Meanwhile, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood”…
Monday Bonus Feature: Walking 42 Saint Bernards Through the Woods
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
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Nice video of the St Bernards. Looked like there were wet and dry types . We had a dry types as our site mascot back in the day. Dry types are less bulky than the wet types. Ours weighed 135 pounds.
ETA…the types of St. Bernards are short hair and long hair. Not wet and dry.
Cat, Really BIG Cat (28 pounds, 4 ft. long, Maine Coon– making American cats great again):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-CoBWQvkow&ab_channel=BarcroftAnimals
We enjoy seeing moose around our house on occasion. I’m squeamish about being in the field when they show themselves, since I didn’t grow up around moose. I once observed a bull come into the area, and as he covered ground (they cover ground in an unreal fashion – very quickly), the deer and even the bucks would jump up about 600 yards in front of him and GTFOutOfDodge.
My now dead black lab mix once chased the biggest cow and calf you’ve ever seen out of our yard, when we had 3plus feet of snow. The cow came into the yard, and Theo charged her at full speed. Momma moose turned on a dime, and beat a fast retreat off the 30 acres! You have to love the courage of dogs.
Note the raw/scare marks on the back of the rear legs. Suspect this guy purposefully chose this location to get away from/due to being harassed by hungry predators, likely wolf. Grassy median, good strategy.
Not dry. Not wet. Moist and slobbering.
New Woodpile!
http://www.woodpilereport.com/
wow what a great video-was that Rainbow Bridge?
I often have moose in my yard.
http://www.ipernity.com/doc/319805/27636025
Saw one out in the marsh next to the Seward Highway last September. It was a monster with a beard that drug on the ground.