Random sketches and thoughts: Place Post No. 5

I'm clearly not a visual artist, not without the aid of a camera, anyway, but I've been sketching some of the random encounters I have at the lake. Here, the dock at Walgren Lake, snowlocked but soon to be freed by the melting waters that run in from the hills and snowfall. We went fishing just a week ago, and now, even though the ice is softened by 3-4 inches of snow, the shoreline is warming, the edge ice is thawing and a good foot of water lies between the shore and the thinnest of ice holding the dock captive. It's pretty impossible to tell, with my inaccurate depth perception and ability to draw angles and distances, but the dock doesn't stick straight out of the water like that. It slopes back, is made of wood (but covered with snow).

And a hawk, as seen from the ground. Ok, that's a terrible picture, but when he's kind of coasting above, it's hard to see the exact curve of his wings or his coloring. I'm gguessing it was a Red-tailed Hawk, since they are so common here(I see at least 5 of these guys a day), but I'm not sure. The birds in my field guide look so similar.. Regardless, hawks always make me smile. When I was little, dad used to call them 'Henry" or 'Henrietta," and until I was old enough to know better, I always thought it was up to him to name the hawk, and that it was always the same ol' Henry hanging out around the tractor or feedlot or wherever we happened to be. Our school's mascot is a hawk, so he's got some pretty big pull around here!

This UNL study, done in the 50s, shows that there were 14 types of hawk in the NE Panhandle; I can't find stats on those same birds today, but I'm sure that even though this land is sparsely populated, numbers have decreased, if only slightly.

And a wax worm, the mealy, translucent bait we use for ice fishing. These worms are the larvae of the Pyralidae, or wax moth. In nature, they live in bee hives, eat the cocoons and wax, thus earning their name. In my house, they live in the fridge (in a round, plastic case) and get lost behind the cottage cheese or other small round containers. These worms are pretty slow moving, but I came across this thread from the Ohio Game Fishing community and couldn't help but post it:

It has always been a concern that the wax worms would get left out and die from heat, so we always made sure we had them in the cooler. This is fine, however sometimes it's a pain to have to get them out and put them back, especially with kids. So, this weekend we were fishing the shoreline and I just carried them over and set them in the shade, of course the sun moved and soon they were baking in the heat. I LIKE IT! As it turns out, I discovered when in the sun, wax worms go nuts when in the heat. They were crawling all over themselves and looked like redworms in the way they were moving around and getting into a corner of the container. Also, they "grew" fatter the longer they were in the sun.

I will tell you, a warm - fat - squirmin wax worm WILL catch a ton of bluegill!

When we were done, I put them back in the cooler and the next time they were fine. The kids just loved it and I could not fish because the 3 kids were just one after another with catches, best fishing I never got to do.

So, anyone else have this happen with wax worms? Have I been living a wax worm lie all my life??"

A "wax worm lie".. ah, I love it!

***

The frost has gone out of the ground now, and with it has gone the stability of the land. When there's a blizzard blowing and zero visibility, getting to the lake is dangerous because I can't see what's in front of me, but it's not impossible. When the frost goes out, however, travel across the country roads is almost unthinkable.

We had to pull the wheels of my Rav yesterday and powerwash the gumbo off of them, because the Rav had developed a bad shake. All of the mud caked on the chassis and the tires had pulled the whole system out of balance.

I think of the people who settled this land, those who tried to move through the muck with wooden wheels and tired oxen or horses. Overland trips took forever back then, and adding this mess to them most certainly made life difficult.

I like the mud, the way it is a mixture of earth and water, the way it feels to squish it between my toes, even its variety of colors: shaley stuff so black it's almost purple; chocolate syrup smooth with a cinnamony swirly; cookie bar brown, with the warm, golden crust of a brownie. But It is a frustrating substance, akin to the quicksand that Edward Abbey encounters in his wilderness in the desert. Mud makes it easy for me to understand why settlers and farmers and ranchers come to think synonymously of "enemy" and "land." The natural world is a challenge; even in the promise of good weather.

Spring is definitely coming; the ice still coats the lake but is too dangerous to walk on, the mud is a crisscross of tracks and ruts leading the way to human productivity. We are leaving behind the winter, and in the mud we are recording our passage.