Moose River Trilogy

Three friends and more. Moose River, New York.

Here

 

Poplar in full song. Moose River, New York, October 17, 2020.

Girls In The Rain

 

Turkeys near Pines Road intersection. Moose River Road, Boonville, NY. October 7, 2020.

Mah Brutha! And Alicccccce! (Part 2)

               Baby and Alice, Victor, New York. Christmas Day, 2006.

The Man! (Part 1)

       Cameron sharing twelve seconds. Moose River, New York, July 7, 2009.

Too Soon To Tell

Moose River, New York, August 30, 2020.

 

Feeling The Need For Seed

Wilson At Work. Moose River, New York, July 23, 2020.

GE Playhouse

The Cottage. Moose River, New York, August 20, 2020.

 

The Red Baron In Oh-So-Slight Repose

Reddy, Moose River, New York, August 22, 2020.

Hanging Close

Raccoons near dusk. Moose River, New York, September 1, 2020.  

 

The Owl

              Female Barred Owl. Moose River, New York, August 23, 2020.

The Red Baron

Reddy on the job. Moose River, New York. August 23, 2020.

 

Lights

Moose River, NY. September 29, 2015.

Thrush And Friends

Beers With Lilo

Just a recording of a couple minutes spent with Lilo "Liles" Jones, the four-footed person near the beer can, on the back step during one of the classic brief Moose River rains. 

To toss away the concerns of people who find themselves unable to avoid being concerned: Lilo did NOT drink the beer. No one in the making of this video drank the beer...shockingly, to some. The PBR can was picked up along the road as I was raking and was picked up by me (environmentalist-slash-free-nickel-advocate) and set on the ledge, awaiting its redemption at a local grocery store. The resulting five cents may have been put toward a fund to buy a six-pack. Or maybe not; I'm not one to account for such things in extreme detail.

Anyway, it was sunny, then it rained, then the sun returned. Somewhere in the middle of all that we sat on the Central Stoop and dug this. 

Two friends on a step, loving the rain, with birds a few feet above us. Moose River Settlement, New York, June 28, 2020.

-MJ

Walking Man, Near Dark

Red-spotted newt, Moose River, New York, July 1, 2020.

Phoebes

The View From Lilo's Bridge

As many times as I have stood on this little plot of land, and as much as I THINK I'm thinking about things, the joint never fails to startle me when I note (which I do, sometimes) my cluelessness.

This water, or the water that you see here finding its way downhill, begins its trip away pretty much within the confines of this video. Raindrops fall and springs rise and gather until something compels them to move. I suppose it's gravity, but who am I to say for sure?

The collected drops gather and slide downhill, passing from the Bog under Lilo's Bridge to join the Fen. And here's where things seem to look stable; where it seems the water has settled. But Nooooo!, as John Belushi would admonish; it doesn't stay long--not all of it anyway--but continues back past property lines and other imagined boundaries. Somewhere back behind any place I've ever been it gathers and becomes Fall Brook. Then it gains friends on the further slide downhill to the Black River. Upon arrival at that meeting spot it moves west in relative calm for a while, but not for long; the whole bunch soon meets with forces even its incalculable tries at straight-ahead haven't managed and turns north. It rolls through (sometimes roars through; sometimes floods out--to the occasional unhappiness of the unexpecting and not-yet-appreciative) the valley that bears its name. It moves north, skirting the western edge of Tug Hill...meanwhile picking up untold gallons of hopeful momentum on the way. At Lyons Falls the Black and Moose rivers do the confluence thing, offering a great example of teamwork. (When they join, it is a SCENE, man!) They continue north for a while, mostly at an easy pace in the eyes and minds of anyone who's never had to stop the travel, which is almost everyone so it's cool. And near the end of the narrower part of the water's ride it turns left for a bit and heads out toward Lake Ontario, where it joins all the Great Lakes water awaiting its arrival before and heads east again up the St. Lawrence River, east and a whole big bunch of north as it goes past the top of New England and finds the Atlantic Ocean, wherein each droplet you see in this video, barring evaporation or sipping along the way, could conceivably end up a whole lot of places I lack the skill to consider. 

It blows my mind. I like that. 

But here's some more fun: about fifty feet from the farthest vantage point at the beginning of this video is something like a ridge. And one inch past the edge of that edge, raindrops will drain directly into the Moose River, head to Lyons Falls on the express route, and cut a bunch of miles off of their journeys.

I realize that none of this information really matters; it's not like considering it changes anything in some material manner. But thinking about it is pretty cool if you ask me. I never, until maybe twenty minutes before I started typing this, thought about the Black/Moose Divide. That seems impossible and yet it is absolutely true.

The world can get you down, but sometimes you just have to love it.     -MJ

The Kid In The Rain

                                       Moose River. June 25, 2017.

Dance With Who Brung Ya (No Worries)

Robins' eggs and nest. Moose River, USA. May 30, 2020.

Not Remotely Alone

Location! Location! Etc.!

Phoebe On Nest. Moose River, America. May 29, 2020.

The Front Comes Through

Moose River, New York, May 29, 2020. And yes: the rain added light to the scene.

Home! Home! Finally Home!

Great Crested Flycatcher, Moose River, New York. June 1, 2020.

The only thing tougher than going home right now is leaving home.

Ten minutes earlier heading back into the world of whatever isn't home is, and I don't see this kid and friends. And they don't see me either. 

I hope they're smarter than I and hang a while. I'll be back soon if I can and look forward to possibilities. Almost fifteen years pass between friends like forever. But there we were, some of us. 

And I'm not kidding: ten minutes later and none of this happens.

And it did happen. 

I believe in miracles.

It Won't Be Long

The last several years I have become all too accustomed to having Winter be non-camp time. I've gotten into the routine of NOT going up late Friday night in a snowstorm, digging my way in, starting a fire, and sitting on the couch waiting to warm up.

I usually had a few beers (yeah: a few) and some Johnny Cash or other suitable tunes with me as I played the latest edition of the running game I made: see how long it takes for breaths to disappear.

It usually takes (or took) an hour or so for the condensation to disappear even an inch or two from the ceiling. It was OK, though, because I knew once it started to move to three, four, five inches from the ceiling that we were in business: an hour later, tops, the place would be 80 degrees, minimum. There is nothing better than knowing that. Not to say it wasn't all cool with me anyway; I was dressed warmly and I had Johnny or his friends blasting on the boombox I've had since 1990 (and still do), and a few beers or so. And besides, cold or hot, I'd traveled in the night to my favorite place in the world. You cannot beat that; things which seem like impediments become longed-for badges of honor in those circumstances. I wouldn't trade a second of that time for an hour anywhere else.

This video doesn't begin to explain those times. It was taken in April 2019, a cold rainy day by most standards but not those of Moose River. I've spent colder, rainier days there in July. But the fire is in the stove, it was great, and I look forward to building another fire in that same stove very soon. -MJ

The Cottage. Moose River, New York, April 26, 2019.

The Bog Baby

The picture you (hopefully) can see above this is, and I know it may be hard to make out at first and I understand why, the youngest porcupine I have ever met in my life. I met this little person on May 27, 2012, as I sat on the remains of what was a woodshed thinking of anything else but meeting this little person, who was accompanied by her or his parents as she or he investigated the terrain and trees and other difficulties of the bog, about twenty feet from me, near dusk.

This is one of the clearest pictures I got of the kid; other than some extremely grainy video (among my most loved few seconds ever even slightly caught on any camera I was holding) this is the only picture, really.  But a good writer can fill in details. Mark Twain could. Stephen Crane could. You didn't need to see the miners in "Roughing It" nor Scratchy in "The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky" through photos; you saw them completely and clearly in some other way. And while I insult those two men and myriad other provably capable people by attempting this, I will risk the failure and go ahead.

May 27 that year was dry; that is about all the details I have regarding the weather or almost anything else that day. I was at camp and am sure I had a great day, not because there might not have been some annoying intervals but because in hindsight when we can improve our memories by adjusting, limiting, adding, remembering, and forgetting, they almost every one of them become great days at camp.

It was getting close to dark, maybe a little after seven or so, when I saw the platform and decided to go out and sit and stare into the woods and think.

I should add that this is one of my favorite ways to spend time; I have surely spent thousands of hours doing seemingly nothing but sitting and staring into the woods and thinking. Said sitting, etc., also often includes talking to myself about seemingly irrelevant things sometimes, not because I think it's the place to be doing so but because they come up and I think I'm by myself and there's I guess no better place to stand or sit or walk and be discussing things amongst yourself than in the woods. I can't say I've come to too many definitive conclusions when I've practiced this, but I sometimes have, and either way it gives you a little more clarity on whatever you talk about, which I don't think can hurt. An added benefit is that there's a chance no one who might actually consider you crazy for doing it would be anywhere nearby to hear you. I highly recommend it if it's something that sounds like the right thing for you. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

But, to get back to wherever I think we were: it's near dusk in Moose River, New York, and I am sitting on a piece of plywood with big holes sawed into it, the whole thing supported by drums filled with rocks or concrete below which lies what I imagine to be Adirondack solidity, though I have no way of knowing because I've never checked. Near me were the ever-rising remains of some long-past regime, whose remnants we attacked and removed with pride and valor years ago but which seem intent upon lasting forever, in some strange legion with Earth, who (I say "who" because I am convinced Earth possesses all traits necessary to personality) pushes up ever more Gennesee Beer cans year after year, their outsides coated with paint Ralph Nader's ghost will be chasing down for damages in the afterlife, if it can, alongside pieces of chairs and pipes and the occasional tire. There's work to be done yet, is my point, and though we try to forget that as we sit outside or even when we try to accomplish some of the work, it remains that in this goal, as in all others, we shall never live half long enough to finish.

So (as they say and I do here, too) I'm out there, sitting on the drilled-up plywood floor of a former woodshed, forgetting about the emerging next mess just off the starboard side and thinking of the place next door. It had been owned and operated by a man I can honestly call a hero. He had been there long before my family showed up; he loved cats; he loved the Yankees and good music (if his radio can be trusted); and in the 14 years we were occasional neighbors my interaction with him had amounted to a series of shared waves.

If you are reading this from The Lower 48, as I call the places details like this are often misunderstood, you might be inclined to think we were cold to each other, or off-putting, or selfish, or uncaring. I don't know that there's any way to explain that the distance we kept was a terms and signs and showings of massive respect. If someone up there needs help, you absolutely do everything within your power to help them. Otherwise, if they are doing great and showing no signs of being desirous of company, you leave them alone. I can't begin to explain to you how much I love the people up there, and much of it is because of things like this. This isn't because they don't love friends and relatives; many of the people I know (including the man I am talking about) have many of them and no doubt love them dearly. I also don't mean they are unapproachable hermits; first of all, almost all of the people I think of as I type this have or had jobs where they interacted with other people all the time; secondly, I am convinced by personal experience that unless you try very diligently you will never meet a hermit who doesn't long for occasional company. And the more "reputable" a hermit, the more likely you will have to give him the big "get out," and though you won't like it, at least you'll be able to say you threw a gen-you-wine hermit out of your place, and although you were absolutely right in doing so you will feel slightly hurt at having to do it, but the hurt will be combined with wonder at the thought that you had to do it, which will eventually grow to a tiny bit of happiness that you did and eventually slight pride when, years later, you can make an offhanded remark like "I once told a hermit to go home" and enjoy the thought because you did, and you meant it. For the record: I did, and I meant it, and it makes me smile to think about it. PS-These hermits don't hold grudges. I'm not sure if that's good or bad (depends on how often you want to send them away). 

Anyway the next-door place was not owned by a hermit, so what's the difference?


Back to business: I was out there thinking about the neighbor's now just-slightly-former place, staring into the Bog when I noticed a few things moving. At first it was the sort of movement you might attribute to breeze but soon it grew too organized to be such. And at that moment of organization, though it never is clear at the moment it occurs, was showtime.

Down below me, a dozen yards away, maybe, were first two, then a few moments later three blackish forms. At first I thought they were raccoons (another species I love to see and meet up with when I can) but soon, as the tall Bog grasses separated and the cattails did the same, it was obvious: a baby porcupine accompanied by a parent. And then two parents.

I don't know how long I sat there watching, it couldn't have been more than half an hour before dark and maybe much less than that, but I forgot all about the neighbor's place and hermits and the Genny cans and everything else and just watched. I probably teared up a few times because I tend to do that when emotional things hit me by surprise. I'm sure the hair on my arms stood up as best it could because I remember it doing so.

I know it wasn't a play because none of it was made up by any human or porcupine, but it seemed that way as I sat there in the almost dark watching the baby learn the trees, climb, get confused (I suppose) when the end of a branch showed itself, sit and think a while, turn around, and try again. Mom and Dad P. were right there, and though I couldn't hear anything they said the kid kept trying out new approaches to things so they or someone must have been saying something to the babe. It was a fantastic chunk of time and space to be a witness to, and as the darkening skies made it to black I sat there watching until the light gave out, then stayed until my eyes could pretend to see them no more, and then still longer until my imagination lacked the chance of convincing me they were still there and that a stray bit of moonlight might illuminate them for just one split second more.

Then I went inside after navigating the hole-filled plywood above the rock-filled drums, all of us above whatever. And I don't remember what happened next but I'm sure I thought about it for quite a long time. I still am thinking about it, so who knows how long? 


 MJ

 

A Couple Laps Around The Pool

This picture was taken in 1975 or so. It shows you, among other certainties, that a couple little guys rode around a man's yard in a man's Fiat convertible. From the flattened grass it looks like we took more than one lap. When you are 9, or 3, or 36 maybe, there is nothing cooler than this.

This is either the least relevant post here or the most relevant. Me? I don't care. Just thinking of friends and remembering great times and wondering why if it can't last (and it sometimes seems like it can't) it leaves so many happy tracks to follow.

No one but one got to Moose River, as far as I can tell. But all are welcome should they choose to appear.

-MJ

Here Comes The Neighborhood

One of about seven Adirondack postcards I have. I love it because it's the first mountain I climbed (with my grandfather leading the way as the rest of us huffed and puffed behind him in 1973. It's also the place I huffed and puffed up last (2010ish) and reminds me I need to wheeze myself up it again soon. But the thing that hits me (being me, and neglecting the thought of Snell's Bald Mt. Rest remaining at the bottom for cold Cokes-or Heineken's, depending on things) is Colvin's tower. Big fan of Verplanck Colvin, I. Anyway, who cares? It's a hill a lot of us have scaled and it's a beautiful place. It's even an easy postcard to take a picture of; set up a sweatshirt on a bedspread after trying other things, open the flash, and hit click.

One Central Wonder

This may have nothing at all to do with Moose River, but I suspect it matters.

On June 24, 1984, before my graduation from high school, my dad gave me this watch. It had belonged to his grandfather, and my grandfather, and him, and then me. At the time I received this gift, it was not in working order so far as anyone could discern.

I loved it anyway.

Since then it has been loved, placed somewhere no one could find it for thirty-five years, found in that place (which believe me is all I wanted to know all that time: where was it?).

But last year it showed up. And last year I wound it. And last year it ran. As it did when I took this video of it tonight.

You might think I'd have all kinds of thoughts about this development, but mostly I just have questions. And those questions all go back to one central wonder: what does this watch know about time? I mean, what does it really know?

I wonder because it seems odd that I could wind it and my actions seem to have made it run again after maybe 60 years; I don't know anyone alive who can confirm having seen these hands move until recently. That's puzzling.

I also wonder because it runs fast. I looked online and found the controls to slow it down but no matter what I have done (and these are things I will do no longer) it runs fast. I would imagine not one 1898 pocketwatch in a thousand runs fast, when it spent so many years not running at all.

It leads me to further suspicions:

* Maybe the watch is trying to catch up with now, and purposely increases its speed by almost unnoticeable increments in an attempt to make up for its many years of non-ticking.

* Maybe the watch is taunting me, trying to get me to get someone knowledgeable to "fix" it.

* Maybe the watch doesn't care at all and just does what it chooses as it pleases.

* Maybe the watch is trying to show me and anyone else who notices that time is a man-made construct that really doesn't matter.

All of which is enough to give me a headache (though it hasn't yet) but there's a fifth suspicion I hesitate to mention, though it's where my heart and mind lead me:

* Maybe time was faster in 1898 than it is now.

I'm not sure that would be possible, but I can't say it isn't. It does seem like people had more to do in a hurry back then. And it also seems like those people would have measured their time by their own assumptions about its measurement; if time is truly a man-made construct then they would have to have done so. It doesn't explain why the watch can't be slowed, unless those people didn't foresee a time it would need to be so slowed as to measure now.

***

All I know is a watch made by people long passed is running 120+years after it was assembled.  I don't know how, nor do I know why, and if I never know either answer, I'm totally cool with it. Which is great, because we all know I never will.