Frog-Strangler

That’s our landlord’s expression for the sort of weather we’re having now. I’m not sure where the phrase comes from.

We’ve had 1.62 inches of rain in the last 20 hours or so. There have been high winds, lots of snow in the mountains, highway closures, and flooding. The electricity just went out here, which is hardly unexpected in big storms like this one. I’m typing this on our laptop’s battery, and better post this before the phone goes out as well. Pica was in the middle of the letter ‘g’ on a new font she’s designing when the power loss interrupted everything.

At least we have lots of Double-A batteries…

Christmas Bird Count—A Bit

Every year a bird census is taken in winter during a two-week period around Christmas. It is the largest volunteer data collection activity in the world. Thousands of people go out in all weathers to count the birds in a given area and tally them at the end of the day. Spikes or dips in populations can be seen and hopefully explained. It’s a good and useful activity, even though it has a tendency to become an exercise in finding rarities (irrelevant to science) and competitiveness (ditto).

We were not signed up to do the Bodega Bay count this year because there seemed to be no leader; we had a dinner engagement that morphed into brunch this morning; and we had the fall-back excuse of a dodgy back and achilles tendon, respectively. We got a last-minute plea to do a very abbreviated count yesterday. This means that today we counted robins, starlings, housefinches, California quail, and turkey vultures in and around French toast with poached dried fruit in a citrus sauce at the fabulous new organic eatery in Bodega Bay, the Seaweed Cafe. Melinda and Jackie are taking January off for a well-deserved rest but will be back in February. The dinner menu is not great for vegetarians (though seems spectacular for omnivores) but brunch is superb. Incredible teas.

If any of my serious birding friends are reading this, yes, we know we’re slouches. We didn’t find the immature goshawk and we failed in our mission to find a rough-legged hawk or even a cowbird. Next year.

New Zealand as Middle Earth

This is a very belated entry to the Ecotone Wiki’s joint post on Mythic Place.

I doubt whether J.R.R. Tolkien ever visited New Zealand but Peter Jackson has ensured that it is now on the global mythic map of the 21st century. It is said that Tolkien was disappointed that England had no native myths, so he set about writing one—about an England that had long disappeared first into Enclosures and then into the Industrial Revolution. (The Arthurian legends are all of French origin.) The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion read like the Icelandic sagas that were the professor’s day job.

Claude Lvi-Strauss insists that myths are a language because they only exist in language; that they must be retold. Jackson’s retelling must count, in part because of the introduction of this landscape into the contemporary consciousness.

A quick rereading of parts of Tolkien has struck me in its almost obsessive avoidance of the latinate. Use an Anglo-Saxon word where there is one, he seems to say. Perhaps the latinate in English is less able to evoke myth than the language of Beowulf.

I wonder whether Maori New Zealand is as excited about the success of the films as everyone else seems to be. Ideas, anyone?

A Dog’s Best Christmas Present

...is to spend a good part of the day bounding across open terrain. We went today with my sister, her boyfriend, and her dog Hooper to Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline, which is a bit of open space on the east side of San Francisco Bay that is well-known to East Bay residents as a place to let dogs run off-leash. There were many dozens of dogs of all shape and variety out there today, enjoying the Christmas sunshine, some retrieving frisbees and balls, and a few going swimming in a channel leading to the Bay. Remarkably, all these dogs were getting along with each other quite well, many of them no doubt exchanging holiday wishes and email addresses. At left we see Hooper returning after venturing hither and yon.

Birds of the Coto Doana

The one full day we spent birding in Doana was calm, sunny, and warm (at least once the sun got well up). It involved ferry rides to and fro over the Guadalquivir and a long, hugely wet ford where the water sloshed up to the doors of the van we were driven around in by our guide, Jos Antonio of Discovering Doana.

Here’s our list. My highlights: stone curlew, Sardinian warbler, short-toed eagle. Numenius’ highlights: kingfisher, white stork, stonechat.

Little grebe
Great cormorant
black-crowned night-heron
squacco heron
cattle egret
little egret
great white heron
grey heron
purple heron
black stork
white stork
glossy ibis
greylag goose
wigeon
teal
mallard
shoveler
common pochard
black-shouldered kite
red kite
short-toed eagle
marsh harrier
hen harrier
sparrowhawk
common buzzard
booted eagle
osprey
kestrel
red-legged partridge
moorhen
purple gallinule
coot
red-knobbed coot
black-winged stilt
avocet
stone-curlew
common ringed plover
Kentish (snowy) plover
European golden plover
lapwing
sanderling
snipe
green sandpiper
black-headed gull
herring gull
yellow-legged gull
wood pigeon
barn owl
little owl
kingfisher
calandra lark
lesser short-toed lark
crested lark
skylark
meadow pipit
white wagtail
robin
black redstart
stonechat
redwing
Cetti’s warbler
fan-tailed warbler
Sardinian warbler
chiffchaff
great tit
great grey shrike
magpie
jackdaw
starling
spotless starling
house sparrow
spanish sparrow
serin
goldfinch
linnet
corn bunting

Medieval Interludes

At left we see Pica standing in the battlements on top of the old wall at vila. Spain is of course a good place for seeing medieval things. Given that I live in a town where old means dating back to the 1920s, this was an enjoyable thing. Of the places we visited, both vila and Toledo were replete with medieval stuff, but there was also the occasional castle seen from train or road.

And there were lots of advertisements for a certain movie entitled El Seor de los Anillos: El Retorno del Rey, the English-language version of which we just saw yesterday. We also noted that Lgolas the elf seems to be as popular in Spain as he is here. And in lieu of an elven-blade, Toledo steel would be just the thing to defend against a marauding orc or two, or so the tourist shops suggested.

We have created a gallery of photos from our trip to Spain, which may be seen here.

On Pilgrimage

One of the greatest surprises we encountered on our trip to Spain was the hamlet of El Rocío (literally, “The Dew”), which lies between Cádiz and Huelva on the western side of the Guadalquivir estuary (and the largest natural park in Europe, the Coto Doñana). The sand streets, which after so much rain prompted the driver of the bus from Seville to announce rather grumpily “no entra,” spilling us all out onto the highway to walk into the village, were a revelation. Lots of horses use these streets and they prefer sand to asphalt and cobbles.

A few weary steps (we were dragging our bags on a hand cart and it found the sand heavier going than horses do) into the village and a memory, vague enough, about the Virgen del Rocío was triggered by the ceramic tiles on walls, the shops selling “ropa rociera” (flamenco, or sevillana, dress), and the few shops devoted to devotions and religious knick-knacks. It all seemed very quiet.

In June (around Pentecost), though, this hamlet of no more than 2,000 swells to nearly a million. Pilgrims come from all over, many of them making an arduous three-day trek by horse or on foot, in colorful dress, in carts garlanded with flowers. Apparently the cult of this Virgin Mary (who demurely looks down at the child she’s holding; her attributes include White Dove and Shepherdess) is growing fast. She has devotees throughout Andalucía (where she has no shortage of competitionthe Virgen de la Macarena, de la Estrella, de la Esperanza are all local Virgins with strong followings) but also in Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Adelaide. That’s Adelaide Australia. They sing a flamenco Salve to her every Friday in Madrid, punctuated with lots of olés. Many songs are written to her (and they are songs you can dance to); the pilgrims sing them as they make the journey and around campfires in the evenings. More come every year; they are not tourists. They are pilgrims. The cab driver who drove us to the airport in Madrid on Monday morning had a medallion of the Virgen del Rocío on his dashboard.

While this might all smack of hocus-pocus (and though the cult to Our Lady of the Dew only started in 1240, there seems little doubt that its origins are pre-Christian), it is worth pausing to look at the connection of place and the holy, which defines pilgrimage and not simply devotion. If a journey is involved in the search for the transcendent, the body can become a metaphor for the act of seeking. By moving in space with effort and blisters, it is purified. The longing can grow in proportion to the time and effort it takes to get there.

Our own pilgrimage, to find the Imperial Eagle in the adjacent Coto Doñana, inevitably took on a new hue in this village of pilgrimage. (We did not see the eagle; we’ll have to come back.) It was good to be reminded, meanwhile, that this was a journey of renewal and farewell for me. We spent the fourth anniversary of my father’s death with close friends of his and held him in our memory; we connected with a child whose journey back to China (someday) might bring her some greater awareness of who she is.

It’s easy to scoff at tourists with cameras yet I hope, somehow, that travelling to distant lands will give them what they seek, in part. To yearn is human. When it’s done to clapping and guitars, though, it’s Andalucian.

Critters Of Andaluca

In Andaluca we saw many horses roaming wild in the marshes of the Doana. During our birding excursion we had to stop at one point and drive slowly around several that were happily milling about the road. The horse at left was grazing contentedly at dawn in the marsh just by our hotel in El Roco. Apparently these are all mares, and they get rounded up at the end of June each year, just after the pilgrimage.

At right is a kitten who was sunning herself in the courtyard next to the new Picasso museum in Mlaga. Nearby was a mime couple, dressed in statuesque white, the woman in 18th century garb, the man kneeling with a Cupidian bow and arrow. The kitten wasn’t quite sure what they were up to.

When we were driving down the canyon road leading to Mlaga, we stopped once for food, and were surprised to see a black spaniel on the roof of the house next door. I think he enjoyed the view.

Crossing New Mountains

In our trip to Spain I tried to stay attuned to the physiography of the countryside, noticing the geology and the vegetation. We took the train from Madrid across the Guadarrama Mountains to go on a day trip to vila, and later on went south by car into Andaluca, returning by train. Andaluca, at least the portion east of Cdiz, is quite reminiscent of Southern California: scrubby vegetation, steeply rising and folded sedimentary formations, streamcourses that are dry most of the year but flood during torrential rains. Eucalyptus trees, exotic to both places, are common and add to the resemblance. The photo at left was taken from the train going from Mlaga to Sevilla, passing through the Garganta del Chorro.

Back From Spain

Numenius and I arrived back late last night after almost 24 hours of travelling. Sorry for the blank page on Feathers of Hope for the last few days; we will be working on altering some settings.

I lived in Spain from 1964, when Franco was in full throttle, until 1979, and my parents stayed there another ten years. I haven’t been back for nearly fifteen years. Spain has prospered very obviously from membership in Europe. The infrastructure is unrecognizable, particularly the excellent and inexpensive train network. Building is going on everywhere, barely regulated, at an almost frenzied rate. But otherwise things are much the same: most people still smoke (though black tobacco seems to be going away), party hard, love life.

We were there to attend a baptism, and I’ll be writing more about this (and a lot else) later. For now, I’ll just sit with the smell that greeted us when we exited the terminal building at Madrid-Barajas: hard to define, yet so completely “Spain.” It was astonishing: garlic and tobacco were certainly there, plus the omnipresent smog, but other things too. Really good coffee, for instance (new, and horrifying, arrivals include Starbucks and MacDonald’s…). I might suggest a “Smell of Place” topic to the Ecotone Wiki.

Photos to come soon. It’s great to be home, though.