Have you ever had one of those Euwell Gibbons’ moments? Moments where you find yourself searching roadside ditches for wild asparagus or turning cattail “hotdogs” into a pancake mix, or even collecting and cooking dandelions?

Our bountiful field of yellow!

Earlier this week a friend of ours, Joelie Hicks, posted a recipe for dandelion cookies. Hmmmm?

Back in my Dubuque days with the exciting daily Telegraph-Herald, I wrote a story on a junk yard guy in his 70s who was married and, according to all involved, fathered a child with his 29-year-old wife. There was little doubt of her deep feelings for the old codger, for you could see love in her eyes as she talked of how he respected and treated her as a person. He was one of those tough exterior guys with a soft heart who acted and worked like a man half his age. After recording the interview and doing the pictures, he asked, “Say, Boy, how about I pour you a little glass of my homemade dandy-line wine?”

Those yellow petals are intense with color.

At that age I was far from being one to turn down an offered drink, so he pushed a paint-chipped chair past the prone German Shepard in his little office and reached for a label-free wine bottle, pulled the cork and filled my glass about a third full. Before jumping to conclusions, this was a little fruit juice glass. “Pour you any more, Boy, and you ain’t drivin’ back to no Dubuque.”

The old man was honest as a summer day is long, for I was challenged to make the drive even with what he poured.

Fortunately I have once again settled down with a dear woman who holds dandelions close to her heart. Actually, I find it a bit disheartening that couples aren’t asked in premarital counseling, “Which is more important to you, John and Rebecca, a field of golden dandelion goodness or to have a dandelion-clean and perfectly green lawn?”

Years ago when my brother, Mark, lived in Omaha, his next door neighbor woman became rather riled over his suspected failure to spray his backyard of the pretty yellow spring flowers. “Mam,” I said, aiming for a spot somewhere on the soft side of her heart, “have you ever heard of this new lawn technique they’re calling ‘naturalizing?’”

This was just enough to stop her rant for a precious moment.

“That’s where you plant native flowers so they will bloom to add interesting color and beauty to an otherwise boring green lawn. That was my dear brother’s intent here with his lawn. Look. You can’t call this a boring lawn.”

She stared at me for a good 45 seconds in what could be generously described as a rage of silence before turning on her heels and stomping off to her house.

Back in the present, a few days ago Rebecca asked, “Have you seen the incredible yellow in the goat pen? The bees are just loving those dandelions.” We have a rich carpet of them.

Between the two of us I’m sure we attended at least three or four meetings this past winter over the crisis facing bees and other pollinators, so we see dandelions as a bridge to our recently planted clover and hopefully the prairie flowers sure to rise in our tillable acres. And, of course, our garden. We hope to have enough blossoms around our little island of pollinator friendliness to withstand the expected GMO corn and soybeans that reportedly carry genes that are causing bee colonies to collapse. In the spirit of marital cohesiveness, I asked her permission before I took my half-cup measuring tin outside to fulfill Joelie’s recipe requirement.

Just a half cup is all you need … without the green “crowns.”

As the cookies were baking Rebecca came inside to say it was hard to see where I’d even picked the blossoms. Our son, Martin, who is here for the month, also came inside to say, “John, I don’t think you even made a dent in the dandelions out there.” Hey, I’m good!

For those just dying for the recipe, here it is: Blend together 1/2 c. butter, 1/2 c. honey, 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, then stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. dry oatmeal, 1/2 c. dandelion florets pulled or cut from the base of the flower.

Just before adding the flour and oatmeal.

All ready to drop on the pizza stone!

Bake at 375 on a lightly oiled cookie sheet or pizza stone for 10-15 minutes. I added a cup of chocolate chips just because I could, so I suppose that should read as “optional.”

All baked and ready to eat … and they were a big hit, even to Martin!

Yes, they’re rather delicious, though they don’t seem to have the same kick as the old junk dealer’s dandy-line wine. In fact, I think I could eat the whole batch and still drive all the way to Dubuque.

Not long after pausing to capture a few images of a Bald Eagle perched in a tree along the shore of Lake Minnewaska, then the painstaking process of following a farmer with a grain drill who insisted on driving down the middle of Highway 28 going through North Morris and forcing oncomers to take the shoulder and the followers to bide time, it was back on the open road once again. Back in the country on the backstretch home, and off to the west, a plume of smoke rose from the prairie.

The Bald Eagle takes off.

Fire in the prairie this time of year is considered a good thing, a time of renewal. By burning off the thick duff left behind by several seasons of prairie grass thatch, a prairie fire brings potential death to invasive shrubs and trees as well as a lush new birth to the deep rooted native forbs and grasses. A prairie, say many, is forest turned upside down. The vast vegetative portion of the plants are all underground, anchoring ever deeper into the soil profile. The smoke plume reaching into the distant sky brought a smile.

After a weekend conference of Minnesota Master Naturalists at Camp Friendship just outside of Annandale, my thoughts were generally positive from meeting with like-minded, environmentally-friendly peers. This was a nice reprieve from new reports of global warming incidents around the globe. Landslides and flooding in the Balkans. Reports and charts portraying perhaps the warmest December on record worldwide. Wildfires once again ravishing the U.S.’s Southwest, which involved a cousin who was forced to evacuate her home going into the weekend.

To the west, the plume was getting ever closer and was exhibiting that familiar profile of width. Immediately I had hopes of capturing the crew working a prairie fire photographically.

On a long drive home, the mind wanders … and mine was. Wondering about my cousin and the fate of her home; of a fire of destruction as well as one of renewal. Then other thoughts drifted in … of how our own sons will fare in an ever changing and warming world.

Will the Black Burnerian Warbler still find a home with the change in the biome species?

Global warming has been a nearly constant conference and meeting agenda item this winter. Seminars and conferences have included the threatened bees and pollinators, and we attended two different presentations by icecap explorer Will Steger. At both he showed the incredible footage from the documentary, “Chasing Ice,” showing a massive ice field suddenly and unexpectedly collapsing that was captured on film by a crew. Indeed, while wildfires threatened my cousin’s California home, news broke that a collapse of massive portions of the Antarctic ice sheet now appears inevitable and could trigger a far higher sea-level rise than once projected — up to 12 feet, or four meters — according to major new studies by University of Washington and NASA researchers.

Those who have read Jon Bowermaster and Steger’s page-turner, “Crossing Antarctica,” will realize that more than half of the book and the issues his team faced on the trip were on the West Antarctic ice sheet — which is about the size of New Mexico and Arizona combined. This won’t happen in my lifetime, since it is estimated to occur over 200 years …  a time span that, interestingly, sparked more thought from the weekend conference, again concerning global climate change.

It was during a keynote address by Dr. Lee Frelich, research associate and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Forest Ecology, that he described the expected changes in the boreal forest biome in Northern Minnesota. At one point he agreed that, yes, the boreal had migrated over time as far south as Tennessee and as deep as the northern wilds of upper Ontario. “Those changes, though,” he explained, “occurred over thousands of years, which geologically are snapshots in time. What we’re seeing now, within a century or two, has not happened so fast in the history of earth.”

Core samples taken from a Siberian lake that offer a portrait of earth over nearly three million years gave proof, he said. Frelich added the forest profile around the Boundary Waters will take on significant change over the next 30 to 50 years and maybe even sooner. “If you want a preview of what the Boundary Waters will look like by 2050, go to Granite Falls along the Minnesota River in the Western Prairie. All along the river you have the same rock formations as you find in the BWCA, and you’ll see a plant profile there now that is very similar to what we’ll see there. Scrub cedar. Burr oak. A dominance of the maple species. Prickly pear in the rock formations.” You could sense an audible murmur as that reality settled around the room.

As I turned south onto a county blacktop off Highway 28, the remembrance of the murmur was lost as the plume of smoke grew ever closer.

“For a scientist,” I remembered him saying, “these are exciting times, for we’re seeing events in our lifetimes that have historically taken thousands if not millions of years to happen. Another drought. Increased instances and severities of windstorms, and the resulting fires will complete the transition. Already the understories of the new forests have taken hold. Drought, wind and fire will bring this succession to life in our lifetimes.” In some areas of Minnesota and Ontario, he predicted, the succession might be only a summer or two in the making … depending on those three climate-driven conditions.

Outcrops and species profile of the Minnesota River valley might be the future BWCA area species profile.

Finally, on the Clinton road, as I drew mental images of Lake One with a Minnesota River plant profile, the prairie fire grew closer and closer, and finally the field appeared. There, south of the highway, a farmer was burning off the last of a wide CRP buffer strip, and was following behind the fire with a huge tiller pulled by a tracked behemoth tractor, turning the newly blackened prairie sod upside down to plant his next crop right to the lip of the drainage ditch.

As the professor said, “In our lifetimes …”

Over the past few hours we have frantically put ourselves on the front lines in the battle against a red alert freeze warning. Our main concern is the new batch of broilers we just had moved outside into the goat barn. Only a week old, the 51 chicks had already become crowded in the horse trough we use as a brooder.

Using old sleeping bags, we covered as much of the 6 ft. by 8 ft. dog kennel as possible. As we moved plants inside we discussed our efforts with hopes that the covering along with the lights will be sufficient for the chicks to survive. In all, a snow fence was affixed to the dog kennel, and then she attached galvanized roofing panels to the outside of that, and then the blankets and sleeping bags were draped over the whole thing to try to keep them warmth through the night.

Despite the concern and worry, Rebecca came back to the house from her garden in complete ecstasy. Once again her little jewels, tiny yellow warblers, were there to keep her company. The warblers, with their intense hyper activity, rarely stay put for long, and she said her efforts to capture images of the little birds with her phone were nearly impossible.

Since I am still smarting from not having my camera on the listening bench in the pathway through the grove a couple of weeks ago, I eagerly volunteered to bring my camera to the garden to see if I would have any luck. She was right. The warblers dart here and there, one second on the frame of a raised bed, the next on a cattle panel, then off to the edge of the prairie. We counted three. Perhaps there were more. Their name tags, if they wore them, were much too small to read!

For a half hour we sat in the lowering sun to watch as they flew in and away. Rebecca was nearly mesmerized. As much as I love our life on the farm, my love pales in comparison to hers. Warbler sightings and accompaniment are part of that love she has for the farm. I captured a nice picture of her as she sat watching the warblers.

Rebecca watches the warblers at the foot of her garden.

For me, it was almost as comical as if I were doing a Whack-A-Mole. “Oh, there’s one!” she’d say. “Oops.”

Living jewels are indeed fleeting.

“Oh, look! By the bale!” Bingo.

By the bale.

Fortunately the warbler bounced from in front of the bale to the lower frame of a raised bed, then skirted that more deftly than an acrobat can balance on a thin train rail. It skittered along to hop onto some of her cattle fencing. Another warbler swept in, and a third … which took a perch on the erected fence panel itself — gave us a fine show. Her garden jewels were shining all over the place.

Like all good shows, this one had to come to an end. We headed back to the house excited about our short adventure, although about halfway there thoughts of the impending freeze warning emerged.

Despite the dire possibilities, I had to smile. Are we becoming farmers? People who cannot have a conversation without worry creeping in? Years ago I did a story on a woman farmer near Gluek for the sole purpose of portraying a happy farmer. I hadn’t known her for very long, yet her conversations were constantly filled with wonder, fine accomplishments of simple tasks, descriptions of her growing crops, and usually concluding with a report of riding around her farm on her horse as a sunset approached. Every conversation was somehow positive.

And here we are on our own farm facing a freeze warning. When we go to bed tonight I’m sure we’ll both think of the chicks spending their first night in the “wilds” of the goat barn, huddled beneath lamps inside a large dog kennel covered with old sleeping bags to hopefully retain the heat. Yes, there is that. I’m also guessing we’ll both have smiles, too, as we recapture those precious moments in the garden with Rebecca’s jewels … those beautiful little yellow warblers!

From the corner of the eye I caught the flash of pure bright brown. Off to the right, across from the garden. It came while awaiting for the bucket of smelly fish fertilizer to fill with water; a mixture we were sloshing into the holes we dug for the new trees and shrubs we were planting in the grove and in strategic spots of our prairie. Yes, said Rebecca, she had seen it, too. Brown Thrashers.

We had a pair in the very southwest corner of the grove last summer. We had concerns that with our cleaning of all the buckthorn and brush from the grove over the late fall and early winter that we had fiddled too much with their habitat. So seeing the vivid brown and those long tails, and for her, hearing their song, was wonderful. Over a thousand variations of the song, according to our field guide.

Now, we await the Orioles. Friends have made reports of arrivals further down the river valley, and someone said just this morning that a pair had arrived at her home along the lake. Maybe we’re next.

Living in the flyway has many rewards, and not just in waving at those traveling through. We also rejoice in those who are returning home. Like the Brown Thrashers and colorful Orioles.

A duck in flight in the wetland.

A huge exciting moment for us came early Saturday morning while we stood in the kitchen sharing a quiet time over coffee and tea. Up in one of the woodpecker trees was a huge dun-colored blob, which sent me running for the binoculars. Meanwhile a second, more colorful mate appeared. Wood Ducks! Oh, what a close and wonderful view through the binoculars! With close proximity to two wetlands, one of our initial hopes was that we would have Wood Ducks in our grove. As we watched, the pair made a very determined and thorough investigation of trees offering possibilities, and yes, we have several.

First one would hop from one canopy to next, soon followed by the mate. As they would stand in the tree we marveled at their dexterity, of how well they stood with webbed feet. Then they would check out another. This continued for about a half hour. Maybe longer. Rebecca and I were anxious and curious. In my limited real estate searches, I doubt if I’ve ever scoured a potential neighborhood more passionately. Our weekend guests soon joined us at our big, kitchen sink window to watch the pair, although I doubt they shared our excitement.

Then, as suddenly as the ducks arrived, they departed. In our search of the grove since it looks as though we won’t be sharing our neighborhood that we now share with Yellow and Golden Winged Warblers, Red Bellied Woodpeckers and any number of other song birds. Apparently we lack enough oak trees and their favored diet of acorns. Fortunately bur oaks were among the trees we planted.

A flushed Red-Winged Blackbird in the Clinton Prairie.

Up in the wetlands we flushed a murder of Yellow Headed Blackbirds that burst from the cattails almost as a feathered bouquet of glorious yellow. Around them the Red-winged males were staunch in defense of their individual territories. Nesting will be happening soon. Same with the paired Canada Geese, who have staked their select corners of wetlands and cozy river bends, and are surely tending nests by now.

Look closely and you can see the owlet.

In the river valley we’ve noted heads bobbing in the nests of Bald Eagles, and was fortunate to have been guided to the nest of a Great Horned Owl. If one looks very closely at my photograph, you can see the well camouflaged owlet nestled inside the nest.

Our sky still has flocks of ducks flying between the wetlands, but the huge vees of geese have moved on up the flyway. Those vees have been replaced by the ballet beauty of flocks of White Pelicans. We often share our first glass of evening wine on our small deck hopeful of witnessing those magical moments of flight when the pelicans become nearly invisible before turning as a group in a contrasting flash of white against a deep blue sky.

In the nearby prairies we hear the “barks” of Pheasants, and Wild Turkeys are strutting in display. Trying to capture a display has been almost cartoonish. On two different early mornings I passed strutting turkeys in full display just down the road, and both times I was without a camera. On Earth Day morning, though, when a fog hovered over the wetlands and in the river valley, I was finally able to capture an image of two toms just over a ridge as they tried to woo nearby hens.

Two toms in a strut-off on a nearby rise.

All of which signals that, yes, spring has finally arrived. Even our acrobatic Barn Swallows have returned, which are more of a joy in flight than in how they leave the inside of our barn! We all have faults, which are mostly disregarded when you’re welcoming home members of nature’s family.

Rain driven by a staunch prairie wind battered us as Willie Rosin guided what he calls his “perfect river boat” down the Minnesota from Waterman’s Landing toward spots known though rarely spoken of publicly. We were after our favorite fish, the sweet-fleshed channel catfish, which despite it’s fine taste is also an excellent fighting fish. We didn’t know if they would be out and about in the 45 degree water, although he had broiled up a family dinner from his limit of the day before — which was a perfect warm and sunny, 70 degree day. Our morning outing offered a distinct contrast.

Willie and I were fishing together for the first time since it seemed that every invite we shot at one another last year bounced back, so I was curious of how he went about his business. Several bends down river he eased off the throttle and guided the boat behind a promising deadfall. I smiled. “I see you do it right.”

He backed the boat into the deadfall to attach an anchoring cord. Yep, the Lutheran minister knew his catfishing business on the river. “So,” I asked, “you must have moved from down south?”

Willie laughed an easy laugh. “South Dakota. Actually, I didn’t learn about catfishing until we moved here. Where to find them in the river, and also that you bleed them out before you clean them. Once you do that you have the sweetest and most flavorful and delicate white meat you can find. Just delicious.”

This isn’t news to a southerner who grew up eating catfish (synonymous with channel catfish and not to be confused with distant family members such as flatheads or bullheads), yet to hear this from a child of a tier-state where walleye is considered king was music to the ears. Within moments we each had lines in the water. The wind and rain combined to make it bitterly cold as we hunkered down to await any movement of the line. Moments later my line tightened slightly and I set the hook, and was quickly in battle with a very strong fish.

“That’s what I love about river fishing,” said Willie, reaching for the net. “You never know what’s on the line.”

My first river fish of the year was a carp. “A good smoker,” as Willie put it. And, a great battler. It was promptly put into the livewell. Shortly I had another “golden salmon” on the line, which was much heftier than the first. We figured the best smoker was already in the bank so this one was released. Last summer I had caught and smoked one about that size before our trip to the BWCA, which in my mind was just as tasty as expensive, store-bought smoked salmon.

With one of the larger carp that we returned to the water.

We chatted about people we know who needlessly kill a “rough” fish like that before returning it to the water. A good fighter, though, should be granted a measure of respect. Years ago I hooked onto an amazing fighter in the tailwater of the Granite Falls dam. It was late afternoon, and some men heading into the Legion across the river for “happy hour” stopped to watch. I didn’t know what was on the line, yet hopeful of a large channel cat or flathead. After a good 10 minutes of playing the fish in the fast water I finally brought it to the net. A large carp, probably in the 12 to 15 pound range. When the men saw it was a carp, I saw them waving it off as a joke, laughing as they entered the darkened bar room. It wasn’t a laughing matter to either the carp or myself, and after I disgorged the hook, I slid it back into the water. Then I sat down for a needed rest. Carp will do that to you.

Just up river at the Wegdahl bridge a few years later I caught about a ten pound carp on a nymph and five weight fly rod. If that doesn’t give you respect for a fish, nothing will. I was fortunate on two counts. My fly rod didn’t break, and I didn’t have a heart attack.

Willie netted a very nice catfish in the three pound range out of the snaggy deadfall, and I hooked another large carp. As we chatted about the similarities of our youths, we hooked a fish or two before eventually gliding downriver to different snags along the way. When we finally bowed to the harsh, cold wind and rain, Willie had a couple of good cats and a smoker carp in the livewell along with two of my five carp. I had also caught a fiddler. He anointed me as the Carp King, a crown I was pleased to wear.

Smoked carp fillets are a treat, for if done correctly they’re really just as tasty smoked as salmon. There are four significant keys to getting that special flavor — bleeding the fish by snipping the gills while they’re still alive, soaking the fillets in a good brine overnight, slow smoking with a sweet wood, and of course, not overcooking it. In my first effort last summer I used a simple brine consisting largely of salt and brown sugar. After an overnight soaking, the fillets were dusted with a Cajun spice before going into the bullet smoker. Although tasty, they were a little too salty for my taste. I thought perhaps the fillets weren’t rinsed thoroughly enough.

Smoke from the pecan shells escapes through the chimney of our new, secondhand offset smoker.

Online I found a recipe that was both more interesting and less salty. Recipes, of course, are like road maps … guides for an eventual adventure. In two quarts of water went a cup each of brown sugar and soy sauce, a half cup of salt, a liberal dose of fresh ground pepper, teaspoons of onion salt, garlic powder and seasoned salt (I used Tony’s Cajun spice), plus a tablespoon or so of Tabasco. The recipe also called for a cup of apple juice, which we didn’t have and I wasn’t driving an extra 20 miles to buy. After an overnight soaking in the brine, I shook off the excess as I placed the fillets onto my new, second-hand offset smoker. Soaked pecan shells were used for the smoke, with the fillets reaching glazed perfection after about two hours at 180 to 200 degrees.

Just about perfect!

Between our two “stringers,” six fillets went into the smoker, five of which are now in the freezer. The sixth didn’t last too long when company came Saturday night. Featured as the center piece on a cheese plate, we enjoyed the smoked delicacy with chilled glasses of Hinterland Vineyard’s LaCrescent. Ah, yes, the livin’ was easy for the Carp King!

In my youth a group called The Drifters rocked our Teen Town with a catchy tune called “This Magic Moment.”  A song of love, of meeting someone special, it was sang with beautiful, old Soul Town harmony.

Several times over the weekend I found myself mentally humming the chorus and music, moments of small special things. Ours was a hard working weekend of planting our recently received bare root shrubs and trees in our new orchard along with some roses along the garden we hope will detour the deer, Luise Hille’s wedding gift spruce and a colorful crab apple in the yard. Both our hard work and breaks offered magical moments.

A bit of history … when we bought our Listening Stones Farm, a classic antique hog barn was nestled in the grove. We debated about restoring it. Close to the barn, though, was a deep pit, which might have been dug to bury the barn before us. No one seems to know, yet that is where the hog barn ended, along with an imploding granary that was in the yard. The excavator set fire to the pile before covering the whole mess with tons of soil. This was where we had dragged and piled the downed buckthorn from our grove we had planned to burn.

That was a problem. That was where Rebecca planned our orchard, so after planting a cherry tree where the yurt was planned, and two pear trees further down the slope, she looked at the pile of buckthorn and said, “We don’t have enough time to burn it, and besides, we’re in a burning advisory. We’ll have to move it.”

Remember the old Pick Up Sticks game where you tried to deftly remove a long toothpick-like stick without disturbing the pile? Buckthorn isn’t toothpicks, with the branches entwined inside and out, over and under, and we three — Rebecca, our son, Martin, and I — worked for a couple of hours pulling, pleading and dragging one tree after another from the pile. In the midst of our work she pleaded with me to take a break. Perhaps she was afraid of working me to death!

So I headed into the grove for the listening bench, found on our circular path that winds through the remaining trees. After removing my hat, I leaned against the downed box elder that serves as the back rest, and was suddenly joined by a tiny and wholly colorful warbler that began flitting from branch to branch and across the path to the box elder, landing on a spike branch not five feet away. As bird watchers will attest, this is a rare happening.

That was when I first heard the musical strains of “This Magic Moment.”

Then came the cooing sounds of nearby mourning doves. Had they been singing all afternoon? Had I not heard them? As the mental music played on, I tried counting them. That’s when I noticed the sap dripping off the box elder. Sunlight slicing through the canopy caused the sap droplets to glisten like pearls.

Like pearls, sap drips from the old and bent box elder.

And so it went, little windows of nature there for the revealing.

Later, as the sun lowered in the sky, we drove into town for dinner and passed wild turkeys silhouetted in prairie grasses down the road, and deer grazing in many of the meadows. Dusk was settling in when we returned home, yet we watched was three deer crossed the road from our grove. All quite magical.

Whitetails in a nearby meadow.

We were back at it on Sunday, working to complete the plantings in the new orchard. Besides the cherry and pears, in went two plum trees, three apples and a crab apple. We each took a shovel to dig a hole perhaps 24 inches deep, with Rebecca using her special tining spade to loosen the dirt around each hole. She poured about a half bucket of water into the hole as I held the spike. Once the loose dirt had been packed around the tree, mulch was added along with more water. We bent wire cages around each tree to complete the task.

It was perhaps mid-afternoon when we threaded the last deer proof cage through a stake to keep it in place, then made our way to the house for chilled glasses of sun tea. We eased our sweaty backs onto our Adirondack chairs to rest while taking in the cobalt sky above us. We watched as ducks  and geese flew over, and even saw a redwing blackbird on one of the feeders.

“Oh, wow!” said Rebecca suddenly as she looked out over the newly planted orchard and grove to the north. “The pelicans.”

At first I didn’t see them, then suddenly, as one, an entire pod of about 20 pelicans turned with their white contrasting the deep blue of the sky. They were drifting in a one of those invisible columns of draft, alternately becoming almost completely invisible when their “black side” was turned toward us, then exploding in glaring white as they turned. If there was ever a magical moment, this was it, one that was replayed again and again.

An image of pelicans taken the following day in the setting sun. One day I’ll capture the white against the blue.

Sometimes I think of all the places where I’ve lived, each with good friends and nearby quiet places. Now, in the autumn of my life, I find our small acreage offering so much solitude and so many special moments. Someone recently suggested that this appreciation comes with my age. Perhaps. Yet, I can also remember growing up on our Missouri farm, and of the hundreds of nights I ventured off alone with my fly rod to one of the ponds, and of how easily I breathed in a love of solitude and nature, of noticing the little things and magical moments. I don’t know if this has to do with age, but I know magic. A sudden visit of a warbler. Silent, glistening pearl drops of sap dropping from a bent and bowed box elder as old as our farm. A real life mobile of suspended pelicans appearing, then disappearing, then magically exploding in a vivid white against a deep blue sky.

I’ve learned that if you can appreciate those little things … those special magic moments … you can more fully appreciate life.

Being in the flyway was truthfully neither among the criteria nor motivation for us when we decided to buy this farm situated just up the hill a-ways from Big Stone Lake. As we began carrying the buckets and boxes of discarded lath-work and crumbled plaster to the huge dumpsters we were often stopped by the skeins of geese, by both the sound and the beauty of flight as they moved from fields to frozen wetlands.

Then, on the drive back and forth from Rebecca’s house in Clinton, we watched as continuing populations of different ducks stopped on the way through. Redwing blackbirds soon took up negotiations in the cattails on the sloughs along the roadways, and in the grove, flocks of various songbirds came to rest and roost.

Migrating gulls rise from the ice at the National Wildlife Refuge.

Every day became an adventure. Rebecca saw her first merganser, and my excitement in seeing my first curlew was duly noted.

Now, a year later and with the inside work completed, we await a new migration. Over the winter I purchased a photographic blind as part of that anticipation. Already the vees of geese are flying overhead, and a couple of nights ago we watched as two huge flocks of snow geese flew overhead reflecting the golden hue of the sunset.

Someone mentioned that the redwings, which for me have traditionally been the true sign of spring, were seen just south of here. In two days of travel through the area, though, I’ve not seen a single one although there are cattails along many of the roadways and highways.

For ten years we lived in the heart of the Mississippi flyway along the Little Vermilion River just east of Hastings. The Little Vermilion cut through town, then through the near wilderness backwaters parallel with the Mississippi from Hastings to Redwing, a distance of nearly 30 river miles. This land was swampy and wild, filled with trees and backwater lakes. After more than a decade of living in Colorado, moving into the flyway was thrilling every spring and fall as new species of birds continued to find the feeders just outside our dining room table. Hours were spent watching this bird life just inches away from our plates, and really, we catered to the birds with our landscaping and plantings … as did many of our neighbors.

Small skein of geese in the morning sun.

Here in the Minnesota River flyway, which by most accounts is still part of the Mississippi, we see a much different grouping of birds. We certainly see more ducks, geese, gulls, terns and wading birds, along with the “usual suspects” among the warblers and songbirds, here than on the eastern side of the state. Last spring, by chance, one of us looked into the high canopy of the grove and suddenly realized what we were seeing wasn’t leaves but rather hundreds of birds resting from their flight.

Being outside this time of year is special, and especially for the sounds. Each sighting reminds one of that sense of comfort in greeting an old friend. “Welcome back to the neighborhood,” you want to shout. “You missed one hell of a winter.” Ah, yes, seeing them, one and all, is knowing spring is coming. In his Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote, “A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.” I’d suggest the same holds for a March afternoon.

While it’s true the flyway was neither criteria nor motivation, finding an area where the very last less than one percent of the prairie pothole biome has yet to be shadowed by the plow or drained by plastic drainage pipe was certainly in our thoughts when we bought our farm. Just over the ridge to the east, and up the hill and across the road, are two beautiful wetlands, and although this area is definitely part of the sea of summer corn that has replaced big bluestem in the prairie pothole ecology, our county has in my estimation probably the highest number of the original potholes (wetlands, sloughs or whatever noun you choose to use) in Western Minnesota.

It’s these wetlands, my choice of noun, that attracts the geese, ducks, mergansers, gulls, terns, eagles and waders, and the old farm groves, remaining oak savannas and tree-lined edges of Big Stone Lake and a few of the gullies that haven’t been dozed into field configurations, and provides refuge for the song birds. Eliminating these last remaining few pieces of the ecology would likely divert the birds elsewhere.

Redwing blackbird establishing his territory.

For now the flyway is alive, although we’re well past the days spoken of by old timers my age who remember when the prairie skies were blackened by waves of migrating redwing blackbirds. These are stories that typically begin with, “When I was a kid …” Yet we can look skyward and see the skeins of geese, sometimes several at once, some with hundreds of birds, all making announcements of an awakening spring. It is up to us to keep our ears cocked and eyes skyward as March marches on toward April.

Earlier this week while Rebecca was gone for a meeting I sat with a cat in my lap on the couch in the solarium and watched a mass of birds launch from a treeline across the field from our farm, a mass that turned suddenly to fly directly over the house. Not a sun blotter, but an impressive number. Meanwhile, skeins of geese continued to pass between the lowering sun and my perch on the couch, enough so that I finally sat the cat aside and went for my camera. And I sat for almost an hour waiting as the sun followed a slow path, and finally a quick sink, as no more skeins appeared … although I heard several pass on the east side of the house nearer the wetlands.

Spring migration, when the sky is alive with sound and feathered fury, is my favorite time of year.

Both of us have children. With luck, perhaps, they will live long past my lifetime, and even Rebecca’s. With luck, perhaps their’s will be a comfortable life, economically and environmentally.

Luck, perhaps, is nebulous, for it wasn’t even a week ago she rose from her office chair and went off into one of her classic rants about the state of earth. Though I don’t recall the exact topic, it could have been our continued and shared views on the disrespect being shown to soil in farm fields by neighboring farmers, or of the frac sand mining issues. We discuss many politically sensitive subjects, and many have to do with the environment and both the corporate and non-corporate attacks on our dear Mother Earth.

“The truth of the matter,” she exclaimed, using her familiar hatchet chop gestures, “is that the ship has sailed and it won’t be coming back!”

Translated this would suggest that should our own Congress ever do something, let alone countries like China and India where emission standards are so low that thousands of residents of those nations resort to wearing facial masks, life as we have known it on earth is likely past the point of being saved. True to character, I threw out some lame bit of positive argument that went nowhere.

Our conversation came to mind while listening to a presentation by Mark Seeley, a University of Minnesota climatologist and MPR climate darling, at a Land Stewardship Project gathering in Starbuck. He was nearing the end of a compelling presentation augmented with factual data on how our Minnesota climate has changed so dramatically in the past three decades. Yes, our winters are certainly warmer … even if our past winter was considered an aberration more so than the norm of just a few decades ago.

Climatologist Mark Seeley makes a point in his presentation at the Land Stewardship Project’s Starbuck, Minnesota, gathering.

And, yes, our summer dew points are also rising, along with the frequency and fierceness of severe weather events. Humidity is rising, along with coincidental health and pest issues. Droughts and flash flooding are as common nowadays as blackbirds in the bulrushes. In the same years of record high moisture events, we have consequential droughts recorded. An overnight, ten-inch rainfall in Duluth was followed by months of drought. Events are more localized, in that a farmer might have enough rain for a crop while a neighbor just to the south records a drought. Minnesota has recently set records for the number and frequency of tornadoes, and F5’s, once more common much further to the southwestern states, have been recorded both here and in Canada.

Consequently, with such variances in catastrophic weather events, property insurance rates are going ever higher and higher.

Near the end of his presentation, Seeley displayed a set of maps that showed modeled projections of a narrow climatic band that crossed the state through the Twin Cities, a band modelers at the University of Minnesota project will reach the Minnesota-Canadian border by the 2060s.

In other words, the weather and temperature common through the middle of the state would evolve to become more common at the far northern border. This would leave a broad breadth of our state with a climate not unlike mid-Missouri perhaps, although Seeley admitted he couldn’t answer the question in good faith without first talking to the modelers to know what they had projected for that deep band of uncertainty colored brown on his maps. “I need to find an answer to that,” he said. “Next question.”

“Has our ship sailed?” I asked, without referencing our office conversation of about a week earlier. “Can we turn this around and come back to the port of what we know as a normal climate?”

“Not unless we start having conversations, as politicians, as nations, even as neighbors,” Seeley started, and he became increasingly animated as he portrayed the political polarization surrounding climate change along with an apparent dismissing of statistical data proving otherwise. Then he dropped the bomb. “From what we see, and from how climate has changed, and how it is being modeled based on scientific data, even if we put the necessary changes in place today, it is unlikely we could expect to right the changes in earth’s climate even before our grand-children’s, or even their children’s, generations.”

Among the 100 or so in attendance in the cavernous hall, a dropped pin might have crashed like thunder.

With Seeley’s “Minnesota Weather Almanac” in front, he keeps a large audience spellbound with his data presentation.

In the morning news, little had changed. Up north the EPA had okay-ed a permit for Polymet to continue forth on its efforts for huge, open pit copper mining despite the threats to both ground and surface waters, including the adjacent Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Country ditches, already clogged with snirt from melting snow, are now filling with muddy runoff from farm fields. No changes were forthcoming in frac sand mining, West Virginia’s drinking water supplies, North Dakota’s groundwater issues nor a proposed a mid-continent pipeline for moving oil sands. And, yes, more photographs of Chinese residents wearing protective face masks due to emission pollution. In other words, a status quo on climatic issues and threats worldwide.

Years ago in my previous marriage I expressed concern on learning that we were expecting our first child together, for as a nation we were entering extremely uncertain financial times. Those have evolved to a point where the children born in that generation  are basically unemployable as a result of the economy. Those same children, now young adults, are facing a future that doesn’t bode well in terms of an even greater threat … the health of the very earth we all share. For them, their children, and especially their grandchildren.

Even as a confirmed optimist, I don’t envy their future.