"True North"

acrylic on canvas, framed, image is "48x60"

I never knew cattails could grow to 7 and 8 feet until I began birding along the northeastern shore. Up until then, I had only seen them struggling along in the ditches beside southern highways.

This picture is of part of a huge stand of cattails surrounding the ponds at Cape May Bird Refuge in New Jersey. The refuge is on the eastern flyway and every spring and fall shelters thousands of birds as they migrate back and forth between the northern and southern hemispheres. When I first saw the cattails I didn't even recognize them for what they were. They towered way over my head and were teeming with blackbirds, sparrows, all sorts of songbirds and wading birds. It was incredible. They were all a maze of paths, a few made by men and marked, but most by the creatures they contained as they made their way back and forth to the ponds the reeds encircled. The paths were muddy and full of puddles, feathers, droppings, clam shells and husks. One of my best memories is of sitting on a golf stick seat, late in the chill of a fall afternoon after having wandered back along some vague little path and ending up at the pond. The preserve was deserted, the light on the tall reeds all around me was so clear it was almost crispy. I had my tiny little bourbon flask, just enough to salute the coming dusk. It was magical.

Whenever I am lost to the man made world with all of it's massive artificial complexities, moments such as these remind me of where our center really lies, where our inner compass knows true north exists. The compass may not be for each of us in a stand of cattails, but a place does exist, somewhere that can remind us.

(I left the droppings out)