R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 70

Yawp for Yawp

Forster's Tern @ Bolsa Chica. We traded yawps, then he flew away.

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From Cather's "The Professor's House"

Though wilfulness was implied in the line of her figure, in the way she sometimes threw out her chin, Kathleen had never been deaf to reasoning, deaf to her father, but once; and that was when, shortly after Rosamond’s engagement to Tom, she announced that she was going to marry Scott McGregor. Scott was young, was just getting a start as a journalist, and his salary was not large enough for two people to live upon. That fact, the St. Peters thought, would act as a brake upon the impetuous young couple. But soon after they were engaged Scott began to do his daily prose poem for a newspaper syndicate. It was a success from the start, and increased his earnings enough to enable him to marry. The Professor had expected a better match for Kitty. He was no snob, and he liked Scott and trusted him; but he knew that Scott had a usual sort of mind, and Kitty had flashes of something quite different. Her father thought a more interesting man would make her happier. There was no holding her back, however, and the curious part of it was that, after the very first, her mother supported her. St. Peter had a vague suspicion that this was somehow on Rosamond’s account more than on Kathleen’s; Lillian always worked things out for Rosamond. Yet at the time he couldn’t see how Kathleen’s marriage would benefit Rosie. “Rosie is like your second self,” he once declared to his wife, “but you never pampered yourself at her age as you do her.”

Hummingbirds @ HB Central Park

 

From "Death Comes for the Archbishop"

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!

Osprey and Fish

 What's An Osprey Without His Fish? When I saw him circling I first thought he was carrying a shiny plastic bag. I thought I'd taken an MP4 of him eating it (guess I flubbed that one). I also wish I'd recorded the shrieks I can only assume were the "lunch calls" to his mate (their nest is just outside Bolsa Chica, just off PCH).

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Golden Eagle (Near Seligman AZ)

Near Seligman and Kingman AZ. Off Old Route 66.
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From "Death Comes to the Archbishop"

 The ride back to Santa Fé was something under four hundred miles. The weather alternated between blinding sand-storms and brilliant sunlight. The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,—and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!

From "Death Comes for the Archbishop"

I just drove from Santa Fe to Flagstaff and I think I know this beautiful area (around Acoma) that Cather is describing. I can see the "cathedrals" but as I was driving along the I-40, I kept seeing large trains radiating out from the center of a large round station. Anyway: rivals the Grand Canyon (Herbert's "inverted cathedral").

***

From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between.

Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop"

 Back in town. On the road (since March 2), I was posting my stuff (mostly bird pics with brief commentary) only on Instagram.

Anyway, here's an interesting "clip" from Cather's novel (I have been dipping into her since Nebraska and "Death" also was part of why I went through Santa Fe):

Jacinto threw away the end of his cornhusk cigarette and again spoke without being addressed. "The ev-en-ing-star," he said in English, slowly and somewhat sententiously, then relapsed into Spanish. "You see the little star beside, Padre? Indians call him the guide." The two companions sat, each thinking his own thoughts as night closed in about them; a blue night set with stars, the bulk of the solitary mesas cutting into the firmament. The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn't think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him. A chill came with the darkness. Father Latour put on his old fur-lined cloak, and Jacinto, loosening the blanket tied about his loins, drew it up over his head and shoulders. "Many stars," he said presently. "What you think about the stars, Padre?" "The wise men tell us they are worlds, like ours, Jacinto."

Long-billed Curlew

 Long Beach. Marine Stadium. Long-billed Curlew. Another first for me.

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