LOFTS

You can be imprisoned when there are no walls.

You can be free in a confined space.

My loft is only 6’ by 8’. The dogs can’t get to me, and very few people are interested in scaling the ladder.

The loft is furnished with an old rocker from my dad’s garage, a railroad chair from my father-in-law’s depot in Billings, Montana, and a stack of thesauri.

The hooked rug is a portrait of my old dog, Obe (named for Old Blue Eyes.) Tacked on the wall is a birthday card I received from a neighbor who had no children, who loved to brush my long red hair. It says, “To my favorite 5-year-old on her birthday.” And lying along a beam is a pair of stilts my dad made in 1952 by chopping down two trees and nailing wooden triangles on them. I could walk all the way down the road to my aunt’s house on those stilts. I could do it really fast when my mother was beating a slice of liver into submission and calling it supper.

From the loft, I can look down through the shadows and shafts of sunlight in our house, through the angles of railings and beams. I can see across the meadow and pond, beyond the fields to the Black Diamond Road on the horizon.

The loft is wonderful for writing, wondering, or worrying. It’s the best place for composing a song, reading, or avoiding all of the above.

Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen at an altitude of 30-feet that helps one relax. Maybe it’s pretending you can’t hear the phone or the washer screaming that it’s finished its cycle.

Grownups who hide in the woodpile or make a clubhouse in the closet might gain a certain reputation. But call it a loft, and it’s okee-dokee, even here in Iowa County, Iowa.

Just don’t be playing any loud music up there during hunting season. (See post for February 10^th.)

HAY, THERE!

For several years after we moved to the country, we let our neighbor cut hay in our meadow. As long as he didn’t use fertilizer or pesticides to increase the yield, this arrangement benefited everyone. He got 50 bales of hay; we thought the annual mowing would help control weeds.

What we hadn’t counted on was the beauty of the hay bales scattered over the field. The sunlight on the golden mounds, the shadows in the evening, birds perched on top––we looked forward to having the bales around and missed them when our neighbor collected them for the winter.

One fall, our neighbor hired a young man to help with the baling. He gave him one instruction: make sure the round side of the bale does not face down the hill. If I had two hours and a cup of liver snaps, I could train my dog to face a hay bale in a particular direction, so we didn’t expect any problems.

If you are not familiar with bales, here’s the deal. The farmer cuts the hay, then rakes it up and presses it into a rectangular or circular bale. It might be wrapped with twine, netting, plastic, or wire. A bale weighs about a ton, is 7 feet high and about 5 feet across. If she had a good run at it, Obe could scamper up a bale and sit on top of it. I did that once, too, with the help of a ladder; it was a great view.

Husband Bruce and his friend, Aaron, were standing on the near edge of our pond casting for bass. It was a lovely evening full of that dense, golden light you get when the sun is low. I stood up on the hill and watched the boys drown a bucket of worms. At least they were enjoying a good chat.

When I glanced sideways, I thought I saw a bale move. Nah. Must have been one of those asteroids that circulate in old eyes, floaters that make you think a mouse just scurried past you. Even a tractor with a long spear on the front struggles to move a bale, so it’s unlikely one would shift its position independently.

But it did move. Just a little at first, groaning as it crunched against the dry field. And it kept moving, ever so slowly. That’s when I noticed: the round side was facing down the hill. Toward the pond. And the fishermen.

The bale was soft, so I figured it would just settle into an indentation and stop. I was wrong. It gained momentum. “Hay bale,” I yelled. The guys squinted at me. “Bale! Moving!” I yelled louder. They looked puzzled, then resumed casting their lines.

The bale was about to crest the hill, so I ran over and tried to block it. It didn’t take long to squelch that idea before it squelched me. The bale picked up speed until it was flying down the hill, occasionally taking to the air when it hit a rough spot.

The pond is a hundred yards wide, but that bale headed for the only spot it could do any harm. “Bale!” I screamed once more.

Just before it reached the pond, Bruce and Aaron turned around. One dove south and one dove north. It was a 7-10 split, the old bedpost, the toughest spare a bowler can face.

Moving a hay bale is hard work. Moving an underwater hay bale is much, much harder. And quite a bit more entertaining.

WEIRD WORLD

PART 2

More entries from the Weird File:

√ When I see my dog doing this in the front yard, I’m almost afraid to look up. In this case, there was a ground hog 15’ up in the tree. Makes one wonder about the name ground hog; I don’t think there are tree hogs, even in Iowa County. These guys are famous for digging burrows, not climbing trees. Dogs are one of their primary predators, so this one was not being an alarmist.

These stocky little marmots are also known as woodchucks or land beavers. (So I guess we have to stop teasing my niece about shouting, “Look, a chuck beaver.”) Just like us, ground hogs give birth to helpless, hairless babies, but theirs are ready to set out on their own at age 5 weeks, so maybe we could learn something from them.

√ We all know what causes crop circles in the fields. Less is known about pond circles.

√ String algae is one of the strangest and most wonderful things found on the pond. It’s considered a pest, but come one––one long cell? Amazing.

√ Baby painted turtle yawning. What exactly tired her out? Must be all that racing around––up on the log in the morning, back in the pond in the evening. Whew. (And yes, this did make me yawn; it's a cross-species phenomenon.)

√ Snails that take up residence on turtle shells. Does this get them there faster?

√ Catfish in trees. Do you call firemen to get them down?

√   Ice-skating geese get a 5.9 from the Scottish judge.

A klutz doing a triple-lutz

The Weird File is never fully closed. Stay tuned for more weirdness, coming soon to a blogspot near you.