Solstice Flowers and Hookah Smoking Caterpillars

A splendid day for a solstice. In preparation for the ceremonies I made a pretty good sized "flower". I'm getting pretty good at these. It took a couple of hours and held together pretty well. I put a stone square around it, which ultimately helped to keep it from being walked all over. I finished it off on the solstice and adjusted the square in order to have the corner align with the setting sun. It turns out that I anticipated a bit incorrectly, but you can't really tell from the photo. So I'm going to pretend I was in sync with the cosmos. After the setting of the sun the fatted calf was slaughtered. The augers read the entrails, burnt offerings were made, the dances were danced, the fasts broken, the visions visioned, the oracles oracled, the coracles coracled, the fish smacked the water and the dish ran away with the spoon.
And so ended the l o n g e s t day of the year.
In a footnote, just after girding my loins but before descending to the place of sacrifice, there in the sacred grove at the top of the bluff, I came upon a fungus of immense proportions. The fattest man in the world would be delighted to have a dinner plate this big! As fungi go, it was one of the biggest I've ever seen. A movement in the grass just nearby attracted my attention and when I investigated I was surprised to find a sizeable caterpillar dragging a hookah behind him. Subsequent discussions revealed that he was leaving his mushroom behind as it was too large, expensive to heat and frankly he was tired of the life of conspicuous consumption he was living. In light of current environmental realities he was moving to a more modest shroom where he could live in a less destructive manner. Unfortunately, while crossing the parking lot he was run over by a Hummer.

2 Explosions-Millions Dead

On the 14th of June I was down working on the beach at sunset and as the evening progressed a humming sound became audible. In the back of my head I was hearing it, but not noticing it. When its real quiet, you know how sometimes you can hear your blood pulsing in your ears? It was just outside of my attention, but then it began to get louder and it became clear that the sound didn't originate in my head. Like a dynamo it increased its intensity and even changed frequency. I just assumed it was some insects up in the woods on the bluff, but at some point I looked up...

The evening sky was absolutely filled with what must have been Mayflies. Zillions of them. I've never seen anything like it. They were along the beach as far as I could see and hovering about 15 feet off the ground. Hmmming as they floated and shifted about, layers and layers of these ephemeral little bugs. I'm assuming that the whole phenomenon was mating related. One grand orgy of desperate winged lovers. Out over the water some of them would tire or lose focus and drop to the lake surface where they would become meals for fish whose lips would kiss the surface, leaving a ripple and a love affair abruptly terminated. Living along the lake one gets used to huge populations of various bugs with the coming of warm weather, but this explosion would be hard to match.

A second explosion that is familiar to natives of the area is that of the Poplar/Cottonwoods. Late May/Early June brings a snowfall of poplar fluff. It can be really annoying when you are trying to bike through a wave of them. In the sky they are as dense as paratroopers at D-day. On the ground they eventually become amassed in drifts. The fluff also clings to trees giving the feeling that you are in a southern swamp where the trees wear Spanish moss. It can be quite beautiful.

Sometimes it will clump together on the ground in snowballs. When the wind blows these guys roll along like the ghosts of tumbleweeds.

I did a little sketch this weekend. I found a nice gnomon so I planted it and ringed it with sticks and then white cobbles and finally with some small squarish flat stones.

I had hoped to continue playing with this sketch next trip down.

But somebody had built a fire in the center of it over night, so that plan went by the wayside.

It had the potential to be interesting I think....

Quick look at the left side of the Stonewave as the top starts to come together...

Saw a turtle on the peninsula yesterday while biking around . It was about a foot long. I flipped her over just to take a look at the under-carapace. Nice colors. After flipping her back, I had to fight the desire to help her on her way as she was in a dangerous place, but unfortunately not being able to tell where she was going, I hesitate to play god.
Nice shell, huh?

Sunset and the Second Stonewave

This weekend was just about as close to perfect as one can get, sunny but not scorching, breeze but not a wind, and a lot of empty beach. I probably spent about four hours of quiet, uninterrupted work on the new Stonewave. And on top of all that two magnificent sunsets to close the day. The next three shots are Saturday's sunset in three acts about three or four minutes apart.

People from Erie will tell you that we have great sunsets and give some stat like we rank in the top ten or something. I don't know the origin of this claim and I'm sure there is some rationale for it, but I can't imagine how that is determined. I know we get a lot of snow. It's easily measured, but how does one measure sunsets? With a sunsetometer, perhaps? The claim is clearly unsubstantiatable (Is that a word?). But I will say this; if you go 5 consecutive days without seeing an absolutely soul-wrenching, pyrotechnically spectacular solar decline, then you are not in Erie.

Work continues on the Stonewave. This one is not as tall as the first, but is already twice as long. It is finally starting to look like a wave of sorts. Lots of stone has been washing up so I've been working slowly. I'm to the point where anything that is to be added will be new stone. The old Stonewave is now completely metamorphosed into what you see below.

The contour along the top will start looking a little more wave like. The plan is kind of an undulating line running from the highest point on the left to the lower end on the right. It will start to look more interesting I think once that starts to take shape.

I like this little gap between the first two segments of the wall. You can see some green between the stone which feels right. I'd like to get a better shot of this when the stone is lit up with late afternoon gold.

PS to the Walden fish enthusiast. Thanks for sharing your observations. Always a pleasure to hear from the piscean inclined.