Month: April 2007

Waughop Lake

Although I managed to spend one of the sunniest days this year in a jewelry workshop today, I did manage to get out for a walk yesterday when I had to pick up some medicine for Skye.

I had to drive to Steilacoom, quite a ways from home so I made the best of the trip and made a side trip to Waughop Lake since I’ve often found ducks there that I haven’t found anywhere else nearby.

I didn’t see any unusual ducks, but I managed to get much closer to several ducks than I have before.

I actually got a clearer shot of this Northern Shoveler, but I love the way this shot emphasizes it’s salient feature:

This is probably the clearest shot I’ve managed to get of a male Wood Duck, who happened along while I was quietly watching the Shoveler:

I think I actually spent the most time watching this Pied-Billed Grebe catching this small fish, which seemed huge in comparison to this relatively small bird:

All in all, it seemed like a wonderful day, despite having to fight traffic.

Granddaughter

One of my favorite Jeffers poems in Last Poems 1953-62 is this one:

GRANDDAUGHTER

And here’s a portrait of my granddaughter Una
When she was two years old: a remarkable painter.
A perfect likeness; nothing tricky nor modernist,
Nothing of the artist fudging his art into the picture,
But simple and true. She stands in a glade of trees with a still inlet
Of blue ocean behind her. Thus exactly she looked then,
A forgotten flower in her hand, those great bllue eyes
Asking and wondering.

Now she is five ears old
And found herself, she does not ask any more but commands
Sweet and fierce-tempered; that light red hair of hers
Is the fuse for explosions. When she is eighteen
I’ll not be here. I hope she will find her natural elements,
Laughter and violence; and in her quiet times
The beauty of things – the beauty of transhuman things,
Without which we are all lost. I hope she will find
Powerful protection and a man like a hawk to cover her.

I like it is because it counters what I think is Jeffers’ misanthropic poems, much as they were tempered by earlier love poems written to his wife.

But I also share his wish that my grandchildren will learn to appreciate “The beauty of things — the beauty of transhuman things.”

Of course, it could be that my appreciation of this poem was also influenced by the birth of Cory and Margaret’s first daughter, Mira Monday night:

Jeffers’ “The Beauty of Things”

Considering his misanthropic views, it’s hard for me to view Jeffers as a Romantic poet, but in a poem like “The Beauty of Things” he certainly seems to share ideas with Emily Dickinson and earlier Romantics like Keats and Shelley:

THE BEAUTY OF THINGS

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality—
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

On the most obvious level, he shares a love of nature with earlier Romantics, but a more startling idea, particularly considering many of his longer poems, is his argument that the “sole business of poetry” is “to feel/ Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural /Beauty.”

I’m not sure how “Shine Perishing Republic” or “Original Sin” would meet this criteria, but it has certainly been a guiding principle in much of my life.

Perhaps one of Jeffers’ greatest accomplishments was merely to find a way to make a Romantic viewpoint seem viable in a modern world.

Dodging the Sunshine

Though it might have been the sunniest day of the year here in Tacoma, I saw very little of it as Bob and I spent the day hiking up in the woods just north of Mt. Rainier, woods so tall and so dense that it was nearly impossible to get a decent picture.

On our first attempt we ran into so many downed trees that we were forced to turn back because the trail looked like was going to be impassable. It’s pretty clear that serious hiking or backpacking in the Pacific Northwest is going to be awfully rugged this year, and probably several years into the future as I doubt there is going to be nearly enough money available to clear all the fallen trees off the trails for many years.

Our second attempt was turned out much better, though, as the trail was nearly clear of fallen trees. It was a beautiful, if steep hike, though we only went about one and a half miles up to the first big falls.

We ate lunch by the falls and I tried desperately to get some decent shots of it, though the light was terrible and I ended up setting the camera’s ISO to 1600 at one point to try to capture something worthwhile.

Despite the sunshine, it was quite cold at 2,500 feet and it wasn’t long before I needed to get moving again because my legs and fingers were getting extremely cold, not surprising since there was still a dusting of recent snow on the falls, not to mention icicles.

Still, it would be hard to imagine a more enjoyable day testing the muscles I’ve been building at the Y, and discussing whether it was possible to capture the feel of a mature Douglas Fir forest because of the sharp contrasts in the light reaching the ground.