Category Archives: Nature

Letters on the ground

By david.humphrey | Published: October 12, 2009
Living in the country, one of the yearly jobs one has to do, which my city friends miss out on, is cleaning out a septic system filter.  It involves removing a man-hole sized cover, which is fastened with 8 three-inch screws.  Once open, you have to reach the length of your upper-body down into the [...]
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Leaves

By david.humphrey | Published: September 27, 2009
The tree has dropped its leaves and stands empty.  A bird sitting in the topmost branch, swaying slightly with the wind, yellow against the gray, reminding the leaves to return and marking the spot, envisages a hope the extends beyond the coming cold of winter.
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A bridge

By david.humphrey | Published: September 7, 2009
Tomorrow I go back to teaching for another year.  I’ve been on holidays for most of the summer, at home with my family, who have also been home.  It’s been both a busy and relaxing summer.  And tonight, as I watched the sun set on my last full day of summer, I went for a [...]
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Seeing the common uncommon

By david.humphrey | Published: September 3, 2009
There is a whole category of things I look for that could be there, but mostly aren’t.  Tonight I saw one.  Just before the moment when it would have been impossible to stop the stir fry I was cooking for dinner, I saw it: the Common Nighthawk. I have never seen one in my entire life.  [...]
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Of Birds’ Nests

By david.humphrey | Published: August 25, 2009
I want to speak of birds’ nests.  I have very little that can properly relate these ideas, other than the fact that everything I will say is about birds nests; and so I will place them all here, under this title, much as Sparrows will build nests beside one another in the rafters [...]
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Not by sight

By david.humphrey | Published: August 23, 2009
A list of birds I heard but did not see while weeding the garden: Belted Kingfisher Cedar Waxwing Hummingbird Pileated Woodpecker American Goldfinch Blue Jay Eastern Kingbird Osprey
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On seeing a Moose

By david.humphrey | Published: August 17, 2009
While we were at the cottage, my mom was relating to me a story about the last time she and my dad had seen a Moose.  As they drove along a highway, they passed a logging road, running perpendicular to them.  She looked down the road, and saw the silhouette of a Moose.  “It made [...]
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On being watched

By david.humphrey | Published: August 5, 2009
I spent much of the day mowing grass.  Across the lane from where I worked, in a field of clover, wild flowers, and tree saplings, my progress was watched.  First, it was a deer, which stood between two rows of trees, and watched me go back and forth for at least twenty minutes before finally [...]
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Field Stone: “The threshold is always stony”

By david.humphrey | Published: June 2, 2009
This morning I read Luke’s discussion of the threshold, and his use of a quotation from Heidegger (“The threshold is always stony…“) put me in mind of something I had wanted to write this weekend.  On Sunday my wife and I worked to finish some gardens around our house.  Actually, we worked to finish some [...]
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Daytime Nighthawk

By david.humphrey | Published: May 18, 2009
I saw my first Nighthawk a few days ago.  While the girls played in a garden after an event we went to as a family, I wandered under a large maple tree.  I was looking for what might be there, and in this case, it was a roosting Nighthawk.  I could have picked it up [...]
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