Mima Mounds in July

My trip Friday to Mima Mounds south of Olympia turned out to be somewhat disappointing. First, I was greeted by a burst of gunfire that made Nisqually seem quiet. They must have been having a rifle competition at a nearby gun range, as there were numerous RV’s and tents pitched in the field next to it.

Still, the sun was beginning to break through, and this was the largest “prairie” I’ve ever seen in Western Washington. For a moment it seemed like I had been transported to Eastern Washington:

Mimar Mounds

I’d come here because the area is known for its butterflies and flowers. Unfortunately, I only saw two varieties of butterflies, a white one, and this Common Wood Nymph,

Common Wood Nymph

though the sheer number of caterpillars on this flower would suggest that the field must blossom with butterflies if you come at the right time.

Caterpillars on Yellow Flowers

There weren’t many flowers, either, and the information kiosk informed visitors that flowers start early in spring and then bloom in succession all summer long.

The dominant flower Friday was this delicate Harebell.

Harebell

Of course, I’d discovered this site in a birding book, but they’d warned that the best time to come was during the Spring and Fall migration, so I wasn’t surprised that all I saw were a few Barn Swallows.

Hopefully I’ll remember to return here next Spring or in early summer when more flowers are in bloom and there are more butterflies. You’d think by now I’d be more in tune with the seasons, but old, institutional habits are hard to break.

If the weather improves by the end of next week, I’ll be up in the mountains seeing if that’s where all the birds have gone.

R.S. Thomas “Absolution”

It’s a rather amazing poet who publicly recants his earlier poetry, but that seems to be exactly what R.S. Thomas does in this poem in “Song at the Year’s Turning” published in 1955, published three years after “Valediction,” which I cited yesterday:

ABSOLUTION

Prytherch, man, can you forgive
From your stone altar on which the light’s
Bread is broken at dusk and dawn
One who strafed you with thin scorn
From the cheap gallery of his mind?
It was you who were right the whole time
Right in this that the day’s end
Finds you still in the same field
In which you started, your soul made strong
By the earth’s incense, the wind’s song.
While I have worn my soul bare
On the world’s roads, seeking what lay
Too close for the mind’s lenses to see,
And come now with the first stars
Big on my lids westward to find
With the slow lifting up of your hand
No welcome, only forgiveness.

I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure what caused the change of heart, though it must have come from Thomas’ change in attitude toward “the cheap gallery of his [own] mind” for it’s clear that Prytherch hasn’t changed. In fact, it seems to be his very lack of change, “finds you in the same field/ In which you started” that the narrator admires.

In contrast, the narrator has worn his soul “bare/ On the world’s roads, seeking what lay/ Too close for the mind’s lenses to see,” which I’d have to interpret as a rejection of purely “rational” thought. There lies something within us that is “made strong/By the earth’s incense, the wind’s song” that cannot be perceived by the mind alone.

I suspect that the narrator sees himself as the greatest sinner because he has abandoned the natural world for the mind, whereas the farmer, at least, has not abandoned that world and, thus, has a greater chance of redemption than the intellectual.

More Shots from Steilacoom

Monday’s trip to Steilacoom was a good one for photographs. As I noted earlier, I really enjoyed standing by the water watching dragonflies hover magically over the water, but I’ll have to admit that the highlight of the day was watching this osprey dive straight into the center of the lake and catch a catfish, then proceed to nearly directly over my head with its catch:

Osprey With Catfish

I keep getting better and better Osprey shots as the summer unfolds, without any apparent effort on my part. I would never have imagined that I would see an Osprey here; I certainly haven’t before.

This shot was taken at the Tacoma Audubon society on the way home. Although there were a lot of small birds skittering about, I never managed to get a decent shot of them. As I was leaving I glanced over at a bench under a tree and noticed this strange little guy waiting expectantly, though probably not for me:

Young Stellar Jay

I would really have liked to wait around until a parent returned, but I was worried that the parent might actually have stayed away because I was standing so near. To me, there’s something strangely appealing about this disheveled little guy.

R.S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990

The first two books in R.S.Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990
“The Stones of the Field” and “An Acre of Land” offer a view of Thomas’ poetry that I never glimpsed in Collected Later Poems 1988-2000. Some of the earliest poems seem to represent the poor farmer, “Iago Prytherch his name,” as “Enduring like a tree under the curious stars,” almost as a symbol of what we should all become, or return to.

Near the end of these two collections, however, Thomas begins to doubt that this plain peasant retains the beauty he should have inherited from his natural setting:

VALEDICTION

You failed me, farmer, I was afraid you would
The day I saw you loitering with the cows,
Yourself one of them but for the smile,
Vague as moonlight, cast upon your face
From some dim source, whose nature I mistook.
The hills had grace, the light clothed them
With wild beauty, so that I thought,
Watching the pattern of your slow wake
Through seas of dew, that you yourself
Wore that same beauty by the right of birth.

I know now, many a time since
Hurt by your spite or guile that is more sharp
Than stinging hail and treacherous
As white frost forming after a day
Of smiling warmth, that your uncouthness has
No kinship with the earth, where all is forgiven,
All is requited in the seasonal round
Of sun and rain, healing the year’s scars.

Unnatural and inhuman, your wild ways
Are not sanctioned; you are condemned
By man’s potential stature. The two things
That could redeem your ignorance, the beauty
And grace that trees and flowers labour to teach,
Were never yours, you shut your heart against them.
You stopped your ears to the soft influence
Of birds, preferring the dull tone
Of the thick blood, the loud, unlovely rattle
Of mucus in the throat, the shallow stream
Of neighbours’ trivial talk.

For this I leave you
Alone in your harsh acres, herding pennies
Into a sock to serve you for a pillow
Through the long night that waits upon your span.

From personal experience I rejected Thomas’ earlier views that these poor Welch farmers, practicing farming as their ancestors had, were closer to God than the rest of us because the farmers I’ve known too often see Nature as a force to be overcome. I suspect that the less control the farmer has, the more he is subject to the vagaries of weather and natural pests, the more he sees Nature as “Enemy.”

Instead of learning from the “beauty and grace that trees and flowers labour to teach” the farmer turns to “the dull tone of the thick blood, the loud, unlovely rattle of mucous in the throat, the shallow stream of neighbours’ trivial talk,” penny-pinching money for an uncertain future rather than appreciating the beauty that nature offers for free.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been as critical as Thomas is of those who don’t see the world the way he does. That last stanza seems rather unforgiving to me.