There are many things with wings, and things with many wings at the Anderson Center. I have never in my life seen so many butterflies: monarchs, swallowtails, and a dozen others I cannot name but are beautiful feeding off the mud puddles like a field of lazy fluttering tissue-paper-hearts every morning.
And then there are the birds. I have seen everything common to Minnesota, robins, blackbirds, hawks, and sparrows (twice I have even seen the elusive indigo bunting cutting in the cedar trees before me at sunset, and once a "rafter" of seventeen turkey on the Cannon Valley Trail), but I have yet to see an eagle, which supposedly abound in this part of the Cannon Valley and certainly around the bluffs of the Mississippi at Red Wing. What I have seen--which astounds me--are the American goldfinches, that seem to wait for me to immerge from the pines on my bike, and fly alongside, and break my trail like balls of yellow ribbons unfurling before me. The hummingbirds are prolific, and take my breath away each time they float before me in the flower gardens. In Spanish, they are sometimes called picoteeflor, "the flower pickers." My mother would love it here for their sweet inquisitive exploration of the bee-balm, alone.
And then, of course, there are the bugs, big nasty things, and little nastier things. (Sean and I even went into Red Wing to watch Vincent Price's 1958 classic The Fly, tonight, but that's a whole other story.) The mosquitoes have raised the largest army they have in years, and hardly lose a battle. The very first night here, in a walk through the oak grove before dinner, I was bitten on my ankle by a deerfly. The swollen, crusty, festering wound (the size of a penny and about that color) has yet to heal.
A.P Anderson was interested in all sorts of flying machines, things that looked like models from da Vinci's sketch books, and they hang around the estate as a reminder that once upon a time, humans were determined to learn the secrets of flight.
This is truly a place of marvel and inspiration. If only the mosquitoes would buzz off. . .
Write on, shine on,
Thomas.
No comments:
Post a Comment