Following on the Middle English theme of yesterday… “Sumer Is Icumin In” is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, canons in print (circa 1226). And here it is.

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweþ sed
and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu
Sing cuccu

Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ* after calue cu
Bulluc sterteþ 
Bucke uerteþ

Murie sing cuccu
Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu

Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu.

You want the crib sheet?

*Lhouþ (Lhouth) means “low” which means “moo” (source: OED). 
**There are disagreements over the meaning of uerteþ (verteth). Some proposed definitions are: 
-Farts
-Darts
-Harbour in the green or fern (“vert” coming from the French word for green)

In the Middle English alphabet, the letter þ is a thorn, equivalent to modern th. We substituted “th” in the lyrics below to make it more readable to the modern reader:

In this theme, Great Meadow is teaming with redwings. All the males are screaming for mates. Emphasis on the “s,” because these birds a polygynous and the males spend a lot of time keeping the harem in order. Figure 1 shows a male calling our amount the cattails. “Sing cuccu!”

Firstly, those of you who received blog notification of my post yesterday. The new form of WordPress continues to confound. If you want to see the video of Cape Hedge Beach, you need to “View on a Browser,” always the recommended approach.

Today we’ve got spring! It is everywhere, and the wildlife is reading it as if they consulted a calendar. I went to Great Meadow in Concord, MA and saw: hooded merganzers, redwings, grackles, crows, song sparrows, the season’s first warbler, Canadian geese, swans, scaubs, garter snakes, turtles, beaver,and a juvenile bald eagle. So let’s start the season off right with my favorite duck. The hooded merganzer (Lophodytes cucullatus).

The fellow of Figure 1 was all alone – the lone bachelor. He was not accompanied by any beautiful cinnamon fuzzy-headed females. But they are there as well.

So spring. Hooray! Let’s stick to Geoffrey Chaucer (Prelude to the Canterbury Tales)

BotPresentation

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…

And so dear friends, get thee goon into the meadows, beaches, and woodlands!

I know that I have been going on and on here about Cape Hedge Beach. For me it has become a place of center and centering, all through these cold winter months with the roar of surf and crashing waves. There is an omnipresent mist, reminiscent to me of the mythic mists of Avalon, a gateway between spiritual worlds. And there is one other magical point which I have not experienced anywhere else. If you look out over the water the waves seem above you yet you feel protected by an invisible force. Optical illusion?

Figure 1 – Cape Hedge Beach, Rockport, MA (c) DE Wolf 2022

Waves represent mortality. Waves represent immortality. Waves represent the constant. Waves represent the ephemeral. There is ever the pounding beat of an insistent heart.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

William Shakespeare Sonnet # 60

Well, I think we have two things to celebrate. First, our liberation, maybe forever, from the tyranny of Standard time. Second, the First Day of Spring. Hip, hip, hooray on both counts. Walks are longer. Light is better. The birds are singing. I’d like to share a photography that I took last weekend at Cape Hedge Beach in Rockport, MA of a “sea turtle.”

Continuing on the theme of the wonderful photographic subjects to be found on Cape Hedge Beach, Figure 1 is an image that I took of granite “pebbles” or stone strewn along the beach. As I have mentioned before these come from a mountain of stones from the huge refuse pile that came from ship ballast deposited there by returning ships, ready to take the next load of granite around the world. Where did these stones come from? They are mute, but what stories could they tell?

These are of such wonderful variety that you can start your walk with a view like “today I am going to find the most perfect red pebble” or a basalt stone with “the largest possible inclusion.” You just have to be careful not to get caught on the beach as darkness falls, you are ever drawn to the sunset, or the tide comes in.

“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities… If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.” 
― Rachel Carson

Beaches seem to present an infinite variety of subjects for photographs: stones (preferably wet), sand, water, waves, skies, fragments of seaweed, water patterns in the sand, sea foam, and, of course sunsets! At Cape Hedge I never seem to become tired of the subjects put before me. Every day is different. Every turn of the head reveals something new.

As I have said here is the Avalonian terrain and your mind is immediately carried to “The Mists of Avalaon” by the abundant sea foam. The igneous rocks, of course, come in varied form, both plutonic and volcanic. And there are also metamorphic forms to delight.

Figure 1 shows a prominent outcropping of basalt. Here made all the more beautiful by water.

“I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself” 
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

It may seem that all I do in Rockport on Cape Ann is photograph the sunsets and sunrises. That is because such is the case. This passed Thursday was the best sunset that I have encountered so far at Cape Hedge Beach – remarkably tropical in appearance for New England during a cold and grey January. So at the risk of sounding redundant, I am posting Figure 1. There is no need for poetry, I think. The sunrises and sunsets are the poetry of the Earth.

I am warm in my office but, in mind, I keep returning in winter to Cape Hedge Beach and the subdued mixed colors of sky, sea, and sand. These are the glories of winter in New England, and yes perhaps a bit overstated for effect in Figure 1. I took this image a few weeks back near the Yule and New Year.

Now we may mark the coming of the light. I have always reckoned February 3 in Massachusetts as the day when you can leave the office at five pm and still drive home before the there is complete darkest. That date is two weeks off and the light, and the world waxes after that!

I know, I know, it’s another sunrise photograph. I, at least, never tire of the dawn. But actually today there is a point to be made. I was looking out at the predawn sky last weekend and noted the waves or ripples at the plane where the clouds join the clear sky above. It is the meeting place of two air layers, where the flow in the two layers meet and induce turbulence and cause these ripples or waves. The phenomenon is referred to as the Kelvin-Helmhotz instability. The name, of course, refers to two great 19th century physicists, who first explained it: William Thompson, First Lord Kelvin (British) and Hermann von Helmholyz (German).

Fluid dynamics predicts that such instabilities will form and transition to turbulent flow where fluids, in this case air layers, of different densities meet and move at different velocities. This is the same phenomenon that causes similar patterns in the atmosphere of planetary gas giants, for instance the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Please click on the link. It falls under copyright but is amazing.

Canon T2i with EF 100- 400 mm f/4.0-5.6 L IS USM lens at 320mm, Aperture Priority AE mode , 1/1600th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.