Overlook trees

 Horse chestnut

Muskrat love

 

It’s only 60 degrees but it’s supposed to get up to 77 today. I hear splashing, maybe a muskrat. I can’t see beyond the invasive reeds. I’m invasive, Northern European mutt. Today is Thomas Pynchon’s birthday and I’m thinking about the rat priest in V. Am I the muskrat priest meditating by the man made lake?

Maybe it’s a fish, I see a fish mucking about. Taking a risk, lots of birds, but maybe the eagle is gone, I can’t see it in the Willow tree with my bare eyes. So scary when something comes from underneath the water, it’s like unwanted unconsciousness. No sharknado today.

Not everyone gets in lightened. Ananda hung out with a Buddha for decades, and had an eidetic auditory memory and still wasn’t enlightened.

After the ecstasy, the laundry...

Walking out I came across my birder friend, and told him how freaked out I was by fish jumping out of the water, twice. He wondered if they were trying to breath, but I thought they got stuck chasing little fish in the shallows and reeds. I asked him what birds would eat the fish that seem suicidal to me, and are asking to be plucked out of the lake. He said cormorants, the sea ravens, and Osprey, the fish hawk. He hadn't seen the bald eagle that sometimes hangs out there.

Saw a bird pop out of the water, and I thought loon, and he said might be a tern, but it didn't look like any of those photos. It didn't look like a loon. Looked like a double crested cormorant. Not sure if that kind of cormorant could eat that big fish that was breaching the surface, it was bigger than a hero. I mean I know they can really open up and swallow. 

Told him how I thought this area was the valley of the ashes from Great Gatsby, but they're saying it's over where they're building the stadium off Northern, where the chop chops used to be. He said this makes sense, it's off Northern Boulevard. He thought they used to try and play baseball in this area, he was guessing. He said there are random fence posts. He said in the 7 years he'd been coming there, it's filled in with greenery, used to be more sparse.

Asked him if he saw the article in the Times about Anhinga. Someone sent it to him. I hadn't seen any but they're supposedly in Prospect Park. More evidence for global warming, he doesn't deny but sometimes you just see birds expanding their territory.

Rising waters

When the waters rise because of global warming, Willow Lake might end up being part of Flushing Bay. I've seen an estimate of 1-10 feet rising of the sea level. My home is 95 feet above sea level, but 85 would surely be in a different world. 

Birders can't deny global warming because more southern kinds of birds are showing up in New York. The Times has an article about how the Anhinga is showing up in New York City. "Anhingas in the United States generally range from the Southern states along the gulf coast to Texas, stretching into the Carolinas in the summer." They've been spotted in Prospect Park. 

There's a memoir I want to read by Camille Dungy called Soil that I want to read. (NPR)

Thoreau quotes

After rain

 

I used a stick to try and drain the puddles on the path. It didn't really work, when I came back hours later the puddles were smaller, but I think it was soaking in and evaporation. 

Met a guy birding, said he’d seen warblers. He had Sibley’s guide. He didn’t know the eagles had stayed longer this year.

Further down the path a woman got off a bike and practiced her snare drum. When I came a few hours later, she was still practicing her drum. 

 

Ranger

I came upon a ranger training a volunteer to cut invasive species. Sumac trees had vines trying to take them over, so they just clip them to thwart their attempted takeover. The reeds are invasive! It's about supporting the trees. I asked if they did the burn a few years back and she said you can’t do that in the city. 

Got a link for the stewardship program. And there's a super stewardship program.

I read the paque about Queens Valley Park and they talk about Kew Garden Hills being called Hopedale, and that Vleigh was the road to Brooklyn. Forest Hills was called Whitepot. 

Transcendentalism

 

My meditation view.

Transcendentalism was trying to shuck off restrictive Puritanical thinking gone off the rails. Too much clamping down leads to weirdness. As the beats extended the movement to hedonistic absurdity, it took a turn back into Buddhism. Not fusty Buddhism but the freedom loving Buddhism.