Bucket List

   On a normal day, six miles is the distance I like. Today is a day for helpful people and travel, for metal, for keeping things moving. It is also a six day by virtue of  the sum one plus five. This is arbitrary: this is part of how I organize.

   The creek is high and full at 6:30 a.m. The barest hint of dawn’s early light strikes the flowing water, looking gray. Orange and yellow reflected light from the houses and street lights bounces off the surface edges.  The creek is so high and full it looks like a river. A cloudy day looms ahead.

   Some mist, just five fellow travellers: three runners and two walkers and I. One heron flies up from the bank at the eight marker. Thoughts about work intrude as I think about the season, observe the tree trunks and the condensed vapor. On my way to the park, a box truck rode in front of my car. The eidetic memory of its rear doors provides the basis of today’s puzzle. Plus a bucket. Value in relationships. A fireplace makes a nice focal point.

    Ashes, ashes we all fall down.

Binocular Visions: Ranger roving and refreshing

Ranger Rick Rack

   Good thing we have binoculars! This Ranger owner has created his own dynamic wrap around in black and yellow.

   On a less exciting note – except to the parties involved – a note on a forest green Ranger. Read me: best to park Ranger elsewhere.

ranger note, bitemyhorse.com image

Stark Raven

   Warrior met 3 ravens Friday afternoon as he began working the weekend.

photograph by Allison Huyett

   One has amber eyes. Another still has the early worm, mid-afternoon.

   Warrior with Raven #3: Blackbird π.

DURO 6 Arias, Constitution Day 2009 and the Paper Czar

Constitution Day by Allison Huyett

 

 

   We the editors of  The Heron Report present the preamble of the United States Constitution and some items donated by the Paper Czar.

   Our own day begins with a kind of preamble. We walk along the creek. We come to the studio and office and and convene with our in-house representatives, including the Paper Czar. We make arrangements.

   Breakfast is one of the sweet spots of the day. The bakery frequently employs paper bags. We like to read the printing: brand and size at the top, name and date stamp on the bottom. The stamp reveals who made the bag and when. A creators mark! Here is the work of Arias, from June 29, 2009. We wonder what Arias looks like.

    From our preamble along the creek, we report one big heron, airborne from a large sycamore. The big bird swoops large, wingspan big as the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Imagine

 

Magic Square 9.13.2009 Allison Huyett

 

  John Lennon music playing in the background. Someone put many hours into hand painting the signs for the autism walk. The particle board signs began with Imagine (dot Dot Dot) on the trademark puzzle background. Imagine this Imagine that.

You’ve just imagned what it’s like to have autism.

Autism is treatable. Do something about autism now.

Heron on a small branch in middle of creek. Hear a couple more.

Meet your Match

   Diamond match box, disassembled and folded, left under the red bridge. At the mill, Ron notes how the water level has receded since its higher levels after rain.

   Holiday weekend. Warrior and I have plans.

   Four herons: one wandering to the eastern tip of the picnic peninsula, another hunched and stoic on rock at red bridge, a small little green heron on a branch in the marshy canal near the Heritage Center (less than a month until Heritage Days) and one upon a rock in the middle of the creek past the overpass.

   On way back, a dead vole in the center of the path ( moved it) and a sunshine square.

   Why is the studio/house on Washington street missing from the list of available properties? The Artist Wanted sign posted in the front window contradicts what a representative from the office told me in June: the property was going to settlement the next evening.

Designer Nerds

nice spot

Neurons happy: Heron on a dead bough: grandaddy of them all, fishing, waiting. View from the road.
Squirrel pops out of a barrel when I make a deposit of litter.
Sunlit scenery. Walk two miles to the eight marker and back, and find a piece of sycamore near the seven. Add the pick of the litter Wonka Nerds box top and voila, today’s rebus. Nerds + give – v = Designer.
Other than that, it’s quiet. Overheard “Research shows…” Something about running half an hour. Meanwhile work on solving world peace. Whose world? Look for the heron on the way back. Might be there. Man and a woman walk with energetic strides and converse in raucous, excited voices, matching in vigor, kind of like the herons make.
Fishing involves patience and timing. Plus location. Pick your spots.

Great Comeback

    Small aircraft advisory: heron spotted over farmland between suburban and urban areas at 6:36 p.m. Wednesday. What a lift!

   This morning one of the summer crew at the park sits by the trench made about ten days ago. Bright cones and a light barricade dot the strip. Light rain between 6:15 and 7:30, few people about. We go around the obstacle.

  “My job is to stay here and make sure no one walks on this,” says the young man.

  “You’re doing a good job!”

   To do list: car care appointment 9:00 a.m. at Jonathan’s in Bernville. This garage is a five or six bay blessing. Occupy waiting time with telephone calls, letter mailing at tiny post office and dropping by the library, which is closed for training. Pass a sign for a consignment/used goods shop: Great Comeback, and return to the garage exactly at the time the car is brought around for me. Helpful people and travel. It’s a six day!

Sweet Sittler Golf Spot

demo sign

 

  First the hot dogs, then the ice cream cone, now this! sign caught our eye. Having made a mental note to visit, we are here for demo and show.

   Location: Kutztown Pennsylvania. Location: Route 222 near Topton. Location: Sittler Golf Center.

   Outside the box: A driving range and miniature golf course with an elephant and a giraffe. The box: The Pro Shoppe of PGA Professional Rick Kline and his wife, Patty Kline, General Manager. Open all year round. 

   Inside the box: heavy duty. Like the top of the TaylorMade SelectFit line.

   Who can resist the painted handmade wood cutouts?  The hot dogs flanked one lettered sign close to the ground. When we looked up, there it was, another one nice and tall:

SIgn at Sittler's Golf

     A wild safari will be just what the doctor ordered soon enough. Today we talk TaylorMade and get a gander at what’s in the trunk.

   Before we meet our makers, the golf range is one of the top 100 golf ranges in the United States and the pro shop ranks in the top 20 by  the Golf Range Association of America. The cone looks good enough to eat. Sweet.

Sweet Sittler Golf Spot

Thank you! Sittler Golf and the Klines! Thank you Kevin Mike and Zach.

Sidebar: Raymond

 Relaxed Endangerment

photo later this day

  

 

   The stage is set for unusual occurrences this morning when we divine a larger proportion of vehicular drivers cutting corners, being careless about their parking alignment  and travelling outside the lane.

   Relaxed endangerment.

    We are thankful. This makes us pay more attention to our own path and command ourselves: Be neat! Align it right. Stay in your lane! Heads up!

   On the yellow line in the middle of  Tulpehocken road, after we have turned right from Broadcasting road, is a big uncoiled white item with a nipple, believed to be a previously owned condom. It is decidedly not a squirrel.  A sex element. A “whee” gesture. Who can match it?

    I  park at Gring’s Mill. I get out. I walk to the mill dam bridge. 

    A bicyclist swoops to conquer. Halts to an angle across my path.

    His lightish grey moustache approaches handlebar proportions. Can I trust him?

    Sidebar:

   “Are you Allison?’

   “Yes”

   “I’m Raymond,” Raymond says. “I’m supposed to deliver a message. From I- “

[I can trust him.]

   He relays a message from a co-walker whose car is sidelined.

   Raymond lives in the city, just around the corner from her, and here. Near Centre Park. Since 1975. House paid for. Staying.

   “It’s not as bad as people think, ” says Ray. “But it could be better.”

     This rational response is the best medicine.

    ”May I quote you on that?” ask I, scrounging in the trash can for something to write on.

   Styrofoam cup.

    He whips out a big litter back and upends it over the cans and bottles recycling container.

   “Every day is earth day!” says Ray.

   He likes the view from the bridge.

   “Shall I take a picture of it for you?”

   “I get one every day.” he says. “In the evenings I walk at the cemetery.”

   “Center Park Historic District Fair is coming up,” he adds.

   “I look forward to it.”

   “September!”

More to come.

Where are the herons?