I’ll have one of these:
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and one of these:
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and one of these:
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Semi-seriously, I wonder how expensive the bell jars are.
via Making Light.
Also – do not miss the most recent Curious Expeditions post – Austrian/Bavarian hunting charms. Fantastic!
You just never can tell. Sometimes the most inauspicious starting point doesn’t matter – great things happen anyway. I offer, as an example, one of my favorite Who albums: Quadrophenia. Strike one – rock opera. Strike two – joined at the hip to an attempt to market a conceptually valid, but technically unfeasible, package of hardware and content: quadraphonic sound. What should have been a gimmick turned out to be great stuff. Per Pete “Tear my nails off windmilling” Townshend:
Pete Townshend now looks back on the album with great praise. “The music is the best music that I’ve ever written, I think and it’s the best album that I will ever write.” *
Why post on The Who now? VH1 is going to show a Who documentary this Wednesday: Amazing Journey: the Story of The Who. Seeing the promo pictures got me thinking about them again – especially poor, self-destructive Keith (I looked at the photo credits, just in case).
One major quibble w/ the youngsters at VH1 – they describe a bit of Who iconography as, “classic The Who target”. Sorry, whippersnappers, my understanding is that the ‘target’ is more appropriately called an RAF roundel.
I ride a G S scooter with my hair cut neat,
Wear my wartime coat in the wind and sleet.
Like I said – World War II was still echoing loudly in 1960s Britain…
“Yes. Your breath and a buffalo fart.”
With that bit of juvenilia, we kick off a feature I’ve had rattling around in my head for some time now. Out in the world of stuff, there are objects that go together perfectly and create mental images more interesting and exciting than one would expect from simple addition (n.b. – with all due respect to Bucky, I refuse to use the s-word).
Because of the time I’ve spent recently in the southern edge of the great circumpolar boreal forest, I’m going to start with two things that mean north woods to me:
The crooked knife.
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I don’t remember where I first encountered the crooked knife – maybe McPhee’s Survival of the Bark Canoe – but since then I’ve run across them in places that make me think of cedar swamps, balsams, sphagnum, and tussock-hopping. The Hudson’s Bay Company museum in Montreal has a couple nice examples, I saw one in Old Town, but – sad to say – I don’t have one yet. If you want to know more, Mocotaugan: The Story and Art of the Crooked Knife is available on line.
Tumplines.
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Tumplines are not unique to the north woods; people all over the world use them for carrying burdens. That being said, for me they mean one thing – portaging. You can rig them on canoes – especially useful if you are paddling an old wood and canvas canoe which may not have perfectly placed thwarts (the builder assuming tumpline use anyway) – wannigans, pack baskets, barrels, you name it.
There are other things that go along with this dynamic duo: a decent axe, a pole, the afore mentioned wannigan and packbasket, a freighter pack frame (with a fresh moose rack and cape on it), a reflector oven with a pan of bannock cooking away. Woo-hoo – still plenty of time to go canoeing – the water around here isn’t close to freezing over.
Heading north yesterday, I noticed that a neighbor had pulled his Ultravan out of the barn. I popped by this morning to ask permission to take some pictures and got a surprise. I didn’t know these folks – had only spotted the Ultravan nose peeping out of the barn on previous trips past – turns out they are the folks that drive the Isetta, the Messerschmitt, and other little vehicles in the Madbury Day parade. Also, very nice people. Not only did I get permission to photograph the Ultravan, I got a lot of info about the vehicle and I got a quick tour of the basement (Daihatsu three-wheeler, France Jet, motorcycles, outboards) and the garage, where the current active project sits: a Goggomobil Dart. Pictures:
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The whole photoset is here.
The weather isn’t going to cooperate forever (in fact, the remnants of Noel are supposed to scream through tomorrow), so we went back north to the covers today.
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I hunted Boone for just a short time – turned him loose in a pocket cover with Dinah. He goes to it with a will, but when we circled back to the truck after 15 minutes, his legs were shaking. I sat down on the ground next to him and we just relaxed for a bit.
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Tamarack (aka The Larch per Python, Monty)
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Janey was wonderful. She can be frustrating – she’s field trial stock and wants to range too far for the kind of covers we hunt. If she doesn’t find birds as quickly as she thinks she should, her urge to range and self hunt grows – thus the e-collar she always wears. But, and it’s a big but, what a nose! What staunchness! She’s one of those dogs that will not release from point if you haven’t flushed the bird she knows is there. If I go in and tell her “OK” and she doesn’t move, I know I need to kick around a bit more – and be ready. She ran one big cover for an hour and a half today. Her final flourish, as we got back to the truck, was to lock up on a bird. I was 150 feet away – not too bad – it was reasonably open – and as I started towards her, a grouse went up to my left (Janey was at 2 o’clock). “Oh, crap”, said I, “the bird must have run.” She didn’t move. I kept walking towards her and a second grouse went up right where she indicated. As I swung on the grouse, I heard a woodcock go up – Janey had managed to line on the 2 birds and not bump either. I never saw the woodcock – only heard it – but I did see the grouse (yum).
The cover, just before it opened up for Janey’s last find (those aspen/poplar/popple are about 1 1/2″ in diameter and 1′ to 3′ apart):
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Dinah has come a long way in two working days. When she first hit the ground Wednesday, she was working on defining “gamboling”. By her second cover today, she was moving pretty smoothly, using her nose (she’s not sure exactly what smell is the most important, but she know it’s one of those scents) and when she bumped her last woodcock, she spun and threw a flash point. I love watching a puppy figure out birds – there’s a fit there that is sublime – the world’s best key clicking into a damn fine lock. Not to get too full of myself – let’s end on a lighter note. There are a lot of moose in the woods where we hunt. You’ll never confuse their droppings with deer turds…
I took a day off yesterday and went north to where the pa’tridge (ruffed grouse for non-New Englanders) and woodcock, she run free and wild. When I’m bird hunting, I’m not thinking deep thoughts; one of the many things I love about it is that I’m paying attention to the moment – the dog, the cover and occasionally the bird. So… nothing earth shattering to report – some pictures interspersed with some smells.
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New fallen leaves. Smokeless powder.
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Wood smoke from a distant stove.
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Peat bog funk (very different from salt marsh funk – another fave).
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Goldenrod crushed underfoot.
I wonder if Christopher Brosius at I Hate Perfume could put together a Grouse Woods scent? Anyone who knows me, knows that I am anything but metro- (the phrase ‘lipstick on a pig’ comes to mind), but some of the smells he puts together? Burning leaves? At the Beach 1966? In the Library? Hmm…
A few additional pictures (there should be more along soon) on my ‘bird hunting ’07‘ Flickrset.
