My Own Backyard

January 6, 2018 A Pugmire

Sometimes I don’t have to go any farther than my own backyard to be reminded of the wisdom of trees. On our urban half acre we have 22 varieties of trees. Within their branches we have catalogued over three dozen kinds of birds. These include the comical California quail, yellow breasted chats, and a pair of horned owls. We photograph them the best we can and look them up in our birding books. Watching the quail come sliding in along the frozen snow like chubby jumbo jets with no landing gear is good fun. Watching flickers hunt bugs or brewer’s sparrows squabble over a patch of berries is the best entertainment money can’t buy. Occasionally, a Cooper’s hawk comes in to hunt squirrel along the fence tops, but to date even the most corpulent squirrel has managed to escape.

What’s remarkable to me is that on any given day the branches of our trees are host to birds, butterflies, and bugs, while also casting a shadow for the cat in the grass dreaming of bagging one of the birds chittering above him. Despite the spats, there is room for everyone. There’s a lesson there that I try not to overthink or moralize. Sometimes I just need the unspoken wisdom of trees to get my mind right and move on.

Fun Facts

-The Earth is closest to the sun during winter

-Snowflakes fall at 1 to 6 feet per second or around 3 mph

-The Chinese plum is one of a very few plants that bloom in winter

-The tallest snowman was built in Bethel, Maine and was 122 feet 1 inch high

Quotables

“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn’t mean in winter.”

– Patricia Briggs, Dragon’s Blood

Poet’s Corner

It sifts from Leaden Sieves – (291)

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, —
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

By Emily Dickinson

Try This:

– Take a photo outside today of something that captures your imagination
– Fill spray bottles with colored water and spray paint the snow in your yard
– Build a village of mini snow people

– Look for cool patterns or reflections in puddles and take a picture – then go puddle jumping!

– What inspires you to get outside when the temperature drops and the weather turns wet? Please share your ideas here!

– World’s highest motorable road – Umling La or Umlingla Pass in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir – at 5,883 meters or 19,300 feet above sea level.

– World’s lowest motorable road – Route 90 in Israel passing along the western bank of the Dead Sea at a -423 meters or 1,388 feet below sea level (Note: there are lower elevations but this is considered the lowest motorable road.)

– Straightest Road – The Eyre Highway in Australia that is a 90 mile stretch of road without a single curve – which pales beside highway 10 in Saudi Arabia – 140 miles of straight blacktop with only a slight bend near the Emirati border.

– Most crooked road – Lombard Street in San Francisco still retains that honor according to the Guinness World Record Book – it’s 8 hairpin turns equal 1,440 degrees of curved road in only 400 meters, and it has a mandatory 5 mph speed limit.

– Longest road – the Pan American Highway that links both North and South American except for a 100 km distance called the Darien Gap – the approximate length is 48,000 km or 29,826 miles.

– Oldest road – a stone paved road in a desolate corner of Egypt linking a basalt quarry to a waterway for transportation – estimates put it at 4,600 years old.

The Roads

I stand on the windy uplands among the hills of Down
With all the world spread out beneath, meadow and sea and town,
And ploughlands on the far-off hills that glow with friendly brown.

And ever across the rolling land to the far horizon line,
Where the blue hills border the misty west, I see the white roads twine,
The rare roads and the fair roads that call this heart of mine.

I see them dip in the valleys and vanish and rise and bend
From shadowy dell to windswept fell, and still to the West they wend,
And over the cold blue ridge at last to the great world’s uttermost end.

And the call of the roads is upon me, a desire in my spirit has grown
To wander forth in the highways, ‘twixt earth and sky alone,
And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:

For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning’s birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth.

C.S.Lewis

Create a backyard treasure hunt using clues that require compass readings or rely on cardinal directions – north, south , east, west.

To make a map for players to follow print out an online Google maps picture of your yard (or park – wherever you choose to do this). Use a colored pen to mark compass points on the map so that players can orient themselves to their surroundings.

Keep instructions simple.

You can create a map for each player, leading to an individual treasure, or divide players up into teams for a team treasure hunt.

Players can use a compass, a GPS device, or phone to point them in the right direction, or if they are especially observant, their own observations of the sun.

When the treasure has been found, challenge the players to create their own treasure map. Trade maps with another player and follow the clues to a new treasure.

Favorite treasures at our house have been edibles packed in Ziplocs, but a close second was a plaster of paris turtle my mother painted in garish colors that could be buried and reburied a hundred times without altering its appearance.

Getting the Outside In

My Own Backyard

Further Reading:

Fun Facts

Quotables

Poet’s Corner

Try This: