Turkeys are perched in the trees all around the house. I put my head outside the door to get an idea of outdoor temperature and saw several turkeys in the tall oaks the other side of the road.

While I was looking at them, one flew over the house from across the road and I heard it land overhead in the big white pine beside the house. They are sailing about from tree to tree out there. Caterpillar and Tar Baby sit in the open doorway following them with alert cat eyes. One day

I watched Tapo stalk an entire flock of turkeys on the ground. They just clucked their wariness to each other and walked away from her at the same pace that she approached them. I had a feeling they were acquainted.

The turkeys know she is a predator. I've seen feather remains of young turkeys where they had been consumed by a cat. The cats eat everything, too, even the beak and the toenails.

Tapo is not a threat to a good-sized turkey, but they know to keep the young ones away from her.

The turkeys have moved on now. I don't hear the clucks and wing-beats of turkeys jumping from tree to tree the way crows do. They're so big they seem out of their element in trees, but they're as graceful in a tree as any other bird, just heavier and they make the limbs sway more, thus making the turkeys have to sway to maintain their balance.

It's funny to see the big brown birds in the leafless trees extend their white necks like herons keeping a full circle of attention around themselves at all times. One eye sees everything to the left and the other sees everything to the right. I expect they can switch their attention back and forth from one eye to the other quick as thought.

They don't have to turn their heads very much to keep a 360-degree vigilance. Last night we (the earth) passed through dust that was shed in 1766 from the comet Tempel-Tuttle. This comet swings around the sun in a thirty-three year orbit and leaves a trail of dust as it slowly, very slowly, dissipates down to nothing.

The news said the light show would be at 5 a.m. I was thinking about getting up and going out to watch it, but knew that if I set the alarm for 4:30 it would get turned off. I'd say, "Later for shooting stars," and go back to sleep.

As a result of a nap Saturday afternoon I was able to stay up late, which I didn't really want to do. I figured by 5 o'clock they meant the peak, which would mean a few hours before and a few hours after would be the full range of the show.

At 2:30 I went outside with Aster and walked up the road a ways to a place with a good view of the whole sky now that the trees by the road are gone. I love to stand under the bowl of night and look at the sky. I don't even need shooting stars to be satisfied by what I see.

The most awesome amazement I can think of is the number of stars (suns) in our universe, like the sand on the beach. I love the scriptural likeness of beach sand and stars in the night sky. I think of it every time I walk on the beach.

Even if we didn't have air pollution and light pollution and could see the stars as well as from a ship out in the ocean, we would still be able to see only a tiny pie-slice of the universe.

In the absolute vastness of infinity there is room for gazillions of universes. That used to bother me until I became acquainted with the very personal and loving consciousness that is the spirit of all the universes and all the space between them, on and on to endlessness — sand on the beach kicked up by the feet of a black lab running to catch a sunset orange Frisbee.

Right away I saw a streak of light in the starry sky, then another one and soon after that another. Some left a long trail of light that dissolved like the sparks from a Fourth of July sparkler. Some made streaks that disappeared as quick as they appeared. The fun is in the near-certainty that the next one will flash unexpectedly. Every once in awhile one would flash where I happened to be looking because it's as much a possibility there as anyplace else, like watching lightning in the distance.

I thought about taking the sleeping bag to a place in the field to lie down and watch the stars the rest of the night. I didn't think about it very long, though.

In less than half an hour I saw over twenty shooting stars, every one spectacular in its individual way, specks of comet dust, probably as small as a miniscule grain of beach sand. They hit our atmosphere at 45 miles a second, faster than a speeding bullet. Air molecules burn them up and they flame out like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin; like ideas that fail the test of everyday reality.

After I'd seen twenty minutes or so of Buddy Holly, Sam Cook, Donovan, Sid Vicious, Boy George and other shooting stars light up the sky, good sense advised against keeping my neck crooked at a right angle much longer. I'm getting like the cats as I grow older. A little bit of a good thing is enough. It gets repetitious after a short while and then it's boring, time to go on to what's next.

What was next for me was sleep.

Back to the Backwoods Beat/Waterfall Road Archive

Email: news@alleghanynews.com