The lure of islands

"Peaceful Reflections," 5 x 7 watercolor, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press

 
When you see an island, what is the reaction?

Probably, a question, a lure, to somehow get there and find what is on it, to explore, discover.

Why?

I think of Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, or Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers'  song, by the same title. Then there is William James' quote about we being islands in the sea separate on the surface but connected deep, along with John Donne's poem, "No Man is an Island."

Don't forget Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, spending the nights on an island in the Mississippi River so they could hide. Or Robert Graves canoeing down the Brazos in Goodbye to a River, camping on one overnight. And, do we not all dream of the magic islands of the South Pacific or getting away to a secluded beach in the Caribbean?

Those thoughts came to me yesterday, walking in Martin Park, seeing this little island in the middle of the lake. 

Thus today's little watercolor. It's been a long month of little creative activity for me, and that walk and this island, brought peace and an urge. It's a little rough but what I felt viewing it. Part of an island's lure.

Booked to go!

Books to go--Hillerman novels in front

How do you get rid of books? Actually you don't, because once read they're a part of you. But they do tend to accumulate.

Cleaning out shelves

I've tried a book sale, and that didn't work, other than just getting exercise carrying them out of the garage and back in at the end of the day. And yo can't just throw them away.
But I saw my opportunity as daughter Dallas and son-in-law Todd Bell want to open a bookstore in Canyon, Texas, and they're visiting garage sales and more, buying what they can. 
With her visit here this weekend, we started going through our shelves, and the ones under the bed, and in stacks on tables, and those in containers out in the garage, plus some from work. Some I'd collected and couldn't remember, or had never read, and they certainly went. 

So we started pulling them out, opening boxes, piling them up in various places in the house and garage to transfer  to her car. We filled her trunk and part of the back seat.
I think we parted with about 150 of them. Some you can't part with, yet--Heart of Darkness, Whitman, Blue Highways, A Moveable Feast, The Art Spirit, books given by my kids for Christmas, and so on. I still have my John McPhee and Ed Abbey and Ernie Pyle and Grizzly collections, my New Mexico and Larry McMurtry and poetry shelves, along with  my signed first editions. And of course my Dad's and my art books. Susan kept cookbooks and more.

From work

You go though the books, looking at the signed inscriptions on many, and the dates when I bought them. Lots of memories.  You start going through those, and you remember each one, and put a few aside to read again.
But I did give away my Tony Hillerman novels (except the first one, signed by him). I had many antique newspaper books, some writing books,  some 1920s novels, and gobs more, including National Geographic books.

Many of the recently bought and read books were easy to let go of. And I figured if many had been out in the garage for a while, they needed to go too--except for those special ones I don't have shelves for here.
What is amazing is I'm not sure you can tell we parted with any at all.

Four hawks at year's end

"Hawks do not share," wrote Hemingway in A Moveable Feast of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of Scott Fitzgerald.
I thought about those words this week when three hawks in three days crossed my paths, but then I came home to study another one, carved of wood just inside my doorway.
The first three hawks were wild red tails, and their appearances within a mile of the house could not have been coincidence, now that I think about it. I was walking in the almost vacant woods of Hafer Park in the afternoon, when the first one spooked me as I rounded a bend.  It launched from an oak tree behind a cedar tree, and I saw the broad tail as its long wings lifted it up. I must have interrupted dinner, as it disappeared into other distant trees, away from my sight.
As I was driving home from work the second day amid light traffic, another hawk swooped from the trees in Hafer Park, landed in the middle of four-lane Bryant Ave. 50 yards ahead of me. Its talons grasped a recently road-killed squirrel, and in seconds its powerful grey wings grabbed the air, lifting it to safety and dinner.
Yesterday I was rounding another bend in the park, and I saw the tips of grey wings lifting up out of the creek bottom, 100 feet ahead. I was downwind and watched the raptor perch on a bridge railing. I just stopped and watched as it turned its almost red breast into the warming sun and sat. Moving gingerly between the trees, I got to within about 25 feet. Without camera, I just watched, silently,  before moving on. I figured it had snared a mouse down by the water and had finished dinner. I didn't want to interrupt.
No, I thought, they don't share food or company, though they've adapted to urban growth better perhaps than humans. They're quiet predators who literally earn their living every day. I'm glad they're present so close to home, in the trees of a suburban park.
When I walked in the door, I saw the  sculpture of the red tail from Indian artist Earl Eder I bought a few years ago in Santa Fe. It's remarkable for they way the bird matches the grain of the wood. But this bird shares with me, and now I know the others do too--a spirit of being free and aware of the little things in life.
I thought about those hawks, walking in the park again today, of how their spirits, their sharing awakened this almost dormant blog and the end of another year.

Hafer Park--The path to the spirit of hawks