The Cardinal, the Turkey: Watercolors on Mother's Day





All the good stuff happens up on the ridge lines of our coulee bluffs.  Very possibly one of the reasons for this is that wildlife, in all it's humor and wisdom, realizes, over time, how few humans are willing to work hard enough to get up to them, and so the birds, bumblebees, the cardinals, the turkeys, the chipmunks, the woodpeckers,

the rattlers (gasp), and all the other creatures of the treeline, do their dances, sing their songs, and slither along their limestone back alleys way up on top, by themselves where nobody's watchin' them.   Julia and I chugged all the way up Clifford Drive sunday, back and forth, back and forth, (ourselves seemingly slithering) on our bikes, to the head of the Greens Coulee Trail overlooking an old grazing prairie, lined still by an antique barbed wire fence, including those little white power packs that used to keep the cattle shocked on the right side of the field.

Once we rose along the trail far enough to get in underneath the dome of the forest, the silence that had been at the entry began to turn to the patter of the chipmunk feet scratching across the leaves.  Squirrels dove over fallen tree stumps. Here and there a random hollow thump of a woodpecker in the distance.  A bumblebee the size of a hummingbird must have been bored or lonely, following us up along the trail the entire way like a pesky guide.

The forest itself, for the moment quiet – drab and bare yet except for the greening of the grass shooting up through the leaves or along the rocks of the trail – opened to a scene of the blood red dash of a cardinal fluttering about the opening seeking out insects.

As it started to rain, Julia decided we should keep going now that we were on the top of the ridge line then down to the where the standard bluff limestone cliffs lay lined by rugged birch trees.  We inspected the lower sheets of the stone for snakes before we moved along over the top.  We heard a rustle much deeper sounding than a squirrel's behind us. A large brown mass seemed to explode up out of the depths of a timber hollow then swoop up into the air with nearly slow motion wings.  Much too big to be a hawk.  Not an owl.  I yelled out a loud gobble toward Julia.  "Oh, I didn't realize turkeys could fly."