Soul of the solstice

The summer solstice eases upon us this 20th day of the sixth month with 15 hours and 38 minutes of daylight—the most of the year—as the sun takes its most northerly path in the celestial sphere, from sunrise in the northeast to sunset in the northwest.

So what to do with the longest day of the year? Look for agates in the storm-washed creek and then look for Jupiter and Saturn when the reluctant darkness finally falls after 10 p.m.

Sunrise. Share it with a cup of coffee on the quiet porch or with a fishing rod on the quiet lake as the first golden rays yawn across the tranquil waters, the silence broken only by the call of a loon.

Sunset. Should I sit quietly, watching a deer tiptoe through the corn rows or stop in the fold of ferns to query my presence. Or should I be on the trout stream, watching brookies break the surface for mayflies, and perhaps for my fascination if not my imitation?

And the long, lazy hours between dawn and dusk. What about them? I’ll watch a catbird at the bird bath, then walk a trail and make notes of brambles with green, budding blackberries.

Should I mow lawn or drive through the countryside and smell fresh-mown hay? Perhaps I’ll follow a bumblebee or butterfly, look for a walking stick—one the insect, the other a walking aid—then check the bluebird nest or pursue a myriad of matters nature is taking up as summer begins.

At 4:44 p.m. on this day, can I feel the solstice, the balance of the hemisphere, the assurance that the sun is trailing the correct path before it turns back toward autumn? Is there a solstice, a turning point, in my life? Have I reached a balance and found the right course by connecting the natural world with my inner self?

On this day, there’s plenty of time to find out.

The flow of green

Greenness flows in waves and rows now, across the yards, forests, fields and meadows of late spring. In my field of vision is green in all shades imaginable, until the hues seemingly stretch the color to infinity.

Some color experts say the hues of green are, indeed, infinite. Others put a number on green hues, that number in the thousands. Whichever, considering green light’s wavelengths, the human eye may be able to distinguish 40 hues of green, say some doctors.

I like green and how it flows in early June. Flowing like verses in a poem, connected in visual rhyme, one purpose in time, leading spring into summer.

Wrote the poet James Russell Lowell:

“And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. Whether we look, or whether we listen, we hear the murmur, or see it glisten.”

In his “Succession of Four Sweet Months,” Robert Herrick penned:

“Next enters June, and brings us more gems than those two that went before.”

Gems indeed, on days so full that darkness defers for a time to the beauty. There are gems of robin eggs and wild geraniums, blues and purples dotting the greenness. Of sulfurs and cardinals, yellows and reds dancing among the fullness of green.

The fullness is breathtaking. I stare in awe, as well I should. As William H Davies implored us to in “Leisure.”

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? No time to turn to Beauty’s glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. A poor life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

Little things in the shadows

It’s the little things that make up the big picture of nature. When we look across the woodlands, back yards and flower gardens, do we see the understory, figuratively and literally? In a reverse of the old saying: Sometimes we can’t see the trees for the forest. Yes, sometimes we should get lost in the details of tiny scenes of beauty.

I was taking photos of trilliums one morning when the shadow of a fern appeared on the flower’s white petals. I say “appeared,” for it was seemingly suddenly there, or so I thought. But it was there all along, begging me to see it, and I didn’t notice until I studied the photo composition in the camera lens.

The photo became more than that of a trillium in bloom. And though I often avoid direct sunshine in nature photography, here it worked, bursting the greens of the fern out of the darkness of the forest floor, with the red of another blooming flower in sharp contrast of the black backdrop.

We have to train ourselves to see, for nature truly does conceal its mysteries, especially its small mysteries. And so, as spring greens toward summer, what can we look for as we hike along a woodland trail or survey the back yard? There have been bumblebees in our herb garden, but until I look closely, I have no idea what sweetness they might be pursuing in early June. Lungwort? I will look.

I see white-throated sparrows in the front yard, and I know they must have a nest in the bushes next to the house. Maybe I can see their cup-like nest, only inches off the ground, with inch-long, pale blue eggs distinctively marked with blotches of reddish brown and lavender.

Is that a frog’s eyes just above the pond surface? A toad flattened out in the mulch? Ladybug beetles on hostas? Spittlebug in the green tansies? What are those dainty blossoms of soft hues on bushes every direction I turn? Oh, there’s a caterpillar on the underside of a milkweed’s emerging leaf.

What am I seeing? What am I missing?

Leeks for campers

So far I’ve left the adventure of seeking for leeks to my in-laws while Northwoods camping in late spring. I’ve also left the cleaning and cooking of leeks to my sister-in-law. But I readily partake in the tastiness of this wild vegetable.

I didn’t know much about leeks until a few years back when my brother-in-law and his wife showed me where the low, broad-leafed vegetable grew wild in the wooded area behind their rural home. I’ve always avoided mushrooms for fear of picking the wrong kind, so I didn’t think wild harvesting in spring was meant for me. I head for the natural stuff in late summer to pick blackberries and wild plums and gather butternuts.

But there they were, wild leeks with wide, green leaves rising half a foot above ground and thickening near the ground into a bundle of leaf sheaths, which disappear below the surface into a short, oblong bulb with roots. So the edible part is from the bundle of sheaths to just above the roots, I’m told. All I know is that the edible part of the wild leek smells like onion and tastes like mild onion with a hint of sweetness, however that is possible.

On our Memorial Day family camping trip, my inlaws found leeks, and they were sautéed with other vegetables in a tasty side dish to the main meal of salmon slices over a campfire. It all went well with the beverage of each one’s choice, with my German heritage coming out with my choice (always) of full-bodied beer.

I’m now reading everything I can about leeks, how they have 12 vitamins and six minerals, how they can replace all the greens and spices in a recipe, including spinach, garlic and onions, a culinary fact reinforced for me by naturalist Emily Stone of the Cable Natural History Museum.

My spring woodland hikes are now more than about wildflowers and finding what winter left behind. I’ve discovered leeks.

The Comfort of Spring

What is the comfort in the return to something familiar? Why does it feel that good to return to what we know, what we like, what is comfortable? Perhaps we are returning, in spirit or flesh, to where we were happiest.

Spring is a return, a happy return, to what we like, what we know will be pleasant, what we remember as being exciting—creeks and frogs, buds and grass, exploration along trails abandoned since last fall, save for four-legged travelers. And perhaps it explains the excitement and pleasure in another return, that of numerous songbirds who once again have chosen our yard, our tree, our box on a field post to start anew with nests and chicks and the whole propagation of the species.

The return of birds now dominates the conversation of at least the folks I hang around with. A friend calls daily to report new sightings—a loon, killdeer, bluebird and oriole. The sightings turn competitive. Who sees what first? Through it all there’s comfort in the normalcy of migration. For what if the birds didn’t return?

But somehow in all the comfort there’s a little irritation, a sticker in the stock, for birds not easily identified suddenly appear and just as suddenly flit away. It drives me crazy.

I came around the corner on a woodland trail the other day and half a dozen rust-colored birds danced away through the leafless branches. Rust-colored and 6 to 8 inches long is all I could gather. And now I wonder: Veery? Brown thrush? No matter what, they returned. They were here. I found comfort in that.

Patience in spring

The word patience came across my reading twice in the past couple of days, causing me to consider patience in regard to spring. In my birding journal that includes tidbits and quotes about birds, it’s noted that Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

Spring pretty much arrives grudgingly, haltingly every year. We wait, impatiently, through too many March and April days that are too cold, too windy, too wet, too gray. There are good days, only to have spring fever dashed suddenly with frost and flurries.

But nature is patient, on a course sometimes fast, sometimes slow but always headed for green grass, singing frogs, budding trees, nesting songbirds. Robins are a picture of patience, arriving on our lawns and then waiting for thawing soil to give up worms.

Grass perks up on a warm day, only to wait again under a light covering of snow. Walleyes wait for the right water temperature to spawn. Swans wait in field ponds before continuing their trek northward.

In “Grace for the Moment,” Max Lucado says patience is freely offered, citing a verse from the book of Galatians, “The Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience.”

With patience, we will see the joy and peace in nature and fall in love with nature, which is quite amazing every day, whether that day is chilly or warm, windy or calm, wet or dry, gray or bright with sunshine.