A Bird's Eye View

 

My younger daughter (20) is afraid of birds. She will run away if one lands near her or flies too close. It can be a weird and amusing phobia, especially now that birds are my new passion. But when I sent her this photo of a tufted titmouse at my birdfeeder in the North Country, she said, "This is not a terribly offensive bird. It has some whimsy and joy." I saw my first red-breasted nuthatches on this trip north. I wonder why you only see them in the winter? 

Most of my Christmas and birthday gifts this year were ornithological: bird books, a bird jigsaw puzzle, and of course this popular little gadget, "BirdBuddy," the voyeuristic birdfeeder that takes photos of visiting birds, and which you can even livestream to your phone.  I may never get any work done again. This is a birdfeeder that you have to charge like a cellphone. Who ever would have believed that we would see a day when you have to plug in your book (Kindles), your cigarettes (Vapes), and your birdfeeder...and when an unhinged lunatic in the White House is willing to go to war over Greenland and because he didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize?

Snowbound: Street Parking in Pittsburgh in the Snow

 

This is Highland Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A snowy street scene, so what? Take a closer look, maybe click on the photo to enlarge it. People have saved their on-street parking spots with folding tables, one of which has been knocked on its side. But there's a little convertible sportscar buried in the closest snow-mound. It's buried deep, too, in heavy snow tainted with road salt.

I always think it would be nice to keep my country place up north and maybe have just a small condo in the city, probably here in the East End. But if you live in the city, you have to get off-street parking. The snowplow is like death itself; it is not impressed with your credentials. It does not discriminate, and all come to stand before it powerless in the end. The snowplow doesn't care if you drive a $50,000 sportscar or a motorized wheelbarrow; it buries all vehicles equally.  

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Revisited

In January, 2002, I took the train out from New York to visit Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as a prospective student. I had already applied to Princeton Seminary and been turned down. It surprises most people to learn that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, founded in 1794, is actually older than Princeton Seminary, though both institutions started out in log cabins. Our original campus was in the countryside all the way out by Aliquippa. (For an old post about that location, click on this LINK.) The current campus was built in the 1950s on the grounds of the old Lockhart estate, from which many of the beautiful trees remain, especially the grand copper beeches and gingkoes--which the Lockharts brought to Highland Park from China in the late 19th century. Mr. Rogers graduated from this school and was actually an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Much has changed here since that January day two and a half decades ago, when I first laid eyes on this place. But these snowy scenes are almost exactly as I found them on that day...at the so-called "Epiphany Event," which was an open house for people considering enrollment in a divinity school. Pictured here is the library, which is a first rate research facility with archeological specimens, scrolls,  and shards of Phoenician pottery, and ancient texts in a labyrinth of climate-controlled rooms in the basement...most of which are off limits without special permission. It also has stacks and stacks full of arcane journals in German and French that no one ever, ever touches, not to mention less academic magazines and books.

Today, business called me back to the old alma mater, though I felt strangely ill-at-ease there. I have wonderful memories of my three years in seminary, but revisiting the campus today did not cause me to feel nostalgic. I just wanted to do my thing and go. For that reason, I didn't get a lot of photos.

It's a beautiful atmosphere, very conducive to pondering the big questions of life, meaning, faith, death, mystery, wonder...all the stuff you do at divinity school, while learning ancient Hebrew and how to baptize a slippery baby without dropping it. (I've never lost a baby, but don't ask me about the divorce rate of the couples I've united in holy wedlock....)

In fact, I was supposed to return here for a Chatham Baroque concert last Saturday, but I lingered too long in the North Country and missed it. I see that they rearranged the otherwise attractive chapel for that concert and still haven't put it back together--leaving the altar and pulpit and baptismal font all pushed into corners, as if they didn't belong there...

This is a master's level institution; you need a bachelor's degree to enroll. I graduated in 2005 at the age of 35. It was common in those days (and may still be) for "second career" people to go to seminary. We had 350 students back then, and there are fewer than half that number today. In fact, a lot of rooms that once hummed with life and activity now sit silent, heated, and unused--like this place, which used to be the campus bookstore and convenience store, where they also sold clerical vestments and parish registers--the dorkiest general store of all time.

I don't worry about this school's fate; it's endowed to the tippy-top of its tallest spire, which bears a rooster, not a cross. It doesn't need many students to keep on doing what it's always done. This horrific mosaic is still standing right where it's always stood, a good example of late 20th century liberal Protestant art. There's a lot more to photograph--parlors with fireplaces, lecture halls, rotundas with marble floors. It's a cool place, and most people never get to see the inside. I'm glad they've started hosting Chatham Baroque; at least the public gets to see inside the chapel.

Winter Birds

The windchimes on the birdfeeder work great: no squirrels but plenty of birds. I love seeing their tiny footprints in the snow beneath the feeder. Worrying about the winter birds recalled to mind a song that I'd heard by Loreena McKennitt back in the 90s. Turns out it's a traditional Irish song:

Oh, Bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see

Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree

For it stood on your shore for many's the long day

'Til the long boats from Antrim came to float it away

Oh, Bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand

And the more I think on you, the more I think long

If I had you now as I had once before

All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore

All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep

Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?"

For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down

And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground

An Icy Calm Before an Arctic Storm

I love winter. I really do. I mean, I love all the seasons, and winter has exceptional beauties. See how the bare trees stand out against gray skies, how the sun makes a faint appearance through the clouds and branches, casting a pallid light that seems to emanate from everywhere at once. See how the snowy mist among the dark tree trunks makes the world feel...alluring, mysterious, full of possibility. You could almost picture a moose emerging from the mists...or a band of Vikings.

What I don't like about winter is the fact that this ridiculous animal that I've been left to care for--this dog--refuses to go out in the cold, and when I pick it up and put it outside, it makes a great show of limping, but it won't wear the dog shoes I made for it or the dog coat I fashioned out of a Dollar General hoody. (I was not meant to be an animal keeper.) Also, I don't like the fact that, as a people, we've forgotten how to drive in the winter. Sensationalistic weather reporting scares people and makes them drive even worse. I don't recall many subzero days when I was a kid--in the 1970s and 80s. Those are a result of climate change--polar icecaps melting and releasing arctic air, as I understand it. But winters in those days were consistently cold, in the 20s from mid-December to mid-March. All in all, I like winter. If you go outdoors, you have the whole world to yourself. The wintry woods was so beautiful yesterday that I bundled up, took a bag-chair, and went outside to sit in -4 degrees...just looking at the skies, and the trees, and the snow.

Temps the next few days will be well below zero, and we might get a foot or two of snow. Everyone seems to think it's going to be catastrophic, and it would be if you were unhoused. I worry about the electrical grid; what happens if we lose electricity? I have no other means to heat the house. We tried to reopen one of the 8 fireplaces in our Pittsburgh house, but it was going to cost too much. The winter storm is supposed to hit tonight around 7pm, so alas, I need to hurry back to the city...back to a house where Jack Frost never paints ever-changing, monochromatic tableaux on the windows. As a kid, I truly never believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. All it took was a December visit to a Five & Dime Santa Claus to convince me that the whole thing was a hoax. I must have been 5, and I remember it right well. (C'mon, a cotton ball beard?) But I also remember marveling and believing that Jack Frost had come in the night to make icy art on the windows. He captured my imagination in a way that the other mythical beings did not. 

Oil Creek State Park: 6.5-Mile North Loop

Oil Creek State Park seemed almost...majestic…from high up on the Gerard Trail, where it followed  the eastern valley wall in the winter.  Our aim was maybe a little too ambitious.  We were going to camp out at the Wolfkiel Shelter Area in 10 degree temps.  This time my companion was an old former backpacking buddy from previous times, a fellow clergyman who hadn’t been out on the trails in three years. As the night grew closer and the weather got worse, we found ways to talk ourselves into a simple day hike, coupled with a night at my place nearby—tucked into warm beds. It totally defeated the purpose of the trip, which was to camp out in the cold with a bright, crackling fire in our shelter. But it was good, maybe even good enough.

This friend? He doesn’t impress easily. You take him to beautiful overlooks, or river gorges, or quaint little towns, all he can say is, “Huh.” He just doesn’t really take an interest in things—aside from music and ideas. How do you move to Pittsburgh from Texas and never research the place where you’re taking your young family? He took a job here, moved here, bought a nice house, and settled into the local music scene—to a degree—but he couldn’t find Pittsburgh on a map, much less the nearby places where we hike. He always, always lets me pick our hiking destination because they’re all the same to him. He looks at the beauty of this place, and all he sees is trees, and he grieves that it’s not Texas. 

Failing a winter camping trip at the Wolfkiel Shelter Area, we did a long day hike from the northern terminus of the Gerard Trail clockwise to the vista in the top photo, then backtracked to the Boughton switchbacks, took the swinging bridge across the creek, hiked up the western valley wall and took the Gerard Trail north again and back to our car. It was close to 7 miles. It was a glorious day in the winter woods. Ice cleats were very much needed. By the time we got back to the house, I was too tired to start a fire out back…so maybe it’s good that we didn’t try to camp out that night.

A Birdwatcher’s Lament

If there’s one order of animals I kinda hate, it’s rodents. I mean, I can never get enough of porcupines, though they quickly get their fill of me.  And beavers*, chipmunks, and squirrels are all pretty cool in their place, but they don’t seem to understand where “their place” begins and ends… (Actually, I love squirrels. I just wish I could hold a conference with my local gray squirrels to explain a few things, like private ownership and my desire to feed titmice and juncos, not them.) Other rodents you can keep. Mice, rats, raccoons, groundhogs. The Allegheny wood rat is endangered, and several states are trying to stabilize their populations. And while I recognize their place in the created order, I really don’t want them around. What I want is nuthatches, chickadees, downy woodpeckers. I want to feed the birds all winter. But the messy little creatures scatter the seed on the ground, and it attracts mice… The mice come into the house, which sits unoccupied most of the time. They die in traps that I set in the basement, but which I only have the opportunity to check once a week. I can often go two or three weeks without an opportunity to check the traps. (Which is gross.) Worse than that, squirrels lay waste to seed balls like the one pictured here. Baffles barely slow them down. I found an old set of wind chimes that I’m hoping will scare the squirrels away, but not the birds. Is that even possible? I guess I’ll find out the next time I go north. If this bird seed ball is still untouched, I’ll know that wind chimes work to keep both birds and squirrels away—which defeats the purpose. Wish me luck.

*See how quickly I forgive the little rodents who tried to drown my friend in an icy pond in the post below?