Yellow and Ripe with Autumn

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.

Our long, dry summer is drawing to a close. Weeks of clear skies gave way last night to a steady rain. We haven't had a soaking like this since June, or May. There will be more warm days this year, without doubt, but November is already in sight, and December too.

I see autumn in the meadows and pastures, where ryegrasses and wild wheat have reached maturity, their tops all yellow and bent over with the burden of seed. The goldenrod is blooming now, taking the place of monkey flowers and penstemon.

In our garden, a second crop of carrots are showing their orange roots above the dark earth. We've seen the last of the raspberries for this year, I'm afraid, but the snow peas are still producing. Yesterday I dug up an armload of potatoes.

Continued at... Yellow and Ripe with Autumn

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Artwork: Yellow Autumn Grass and Sunset

Equinox

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.

We lie on the brink of change. Great storms are brewing. This is the week of the vernal equinox, when the Earth stands up straight to the sun before it begins to tilt again, northern hemisphere tipping outward.
   
At this moment everything hangs in balance. The hours of day and night are nearly even. There's some powerful physics at play.

I remember Oregon Coast fishermen, charter skippers and commercial trollers, standing around the bait shop scolding the weather. The worst storms and the most unpredictable catches occurred at equinoxes, they said. Nasty storm clouds would rise out of nowhere and turn the ocean black, threatening lives. Then, quick as cream in a cat's mouth, the clouds would be gone. Skies would clear. Fish would bite.

Equinoxes are times of special powers. Calendars are created around them; crops are planted by them.

Continued at... Equinox

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Out There
Artwork: Encyclopaedia Britannica 1801 Precession Equinoxes

Skipping Stones

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.

There's a place down by the river where the bank is wide and sandy. It overlooks a low-lying rock dam over which the river spills. Behind that dam, the water is flat and calm -- perfect for skipping stones across.

My son stops here every time we come by on walks or bike rides. He scrambles down to the water's edge, scavenges for flat stones just the right size to fit between his palm and forefinger. This is where he learned to skip stones.

I started skipping stones as a toddler beside a reservoir in Montana. My family spent many weekends camped along its shore. As soon as I grew bored watching the folks fish, which didn't take long, I took to skipping stones -- well away from the anglers, of course. I threw for hours.

Continued at... Skipping Stones


Michael Hofferber
The Nature Pages
Rural Delivery
Out There

Artwork: Skipping Stone Just About to Hit the Water's Surface by Michael Durham

Out Walking

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.

Night falls an hour earlier now than it did a month ago. Evening walks that once began in full daylight and concluded against a rosy red backdrop end in twilight.

I walk the better part of an hour or more each evening and sometimes in the morning too, often with my dog and occasionally with a partner. The pace is leisurely, hardly ever brisk, and frequently interrupted with opportunities to comment about the weather or the progress of someone's garden with a neighbor or passing acquaintance.

By the time I return home I have surveyed a good portion of my town and know much about its business: whose tomatoes are ripened and whose house is being painted and who's hosting a family reunion. These walks fasten me to the community like the couplings on a freight car.

Continued at... Out Walking

Michael Hofferber
The Nature Pages
Rural Delivery
Artwork: Tree Avenue in a Small Town Art 

Where Did Dogs Come From?

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.

Domesticated dogs, these creatures that fetch sticks and sit at our command, seem so common and normal that we take them for granted. They are so much a part of human life, both past and present, that it's hard to imagine a world without them.

But dogs haven't always been around. Part of the Canidae family that includes wolves and coyotes and jackals, domesticated dogs are rather new to this planet and what they've accomplished since teaming up with humans is miraculous.

In the space of just a few thousand years, dogs have changed their shape and behaviors to fit into almost every known human environment and endeavor, from Huskies pulling sleds in the Arctic to Border Collies herding sheep in Scotland and Pekinese warming laps in midtown Manhattan.

Continued at... Where Did Dogs Come From?

• Michael Hofferber
• The Nature Pages
• Rural Delivery
• Out of the Past
• Out There
• Artwork: Gray Wolf Pups

Lightning Strikes

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved.

Tonight the sky is growling. Beneath the blackened heavens a finicky breeze rattles the maple leaves and makes the pine boughs groan. A scent of rain rides the whiffs.

Without warning this darkness is penetrated by fingers of ghostly white. They grasp at the earth, its treetops and its mountainsides, ever so lightly before withdrawing into the night. Moments later, thunder rumbles.

Lightning is one of the most dramatic, uncontrollable and dangerous acts of God. A hundred times each second bolts of lightning connect with the Earth. Where they will strike, no one can say. But aside from floods, no other natural phenomenon claims as many lives or causes as much damage.

Each year about this time we hear the stories of people killed, survivors wounded and fires started by lightning. Like the teenage boy I read about who was struck while watching a baseball game. The lightning shredded his clothing, ruptured his eardrums and burned his skin, but he survived.

A man playing cricket in Kansas City, Missouri, the same week was not so lucky. The 33-year-old victim was standing in an open area far from any trees when the bolt struck him down. At 6 feet 3 inches, he was the tallest person on the field at the time.

Continued at... Lightning Strikes

• Michael Hofferber
• The Nature Pages
• Rural Delivery
• Out There
• Artwork: Lightning Bolt

Folks

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1997. All rights reserved.

Age had dimmed her vision, but Grayce Brintnall could still see herds of wild horses grazing on the hillsides. She was spending her days indoors, but her lungs still swelled with the fresh air of the open range. And while she hadn't been in a saddle for years, she could still feel the ride of a strong horse at full gallop.

A few days before her 100th birthday, I went to ask Grayce some fool questions. That's what happens to you when you get to be a centenarian.

"You aren't going to ask me those questions, are you?" (How did you live to be 100? What's your prescription for a long life? Did you think you'd live to be this old?)

"I was taught not to ask questions of people," said Grayce. "That was the law when I was a kid. You didn't ask people where they came from or why they came."

I asked my questions anyway, as people of the newspaper trade are wont to do.

Continued at... Folks

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Artwork: Cow-girl, mounted on horse