After being thwarted in our canyon descent, Tomas and I drove into the hills to an isolated dammed-up pond. A week before I’d made a path through the cattails to the water. (I waded out and when it got too deep, just lay on the cattails and they bent over to make a path.) We went swimming, it was very beautiful, pond ringed by cattails, swallows dipping to nab water-skimming insects… At left, I’m coming back in; that’s my bald head a little above the middle, pulling myself along. I felt like a muskrat.
Gathered nori fresh off rocks at low tide. Washed it, dried it, now to roast it. Can’t believe I haven’t done this before. Essence of the sea, you know it’s good for you.
Two photos from the beach, below the turkey buzzard posing artistically, such a choice of perch, such style! When still, these guys aren’t handsome devils like the hawks, but when airborne, they’re magnificent, floating on air currents, tuning direction by adjusting wing ailerons, soaring, floating…A few years ago I had a series of dreams where I was flying. I wasn’t just up in the air, I had to take off. I’d run along, flapping my arms and pretty soon I’d be airborne. It really felt, well…real. Still gives me a thrill to remember how it felt to fly.
Below a dead pelican. Another magnificent bird. Surfers all have watched them skimming waves, seemingly never flapping wings, just gliding along on the wave updraft, in group formation. I’m gonna leave this on the (remote) beach for another few months, so all the flesh is gone, and I’ll take the head and bleach it out for my collection of bird and mammal skulls.
Lloyd,
I wanted to drop you a note and thank you for the posts that you made about taking animal skin from roadkill. I've taken roadkill animals before, but after your post I was able to visualize the end product much better. So far this year, I've gotten a mountain beaver, two racoon and an actual beaver almost 4 foot long. These were skinned and salted, and dried – yesterday I finally took the step to send them out of state to a tanner to have them finished and returned to me as a final product. I just really wanted to say thank you – because honestly, I've thought about this a long time, but having you as a concrete example really helped make this a reality for me, and the satisfaction of keeping something beautiful from being wasted is immense.
Yours Gratefully,
Dominic Ebacher
ebacherdom@gmail.com