On My Honor

Homeward bound, we decided to take a small detour. I wanted to check out Crawdad Slough, where I have spotted an egret. She is usually hidden along the reedy edges of the shore, stock still or slowly moving toward an unsuspecting target. I saw her, recently, high up in a tree and wondered if she was building a nest. The detour was my wandering hope that Tom could see it on our way home.

There we were, chatting significantly about the insignificant, just moseying along in the late afternoon, when I saw it!  Not the egret, but, instead a sign. No. Not an omen or an octagon, saying STOP. It was a big, bright, yellow sign, just out of the corner of my eye as I drove right past it.

“Did you see that, Tom?”.

“What?“

“That sign?”

I hung a quick left into someone’s driveway and whipped my way back from whence we came.

RAW HONEY — >

The sign pointed north. As soon as I turned, there it was. Just up a drive. A big yellow box with bold black letters.

 RAW HONEY.

We pulled into the driveway and hopped out of our mocha VW with a latte interior – such a trusty traveller she is – and looked around to see if anyone was outside. I called a cheery “Hello. Anyone here?” With nary a soul in sight, we walked up to the box. It had a few latches but no lock and key, and some bold honeybees painted around it.

There we were, the ever-patient Antler Man and Penelope Pitstop (she who stops at every box) and looked to see if we could open it. We fiddled a bit with the latches, then we slowly opened one door, then the next. One must be very careful when opening a newfound box – especially one with such large bumble bees depicted on it!

Inside was a sign with explanations, and an honor system for any customer wanting a jar of honey. How nice! Honor systems are not unusual down country lanes or in rural areas, but, they are not very common hereabouts, even in our semi-rural neck of the woods.

What a surprisingly delightful discovery this was; while not a white egret, a very sweet cache of local honey.

I dutifully signed the guest sheet. We slipped our payment for our jar of Hilltop Honey in the appropriated container, closed and latched the bright yellow doors, and set back on the road-less-travelled home, where I promptly made a cup of tea with honey – and very good honey it was.

I try to buy local honey, not only to support local businesses and beekeepers, but, also because it is said that ingesting local honey helps counteract seasonal allergies. I do not know if this is scientifically true, but, I do not that my own seasonal allergies have abated since I have been using local honey. Most of the honey I buy is from this general area, usually a farm stand, appropriately called The Farm, but, none of it is from hives only four miles from our home.

So it goes; a sweetened tale of life here on the Cutoff, where small detours sometimes lead to large, snowy white birds – or honey pots and the honor system.

(I did feel, just a wee bit, that I had just discovered the Bee Tree in the Hundred Acre Woods.)

 

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The Egret – at Lake Katherine

The Egret by Mary Oliver
Every time
but one
the little fish
and the green
and spotted frogs
know
the egret’s bamboo legs
from the thin
and polished reeds
at the edge
of the silky world
of water.
Then,
in their last inch of time,
they see,
for an instant,
the white froth
of her shoulders,
and the white scrolls
of her belly,
and the white flame
of her head.
What more can you say
about such wild swimmers?
They were here,
they were silent,
they are gone, having tasted
sheer terror.
Therefore I have invented words
with which to stand back
on the weedy shore—
with which to say:
Look! Look!
What is this dark death
that opens
like a white door?

 

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Blue Heron Moments

 

There are signs of spring all around me now; frivolous fragments of life emerging from the still cold soil. What a wonderful time of renewal it is here on the Cutoff.

 

Tom and I pulled up to the Dean Nature Sanctuary on Thursday afternoon. It is a new discovery of local conservation for me. Though it is along a road that I travel numerous times each week, I had no idea of its existence. Isn’t it an unexpected gift when we discover this gems in life?

 

Just as we were getting out the car, up from the pond arose a magnificent blueish white specimen; a great blue heron! He spread his expansive wings, swooping up and away, catching my breath and taking it with him.

 

This week has been full of such blue heron moments; from the first daffodils to open, to the slow budding of trees, and the exclamatory chorus of the spring peepers in the pond. I am awash in the glee of springtime.

 

Yesterday, while at the Morton Arboretum, I pulled into a glen that is usually blocked off. There were several photographers positioned with their tripods and professional cameras and binoculars. I slipped as quietly as I could out of the car, my small, abused Nikon in the palm of my hand, and gazed as the small, blue birds dipped and dived, disappeared and came forward again in their springtime flurry of activity. I smiled as the phrase “the bluebird of happiness” came to mind. A few paused on a branch, here or there, and I captured them, forever, in my mind.

 

The daffodils were just beginning their show. Even in their prelude, they are so splendid I feel my heart applaud.

 

I headed toward Crawley Marsh, sure the peepers would be singing there. They were, but, it was a white egret that caught my eye. He came from the west and swooped and swirled in a figure eight; close then further then closer again as he danced on the wind above the water, suddenly stopping, a shiver in space, dropped straight down, breaking barely a wave, arising with his a fish in his mouth and soaring to wherever his table was set. There I stood, Yia Yia in her ancient lumber jacket, gasping “oh my”. An elderly couple scurried out of their sedan, wondering if it was the wood ducks I’d seen.

 

It’s amazing the conversations one has in blue heron moments. Have you had any lately?

 

 

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