If you’re reading Mary Oliver’s Twelve Moons as a lunar calendar with me this year, it’s time for a Christmas poem for today’s last quarter moon, Stark County Holidays.
I love some of the lines this poem offers. “We sit like heroes trading tales” reminds me of more than a few family gatherings in my own experience. There’s a poignancy to the lines, “Now, less than we meant to be/We watch the night and feed the fire.” It would be sad, indeed, to feel that way. Continue reading
One of the more thrilling features of life on our homestead is our close proximity to humpback whales. We regard this as a seasonal phenomenon. Generally speaking, humpbacks that summer in our waters migrate to Hawaii, the mating and calving grounds of the Pacific humpback population. I say “generally,” because many whales overwinter here in Southeast Alaska.
I remember that last year, a friend of mine went home to Wrangell, south of here, for Thanksgiving. He got some amazing video of a large pod of humpbacks feeding in the waters off his mother’s beach. I remember seeing humpbacks in the shelter of Tenakee Inlet at Thanksgiving as well, but they seem to forsake the northern end of Southeast Alaska, where we live, in the colder months.
In the time we’ve been here, we usually stop sighting whales between November and March. Our wildlife journal contains one humpback entry as early as January, but these are very rare.
This year, for some reason, things are different. Humpback whales have stayed in the area into mid-December so far. Continue reading
