Dave Greschner Outdoor Journal – Writing about outdoors and nature

A February fray

On the last day of January, I remembered a mental note I made on the first day of January. It was a resolution of sorts, seemingly simple but bound to take time: find a pileated woodpecker’s nesting cavity.

So there I was in the woods of mid-winter, a mild day in early February. The temperature hovered at melting point as sunshine took aim through bare trees on the settling snow covering—not by much—the leaves.

Bare ground was still in hiding, but it was making its bid in all the usual places—on the south side of tree trunks, under evergreens, in wind-swept fields, and where deer had worn paths. A lone crow flew over the woods and landed in the field, where corn stubble poked through the thin white cover, like pegs on a cribbage board.

The crow’s flight cued me back to the pileated pursuit at hand. I have watched pileated woodpeckers in this woodlot while gathering firewood and hunting. I have marveled at the large bird’s deep vertical excavations in dead trees where carpenter ants intended to ride out the winter sheltered. From my tree stand, I once heard a pileated’s wings whooshing as it passed eye-opening close in undulating flight on a two-foot span.

On this day, I would see no pileated woodpeckers nor large holes that would be nesting candidates. What I did see were two downy woodpeckers chasing each other up and down and across tree trunks and branches. They would spar, wings flailing, then pause to stare at each other, only to pick up the silent skirmish once again, sometimes only a few yards above me. They paid no mind to me.

At first, I thought it was an early mating ritual. But as they came closer and lower in the tree, I could see they were both females (no red head patch). It was a mystery, this aggressive behavior by the downies, until I researched the nesting habits of these small woodpeckers I so often watch at the suet feeder.

Downy woodpeckers claim suitable nesting cavities in February and March, their quest for the best territory often pitting males against males, and females against females. And, it’s the females who have final say on the nesting site, explaining their intensity I was witnessing.

Female downies are said to feed, and thus spar for nesting rights, in branches lower than the males. Sure enough, as I watched the females not far above me, a male downy was pecking at bark higher in the next tree, seemingly oblivious to the females carrying on below.

I watched this territorial quarrel for several minutes, long enough to burn my neck muscles as I pointed the camera upward. The two birds would circle the trunk like young squirrels, at times flapping and fanning their wings in combative postures. At one point the fight took flight, the birds coming within inches of my head as they swooped downward, somewhat out of control. So it seemed.

The mild winter’s day indeed had the feel of a new nesting season. I had not heard or seen the largest of woodpeckers—the mustached pileated. But I had observed the smallest of woodpeckers—the six-inch downies—carrying on, preparing to move on to their next calling.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Of fur and feathers

This is not my rabbit, this oblong figure of fur plump on the snow where the ground slides off into a gully of scraggly alders, dogwood, and honeysuckle. I’m a mile from home, too far from the rabbit’s home range of only an acre or so. So, no, this is not the rabbit under my birdfeeder every night.

It has, however, been eating well. It is a big cottontail, and it doesn’t seem too concerned about moving that big body—perhaps 4 pounds—just for me. I guess we’re friends; this encounter has been happening day after day when I trek the trail on snowshoes.

The rabbit just sits there like a watermelon with ears, sometimes sideways to me, other times facing me, only yards away.Sometimes it stands as if to query me. I bid for a reaction with inane questions: Have you brushed and flossed your incisors today? Have you combed your fur? Wanna carrot? No response, just a cautious stare from large brown eyes, processing if I’m a curious visitor or lurking danger.

Oh, those large eyes, “soft, dark, and brown,” like the line from a Lovin’ Spoonful song. A rabbit’s eyes are placed high atop the sides of its head, providing a 320-degree field of vision, the only blind spots directly behind and for a few inches in front. The big cottontail I’m watching has no trouble seeing me even when it’s not facing me.

I move to the foot bridge above a dry creek. With blobs of snow on the bed rocks, I’m looking down on a mosaic of white, gray and black. Keeping with the color scheme, a chickadee flits below me from one branch to another, climbing as it might be, up the steep bank.

The chickadee comes close, all five inches and half-ounce of it. “Fee-bee, fee-bee.” It is just below eye level, on a branch about six feet away. I study it, and take photos. The black-capped chickadee wears a black cap, of course, on its roundish head with a black throat. Its cheeks are white, as is its nape, from which a little white spills raggedly onto its gray back. Wing feathers have distinct stripes of white, gray and black.

From this vantage point of a chickadee’s back, I see only a rim of its belly extending beyond the wings. The creamy belly down I can see has hints of rust. The black, rounded split tail is trimmed with gray.

A cottontail and a chickadee. Ordinary sightings, for sure, but the closer one gets, the more beautiful are our winter neighbors. That includes the blue jay at the bird feeder. Though sometimes scorned for raucous behavior, the blue jay wears an attractive palette of blue, much like a da Vinci landscape rolling across the canvas in endless blues.

The blue jay’s back is ultramarine blue, some say, but others see it as indigo blue. Its wing feathers are Berlin blue, and secondary hues, trimmed in black and white, include the blues China, azure and flax-flower. So pretty, the jay can chase away the winter blues.

From my walk’s close encounters came the inspiration for a new year’s resolution: I will ease even closer to wildlife, recording the astounding details of birds and critters. A year of fur and feathers.

Soft and peaceful the night

Introduction: During this season of glitter and gifts, family and friends, and reflections and resolutions, I’m sharing excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors.” For the book reader/nature lover on your gift list, signed books are available through me (see price and contact information below). The book is also available at local bookstores and online. Here‘s the third and final excerpt, a February journal under a winter’s full moon.

Winter affords one, maybe two, opportunities to snowshoe or ski comfortably by the light of a full moon. The necessary trifecta is mild temperature, a mostly clear sky and, that big sphere, full or nearly so. In the last week of February it all came together under the Full Snow Moon.

So off I went, a couple of hours after sunset, the moon three hours into its night ride and already halfway up the eastern sky. The temperature had dipped below the freezing mark when I strapped on snowshoes and slapped them to the trail. I hoped to see animals moving in the moonlit meadow or the large field as I shuffled toward the narrow path in the forest. But the melting and freezing of previous days left a crust. Crunch, crunch, crunch spoke my snowshoes. I would not be sneaking up on anything.

The full moon was behind me, my shadow waltzed in front of me. I crossed the field, the wide expanse allowing me to study the sky—Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog Star high in the south, the Big Dipper balancing on its handle in the northeast, and that big orb Full Snow, 225,000 miles away but seemingly riding on my shoulders.

The dark, jagged form of the hilly forest was a half-mile away. It wasn’t that dark when I got there. My path was easily visible, a white ribbon tinged in blue, though always trailing into a dark curve. I’d reach the bend and see the next stretch of ribbon. I paused to listen for an owl, perhaps a coyote, but heard only the sifting of moonlight through the bare branches and pine boughs.

I headed for home, my shadow tagging behind to the jogging rhythm of my snowshoes. For a moment, it was nature’s night song, on the wings of a Canada goose, in the gurgle of a creek, on the cadence of an owl’s call. Sirius was my guide, high and straight ahead, with the moon towering to my left. Soft and peaceful was the night.

Note: “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special holiday price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Solstice, and serenity, of winter

Introduction: During this season of glitter and gifts, family and friends, and reflections and resolutions, I’m sharing excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors.” For the book reader/nature lover on your gift list, signed books are available through me (see price and contact information below). The book is also available online and at local bookstores. Here‘s a short journal from the book’s December section.

Winter arrives on the calendar this week. So what should I expect from winter? The worst, I suppose, if I so choose to look at it that way.

But what if I expect the best of winter, of the gems to come, found in the serenity of snow and cold? These gems will surely turn my head even as I turn my collar to the wind.

It’s already happening. I see the wide flowerheads of faded, bronzed sedum dressed up in white hats. Chimney smoke curls into the frigid night air, softly illuminated by holiday lights as the wisps tease the crescent moon.

There’s more to come. I’ll see swirls and whirls of frost on the window panes of an old shed. An icicle will hang in the bushes, changing colors as it catches sunset’s golden rays. The same rays will find their way through a south window, warming a nook for reading a book.

I’ll study tracks in the snow, discovering a rabbit’s night moves to and from the seeds below the bird feeder. I’ll see deer tracks sharing my snowshoe path. A cardinal will appear among the first fat snowflakes of an approaching storm, flashing its red feathers as a warning to all birds to feed and take shelter.

Winter is bright red high-bush cranberries against a backdrop of pine boughs laden with snowy fingers, dogs bouncing in the fluffy whiteness with hints of fun on their noses, lake ice booming in the darkness, the lonesome hoots of an owl at midnight, and geese shrouded in the rising steam as river water meets a morning of zero degrees.

Perhaps I’ll approach a feeding chickadee, so close I can feel the energy of its dime-weight body vibrating for warmth. Yes, warmth, what we all seek now. I’ll carry an armful of warmth from the wood pile for the late afternoon’s repose, the serenity slipping into a cozy evening. Then, a quiet morning indoors, warmed by the wood heat and hot coffee.

It’s winter. Sometimes the best of times.

Ghosts of the Woodlot

Introduction: During this season of glitter and gifts, family and friends, and reflections and resolutions, I’m sharing excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors.” For the book reader/nature lover on your gift list, signed books are available through me at a special price of $17 this holiday season (see contact information below). The book is also available online and at local bookstores, including The Old Bookshop in Rice Lake at its new location at 318 S. Main St. Here‘s a short journal from the book’s November-December section.

There were white ghosts and black ghosts, dancing away in the fading glow of the full moon an hour before sunrise. The ghosts were racing for cover before the light of dawn.

Was it their past the ghosts sought after they took a harrowing heated escape up the chimney on this bone-chilling morning? It was obvious, however, that the ghosts had no bones. They leaped from the chimney with dizzying fluidity, whirling and swirling, rising and falling and rising again as if eluding invisible obstacles.

They were wood stove ghosts. I wondered if their release from the hot coals sent them looking for the forest where they once lived in maple, oak and ash trees. Would they spend the rest of their days hidden high in the branches, wisps of the past witnessing secrets of the present?

I stared at a snow-covered backyard lit dimly by the Full Cold Moon, now high in the west behind me and casting shadows from all the familiar characters—the birdhouse, the trellis, the deck posts. The smoke ghosts were not as serene and steady. They were white against the cold predawn sky as they escaped in waves from the chimney. But their flickering shadows were dark on the snow below, their forms changing with the whims of any slight breeze.

The ghosts were hard to follow. I watched some race through the herb garden, bounce off the yard shed, climb the shed’s roof and disappear in the branches beyond. They were free, no longer standing in the forest, stacked in a pile or trapped in a stove. Now the ghosts danced in the branches. A cold winter dance.

Note: Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

The confliction of killing

Every hunt presents its own story, its own visuals, more often telling of the easy flow of the woodlands than the scene of downed game. I never know what the story will say, or what will be the photo of the day, or even what role I may play.

On this day, the story is the calm amid indecision, the crows and squirrels without the deer, leaves surrendering silently, and the fruit of the hawthorn.

For the first time this fall, I’m strapped to a tree, renewing my contract with the season of confliction. Bow and arrow are cradled in my arms, resting on my lap. A camera hangs at my side.

I’ve come to the treestand a couple of weeks earlier this year, drawn by the sweet, nostalgic smell of autumn’s soft sigh of resignation. In the restless breeze, leaves flutter past, landing softly, as softly as the first snow that will cover them. I’m calmed.

I’m also drawn by a photo of a deer—a buck hanging around these parts—with antlers of outlandish size. I tend not to see trophy deer as white whales. Points and spreads are nice but not my obsession. Still, that buck in the photo…

Thus, the confliction commences. If given the opportunity, would I end the life of a majestic buck, or would I be fulfilled taking photos of the deer as it ambles through its kingdom?

I push the decision aside, imbedding myself in the autumnal woodland. Squirrels scurry past, stopping to thrust their mouths in the leaves, all the time unaware they are being watched. A crow flies over, four “caws” and then a pause, and then four more.

Leaves float past my elevated position, mostly at an even pace but then suddenly in a dizzying swirl when the wind at my back forces its way through the treetops. I hear the gust coming before the leaves feel its push.

It’s cloudy this morning, as cloudy as my commitment to the hunt. Wait, that’s not entirely true. My passion to hunt burns as wildly as ever. But the passion to kill has weakened to a flicker. I know all the justifications for ending a deer’s life, but I also know the feeling of walking up to a wild animal, limp on the ground from the impact of my arrow, my decision.

I am not alone. In “Meditations on Hunting,” Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett wrote, “Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscious when faced with the death he is about to inflict on the enchanting animal.”

I have seen deer die in ways more suffering than by hunting—smashed on the highway, snared on a barbed wire fence, clawed by predators, impaled by their own species, and starved in a winter deer yard. So who can say that death by the hunter’s blazing bullet or swift arrow is less humane?

I also know the arguments for paring the herd, including lowering collisions with vehicles, crop damage, deforestation by overbrowsing, and the odds of lack of food for too many deer in a winter too harsh. And yet, my conscious is haunted by my inconsistency, my tendency to play favorites. I wouldn’t think of killing a chipmunk in the yard. But a deer? I’m fine with taking one a year for the venison, and for what I see as a need to sustain the health of the species.

Today, my conscious isn’t probed; I see no deer except for a buck walking along a picked cornfield as I arrived in dawn’s murky light. Nevertheless, I am filled; the hunt never leaves me longing. In my youth, the point of kill was the point of hunting. Now, the hunt is always a success measured in the cawing of crows, sunrays stroking the morning, birch trees glowing like lighthouses in the distance.

Amid all this, I accept death as part of the hunt, just as I accept death as a part of life. Wrote Ortega, “One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.”

As I walk out of the woods, I pass a cockspur hawthorn shrub that has held its ground since my childhood here. Only one of its scraggly, aged branches has green leaves, and on a twig of that branch hangs a single burgundy berry. It’s this hunt’s final chapter.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Heron in the haze

I lost at this pursuit game of the great blue heron a year ago. Well, it’s a game to me, probably not to the heron, who sees the photographer’s intrusion as a threat at worst, a nuisance at the least.

Last year on this flowage, which edges up to the roomy, pine-studded campground, I walked the shoreline at sunrise, stalking the heron, hoping it was somewhere near the weeds on its own stalk, that of fish. It wasn’t there, and I let down my guard, walking the weedy shoreline to where it met up with a dying weeping willow.

Before I knew it, before I could raise my camera, there was a raucous squawk above me, and a great blue heron dropped from the high branches, swooshing away from me in an awkward pumping of wings. It quickly put branches and distance between us; there was no photo to take.

Now, it’s another August, its first days bookmarked by sunrises and sunsets in a reddish haze. It makes for good photos, but not so good air quality. Canada’s wildfires, 500 and more miles away, are a visible lesson in how we are linked by natural events on this globe, including smoke riding the jet stream.

In the dew-soaked morning, as a burnt-orange sunrise from burnt forests slips through this campground’s tall white pines, a doe and her fawn feed on red clover in a field. They dash into the brush, wary of a walker. I see a heron along the shoreline. I take some photos from afar, then decide against an approach, leaving the heron to its morning routine as a light cover of fog lifts to meet the smokey haze.

Does wildfire smoke affect wildlife? Birds, for sure, say wildlife biologists. There’s the resident great blue heron on this flowage—a river widened by a dam—along with Canada geese. A pair of osprey hover above the water, their nest farther up the river. A cardinal tweets unseen from high in the pines, and a killdeer races along the mowed edge of the campground.

Birds, unlike mammals, direct air through their lungs to extract oxygen, exchanging most of the air in their lungs with every breath. It’s a highly-efficient way to breath, but also makes birds more susceptible to poor air quality.

Birds may decrease activity in the worst periods of smoke. Some will alter their migration. Up the road late yesterday, purple martins whirled above tall corn, picking off insects while flocking and feeding—fueling for migration to Brazil. Will they leave early, winging south, outflying the smoke?

Summer rolls on, as does the sunny morning. I look down, a spot of green at my feet catching my eye. It’s an acorn of the pin oak, which thrives in damp habitat; here, pin oaks grow out of the riverbank. The acorn is dull green with a brown flat cap appearing too small for the nut, as do all pin acorn caps.

What knocked the acorn from the tree so early, before it browned and ripened? A squirrel? Squirrels will snatch green acorns to hide them away. The squirrels can’t wait, impatient for autumn, as am I.

The trail follows the river’s steep bank. Above me rises a wall of sandstone, below me are glimpses of the river through trees and brush. I stop to peek at a smooth softshell turtle atop the end of a log in the water. Its tubular, pig-like snout pokes out from under its roundish smooth shell, about a foot across and covered with leather-like skin. The shell is as smooth as the flowage’s surface, both turtle and water glimmering in the morning sun.

Suddenly, there’s movement under the tip of the log as the turtle inches forward. I realize it’s the turtle’s feet rippling the water as they churn for momentum. The turtle slips off the log, its splash creating a swirl of sparkling dimples that inexplicably take on a purplish hue in the morning sunlight.

The smooth softshell, a turtle of the river, can stay submerged for more than an hour. I think of how easily it escaped the smoke, though unknowingly, I’m sure. Where do I go?

I take off walking toward the last spot I saw the heron, when the sun was inching above the trees, its rise pretty and peaceful, belying the raging source of its reddish hue. The heron is still there, but has moved up the shoreline. It sees me, and flies to that same bare willow where it startled me last year.

This time I approach slowly, focusing on the large bird’s silhouette among the scraggly branches. I get closer and closer, the photos get better and better. And then, just like last time, the heron squawks and swoons downward, away from me. It clears the branches and rises above the flowage, into the sepia-tinged fog and haze of another August morning.

Reading into summer

I normally come late to books, as in 10 to 30 or more years late. In the past year I’ve read, and enjoyed thoroughly, “Paddling to Winter” by Julie Buckles (published 2013), “What the River Knows” by Wayne Field (1996), and “Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon” by John Hildebrand (1988). So when it comes to recommending summer reading, I’m probably offering something you’ve long since consumed.

But I’ll add a title I’m reading right now, fresh off the press. That would be Cornerstone Press at UW-Stevens Point. “You Shoulda Been Here Last Week” is a collection of fishing stories by Ted Rulseh, just in time for the fishing season and vacations at the lake.

In down-home fashion, Rulseh spins fishing tales from his childhood in Two Rivers to his present home base on Birch Lake in northeast Wisconsin’s Oneida County. Rulseh recounts a “lifetime of angling’s joys, thrills and failures,” as the book cover puts it, with “moments of wonder, and treasured times with friends and family.”

I’ve been reeled in by Rulseh’s talent for description: “The evening wind is fading on Eagle Spring Lake, the water smoothing out so I can clearly see, in the sky’s bright reflection, the small circles of freshly sprouted lily pads floating on slender stalks. A red sun is setting into purplish haze …”

Rulseh recounts fishing for suckers as a boy, when sucker fishing was its own season, which was fleeting, lasting only a week or so, recalls the author. “When it was over, we stowed Uncle Dick’s net in the garage rafters, forgot about it, and turned to other pursuits, chiefly baseball behind the tavern.”

This isn’t a how-to fishing guide, or bragfest about fish caught, but instead it’s of everyday fishing stories with plenty of self-deprecating humor and confessions. “I had never caught a carp,” writes Rulseh. “Of all my failings as a twelve-year old, none weighed heavier than that. Being skinny and a bit of a weakling, being the last boy in the neighborhood to learn to swim, I could bear those burdens … But not having caught a carp—that wore on me.”

There is also the issue with the wife over live bait in the refrigerator—”You get those worms out of this house and keep them out”—and about the origin of the book’s title—”I can’t understand it,” the resort owner says. “The group before you was getting northerns right off the pier.”

There are the tender moments, including recounting fishing outings with his father when he was a kid. Rulseh writes of returning the favor so many years later, when “life’s circle swung around,” and the author and his three brothers took their aging and legally-blind dad fishing.

Writes Rulseh, “Before getting into the car for the trip home, Dad shook hands with each of us in turn. ‘This has been fun,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ In truth, the debt of gratitude was all ours. Dad didn’t teach us much about how to catch fish, but he did teach us to love fishing. It was and is enough.”

Introspection keeps showing up in Rulseh’s book, of how fast summers are consumed by house and yard chores, and weddings and reunions, while fishing keeps getting postponed. But with his children grown and retirement around the corner, Rulseh daydreams about when he can write three words in big, red letters on a sheet of paper and tape it to the front door. I’ll let you read what those words are.

If you enjoy fishing, if you enjoy the water and the Northwoods mindset, this book is for your summer reading. It surely is a part of mine. The book is available in bookstores in Northern Wisconsin, through online sites such as Amazon, and from Cornerstone Press. For a personally autographed copy, order through Rulseh’s website https://thelakeguy.net.

Rulseh is also the author of “A Lakeside Companion,” and “Ripple Effects: How We’re Loving Our Lakes to Death.”

Switching gears, I was invited to participate in a poetry hike last month, even though my poetry efforts have been limited. The hike took place at the 125-acre Union Conservancy, a wooded gem of eight trails in the Town of Union just west of Eau Claire. Some hiking paths rise high above the Chippewa River for stunning overlooks.

About two dozen people hiked through the early spring woodlands, following trails rising and falling along the river and into valleys, starting and ending at a campfire in the spacious parking lot. Along the hike, four readers took turns reading their piece of poetry and from their books. Ken Szymanski read a humorous piece about flying a kite with his son (a tree eventually ends up flying the kite); Elan Mcccallum read four of her introspective poems; Jessi Peterson read several nature-themed poems; and I read my “To the Creek” poem, along with a couple of excerpts from my book.

One of Jessi’s poems gives thought to the mortality of fawns, and how we can protect the raptors taking advantage of that mortality. Here’s Jessi’s “Roadkill” poem, from her chapbook “Century Farm,” available at Dotters Books and The Local Store, both in Eau Claire.

Roadkill

Fawn, only just past spots, spewing still-wet bloody foam from its nose

and mouth, maybe warm, I don’t know.

Can’t bear to notice too much.

Belly already breached, flies

have congregated on the stench,

the spilt raveling of gut.

From the stop sign half a mile away

I saw the wheeling wings, the great settling,

then ungainly upheaval into oncoming traffic.

It’s a quiet road, but not that quiet.

I could have turned off, driven south

And done no harm, but no good either.

So I drove on, past it, made a u-turn, put on my flashers.

Walking back, I stretched a stray sock onto my hand,

maybe to breathe through, but mostly to drag that

lost life off to nestle in the ditch full of daylilies.

Safe from being struck again and again by wheels,

safe for an eagle to land on and feast.

So that’s the blog, taking a bit different direction this time. Happy summer reading.

Book author Ken Szymanski reads a short story from his phone on the Poetry Hike at Union Conservancy near Eau Claire in May.

Cattail detail

In a week or two this shoreline will draw anglers soaking up spring while soaking worms to tempt panfish in shallow, warming water. The bobber watchers may not jostle for position but will surely work to outmaneuver each other for the best spots.

This morning there are no anglers on the marshy bay, covered in thin ice for at least one more day. There are, however, a lot of geese, and they do jostle, wings clashing if verbal threats aren’t taken seriously. Canada geese are in pairs, claiming nesting sites in snowy patches of cattails and reeds poking from the ice.

I’m seated tight to the shoreline. Winter is on the leave but has left its mark. Stubborn spits of snow and wet ground are covered with branches from an ice storm. Bits of garbage are strewn about, though scarlet twigs on a red osier shrub pay no mind.

Geese are paired up for as far as I can see—dozens of “gooses in deuces.” Truces of courtship appear in place, though every so often a lone goose, probably having lost its mate, wanders about. It gets chased away, its hope for a new mate dwindling; geese mate for life, until death do they part.

Today the geese walk on crumbling, darkening ice, sometimes stopping to rest their bellies on the surface or stand on one leg. I vow to sit and watch in an attempt to read their nesting behavior. I have a lot to learn.

Just when I think there is peace among the geese, suddenly one pair begins honking. Honking loud. Apparently, another twosome has come too close, though to my eye the “offenders” are simply waddling aimlessly. The honking male, slightly larger than the less irritated female, makes a short dash at the other male. They awkwardly tangle, clashing wings. Then it all quiets down again.

What am I watching? Is there already a nest I can’t see, hidden on an elevated clump of ground in the cattails? Has dogged nest defense begun? Perhaps egg laying has started. Could well be, for geese, like many birds, lay an egg a day before incubation begins, allowing for simultaneous hatching of a half dozen goslings, maybe more, maybe less.

I shift position and sharpen my camera focus, framing geese in cattails 125 feet away. But what’s this? A few feet from my feet a sleek creature comes through a platter-size hole in the ice. A river otter, dripping wet, pauses next to the bank near exposed tree roots. It sees me fumble with my camera and tripod, then it whirls and dives back down the hole, leaving me with a photo of a tail.

I turn my focus back to the bay. A bald eagle circles above, male red-winged blackbirds atop cattails trill “conk-la-REE,” and a lone duck passes over, drawing a few honks.

The geese are calm but guarded. When egg-sitting begins, they will aggressively and tirelessly fend off predators, including that otter. The geese are focused on the goal of goslings, spring’s detail in the cattails.

Note: For more essays like this, my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Icy entity of March

Morning revealed the night work of nature’s ice artist while oak leaves shimmered in the glow of sunrise. I thought about March, the month already half over, how we always seem to wish it would just end. Wish it were April.

But March is more than a bridge between winter and spring. We may have to look for its allure, but it does offer more than shrinking snowbanks and rising temperatures. I looked where yesterday’s puddle of melt had turned to ice overnight. Imagine, nature crystalized this piece for my brief enjoyment. In only a matter of hours it would puddle again under the sun’s growing power.

On this small, hard canvas was ice as smooth as a mirror reflecting the sky, and also ice textured and feathered like a bird’s wingtips. There were delicate shelves of ice, swirls (cat-ice), and wandering wavy lines, like chimney smoke on a calm morning. I stared at the icy creation, seeing a fallen bird, the eyes of a ghost’s upside-down face, and the geographic form of the Red Sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This intricate piece—one of a kind sculpted in darkness—would soon be water again, its artist in hiding, planning tonight’s design.

I returned to my coffee, where through a breezeway window my eye caught a kitchen window reflecting the morning. The glass was filled with rust-brown oak leaves—a mirrored, blurred image with a blue-sky background. Any slight movement of my head shifted the image. It was fluid, not frozen, a rolling scene of leaves preferring to move sideways, not fall.

Not yet, not in March. For March, despite home of the vernal equinox, is more winter than spring. Oak leaves hang on to winter’s very end, as do we. The leaves tumble in spring, as we fall head over heels for the season of rebirth.

Oaks, like the beeches, retain their dead leaves in what botanists call marcescence—the retention of dead plant matter. Why? There are theories, only theories stress some, since nature can be coy regarding its ways. Perhaps a spring leaf drop delivers fresh organic matter to the soil under the tree. Perhaps leaf retention protects the tiny buds that formed last fall and now wait to swell in spring, pushing off their winter protector.

But why only oaks and beeches? May it be these species are still evolving into fully deciduous trees from their evergreen roots? Yes, the beech family also includes some evergreens, whose winter needles provide us with greenness when we most need color.

We wait for spring warmth and the color palette it awakens. New life all around us, new life within us, while oak leaves colored and dried last fall wait for their demise. They make their last stand, above puddles that form and freeze, thaw and refreeze, in a month that moves us along in a frustrating tease.

April will have its own agenda—showers that puddle and not freeze, tree buds swelling into tiny leaves—while icy artwork and spent leaves are swept away in streams of spring.