The Crow Show
They start moving as the sun begins to go down. The first birds are so far away they look like grains of pepper against the gray sky. The crows are heading into Amsterdam for their nightly jamboree. Amsterdam, NY, like many cities and towns, is used by crows–mobs of crows–for their nightly roosting spot. And I’ve been wondering, just exactly how many crows are there? The other day my husband and I decided to find out. Just before sunset, we drove to the Riverfront Mall and parked in the parking garage, facing south with a good view of the river. We had a front row seat for the...
Read MoreStone on Stone
A few cold spring days at the Highlights Foundation at Boyds Mills, PA, for a writers’ workshop. A wonderful opportunity to learn and write. Recently the Highlights Foundation added a new building, using part of the foundations of an old barn. The new space is a cozy yet roomy classroom and meeting place on the inside. On the outside it’s a maze of intricate stonework. The lichened and weathered rocks of the old barn foundation support the newer stones. Enormous chunks of bluestone pave the classroom, the porch, even the bathrooms. The walls are mosaics of rough-hewn stones, each...
Read MoreSacred Tree
One morning in Sri Lanka. I happened to get up early, and wandered out of the hotel to see what was going on. It was in the small city of Dambulla, and our hotel was a few hundred yards away from the main road. At the crossroads, I came across what I at first thought was a park of some sort. Then I realized it was a temple. And the heart of the temple was a tree. A magnificent tree, an ancient tree. A double set of temple walls surrounded and protected it. You have to take off your shoes to approach the holy tree. The temple is right in the mainstream of life, a few feet away from honking...
Read MoreTropical Color
Tropical fruit. It appears in grocery stores like magic. Bright sparks from the tropics to brighten an upstate New York winter. With a more homely fruit like, say, apples, I grasp the idea that someone picked them, packed them, shipped them from an orchard. But somehow tropical fruit doesn’t seem like it came from an actual plant. I mean it’s hard to think of bananas as something that grows on trees. Here’s a sun-drenched banana orchard, with a handy clothesline strung through it. Every Sri Lankan town has dozens of open-air fruit...
Read MoreThe Long Brown Path: Minneriya National Park
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road… Free, the world before me The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune Henceforth I whimper no more complain no more, need nothing… Strong and content I travel the open road. –Walt Whitman A Sri Lankan national park. Actually we didn’t tread this particular long brown path afoot, which I did not truly regret—it was ninety degrees, the road was ankle-deep in mud, and the elephants in Minneriya National Park are wild animals, and human-caused elephant deaths are not...
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