the early bird...

catches something, but it was far too wet for worms. just before i headed off to bed thursday night, i called lenny to tell him the latest on running school field trips out to the bear pond natural area. i thought it might be possible to get together with him on friday. he suggested i meet him and christian and do a bit of bird banding. "meet us at the pull off at 5:30!"

the decoy...

like i have said before, i get up early, so i agreed right off. when i pulled over, with my bike lights strobing, he and his grad student, christian, were a bit surprised. i changed into boots and followed them into the foggy, dim woods. we put up our first set, a few hundred yards along the path. almost as soon as lenny walked away from turning on his i pod to play the canada warbler call beneath a decoy warbler he had fastened onto a bush, an unbanded male flew into the mist net. (pam says, "that's so sneaky!") before we were even done banding the first male and taking down the biometrics, we had a female in the net. things went fairly smoothly and quickly given we had three pairs of hands to operate with.

lenny, male canada warbler, and me

canada warbler and christian

we set the net up about four more times with equally pleasing results, capturing four more unbanded CAWA--ornithologist code for canada warblers--and two special prizes, warblers with geolocator devices (this site shows an example of those devices) on their backs! the trick with these miniature electronic trackers is the birds they ride on have to be recaptured to retrieve the tracker and read the data. attached to the bird one year, when caught again the a year later, the migratory history of that bird is captured. the canada warbler is a long distance migrator, wintering in the southern most regions of central america and the northern most parts of south america.






chasing the last 'geo' bird, we splashed across the beaver dam and through the drainage area several more times. we ended up netting one more unbanded male CAWA, but not red over yellow. it was getting sunny out and on toward 9:00 so we pulled in a last set without getting a bird and headed out toward rt 4. at one point we passed a really cool burl that had started to be hollowed out by something. christian snapped this picture for me a few days later. turns out he and lenny tried fairly hard to get the male with the locator they had spotted earlier, but ended up only capturing several more unbanded males.

i like to think that somewhere out there, a male CAWA with a geolocator is laughing at us! "ha ha ha"

bug season...

in western maine--headnet recommended! i fastened my front fork to the mount in the back of the truck and made a quick check to be sure i had packed my bike shoes. the last time i drove off for a ride i had to turn around and fetch them. all in, i set off for kevin's over in west brownfield maine. what i didn't notice, were bugs. a couple hours later as i pulled into kevin and mariel's driveway, a cloud of black flies wafted through the window and gathered about my head. i had to close the window to even attempt to gather things for the dash inside.

mariel was home mixing up a wheelbarrow full of potting soil and moo-doo to start dividing her transplants. it was pretty obvious that working outside was going to be way too buggy without a headnet. so, like any dedicated maine gardener, she filled a five gallon bucket with her mix, headed inside, and emptied half of it into the kitchen sink! "...we'll have to clean this up before kevin gets home to make dinner..." with an attitude like that, how could i not pitch in and help.

we were basically ready and a pizza dinner was prepped, cooked, and set on the table in fine fashion. i got in a visit with 4/5 of the feider-sullivans, all save for seamus, who lives and works out in san francisco. owen has grown two or three feet since i saw him at popham beach last july. clayton has found a yurt to live in while he works landscaping and plans his next long trek--he has now finished both the appalachian trail and pacific crest trail--that's just shy of 5000 miles, on foot! mariel is growing plants like mad and wants to actually set up a nursery in a green house. kevin is working three days a week at a bike shop in n. conway. life seems pretty good.

friday morning, the dishes done and our panniers packed, kevin and i set off to pedal to the amc cold river camp up in chatham new hampshire. we headed north towards fryeburg where we would pick up 113 and continue north towards evan's notch. the road actually crosses back and forth from maine into new hampshire several times as it winds its way toward gilead me on rt 2, just east of shelburne nh. it was a great day to be riding, with little wind and somewhere in the 60's temperature wise. i tried to keep up kevin's faster cadence, but for some reason found myself pushing higher gears at lower rpms most of the way. old habits die hard--i just hope my knees don't give out early.

we pulled into the amc camp about twenty five miles and two hours after leaving kevin's. after arranging for a cabin kevin and i pitched right in to helping schlep dinning hall tables and chairs. the whole reason we were there was to open the camp for the season. moving everything out of storage, scrubbing walls, clearing paths, putting up fixtures--even a play structure--gave us plenty to do for right through sat, about 2 o'clock. there was a bit of time for fun and the pinkham crew took advantage of it, atop some of the bikes we rolled out of the rec center...

after working in the sun for a bit of the afternoon, three of us took off down to the cold river for a dip. i snapped a picture of billy buffum resting up on a rock.

after a bit of rest we decided to hike up to the ledges on little deer hill just east of the river. i forgot i had my camera until after we passed a really cool stone wall climbing up along the ledge trail. we stopped to look out once and i got an expanded 'selfie'...

the smiles on our faces are genuine and attest to billy's talk as we hiked about the 'being present in the moment' philosophy of eckhart tolle.  some moments in life remind me how privileged i am to have dear friends, my health, all the stuff that makes for moments like these. i have been reading joe kurmaskie's biking book riding outside the lines and keep coming back to one particular story, "you make your own luck". my friend ken and i talked about this just the other day and he is convinced, as kurmaskie comes to be, that this is not at all the case. in fact he finishes the story with the line "luck's what happens when god has his back turned." the story is a good one. so was this hike.

not that you can tell, but the trail was quite steep, complete with signs 'not recommended for decent'. i got a sweet vision of a foot of snow on the ground making for one hell of a fine ski run! maybe i was just lamenting the lack of skiing this past season. seriously though, there seemed to be some hot potential, if we just got lots of snow. that is possible in the north country, and when that happens i told kevin i would pick him up and we would give it a shot. it was in the plan for last winter for us to ski the 4000 footers in new hampshire--maybe next year...i can only hope.







we got to bed at a decent hour after hanging out on the porch and reminiscing about our pinkham days and life after. one of the reasons we came to cold river was to surprise ed parson's--the fourth 'pinkham weenie' from back in '75. ed had spent sometime in nepal and showed a slide show of his trip to the pinkham crowd. billy had seen those pictures and decided he needed to see the beauty for himself. he ended spending 10 years in nepal and 5 more in bhutan--ed had changed his life. on a sadder note, the guy running this cold river opening, bill waste, was the brother of connie who had also been on our pinkham crew. connie died in october '75 of a heart complication while the crew had been playing touch football down at the auto road. ed had been playing that day and i had gotten the news when i came back to pinkham to wash my clothes (i used the hobart--once a week whether i needed it or not). it was a reunion packed with quite a few emotional memories as well as work.

true to form for me, i woke very early, probably because it was raining and i was puzzling how i could get kevin home without getting wet. i tried to get back to sleep but didn't have much luck. around 4:30 i got out of bed and started packing. turns out both kevin and billy were awake too. when i greeted them a bit too enthusiastically for the hour, kevin pegged the moment, "it's like christmas, only it's raining!" we packed and wheeled the bikes over to the lodge, turned on the lights and raided the kitchen for breakfast. billy came with us and ed showed up after my second bowl of cereal and cup of tea. it had been a celebration of friends and i wish i had a better camera...nancy, ed's friend, took a final shot as we prepared to head down the road. (in a sweet coincidence, nancy also took the picture of ed and i up in tuckerman ravine when MOC met them over our annual april vacation trip!)

somehow it stopped raining as we pedaled away from our friends and ed 'rang us out.' at before six in the am a porch bell can be pretty loud in a quiet place. bill waste told me later that indeed he had "heard it!" we made it back to kevin's mostly dry and very happy to have shared the weekend. as i drove back to canaan to meet another set of dear friends for lunch and another hike, i wondered if like joe kurmaskie noted, "god had his back turned."