FLAVORS OF THE MIST

Up at dawn this morning in a cloudy light, awakened by an odd crunching sound outside that had an inviting succulence to it, like a horse eating a bunch of carrots beneath my bedroom window. I got up and looked out into the dimness and there saw the ghostly shape of the Baron, enjoying a late banquet of the chestnuts that now litter the ground, he having pretty much finished all the acorns.

He would nuzzle around among the spiky hulls, his rack of tines waving in the air, until he found a free chestnut and gobbled it up, then he'd stand stock still savoring the sweetness, crunching the nut hull and all, eyes half closed with the ecstasy, zoning out every bit as deeply as I would over a big chunk of chocolate or cheesecake or apple pie let's not go there, let's get back to the Baron standing lost in the flavors of the mist, his fine antler tines all well sharpened against the tines of fellow suitors that now and then wander into in the Baronetcy as I hear now and then in the clacking of head swords up in the forest.

What puzzles me, though, now that this year the chestnut harvest has sort of slipped by us humans unnoticed in the rain and workdays, is why the bears don't come and get it, given the abundance of acorns and chestnuts we have here. I hear a lot lately about country folks all over Japan being hassled by bears whose natural diet of wild acorns and chestnuts has been seriously diminished by unfavorable weather, so there's frequent news of bears wandering into human habitats like mine for acorns and chestnuts...

The Baron may be noble, but royalty has no value in the wild, than which nothing is truer...

Somehow this brings to mind the happenings on Wall Street...

BARONIAL EPILOG

Speaking of the Baron, early yesterday morning before heading off to the grandies' undokai (of which more later, time and mind permitting) I was out in the garden for the first time since hurricane #15 (came right after #16!) to check things over, see what had grown and what had gone. I walked along the east side of the net fence to check the cucumbers, which hadn't fared too well, though most of them had hung in there; thence along the north side to check the goya, which had done well - very hardy against hurricanes, coming as these do from Okinawa - then, in all the massive nonchalance one carries effortlessly at such moments, I turned the corner to walk along the west side just as the multi-tined Baron stepped through my blueberry bushes to graze around my cherry tree and among my shiitake logs, when he saw me standing less than five meters away. I froze. He froze. We stood there staring at each other for about a year, both about the same height, but I without antlers.

He tried to work out what he was seeing here, on his turf, as I decided what I should be doing. No way I should run, since the Baron is the Ferrari of local animals. No way go inside the fence, where he could follow and we'd be contained together for quite an event. So I just started waving my arms and jumping up and down, shouting what I hoped was near-deer for Get out of my garden! He gazed at me with his big brown eyes for a quiet moment, deciding, then lowered those antlers and charged.

I had often wondered what would happen if he and I ever got close enough for no escape. But thought was not required now. As the Baron's hoofs pounded in my direction my body just turned and ran me faster than a parked Ferrari back along the North fence, me thinking his highness at least might not be able to make the turn so quickly, give me a microsecond in man-racing-irritated deer terms, then I'd quick-cut south along the fence for another length in which he'd gain fast... I turned my head to see how close those antlers were to the end of my days and -- there was no Baron!

I stopped to looked carefully, but he was nowhere about! Then I saw his antlers in the distance, disappearing up mountain into the undergrowth. He hadn't been charging, he'd been escaping by the fastest way possible, which had been toward me to get the quickest way around the cherry tree, then straight left upmountain away from this clearly unbalanced interloper. To cement the illusion I yelled righteous conquest stuff after him, like That’s right, you mushroom thief, you tomato eater, make tracks! And stay off my property!

Righteousness doesn't have to be absolutely right, necessarily.

TERRITORIES

While I was upstairs changing into my work clothes a few afternoons ago the Baron stopped by, elegant as you please, walked into my garden and started casually marking his territory on my territory, specifically on my momiji tree, in the corner between the blueberries and the compost. I think of garden and tree as mine in that way peculiar to humans, though the Baron knows better, as his attitude makes clear. Because in deer fact, the tree and what I call my territory comprise just a small part of his family's vast ancient holdings; they go way back in these parts, and he knows it. Facts are facts, are they not, whatever the species.

The Baron has a much bigger crown of antlers this year; he wielded them with impressive grace as he rubbed his head here and there along the multiple trunks of the low-branching tree as evidence of possession. At some point, though, he being near my vegetables, I felt I had to remind him that despite his pedigree and borderless familial heritage there were members of another species using this land who have priorities other than random forage and tree marking, but how do you just come right out and say such a thing to aristocracy with antlers.

At a loss for words, I opened the windows wide like glass wings spreading, then closed them again, then did the same again a few times, sort of being a giant butterfly, whatever that might mean to an antlered ruler, me whistling the while and making other sounds to remind him of the situation and act like I am larger than I am, which sometimes works with nobility, especially the wild kind. He paused and looked my way, trying to determine what was going on with those oddly transparent wingy things on the side of that big strange shape that the two-legged antlerless creatures have erected on this spot and go into and come out of ever since, all without his permission.

He thought for a deer while about what he was seeing and hearing, and deemed the situation an unwelcome perturbation. He casually turned, nose in the air, as nobility does in all cases, trotted back along the hedge, down the stone stairs and out onto the greater portion of his domain. The land wasn't going anywhere, as he well knew; nor was his well-marked momiji.

He paused outside the gate looking this way and that, in the certainty inherent to his lineage that all was well, by and large: he had marked his tree, he had made his point and it was sufficient; that was then, this is now. He turned upmountain, walked along the unnatural roadway for a bit until he came to a fully Baron-scented section of forest he enjoys, and became it.

 DEER GRAMMAR

Out in the garden this morning fiddling with the firewood, moving some last year's wood to the top of a less-old stack to consolidate my equity in more manageable form - energy is one commodity sector to go for in the foreseeable investment future-- where was I - oh yes, fiddling with the firewood, when I heard an odd rustling over in the far corner of our bonsai 40 acres. I looked up, focused into the shade over there and could finally make out the shape of the young scion of these parts, heir to the Baronial estates, the as-yet unnamed teenager too new to know how things work around here, unlike his father the Baron (wonder where he is?)... 

As the noble youngster strolled elegantly into the sunshine and my clear sight, still munching some of the mitsuba that he loves and that is wildly plentiful on our property, I was standing upwind of him so he could smell me, but to be sure there were no surprises at this proximity I clunked a couple of  pieces of dry cherrywood together (great sound) to let him know I was in fact physically there and was looking at him so I knew he was there too. In response he raised his head and looked at me, his young punky horns still velvety-knobbly (a scientific term), but those eyes were not at all punky.

They were more like soft, dark and unreadable. The strong, silent type. Wild. So I raised my hand and waved goodbye at him as a hint that he should depart. My deerese is poor, plus deer grammar is so dense and the inflection so subtle, he'd probably just chuckle at my efforts in that subdued deery way. I just said "Sayonara!" in the polite Japanese version of humanese, and he - understood! He paused a moment - to assert his dignity, like any teenager - then headed down the stone stairs, out the gate and across the road, where his friend the German shepherd lives and the grass is excellent. No mitsuba there, though, so it is a step down from these royal gardens, where the gardener also raises lettuce and spinach just inside the fence that one time had an open gate...

QUAKE UPDATES Day 8

What with the dirty plutonium slight-of-mind I found out about yesterday, K+T and the girls got out of there just in time. Talked to K earlier this morning for the first time since their return, she's still a bit under the weather, so today the girls’ other grandmother (who speaks excellent English, a rarity among Japanese grandmothers, and great for the English skills of the girls) is taking the trio to the Lake Biwa Museum, a great place for kids. Here’s to their new and increasingly healthy life, if the authorities wake up, stop power struggles, openly debate short cuts, eliminate pork dealing and cut bridges to nowhere (dream on! or wake up and take action). Tomorrow we’re going to drive over and bring them all back here for the day of some planning and option consideration, after we've had all the fun and catching up we can take. Next week we all go shopping and renting them a car. Can’t wait to see those smilies.

**

Interesting to watch the news networks slowly drift from the serious genuine struggle for words with which to worthily update the reality of totally unspun, even unspinnable, horrendous events, as they revert to chippy, chirpy, soundbitey, blowdried newsiness... Me too, actually in my way-- though unblowdried and not very chippy or chirpy, let alone soundbitey, I'm drifting fully back onto the mountain above the Lake, into the house and the garden... but rest assured I’m keeping a gimlet eye on the plutonium mongers and will not sit still or silent for their idiocy...

It’s always amazing, how tiring intense concern is, the more intense the more tiring... I have been focused to a pinpoint...

BUT THERE’S ALWAYS THE BARON 

Having gone out in the fresh heavy snow this morning to unflatten my lettuce, I noticed at the garden gate - which I REMEMBERED TO CLOSE the eve before yesterday -  the big hoofprints of the Baron, who apparently knows now where the gate is and stood there dancing in the snow wondering what in hell or whatever his idiom had happened to his new reality, there was consternation in those hoofy patterns, there definitely had been an opening right here, he was sure of it, that had led to succulent spinach, crunchy onions and other luxury delights unheard of in his otherwise minimalist diet, he was frustrated, didn’t care about no reactor, no uranium, plutonium, hooey... where was his version of comfort food? I enjoyed the moment.

PLUS I GOT A BUCKET

I found a bucket! At another store! A good, strong, big bucket, for holding water！And whatever! It can hold anything! It was the last one left, the laaaaast one, and I didn't have to wrestle anybody for it! There were no gasoline cans there, or flashlights either... chainsaws, two-cycle oil, duct tape, plastic sheeting-- all zeroized! But I got a bucket!

Ecstasy is surprisingly relative...

WILD NEWS

When I go outdoors these winter dawns, before I make big human footprints all over the snow I spend the first few minutes reading the wild news on that big white page, checking out the animal tracks there, surfing the feral net to see who's been by and gone from where to where, what they did while here-- the Baron, for one, always comes out of the night woods from the south, circles the house, checks out the compost pile, browses in his favorite spots, avoids the fence around the garden, noses up some green weeds and at last moves on up to his place of daytime repose in the forest. Monkeys don't move by night, so there's no trace of them, which is fine by me, no news is headline news in re the thieving furballs. Every once in a while there's a fox pacing through, sometimes a hoppy rabbit or a maundering dog, now and then a wild pig nosing around for acorns and earthworms.

Then a couple of dawns ago, just after I got up and went to check the snow level out the front windows, I saw the delicate tracks of a cat, of all things, that had paused in its travels through the night blizzard to look in at the big glass doors at the front of the house. Perhaps it had lived with humans once. While wandering the dark Siberian world the cat had leaped up onto the deck, walked along the front wall and stopped there, with snow blowing under its fur, to look into the darkness of the house and remember as we slept.

Yesterday morning, before getting a day's wood from one of the stacks, while checking the snow for the latest news I saw cat tracks in the deep snow, where the cat had emerged from the welcome snowlessness under a long stack of firewood. In traversing our land the cat was traveling from understack to understack, in between stacks bounding across the snow in giant leaps and minimal pinpointy-feet landings that said in silent invisible exclamation points: YEW!! YUCK!! YOW!! SNOW!! The tracks led at last to the snowless space beneath the shiitake logs and thence into the mountain bamboo. I know that cats in general hate snow: my neighbor's cats, for example, shudder at sight of the horrid white stuff outside the doors of their warm house; just a glance at it out the window makes them leap to loll under the kotatsu all day. But this also snow-hating cat was living in the stuff, even during the night!

As I loaded up with firewood I wondered what cat it might be that is out here at night in such storms; I couldn't recall an eccentric wandering feline; any self-respecting cat around here that has a human pet will be in the house at night sleeping next to the warmest thing available... Oh yeah-- there was that cat I saw hanging around the Baron one day in early autumn, when the big antlered guy was browsing on the compost pile; the black and white cat came up slowly, the way cats generally approach feral animals fifty times their size. The cat got within a meter or so of the white-tailed noble, the Baron lifting his head now and then to assess this mite entering his field of vision, but he kept on munching as the cat settled nearby. For a long time they just checked each other out, the Baron dining and the cat sitting and watching the big buck eat, till I as a gardening human house owner had some task to do.

There can't be one cat that watches bucks eat from close-up and another cat that wanders in snow at night and knows what windows are. Must be the same eccentric cat, out there in the night.

That's the wild news for this morning.

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU.

On an evening in late November, after a dry spell in the weather I went out to dampen the mushrooms and water the garden. It was one of those evenings poets try to capture in disjointed sensory words (Prussian blue air of chill stillness, like vodka 30 minutes out of the freezer), the ground ankle-deep in red-to-gold cherry and chestnut leaves as I walked around with the garden hose, dampening the mushrooms that were growing larger by the day.

As the Prussian blue darkened I looked up and there not 10 yards away, gazing at me and chewing on dinner, was the Baron himself, intrigued by that non-deer creature over there who was streaming from the ends of his upper limbs such interesting shapes that sounded like rain and waved around in a way he'd never seen before... He was enthralled, didn't show any sign of panic when I moved along, he just looked on intently, now and then bending down to take another nibble (he's a big fan of my compost pile with its apple cores, cucumber vines and potato peels), lifting up his big crown of antlers to look whenever I moved, watching the water stream from my hands. 

He browsed on across the ground as I continued watering, first the mushrooms, then the spinach, beans, shungiku and other  greens, shallots, chard, onions, closed the garden fence, then rustled back through the glow of leaves to put away the hose-- and there just above the Lake was a full moon rising from the far shore, a ball of sunset-red at first that slowly lightened as it rose, casting a glittering pink-gold trail across the calm waters (even though it was a blue moon all along).

One can get along very well on far less natural beauty than this... I was blessed by this largesse, let the moment keep on filling me with the rainbow on the ground, the trusting Baron, the red moon rising, the clear, brightening night, to share later with you.

BARON NOT IN BLUE

The Baron not in blue, but in the natural majesty
suited to a portrait for the hall of noble ancestors,
as kindly restored by Mark Alberding...