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.

Back at an age when mother-pleasing was something boys seven or eight find easy was perhaps when the concept of wind first entered my consciousness. We were in the midst of one of those sultry 90-90 Missouri summer afternoons without air conditioning with no hint of a comforting breeze.

“Don’t worry,” I told my mother. “I’ll make the wind start.”

We had a young elm, or so it seemed. I scampered up the tight bark, grabbed a long and low hanging limb to pull myself further into the heart of the canopy. Using my arms and legs I started pushing limbs and jumping on the branches with all my might. If I could just get some air moving, I thought, the wind would begin. A passerby might have slowed at the vigorous movement in the center of the tree … until one of the branches holding me aloft snapped and I was sent sliding down into the yard.

“Nice try,” said my mother with a smile once she realized there was no broken bones. “But you can’t start the wind.”

Wind-blown snow creates a halo effect on a prairie wetland.

This was the beginning of my being haunted by the wind. From the slight, calming breezes that sooth the soul to the extreme of feeling and hearing of the forces of a 300 mph plus trauma of wind that swirled around the circumference of a thunderous storm cell to propel a six-seater cloud seeding plane above the Northeastern Colorado plains. Now, living here in the open prairie, wind is nearly a constant companion. It rumbles, sometimes like low thunder, from all directions, often deep into the night. It may tingle our wind chimes, or produce a wild, Beethoven-ish symphony clanging from the ash and oaks in the yard. Sometimes when you try to take a step into it out on North Meadowbrook, a northwesterly will stand you straight to halt you in mid-step. Wind has moved hundreds of tons of topsoil this winter, yet has delicately written “poems” in soft snow using prairie grasses as cursive “pens.”

Tips of prairie grass leave wind-etched “poems” in the winter snow.

This haunting caused a friend to recently tease me of how I could happily forgo watching commercial television programming for cultural media awareness in order to follow my passion for making images of prairie grasses in the wind.

“You must realize that watching prairie grasses blowing in the wind isn’t for everyone,” she chided.

Indian Grasses dance in a prairie wind.

Wind is my weakness. There was that late fall evening in the 1970s in an old farmhouse outside of the Newton, IA, home of the teenage boy who’s letter prompted Pope John Paul II to visit Iowa, when I asked the family while I was doing his story if I could spend a few moments alone in an upstairs bedroom just to hear the whistling of the wind. They smiled as I backed into the room and turned off the light to sit on the bed. It had been years since I’d heard that whistle and whine of the wind in the sleeping porch of my parent’s old Missouri farmhouse. It whispered a momentary meditation.

So, yes, I have many wind stories. Last weekend as I sat alone in my canvas ice fishing “clam,” a ferocious wind whipped and snapped the canvas during a Severe Winter Warning with a -45 degree wind chill, bringing  many wind moments to life as I fought off the bone chilling cold. Wind games, if you will, playing with the mind and the numbing elements.

Sportsmen around here have given ample warnings about these Big Stone Lake winds that howl down this 26 mile long corridor of water, and now, ice. “Never get far from shore in your kayak,” they’ve warned in the warmer months. “You never know when the wind will come up, and remember, there isn’t anything out there to slow it down.”

Many tell tales of friends being caught, or of themselves being in instant peril, being stranded miles from a boat launch or pushed against a distant shore, of being capsized and adrift. This time on the ice was as close as I have come to feeling the heed of their warnings.

Despite the side flaps of the canvas panels being buried beneath ample ice chips and snow, the canvas snapped and popped with incredible and forceful energy. I was afraid of standing, fearful of the clam blowing away down the length of the lake. As I watched the undulating sides of canvas I was visited with another wind game, from of all places, the Caribbean somewhere outside of Road Town, BVI. I suddenly visualized being on the deck of the 210 ft. barquentine I was fortunate enough to help sail in the late 1970s. As we maneuvered the big square-rigged sailer into open seas, the huge sails filled with wind, snapping and popping the sailcloth just like it was my ice fishing canvas on Big Stone. Indeed, these were the only sounds as the antique naval training ship listed slightly and cut a magnificent wake in the azure sea.

I could only wish the mental images of the blue Caribbean skies had been more warming, as had the few jumbo perch pulled up through the ice. This would be another day dominated by prairie winds sweeping in from the Saskatchewan Plains, winds that once again lifted loam and snow into the skies up on the prairie and rattled old windows.

Indian Grass and heads of cone flowers moved by prairie winds.

Through the night gusts rumbled through like a distant freight train, warded off by solidly insulated walls and a bevy of quilts made by the mother of her modern day Don Quixote, a man who has come to realize he can neither start nor end a wind … even he might wish to.

Neither of us have seen the owls, although there might have been a distant sighting of one earlier in the winter. After the winds had ripped the last of the leaves from the trees in the grove we witnessed what seemed to be a silhouette reminiscent of a stately owl on a limb of the huge cottonwood that stands as a sentinel on the far northeast corner of our stand of trees. My binoculars made the darkened dot a little larger, enough so that it might resemble what you envision as a great horned owl. That is as close as we have come to seeing one.

The cottonwood is high enough to give an owl a vantage point view of both our eight acres of prairie and a wetland just over the rise of the hill on the other side of the road.   

We know owls are around us for we can hear them hooting. First one, then another. One closer, the other more distant. Just a quarter mile to the west of our farm is another good sized woodland … good sized in Minnesota prairie terms. Perhaps five acres in all, right along the gravel road. The distant hoot could come from there if the closer one is in our grove. 

Rather convincing evidence that owls are near greeted me on my return from the mailbox the other evening. Laying beneath the canopy of our recently cleaned grove was the carcass of a red bellied woodpecker with the upper skull eaten away. Perhaps this was the one I’ve been stalking with my camera. A red bellied was one of the first species to find our feeder once we got around to filling it with the ever popular black sunflower seeds.  

In my quest to capture an image of this beautiful bird I’ve set up my blind to no avail, and my luck using a remote shutter release wasn’t much better. This was one camera shy bird, unlike some of the other species coming to the feeder. The smallest woodpecker, the downy, and the larger hairy woodpeckers, have joined the bluejays and nuthatches in my digital cache of photographs, but not the red bellied.

Finding the carcass seemed to answer why the sightings of the red bellied had suddenly become so scarce. We’ve missed that telltale swoop down to the small tree the holds the squirrel-proof feeder, for the red caught your eye especially on those gray or whitish mornings. It would land low on the base of the tree and skitter up the trunk to where it was just a short hop over to the feeder. Once a seed was secured, off it would fly over the solarium porch back to the grove.

Seeing the red bellied in the grove earlier in the fall keyed our decision to keep a number of what we called our “woodpecker trees” among the ash and other trees too immature for the saw. As we worked around one tree in particular, one with obvious pecked holes in the long dead wood of the trunk, the woodpecker had briefly peeked out at us. We assumed this was where the red bellied was returning with its seed. When the hairys return to the grove with their seeds they alight on our “lightning” tree, crawling up ever higher before breaking open the seed. Not the red bellied, for it typically flew deeper into the grove to its tree. That flash of red wasn’t good for keeping secrets. Not from us, nor apparently from the owl.

When I found the carcass, most of the head and that telltale identifying red stripe on the crown was gone. Eaten away in a meal of nature. 

It was on a canoeing trip years ago on the Chippewa River that made me instantly think the culprit in the demise of the red bellied was an owl. We had just paddled around a bend when we came upon a noisy confrontation. Perched on a staunch limb just below the protective outreach of the canopy was a great horned owl, and scurrying all around it was a murder of crows, diving and cawing, threatening the much larger and dangerous bird of prey with pronounced racket and mayhem.   

“Accusations,” suggested my paddling and fishing friend, Wes Konzin as we slowed the canoe. “I think it all comes down to beheadings.”

Sometimes you can sneak into the inner workings of the natural world in a canoe, or it may materialize beside you while quietly waiting in a deer tree stand. We were completely unheeded as we drifted by, intently watching the confrontation. Surprisingly, the owl suddenly bolted from the tree, hastily beating its wings to escape just over us in that supremely hush of owl flight with the murder close behind, cawing, some deftly diving at its head, to land again inside of an outstretched canopy of a tree just down river. There the murder of crows continued their relentless attack.   

The birds know. So the beheading of the red bellied was a circumstantial CSI moment in the grove perhaps.   

After finding the carcass, calls were made to a couple of naturalists who both confirmed that the red bellied woodpecker had likely met its fate at the beak of an owl, that the eating of the head was indeed a significant clue.

Death is often sad, especially for those who remember a certain specialness. For the shy woodpecker, we’ll miss that flash of red swooping into our little square window to the outside world, its hopping up the narrow trunk of the tree, at how nervously it looked around in a search of danger, the quick stab for a single sunflower seed, then just as quickly, the flash of red disappearing back toward a hideaway in the grove. One of those flights was its last.

All in the realm of nature.

Making dinner around here is so much fun. We rarely layer noodles with soups from Campbell’s’, and usually have a glass of wine within reach. One of us will usually stake ourself across the room chatting with whoever has opted to cook. Often we’ll walk around the center island to glance out the big kitchen window to take in what is typically a postcard worthy view. This happened again last night with a startling sunset.

Sunset from the kitchen window.

“Startled” might be considered a bit extreme, and “surprise” might be closer to an appropriate reaction to when we first entered this kitchen where we spend so much of our quality time. This was my reaction on first looking at two double-hung windows with blurring screens found above the kitchen sink. “If we buy the house,” I said as we began our first look around, “these windows have to go. We must have a big plate glass window in here.”

Rebecca and Steve Bruns talking in the kitchen during the remodeling phase. The double hung windows are behind Steve.

Rebecca was no stranger to the house and especially in this kitchen where she recalled having numerous meals with her friends, the previous owners. If she was taken back by my comment, she hid it well.

Roger Albright and Steve Bruns bringing the new kitchen window up to install.

The kitchen window after installation.

Windows have long been a fascination. Whether visiting an old farm house like ours, a hospital or motel room, or even a European castle, I always find myself looking through the windows to see what there is to see. You know, “If I were king I’d put a window right here” sort of thing. I’ve never understood blocking a window view with a lamp, or even curtains. This has caused a few arguments and awkward moments through the years, and usually I’ll back down on the curtains.

Moon set from kitchen window.

Windows can showcase a larger world much like a picture frame. Through the years I’ve seen some fascinating views through the windows of others. So, in our pending purchase I simply couldn’t consider having all that wood framing and grayish screens blocking such an incredible view of the wooded grove, the nearby prairie or that distant farm site, views that seemingly are varied with each sunrise and setting sun, by cloud patterns, by rain, fog and blizzardy snow. These views never tire.

Sun dog from our kitchen window.

This kitchen window was one of two major window decisions we would make in remodeling the house. The other was in the upstairs bathroom where there was no window at all in the East wall. We had decided rather early to completely redo that room. Along that wall was a wide vanity. A toilet was placed up against the adjoining inside wall and was in plain view of the door opening to the hallway. There was no shower nor bath. We would eventually do a complete reworking of the room by removing enough of the floor to move the toilet across the room behind the door, to install a smaller vanity and sink where the toilet originally sat, and by adding a spa bath where the old vanity had been. It while I was framing in the tub surround that I thought of adding a window, to bring in more light, and to add a view.

Removing the cut out for the bathroom window.

Tile would be added across the entire floor and as a shower surround. And in that bare wall we cut a hole to add a modest plate glass window we had hoped would give us a nice view of the prairie and nearby wetland while sitting in the bath. That, we’ve since discovered, won’t happen since neither of us have the height of a NBA basketball player. Our view from the toilet, however, has no equal!

Fortunately this house has many windows and wonderful views from all angles. Our front porch solarium has a surround of windows on three sides, and the large windows from our office and family room offer views from the inside out into the solarium.

My muse for the kitchen began while doing a story on the husband of a former colleague who had a stately old house on the outskirts of Maynard. When they remodeled their kitchen they replaced double hung windows with a large open window above the sink that looked out onto their grove and picturesque pond garden. Their new window transformed a rather tired and forgettable kitchen into an exciting and comfortable room, inviting you into the world beyond. The window added life to a nearly barren room, a place where you could easily imagine planting your elbows on the kitchen counter to stare at an enticing outdoor landscape. It wasn’t hard to imagine having the same effect in our new home.

Sun rise through the bathroom window.

As we progressed in our remodeling I found myself anxiously awaiting the removal of the double-hungs. When it finally happened I could barely contain my excitement. It was the same when we finally lifted a ladder to cut through the outside wall for the new bathroom window. I don’t know if my co-workers on the remodeling project were all initially sold on cutting through the wall for that window, but afterwards they were equally as pleased and excited. Especially when we had finished with the tiling that framed the window from the inside.

Those two windows are my favorite places in our new home, framing views worthy of the Louvre every morning and evening. We couldn’t have made better decisions, nor could we be more blessed.