Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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In the brush or in sand, it's easier for Antonio to pull me backwards:
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Not far from my tree were deer tracks, and a wide area of flattened brush where a herd must have laid down:
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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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It's a thrill when I return to find my offering undisturbed (other than the lovely white fluff and web decorating it). This particular offering's been hanging from the branch for two years.
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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

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Continued from November 7th at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve:

We came upon this red-tail further up the trail, near my tree area.
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Mooned!
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Saturday, November 7th, the boys and I went to visit my tree at the Adams County Fairgrounds nature preserve. It was absurdly beautiful out, the golds, browns, and reds highlighted, and all a sunny 72 degrees.

At the initial fork in the path we saw a large bird in a tree across the river:
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Curious, Jay climbed the hill a little ways to glean a better view. 'twas a golden eagle, intently eying a bird on the ground!
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After the eagle took off, the bird on the ground made off in the opposite direction. It was a red-tailed hawk (it's blurry in the pic)!
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El Dia De Los Muertos by Siouxsie & the Banshees

It's all soul's day
I hear you say
It's all soul's day
And you've come to pray
For the lost ones
The unadorned ones here today

El Dia de Los Muertos
El Dia de Los Muertos
Bailamos, bailamos
El santo y yo

Kiss the bride
Dance with me
Come rattle these bones
Come and shake my tree
Embrace me--irreverently
Now in marigolds
Shower me

There is more time than life
One never dies twice
There is more time than life
One never dies twice

Wearing wet suits sewn in the underworlds
Death comes shining
In a thousand bright colours
And music out of this world
Serenades to a bony twirl

Me lleva el diablo
La muerte va de viaje
Esta es musica del otro mundo

Buenos noches y adios
Hasta luego mis amigos
See you in heaven
See you in hell
All will be level all will be well

Bailamos, bailamos
El santo y yo

Me lleva el diablo
la muerte va de viaje
Esta es musica del otro mundo

---

Day of the Dead history
Indigenous people wouldn't let 'Day of the Dead' die
by Carlos Miller
The Arizona Republic

More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death.
It was a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate.
A ritual known today as Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
The ritual is celebrated in Mexico and certain parts of the United States, including the Valley.
Celebrations are held each year in Mesa, Chandler, Guadalupe and at Arizona State University. Although the ritual has since been merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the Aztec ritual, such as the use of skulls.
Today, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls are also placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has written three books on the ritual.
The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth.
The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the monthlong ritual.
Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and only in death did they become truly awake.
"The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic," said Christina Gonzalez, senior lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. "They didn't separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures."
However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous people to be barbaric and pagan.
In their attempts to convert them to Catholicism, the Spaniards tried to kill the ritual.
But like the old Aztec spirits, the ritual refused to die.
To make the ritual more Christian, the Spaniards moved it so it coincided with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (Nov. 1 and 2), which is when it is celebrated today.
Previously it fell on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August, and was celebrated for the entire month. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl. The goddess, known as "Lady of the Dead," was believed to have died at birth, Andrade said.
Today, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and in certain parts of the United States and Central America.
"It's celebrated different depending on where you go," Gonzalez said.
In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones.
In Guadalupe, the ritual is celebrated much like it is in rural Mexico.
"Here the people spend the day in the cemetery," said Esther Cota, the parish secretary at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. "The graves are decorated real pretty by the people."
In Mesa, the ritual has evolved to include other cultures, said Zarco Guerrero, a Mesa artist.
"Last year, we had Native Americans and African-Americans doing their own dances," he said. "They all want the opportunity to honor their dead."
In the United States and in Mexico's larger cities, families build altars in their homes, dedicating them to the dead. They surround these altars with flowers, food and pictures of the deceased. They light candles and place them next to the altar.
"We honor them by transforming the room into an altar," Guerrero said. "We offer incense, flowers. We play their favorite music, make their favorite food."
At Guerrero's house, the altar is not only dedicated to friends and family members who have died, but to others as well.
"We pay homage to the Mexicans killed in auto accidents while being smuggled across the border," he said. "And more recently, we've been honoring the memories of those killed in Columbine."

As the moonlight cut through the slit between the ugly burlap curtains, Harvey knew his time as Harvey Brundle, the man, was short. He was beyond panic at this stage. Years had come and gone since his first inexplicable change. Who can say what precipitated that initial transformation, save for the full moon. The honest-to-God full moon as written in the calendar. No European pagan "three days of the full moon" shit. That would've been too much to bear.
Could the moon truly be the sole culprit? It seemed unlikely. Harvey was well aware of the effect of the full moon's behavior on man and beast--the spike in crime and violent behavior, and so on. In itself that didn't seem to account for his curious condition. No more than the dirty burlap curtains, if indeed they actually were made from burlap. He paused mid-pace to run his fingers through the curtains. It was heavy and scratchy enough to be genuine burlap.
Harvey chuckled without mirth. He was trying to distract himself without being aware of it. At first. Heh, like burlap was infinitely fascinating.

It first happened when he was twelve, just a gangly kid, full of comic book dreams and a passion for pets. Harvey's favorite had been a brilliant yellow parakeet. He knew better than to admit his fascination with Yellowbelly, as he named the bird, because the neighborhood boys viewed anything less than big, borderline vicious animals as pets only pussies or fags would have. In fact, he knew better than to mention his bird to anyone. Only his parents knew, and they were animal lovers too. He was happy at home, and could easily enough shrug off the unease of school and unavoidable interaction with his peers within his house's walls.
That sense of comfort, of safety, at home proved Harvey's downfall. Just a week before school's start, he was playing hide and go seek with Yellowbelly in the backyard with its thankfully high privacy fence. Though his wings weren't clipped, Yellowbelly never flew off. He seemed, somehow, to know better than to be seen, to draw attention to himself--or, far worse, attention to the fact that Harvey played with, let alone owned, a little bird.
The full moon grew luminous as the late afternoon shadows stretched. Harvey's mother called for him from the back door, announcing dinner time. He whistled for Yellowbelly who flew in a loop-de-loop, the show-off. Unfortunately for all, the bird arced too high and was quickly spotted by Harvey's notoriously nasty neighbor, Craig "Splatz" Markowitz. Splatz seemed to go out of his way to make Harvey's life hell. In school Splatz tripped Harvey at every opportunity, swept everything--books, pencils, homework--off Harvey's desk when they shared classes, and threatened others with physical duress should they dare to sit with Harvey or play with him at recess.
Spotting Yellowbelly was good as finding gold to Splatz. The bully had been practicing for weeks with his BB gun. He had a poster of John Wayne tacked to a tree in his mostly dirt yard, and the face, chest, and crotch were rife with holes. This, surprisingly, would be his first living target.
Splatz shot twice, the second hitting the parakeet in the neck and shoulder.
Harvey screamed as Yellowbelly's eyes widened like a Japanese cartoon character and blood spurt from the wound. Harvey dove to catch the bird before it hit the ground. Splatz's laughter from beyond the fence made the nightmare situation real. At that moment he couldn't focus on Splatz; Yellowbelly might still stand a chance.
Harvey ran into the house, showing the parakeet to his parents and demanding them to use their grown up powers to fix the bird's wounds. Harvey's parents eyed each other mournfully, then mother took Yellowbelly and gently cleaned the blood from his feathers. She instructed Harvey to lay him on the bottom of his cage near the window, where the light of the full moon would reach him. The full moon, she stated in her parental wisdom, had the power to transmogrify. Even if Yellowbelly's body seemed dead by morning, he had simply become something else. Maybe even a worm, or a spider, or a cow.
Harvey was twelve then. He loved his parents. Their wisdom was infallible. He did as his mother told him, ignoring Yellowbelly's stiffness and cold. Harvey poured extra seed into the cage and watched as the moonlight crept over the bird's body like a celestial blanket. He drifted off to sleep there at the desk, carried by rage and hope.
He woke soon after when something writhed beneath his skin. Harvey's veins took on a life of their own, a life that rebelled from the body that housed them. He would have cried out, more from terror than pain, but his throat was constricted. New attachments were formed, new conduits made, pores widened, blood rushed, skin flushed. His head suddenly pounded in an agony he had never before known. He must have passed out, for when he came to large yellow feathers littered his room, he lay naked in the floor, and the window was open.

Harvey had learned that, indeed, Yellowbelly was dead. Or maybe, as mother had said, transmogrified. And that Craig "Splatz" Markowitz had died that night. According to the incredulous policemen on the scene, something had pulled him out of his bedroom window and carried him to a great height before dropping him onto the pavement of the Markowitz's driveway.
Since then it's happened like clockwork, once a month. Maybe it's a blessing not be aware of what happens when Harvey's not in control.
He retrieved the box of bird seed from the table and poured a mound into his palm. Before the window, in the moonlight, he sifted the pale seeds through his now trembling fingers. "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers at night, transmogrifies when the full moon is bright and the seed is right."

Happy Halloween! >:-D

THE SABBAT OF SAMHAIN/HALLOWEEN (October 31)
© Copyright 2005-2009 Karen Charboneau-Harrison, All Rights Reserved.

Samhain (Hallowe'en, Hallomas, Sauin, Samhuinn, Nos Galan Gaoef, Nos Kentan'r Bloaz) is the traditional Celtic New Year's Eve. It is the beginning of the dark period of the year which will gradually give birth to a new sun and new life. It is the beginning of the gestation period for the coming year and of the future. As such, the Horned God must leave the seed of life with the Great Mother for the New Year. This is the last opportunity He will have to perform this greatest of all magicks before He must depart the physical world and so sojourn in the land of spirits and waiting souls. His departure at Samhain is very dramatic and powerful as it opens the gates of the entire netherworld for a brief period thus rendering Samhain a period of awe for all who have the senses to feel it.( Read more... )

Ever on the prowl for cool gifts for folks, look what I just found:

Authentic Claw Prints.

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This was cool: there were two perfect crawdad claws beside one another on the bike path beside the river. Part of a leg was above them on the railing. Perhaps a bird dropped it there to crack it open?
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The South Platte was so clear and low. It was neat to see the bottom.
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Marbled Godwits (thanks for the ID, Catsarah!) cavorted on the opposite bank. Normally godwits are further east. This was our first godwit sighting.
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