pameladean

On Wednesday, Raphael and I went for our first expedition of the year, to see the ephemerals at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park. To see the early ones at their peak we ought to have gone last week, but the weather didn't cooperate.

We got a reasonably expeditious start, especially for the first hike of the year, and even though we had to stop at my clinic so I could pick up my medication. We usually get off the freeway at the Northfield exit and go through town to pick up Highway 246, thus giving me a glimpse of Carleton and the Cannon River. But the GPS suggested staying on the freeway til the next exit, going instead through Dundas, and picking up 246 somewhat further along its length. Dundas is not Northfield, but I had fond -- mostly -- recollections of biking there from Carleton for a huge annual used-book sale. I didn't like biking along the shoulder of the road in the dust, but the books were excellent.

I had said to Raphael as I put on my fleece sweater and picked up my raincoat that I expected to be alternately too warm and not warm enough, and this prophecy was amply fulfilled. It was very sunny and intermittently very windy. Up in the picnic ground it was quite chilly. Down by Hidden Falls the air was almost still and the sun really beat down.

One of the pleasant things about Nerstrand is that there are ephemerals even in the picnic grounds and the campground. Anywhere the grass is not mown are trout lilies and false rue anemone and occasional other native wildflowers. You can see the tiny trout lily leaves spreading out through the mown grass. If Nerstrand ceases to be able to afford to mow its lawns, or civilization falls, the trout lilies will fill up all that mown space now occupied by grass, dandelions, and creeping charlie.

The Park Office was closed, so I sat on the bench they have on their west-facing porch and watched for birds while Raphael filled out the form for an annual park pass. One downy woodpecker and three or four little delicate sparrows with a rufous crown and a black eye line, were scratching around in the leaf litter under the bird feeder. And there was one white-throated sparrow, or what I took for one, though we didn't get a good identification until later. We had a sandwich at a very windy picnic table.

Then we walked through the campground, keeping an eye out for red-headed woodpeckers, but we'd arrived at the height of the afternoon and most birds were silent and absent. We went along the short gravel trail pointing out false rue anemone, purple and yellow violets, swamp buttercup, and the leaves of wild geranium to one another. Then we took the very steep path down to Hidden Falls. Larger patches of false rue anemone, clumps of wild ginger, nodding trillium, a few blossoms of cut-leaf toothwort; and as we got down to the damper areas, dark-green horsetail ferns and, below where a stream went down to join Prairie Creek, some marsh marigold blooming away. Things were intensely green and there were many flowers, but it looked strange to me. I finally realized that, while the false rue anemone was more or less on schedule, it would ordinarily bloom in a much emptier landscape where the understory plants were not leafed out, nor the wild geraniums so far along in their own growth. The trees would usually show just a hint, a mist of green, and you could see quite far into the woods because only the trunks and branches of trees and shrubs impeded your view. The view was much shorter and more cluttered this time. In some years there would hardly even be any violets yet, but they were thick along most of the damper trails that we took. And the spring beauty, while we did find some eventually, was not nearly as widespread as you would expect. We had also missed most of the Dutchman's breeches, though we did find a stalk or two here and there.

We went down the wooden steps to the rocky shore below the waterfall, and sat on a bench in the sun for a while. Clouds of tiny insects were dancing in the sun, coming together in a dense ball like a globular cluster and then bursting apart only to coalesce again. I was just about to point out to Raphael that they were a dragonfly's dinner without the dragonfly, when a green darner darted into their midst and started snapping them up. I made sure I had remembered to tell Raphael that Eric and I had seen darners at Eloise Butler, and Raphael told me there had actually been one in the back yard.

Eventually we got up and went back up the other side of the trail, the steeper side with steps. Last year we got to see the Minnesota Dwarf Trout Lily in bloom, but it was done this year. There was plenty of false rue anemone, newly-opening ferns, early meadow rue with its flowers like little fringed lampshades, more violets, a little spring beauty, one or two blooming wild geraniums, fantastical ash buds, and hundreds of trout lily leaves, with here and there a patch of blossom in a shadier or cooler spot. At one point Raphael asked me what pollinated trout lilies; we thought it was bees but weren't sure. A little further along the trail, Raphael saw a bumblebee taking a good long time inside a trout lily flower, so that seemed to be that. We saw a number of bumblebees zipping around in the course of the day.

We climbed the trail and sat down on the bench that the park has kindly put just before the really steep part. The wind was fitful. All the green was fresh as fresh. The sky was almost autumnal in the intensity of its blue -- we thought this might be because the humidity was low, but we didn't know. It was hard to get up and go on up the hill, but we did. We came almost immediately upon a large number of extremely weird plants that we were fairly sure we had looked up before but failed to retain the name of. I think, having poked around online, that they were wood betony.

Once back at the top of the hill, we had a hunt for the yellow lady-slipper orchids we'd seen there just once, and then went back to the picnic ground and had another sandwich and took a different trail that crossed Prairie Creek and then gave us a choice of which way to go. We decided to take the White Oak Trail back downhill to the water, since it was such a dry spring; sometimes it's too wet to take the lower trail by the creek at all. The upper part of the trail was full of trout lilies, violets, and false rue anemone, with the occasional Jack-in-the-Pulpit or trillium. As we came down into lower and damper levels again, the false rue anemone came into its own. Along the creek banks it grew lushly with ferns and reeds and violets and some lovely clumps of blue wood phlox, which I think of as blooming much later. We stood on the bridge admiring the phlox on the other side for a while, and then walked on to the where the Beaver Trail intersects the White Oak, and sat down on yet another bench. The light was starting to mellow out, and everything was still the tenderest green imaginable, starred with flowers and yet-emerging leaves and dancing small insects. Several times we saw the shadow of a butterfly -- or maybe just of a blowing leaf.

At last we began the walk back along the creek to the steep trail with the steps. The flowers were still very lush and intermingled, but there were fewer ferns and grasses or reeds. At some point something in the soil or light changed, and the understory thinned out, and there was a bit of what I'd been missing: mostly bare shrubs arching over patch after patch after patch of false rue anemone. "So many windflowers!" said Raphael, and I looked at them closely. The air seemed quite still, but they were still moving just a little on their flexible stems.

Raphael suggested that we climb the half of the Hidden Falls trail that we had previously come down. The light was much better for seeing small things by then, and that half of the trail isn't quite so steep. The main discovery was a single hepatica blossom still hanging on in its nest of three-lobed leaves. The last third of the trail was a bit of a slog, and we sat on the bench at the top of the hill when we got there. The light was mellower yet. Through the green and gray of the woods a barred owl called, and again, and again, and then after a pause yet again. Eventually we went and sat on the porch of the park office. The tiny sparrows with the rufous caps, downy woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, white-throated sparrows (we saw the white throat this time), and a single chipmunk, flew down to get seeds or suet, or kicked up the litter on the ground. You could hear the whoosh and ruffle of their wings as the birds came and went, and the scratch and rustle of the chipmunk's feet. There was some squabbling amongst the sparrows, and two nuthatches had a battle over the suet feeder. More distantly, we saw an elusive woodpecker that could have been a flicker or a red-bellied woodpecker; and finally we saw a flash of black and white and red as a red-headed woodpecker appeared briefly and then provided a glimpse, a longer look, another glimpse, always moving around to the other side of the tree or flying across the road to hide in trees with too much foliage. On our walk back to the car, a flash of black and red and white showed amongst the plants by the path. "It's a towhee," breathed Raphael, and it was, kicking up the litter much more violently than the sparrows had.

We had our last sandwich at a now really chilly picnic table, and Raphael got me to take the Sibley out of my backpack, and looked up the sparrows. Like the wood betony, they had been looked up before but we'd forgotten. They were chipping sparrows, and the first elusive woodpecker was indeed a red-bellied one.

We drove home in sunset and twilight. Then we had to come back to earth and do the year's first tick check, but that's just part of going hiking.

Pamela

I want to put down at least a few brief notes about things I had hoped to write about at length when my memory was fresh.

First, Minicon 50. As mle292 so clearly explained at Opening Ceremonies, Minicon 50 did not mark the fiftieth year of there being Minicons, and nor was it actually the fiftieth Minicon. However, we were celebrating anyway. The three co-chairs had worked very hard to build up membership and guest-of-honor goodwill, all to culminate in this convention. I complained a lot about how it was a day longer than most recent Minicons. In the days of the huge Minicons, were you so inclined, you could attend a party every night for eight or nine days, beginning on the weekend before the convention and spilling over at least onto the Tuesday following it. I've become sufficiently hermitic that I don't even go to the work party or the first party at the hotel, so that my usual Minicon runs from Friday afternoon through, if you count post-convention sushi and ice cream, Monday afternoon. This year we checked into the hotel on Thursday. I still skipped the Tuesday work party and the Wednesday party at the hotel.

Eric was the at con head of the Volunteers Department and a responder for the Code of Conduct Committee, so he got talked into coming to the Wednesday party, which he said was great, but it made him feel anti-social on Thursday. We ended up borrowing Lydy's car and slipping off for dinner on our own. We went, somewhat at random, to the Malt Shop, and got caught up on one another's news. We ordinarily have a date on Friday or Saturday, but of course at a convention it all has to be fitted around other events. We had one other meal together because our timing didn't suit anybody else's. Other meals were properly conventional: sheerly by accident, we ran into Lois who is not on LJ and Jon Singer, and had lunch with them in the hotel restaurant, with very pleasant and wide-ranging conversation.

On Sunday after Closing Ceremonies we slipped away to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden for an hour or so. The weather was threatening rain, but we did manage a walk around. There were snow trillium. All the tamaracks were still buttoned up as tightly as could be; of the understory, only a few dogwoods showed the fantastical beginnings of leaves, but there were recognizable rosettes of thistle, false rue anemone, wild ginger, and trillium

We came back to a dinner with Ctein and Jon again. We went to Peninsula and had excellent food. I also ate one Dairy Queen meal in the room on the day that I had my reading; and Eric and I had a lovely meal both for food and conversation with eileenlufkin, mrissa, and alecaustin at whatever the Sofitel has become -- maybe a Sheraton. I refuse to keep track. They were remodelling their actual restaurant, so they guided us through wide shadowy spaces to their temporary restaurant. It was a bit like eating in a spaceport, but the menu, while limited, had very good things on it. No blue food, however.

I usually get in at least one meal with David, but he was busy with the Cats Laughing concert on Friday night and with hosting room parties other nights. He does sometimes complain about going out for meals at conventions with people he lives with, so I trust this was more satisfactory in any case.

The dreaded 11:30 a.m. panels were both extremely good. I believe that the Scribblies (minus, sadly, Kara Dalkey) managed to keep Jane Yolen entertained while we interviewed her; and the Fairy Tale panel was by far the best one I've ever been on. Everybody was very insightful and intelligent, and there was also a running joke from I have no idea where, in which one put up one's hand if one felt uncomfortable. This came in very handy when people began complimenting one another and when Jane Yolen told family anecdotes about Adam Stemple.

On Saturday afternoon before and after my reading I spent most of my time listening to a really fine lineup of other people read -- Naomi Kritzer, Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, Marissa Lingen and Alec Austin, Michael Merriam.

I had never heard Naomi read and, though I like her writing very much and already knew that she is funny, I didn't realize how much theatrical skill she put into reading her work aloud. She read a time-travel story that was a lot like an anxiety dream in its repetitive failures, but much funnier and better structured.

Marissa and Alec are a very good team both for writing and reading, with a nice contrast in manner and in particular flavor of humor; Marissa also read a work of her own that did what most of her short work tends to do to me, which is to proceed stealthily towards a point that perhaps should not be surprising but generally is. (If not surprising, or sometimes while also being surprising, this moment tends to knock the metaphorical breath out of you for other reasons, mostly the logical coming-together of disparate and intense elements.)

Jane and Adam also did a mix of collaborative and individual reading, passing scenes back and forth like, um, some kind of ball in some kind of sport I'd think of if I knew any sports. Jane's poems are often not unlike Marissa's short stories, only more compressed -- one moment you are laughing, the next your eyes sting with tears. I mostly hate war stories, but Adam read a very good one.

Michael has done a lot of spoken-word work and it informs his reading very pleasantly, insofar as that's a good word to use about rather grim subject matter. But I liked the touches of humor and the local settings.

I missed Scott Lynch and Bear reading, again, and will need to put that at the top of my list for next year because this is getting ridiculous.

My own reading went well enough, but I need to find some better solution to the fact that I always overrun a half-hour slot but cannot really fill an hour before my voice gives out. Pat Wrede came in just as I'd finished and was somewhat frustrated, since she knew I would be reading a few passages from our joint story in Points of Departure. The "print ARCs" had arrived over the weekend, and she kindly handed me hers (she commutes to the convention, we don't) to show off and read from. My own was awaiting me when I got home.

I didn't get to as much other programming as I would have liked, but I got to hear matociquala and other fine people talk about artistic bravery.

And of course there was the Cats Laughing concert. A spreading fear that the room provided would not be large enough caused a lot of people to line up well in advance of the starting time. I myself got in line maybe half an hour before then and had good conversation with laurel, Jon, and Mike Pins, who I think is not on LJ. We ended up sitting in a row with ckd and aedifica, which was pleasing. Eric didn't stand in line because he didn't want to be trapped in the middle of a crowd rather than being able to come and go. As it turned out, there was room and a little to spare, and he came and sat behind us about two-thirds of the way through the concert, having been in and out and sometimes dancing before that.

The opening act was Sister Tree, whom I had not heard before; but David had, and told me they were very good. They are, and in a way that I particularly like. They did a number of traditional folk songs in their American versions, and each of them did a version of "Cruel Sister" that arrived from and ended up at a very different place from the other's -- with footnotes. I have seldom had such a rollicking academic time.

The Cats opened with "See How the Sparrow Flies," which I had been playing a lot because of the Kickstarter extras. I loved it but remained fairly calm. However, the next song they did was Mike Ford's "Black Knight's Work," and I immediately got extremely teary and felt profoundly moved and nostalgic for the rest of the evening. The Cats sounded excellent. I kept flashing on an alternate history where they had stayed together and evolved into this form -- "So yeah, Steven decided to ditch the trap set because... " and "Scott came in about five years ago when... " They didn't sound the same any more than any of us really looks the same after 25 years -- but they sounded like themselves.

I missed far too many concerts, some because of scheduling conflicts and some because I was too scatterbrained to organize myself. But I did get to attend a room party or two with music, and also to listen to the music circle on Sunday night.

This is far from a full account. I was very happy to see Star and Pooch, as well as everybody mentioned above and quite a few I do not at all mean to leave out.

I think this will have to do, though I'm hoping that having recalled so much will shake up my brains so that I start out of bed at four a.m. remembering entire events that must be committed to writing at once.

Pamela

I am so smug. I am always excessively, obnoxiously smug when my failure to do something that everybody else does and that I've been beating myself up for not doing turns out to have been beneficial.

The tree on our boulevard is a Norway maple. All Norway maples are on a schedule that may be Norwegian but may be from some alternate dimension. They stay green late, late in the fall; if there is a hard freeze they shrug off their green leaves and look insouciant; and if allowed, they turn a glorious gold in mid- to late November. Then they like to preen themselves a little. I'm sure that, whatever timestream they hail from, they know exactly when Minneapolis has decided to send in street sweepers to get the leaves out of the gutters. Then they drop about half their leaves the day afterwards, and hold onto the rest until their local human companions have raked their yards clean.

The maple on our boulevard is always the last one to drop its leaves, and the one on the boulevard of our neighbor to the north is the next-to-last to do so.

The entire public sidewalk and a good portion of the walk leading from that sidewalk to our front porch were solid with maple leaves. In a wet autumn, I'd have had to deal with them because wet leaves can become as slippery as ice. But these were dry and crisp. I did try to prevent the leaves from utterly concealing the one step down from our walk to the public sidewalk, but it was so windy that in as little as half an hour after I cleared the leaves, more leaves would gather and obscure the step again.

On Saturday, it snowed, first ice pellets, then big fluffy flakes, then pellets again, for a total of maybe two inches. I had actually planned to just let the stuff melt, since it will be fifty during the day by Thursday. But then I remembered that the person delivering the groceries would have a bit of a struggle if I didn't shovel. The mixture of ice and snow, dyed a delicate yellow by the underlying leaves, looked pretty grim. But it peeled right up from that glory of glories, a perfectly dry sidewalk. The sidewalks of my obsessive raking neighbors aren't nearly so clear.

I am so smug.

Pamela

Well, that's a rather grim subject line, but on its own it feels like what I'm doing with the book. After a long hiatus and a lot of hair-tearing, I opened up one of the files and revised Chapter 2 to have more tension in it. I have not yet attempted to gaze into the abyss that is the fallen middle of the narrative, but I hope to do that tomorrow.

In other news, Raphael and I have been thwarted two weeks in a row in our plans to go to Itasca, because the weather has been impossible. We will try again after Fourth Street. In the jungle of the yard and garden, the dame's rocket is almost done, the spiderwort and daisy fleabane and Shasta daisies are blooming, the rudbeckia is thinking things over, and the phlox is growing very tall but not budding yet. The volunteer milkweed is in bud, as are the true and the day- lilies. The peonies were slain quickly by heat followed by rain, but there were certainly a lot of them while they did bloom.

The snow peas are blooming, and the sugar snap peas are thinking about it. The snow peas are supposed to be bush peas and to need no support, but they are climbing the dame's rocket at the edge of the raised bed just the same. I have lots of lettuce. The spinach bolted while I was at Wiscon (see aforementioned heat), but remaining leaves are not bitter. My mother and I are going to Mother Earth Gardens tomorrow to get some tomato plants.

Pamela