginseng and delicate rue anemone, among many others at Angelica Park. One person in the group was able to report on the scant rainfall this year and another revealed she has a recipe for garlic mustard  pesto without revealing the actual recipe. A few defectors from the pack of antendees said they had places to go or found the pace too slow for them, but I found Dr. Munch to be knowledgable – how fast can you go and stop and spot the wildflowers? – and learned to identify a few new plants, including black cohosh. The loop up and down the mountainside is unlike any other in the county. Near the end. we were warned of the imminent arrival of mountain bikers about to finish a course. A strange woman stood by the path as we admired a luna moth resting near the base of an antique spruce tree. She advised us to move out of the way – fifteen bikers were coming down, that’s what she said.

4 ever

  Fresh grey screenings have been placed on the path. Last evening, the edges  were a slate blue grey. The combination is similar in hue to heron plumage. 

   At the 4 marker a pair of initials may be seen, having been crudely scratched above the carved numeral 4, a number which identifies the post and an area of natural interest. Below the hefty permanent 4, rough markings formed the word: ever.  They have a thin, unsubstantial look of transience. It is possible they are still there today.

  The level of the creek, having been kept low, shows clear water flow. The bottom is visible in most spots, revealing rocks and plant life.

   One heron to report, an early bird, having flown over the house at 7:30 this morning, heading east-south-east. We do not live yet we live 4 ever.

Journey 2

   Aud 3. Vanity tag Maryland: SERVOUS. Three in three locations is louder. Items of stowing interest Guatemalan Worry or Trouble dolls packs of four with pouch, their faces, individually and hand sewn all distinct and different as if real people. Produced in assembly line but not mass-produced to point character is taken out. Stet. Stat. Pick of the Litter is ticket for theatre: Journey 2. Also a petite (under heading of items of stowing interest) booklet of paper: Emotional Mastery. Have today slept, showered, coffee’d, cleaned, straightened, painted, sorted, shone. On ten-dollar bill ING, on five the stamp now or MON. and on a one dollar bill the sequence of numbers: 1-13- 17-21-35-43 and on another 850. Making lot of 32 artist cards. No herons to report. Journeous. Servous with two smiles. I’m serious! Et tu?

Presidente

   Hola! Pick of the Litter: Spanish bottle cap Presidente. Streaming sunshine, glittery water and squirrel activity on land and trees, no herons to report but two fly fisherman both had  blue shirts and the one with the hat seemed to be looking about for a wider audience while the other focused on casting a wider net.

   Yesterday visited Target to find out about trading in old camera for new camera and the associates helped me discover the old one still works, the battery required recharging. ( I thought I had dropped it and damaged it beyond feasible repair. ) So after walking caught up on a few missed photo opportunities with the camera Target values at $4.75, now I will run for President or drink a soda.