Runnaversary!

 July 30, 2011, was my one-year runnaversery. Having run almost seven days a week for a year, having been out in every kind of weather from weeks of icepack to sweltering 90's, I am more than a little pleased with myself for sticking with it. I've probably run almost 800 miles in the past year. Not a lot for a serious runner, but it feels good to write that. Good? It feels unbelievable, in the purest sense of the word.

I thought I'd lose weight. You'd think, reading this, that by now I'd be one of those sinewy stick women. Nah. Not an ounce lost. I gained several pounds of muscle. Oh well. But what I noticed once the soreness wore off was how much better I felt in my body. It was a revelation.

How could I not stick with it? I'm hooked, as much on this landscape and these colors, as I am addicted to the exercise.

 

Nothing is the same from day to day. Everything is different and new every time I go out. One fine morning the thistles will have bloomed.

 The colors change. Some mornings they're dull, some mornings they're glorious. I feel blessed to have this road stretching out before me, to have it almost all to myself.

I stay off the paved road. Gravel has proven much kinder to my feet and knees than pavement would be. But every morning I stop and look down at Carl's house, at the place where his beautiful leaning barn used to be. I listen for the catbird.

 Just before the birdsong died out (naturally, I'd add, for they're done breeding now), I started carrying a folded piece of notebook paper and a little pen in my pocket, and scribbling down the birds I heard singing every morning. It was a wonderful way to take my mind off the heat and the hills and the sweat and the toil. I write lots of other things on the paper, too--usually a few haikus every morning, or song lyrics, or ideas that come to me when my blood is pumping.

My personal best for the 2.8 mile daily run was 48 bird species on July 9, 2011. Because I am a nerd, I will list them here in bander's code, because anyone who knows enough to care what birds are singing on my road will probably be nerd enough to figure out what they are (Yes, KatDoc, I'm talking to you) and anyone who cares but can't figure it out can ask me. I love this list so much. It is pure, distilled essence of what makes Zick happy--getting out every morning, rain or shine, recording what I hear and see, and paying full attention to the wonders all around. Note that all these birds are breeding right around my house. That's not all that breed; the worm-eating and black-and-white warblers and many others aren't singing any more, but gee whiz! How's that for a chest full of treasure?

 EATO

AMCR

BLJA

ACFL

CHSP

FISP

NOCA

AMRE

TUTI

KYWA

RTHU

REVI

HOWA

BGGN

EAKI

INBU

EABL

HOSP

CACH

DOWO

AMGO

RBWO

EWPE

AMRO

SCTA

YBCU

YTVI

BASW

EUST

MODO

GRCA

WBNU

BWHA

BRTH

PIWO

CHSW

COYE

NOMO

BHCO

EAME

WOTH

YBCH

RSHA

WEVI

NOFL

SOSP

CAWR

EAPH  48 spp. 7/9/11  (PERSONAL BEST FOR RUN SO FAR)

It is a great regret of mine that I can't carry a camera every morning, but even the slight weight of my Canon G-11 is too much to want to haul. So on one particularly lovely misty morning I carried it along in my hand as I ran, and recorded some of the beautiful things I see every day, just to share it with you. It took hours. In the tree above is one of those beautiful things. Can you find him? If I had a soundtrack you could. Astute readers will notice that YBCH eluded me on July 9, though there were three pairs along my route. Ever-changing, never predictable. I bet I coulda broken 50 species with the chat and a raptor flyover. Oh well, next year. It keeps you thinking. Listening to birdsong, sifting one from the other, is my thing. 

A yellow-breasted chat, quacking and clicking and grunting and hooting his heart out.

I'm writing this post while waiting for Phoebe's nightly cross country training--45 minutes to the school, two hours for her training, then 45 minutes home. She loves it. And she's built for it, like a gazelle, unlike her little brick outhouse of a mama.

Whoda thunk just a year ago that running would become such a huge part of our lives? Needless to say, I highly recommend it. Yeah, I thought I hated running too--until I committed to it.

Yellow-breasted Chats

Next, New-York Historical Society's Curator of Drawings Roberta Olson pulled out the yellow-breasted chats. Oh, how did she know how I loved that painting? It was exquisite—the depth and delicacy of the nest in particular.  Not to question the master, but I’m not sure he’s got the proportions right—the female chat seems to be buried in her nest. Chats do build a big, bulky nest but she looks quite swallowed up by this construction. Nevertheless…look at the ring of rosies around that exquisite nest. Nests are very difficult to do well. This one, aside from the proportions, is irreproachable.


Here's a photo by my patient friends Richard and Susan Day that shows chats with their nest. It's a big, deep nest, but not perhaps quite as big around or deep as Audubon showed it. 

Photo courtesy of Richard and Susan Day, Daybreak Imagery

Roberta said that this work is one of her favorites, too, for the way that Audubon tells the whole story of courtship and nesting in one painting. Of course male chats would not be displaying right over an occupied nest, but she said she thinks of it more in a comic-strip way, that Audubon is telling the story of the male’s courtship, which culminates in a nest with the male feeding his mate as she incubates their eggs. You’ll see that in another painting, coming up.

Roberta pointed out that the belly-up male chat does not appear in the final print. Audubon got a lot of flak from ornithologists of the day for his exuberant poses, which he got from the living birds, as well as from the birds he wired to his drawing board. Having lived with breeding chats around our yard for 18 years, I can attest that they do fling themselves up into the air when they start their butterfly display flight. How frustrating it must have been for Audubon to have to tone down what he knew to be right and true, in order to satisfy an audience that was both more conservative and less experienced than he.

 I had a lovely ink drawing of an American redstart, flinging itself up into the air after a leafhopper, that was rejected by the ornithologist for whose species account I drew it, because “redstarts never do that.” Oh. How odd that an ornithologist would employ the word “never” when referring to the movements of our most acrobatic and agile warbler. I’ve seen redstarts fling themselves straight up, straight down in a flurry of wings and tail, turning themselves inside out—whatever it takes to catch the insect. But however much the artist grumbles, the client is always right, so I did another drawing.