Swamp hangout: Great Meadows

"My Swamp", with a surprise Spring snow falling.

From our Wayland house, I walked to the start of Old Stonebridge Road, turned left for a few yards, then crossed over Stonebridge Road. Taking the woods road covered in pine spills, I climbed over the aqueduct and headed down the path along the edge of the water. Finding a sunny, dry spot in this corner of Great Meadows Wildlife Preserve, I sat, to think, pray, contemplate.

Part of the waterfront scene, seen from my perch.

Geese, ducks, and other waterfowl had flown away as soon as they were aware of an intruder; but as I sat very still, swamp life picked up where it left off.  I was treated to the sight of a shiny-wet water mammal swimming among the partially submerged bushes. I continued my vigil, gradually taking in more and more detail of the life around me, until the feeble sun retreated behind clouds. To combat the creeping chill I pushed my gloves under me as a substitute sit-upon and zipped up my jacket. A quarter of an hour later snow began to ping down from that gray sky. I set off for home. The school bus on its afternoon run provided the only color in the neighborhood. By the time I got to our gravel road, the snow had stopped and blue sky prevailed. This snow/no snow weather pattern was to continue over and over until after sunset.  What a cold afternoon, for March!

We lit a fire in the fireplace that night.

Moonglow

Night Visitor, by Sara Barnacle

The moon eased in closer to Earth a few nights ago, perhaps to get a better look at what we're doing. What must She be thinking now? One marvels that the Earth can still be so volatile, while its sole satellite keeps every rock and mite of dust in place. Or so we believe!

Moon's face did look larger, her light more searching. I am pleased with my simple cell phone camera for capturing Her visit so evocatively.

A Barnacle Afloat

With apologies to the man on deck, this is My Own Boat.

Ever since my girls and I first howled merrily over the misadventures of Mr. Toad and the washerwoman, it has been my dream to travel by long boat along the rivers and canals of Great Britain. In fact, characters and adventures from The Wind in the Willows lie behind my entire riverine blog.

Have I -- will I -- ever come close to fulfilling this dream?

In 2005, I went to Scotland with my then-husband Tom and daughter Rachel. Our first destination was the Falkirk Wheel, until that moment unknown to me.  It is pure joy to be able to stand in awe of an exquisitely engineered, manmade object, moving in perfect sync with its design.

Photo by Rachel. We watched the Wheel deliver
several loads of canal boats.

The canal at the foot of the Wheel was lined with colorfully painted, flower bedecked canal boats. The contrast between them and the futuristic Wheel was enchanting. The boats ride, several at a time, in the steel cradle of the Wheel, whose turning lifts and lowers the boats between a higher and lower canal, eliminating the former need for many canal locks.

I walked along beside the boats, longing to be invited in for a cuppa, but never set foot on one.  Other visits to UK and the Continent have yielded quick snapshot views, like the two below, of canal boats in action:

• A man operated a manual lever to open a lock in rural French village. The lock walls, bridge, and canal-side buildings were all dripping in red geraniums.
• On our drive from Inverness to Ft. William in Scotland, the route periodically ran close to the Caledonian canal. Although most of the boat traffic was modern cabin cruisers, styled streamline like Nike sneakers, there were occasional instances where My Kind of boat came swishing along, or had been tied up for the night. Once I heard the whistle of a tea kettle from a canal boat's galley.

Travel with Tom was whiz-bang, swallowing whole (yet thoroughly digesting!) cathedrals, museums, and urban landscapes. I knew I could never convince him that a slow, canal boat trip with its built-in opportunities for pure, leisurely pleasure and in-depth exploration of a limited territory would -- could -- be a worthy use of vacation time. My new husband, Roy, is more in tune with the rural rhythm of the British Isles. Our planned visit to his native land features both my long-anticipated canal boat trip and his favorite, travel by British public transport. Should this fairy tale trip come to pass, it will supply blog material for years to come. En garde!

Dark Mystery, Swimmer

On a walk just after sunset last night, I stepped gingerly out onto the Old Stone Bridge over the Sudbury river. A twelve-foot snowbank has blocked access to the bridge since early January, but now all such barriers are receding fast. "Gingerly" means I was watchful for new sinkholes that might let me down toward or even into the cold, dark river. The water was moving more swiftly than in the fall and had risen several feet, lifting up the heaps of debris caught by the bridgework to where I could see them clearly.

Suddenly, I was not alone. An animal form was swimming swiftly toward me, crossing the river at an angle.  My elusive beaver? An otter? No, when the creature stepped out onto the debris pile, I saw it had a long, thin, hairless tail and was exactly the size and possessed the profile of a large rat. Shudder.

After a swift sniff-around, the rat slipped back into the water, then checked out the next debris flotilla. The dark river soon swallowed up the darker form again, but he reappeared on Clotilde's lawn, poking around, presumably for food. Shudder again? But why? He was just doing his part in cleaning up the environment.

Then it was time for both of us to go. By now it was dark enough that I wouldn't have known what kind of creature it was that ran out along a fallen tree limb, slipped into the water, and ever so sveltly swam off leaving a widening trail of ripples behind. Ratty disappeared into the shadowy place where he had first emerged. I hoped he'd found enough supper, as I turned for home and mine.

Historic Neighbors Haunt My River Valley

Having made some acquaintance with the contemporary situation in my new river valley, I felt eager to learn more about the historic figures who peopled Massachusetts in its early days, making Boston unequivocally the intellectual center of America. To that end, Susan Cheever's new Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (November 2010) popped off the Wayland Public Library shelf and into my book bag. There is hereabouts a certain residual spirit of those heady times.

I had no idea. Papa Bronson Alcott, the lovable, admirable, nearly useless genius. His long-adoring wife upon whose shoulders the weight of Bronson's ineffectiveness fell. The four distinctive daughters, somewhat like the four Louisa Alcott would immortalize in Little Women and its sequels. The impoverished family's many moves to always inadequate housing. Their dependence on handouts from relatives and more notably from Ralph Waldo Emerson, their wealthy friend and neighbor when in Concord.

At first, I did not enjoy Cheever's book design. She alternates segments of the unfolding biography with snippets of her own experience in researching and writing the book. But by the time I reached Louisa's volunteer tour of duty as a nurse in the Civil War, I was so hooked on the Alcotts that I tolerated the Cheevers.  This then-and-now style may have encouraged the author to evaluate the experience of historic characters by comparison to today's mores. Cheever acknowledges the pitfalls of this practice. An example is her reporting of the contact between Bronson Alcott and Mary Baker Eddy, and hence the probable contact of Louisa, the chronically sick former Civil War nurse, and Christian Science.   Cheever's own apparent misunderstanding of the religion and its practice of Christian healing tend to color her evaluation of the Alcotts' brush with the faith. Researchers outside the faith have notoriously had great difficulty in understanding Christian Science, so it is not fair to fault Cheever's other research by comparison with the inaccuracies on this one topic.

So, I am drinking in Little Women. Despite its lectures -- and OK, often because of them -- it's a multi-hankie book. Reading Alcott's creation in tension with what I now know of her own life, I appreciate the novel much more than I did as a child.

I had no idea. This novel, which Alcott resisted writing for years, almost overnight gained such popularity that its publisher had to hire new workers and increase his production capacities. Louisa was the J.K. Rowling of her day, as her popularity lasted through many years. She was instantly able to support her impecunious family, but the long-term battles with illnesses prevented her from ever fully enjoying the financial security of her literary successes.

I hope to visit Orchard House this spring, and the farm in Harvard where Bronson conducted his short-lived Utopian community. I'll find out if LMA's residence in Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill in Boston is commemorated today.  This is fun.