There is one giant, formless, shapeless cloud low on North Central Indiana, and not even a bright spot. I'll assume the sun is still about where it ought to be.
Made a trip to Wabash today, which meant a trip across Mississinewa Dam.
Okay, the dam isn't even close to the preferred route, nevertheless...
There is a power line parallel to the road to the dam (from south and west). The towers are a tribute to the stability of the triangle. Two supports share a common moor and rise at fifteen degrees about seventy feet to the third side of the triangle, a twenty feet high superstructure to hang the cables. Each support is three-sided, and all the struts in each leg form triangles. Every detail of the legs and superstructure is a triangle. There must be thousands in each.
These towers were said to be indestructible.
In the ice storm of 1987, the entire line from Riverwood to Greentown, 25 miles, 130 towers, came down.
On a tower just before the dam road (on purpose) I saw a dark shape. I couldn't get close enough for my glass (eyes, maybe?) to make a positive ID, but it was a red tail, about thirty feet up, not threatened, not at all shy.
Just north of the dam at SR 124 is Asherwood, an ecology center owned by Marion Community Schools. They have a pond (no fishing, no swimming), trails (no dogs, no smoking), and an aviary (no flying), and other features, I'm sure (no interest).
There are eight cages in the aviary, pie slices, twelve feet high and fifteen feet deep.
There are five prisoners.
Okay, that's not fair. I've only been there a few times and have talked to no one about the status of the birds. All five may be physically incapable for release.
If you are a scofflaw, and ignore the signs, and cut across the walks, the first bird you, and I, come to is a rough-legged hawk. This is the wildest of these raptors, immediately climbing to the highest, sharpest point of the pie, and still fighting the webbing. This startled the bald eagle feeding in the cell (uhm, cage) next right, who hustled back away making eagle sounds of alarm, or disgust, or both.
This rough-leg is one sorry-looking hawk. In his defense, they weren't spotted in Indiana from mid-April until late October last year, as they summer on the tundra and nest on high Arctic cliffs (from Kenn Kaufman, Field Guide to Birds of North America). Heat indexes have been in the century range the last four days, and it had to be rough on a little cold-weather hawk.
Clockwise is another point-of-the slice dweller, a Barred Owl.
Staring at predators makes them intensely uneasy, and I feel big guilt discomfiting animals in prisons (uhm, aviaries), as they can't find a comfortable distance. Predators, like these five raptors, have their eyes on the front of their faces (like us), and staring makes them feel like food (which have eyes on the sides of their skull, the better to see and flee).
Quickly moving on, there is a great horned owl. Looking in those huge, yellow rimmed eyes is looking into a vacuum. The person responsible for the "Wise Old Owl" myth was overserved.
All this is totally unfair to the great horned owl, one powerful predator, taking what prey it wants from where it wishes, from Labrador to Alaska to Mexico, and you can color in everything on your map, from the Arctic Circle south.
Awesome is a word of reverence for me, and using the word to describe, for instance, a dunk in college basketball, is heretical.
That said, it is with all the reverence I can muster that I recognize the Great Horned Owl as one awesome bird. And the best predator of our little group of inmates.
Next along is a red tail, perched calmly three or so feet high at the front of the cell (uhm, cage), eye-level, collected, probably just fed. A big, beautiful hawk from any angle, easy to find, fun to watch perch, fly, soar, hunt, interact with a mate (no, NOT sex. There's more to life, but I must leave the proof to someone else.)
Not so much fun to watch one perch in a cage.
My wish is to fly a red tail someday soon, to watch a big bird own the sky, and return to me.
And then the Bald Eagle. I admit looking at a Bald Eagle, our nation's most recognizable symbol, in a damn cage is like looking at our President in jail. (Except, the Prince of 9/11. I'd really have enjoyed that. And I still have hopes for Cheney in chains.)
So, as stunning as the Bald Eagle was, there was no joy, and I left quickly.
Coming south from Wabash, I had no plans to get east to Grant Creek. I've never come into the area from the north, and the road turned where it shouldn't have, and I was at the bridge.
A Great Blue Heron left, loudly, flying south, under the bridge. A Great Egret stayed, watching.
I turned around and saw a heron and an egret in the reservoir to the south, and a heron and an egret in Grant Creek north of the bridge, and a big pile of fishermen's trash on the bank.
That last always makes me wonder: one goes "outdoors" by choice, to "experience nature" firsthand. One gets, at most, one or two chances a week to do this, fifteen to twenty trips each year. So why bring a bunch of crap, every bit packaged and sealed, then leave all the trash piled or scattered around? Is neck-deep trash a comfort from home?
I used to call such people "pigs" but came to understand that was a slander to hogs everywhere, who never choose to live among their own wastes, but are forced, by the hand of man.
There was a red tail flying over a field towards a corner of a woods, bypassing the salient, corner, tree, and continuing, soon out of view.
And I found a familiar red tail on a utility pole just south across Red Bridge. Thanks.
Nothing much else, but the myriad of life that swarms this area hasn't gone anywhere.
Under a smoke-grey sky.