Return to the Honey-hole

In one lovely visit to my two favorite ponds, these friends flew: Blue Corporals, Carolina Saddlebags, Common Green Darners, Fragile Forktails, Citrine Forktails, and Southern Spreadwings. The sky, and the grasses, and the bare limbs, and the just visible beginnings of leaves, and . . . so much to love. I could spend the day there and come home happy, even if the ode photos are all terrible.

Extra-species Visitors

I
Northern Pearly Eye

I have learned the name of this annual visitor, whose arrival presages fall, always alighting on window or screen, front or back entrance windows, as if greeting me intentionally.

II

Red Dog

I need only head to the Day Lake Road ponds, and she will find me, trotting down Caldwell Road or down the path or through the woods, as she did today, tail wagging, swimming, wading, avoiding my camera station, waiting patiently for me till leaving, together; then standing at the end of the road, watching me, till I take the curve uphill.

III

Spreadwings

Just as I stepped onto the spongy moss of pond verge, they appeared, coupled, here, then gone, then there, then gone, me following left and then right, then back and forth, then waiting, till finally, after many wrong pictures, at least one right snap showed what I hoped: Sweetflag! the pair. I had hoped Sweetflag, but as it turns out, they're Southern. See the sad story unfold below.

(Oh, please, let it be Sweetflag.)

Addenda 

(August 31): A second photograph (and others) have me reconsidering. Maybe that dadgum pair are Spotted. Maybe Southern. Ugh. Photo below.)

(September 1): The expert has spoken. Ed Lam says Southern (he doesn't see two spots and the ovipositor isn't big enough). 

The hunt and frustration continue.

Along the Margins

Standing, pole firmly planted in the mud where I slipped and fell, I slipped toes into water, leaning, leaning, leaning out to the yoke where the damselflies hung, they on the margin of plant, I on the margin of the pond.

And then I heard from the drive on the margin of the pond's other side, up through dead branches and new leaves, Did you like see him like last night? I mean like he was so like drunk he was . . . [laughing] . . . vomiting like puking chunks like all over his like shirt . . . [laughing]. And then Yeah like I've never like been that s***-faced like before like wow man and he shifted his 12-pack to the other hand, as they walked on to the graduation party.

Nothing disturbs the Southern Spreadwings, deaf as they are, alert to movement, and nothing disturbs me standing  -- still, reaching.

Another Spreadwing Kind of Day

This time, the Southern Spreadwings took their morning sun at the Day Lake Road Pond, wherever they could find it and however thin.

Blues on Parade

Slaty Skimmer and Sky Water

Old Female Slaty Skimmer

Male Southern Spreadwing

Double-ringed Pennant

Male Amber-winged Spreadwing and Sky Water

Blue Dasher

The Honey Hole

One small pond.
An hour and a half.
Seventeen species:
Carolina Saddlebags
Golden-winged Skimmer
Comet Darner
Common Green Darner
Slaty Skimmer
Spangled Skimmer
Blue Dasher
Eastern Pondhawk
Double-ringed Pennant
Little Blue Dragonlet
Common Whitetail
Lancet Clubtail
Widow Skimmer
Autumn Meadowhawk
Azure Bluet
Fragile Forktail 
Citrine Forktail
Southern Spreadwing.

And, oh, the Southern Spreadwings,
so beautiful in the morning

and so delicious.

In the Here and Now

In today's New York Times, Perry Garfinkel describes opening a writing workshop with this direction:

At the top of a page, write the words ‘Here and now I am’ followed by an ellipsis. In the next five minutes write as many sentences as you can, each sentence beginning with ‘Here and now I am.’ The rules: no questions, no stopping, no thinking, no worries about logic or syntax and no cheating off your neighbor.

If you go blank, draw from your senses — what you see, smell, taste, hear, feel.

Here goes:

Here and now I am writing my 2,120th post for My Daily Snap, a ritual that lifts me like a swing, higher and higher, head back, laughing. 

Here and now I remember swinging as a child, and I love blogging like that, an infectious addiction, even though my feet hurt. 

Here and now, my feet hurt as they have since morning when, over my head a green heron ack-ack-acking across the pond, I slid part-way into the black loam, water soaking my socks, my camera aimed at another new species -- the Southern Spreadwing. 

Here and now, I smile, knowing that a famous person, Dennis Paulson, author of a major field guide to Odonates in America, verified my photo on Facebook. 

Here and now, I heard the heron's acking as applause, but it's the rush of wings, the gust of air brushing my cheek as a Slaty Skimmer races by, that makes my skin pucker. 

Here and now I feel dehydrated, not literally, but metaphorically: spent, I suppose. 

Here and now, still tired from looking for bugs, in wet shoes and socks, two cameras slung across my chest and back, I know I'll do it again tomorrow. 

Here and now, when I write have nothing to say of consequence other than noting the way the Southern Spreadwing turned a moment toward me as I reached in for a photograph or the way the second lizard, the one on the Lake Dimmick sign, waited and waited and waited as I approached, as if it knew I am no predator. 

Here and now, I have nothing to write, I think, but then when I sit at the computer and place my fingers on the keyboard, something happens and text appears. 

In the here and now of photowalking and writing I am part of the elements, and I feel whole.