Seventy-five Fauna Finished

      Because I live in a rural area, finding animals for the list of 75 fauna I was challenged to see and identify was at first easy and fun. I was spotting cats and dogs, cows and sheep, goats, horses, and pigs every time I drove down the road. Then suddenly it seemed as though I had seen every animal there was to see in the Applegate. Bob Cook, who had given me this item, stipulated that insects didn't count, except for butterflies, so I listed two or three different butterflies I found at the end of the summer. Birds didn't count, either, because I have a separate 75s challenge to see and identify 75 birds. On September 12 I saw an alligator lizard, and then nothing but a banana slug until November 6, when I saw a herd of elk as I was hiking up Table Rock Mountain early that morning.

      A trip to the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, over the Christmas holiday added three animals (porcupine, two different kinds of trout, and a bobcat), and I caught sight of a fox close to my house on January 5, but I was beginning to realize how unlikely it would be that I would see 27 new kinds of animals before July 20. More intense concentration was called for. I invited Mike to go with me to the Wildlife Safari near Roseburg, a couple of hours from my house. There, I was sure, I would see at least 27 new animals.

      In spite of the dense fog at the beginning of our drive through this open-range zoo, where the people are encaged in their cars and the animals run free, we began seeing animals almost at once. A dazzle of zebras trotted across a hillside, their beautiful striped forms zigzagging through the fog.

 The Watusi cattle had enormous, graceful horns. The white rhinoceros was barely visible through the fog and the hippopotamus barely visible in the mud, but I did see them. We saw yaks and dik-diks, pythons and lemurs, lions and several kinds of deer and elk. We saw flamingos and rheas, but, of course, those counted on my 75 birds list, not the 75 fauna.

     Altogether it was a very satisfying day, and I successfully completed this item on my 75x75 project. In addition, I was inspired to write a number of poems about the animals, so I also moved forward on the item to write 75 poems of 75 words each. Here are two of the poems:

Tibetan Yaks

Three yaks stood under trees
their long black hair,
like a Mexican sweetheart's,
lush and lustrous.
One lifted a long silky tail
and waved it gently
its gorgeous white tresses
swaying like a bridal veil.
Unlike the mud-caked bison
stubbornly walking the road,
the yaks were clean, and,
having absorbed the zen of their nation
mindful,
completely "in the moment"
which was:
the shade of the trees,
the food provided,
the beauty of their being.


Watching Flamingos with Mike

You said, "There's no such color in nature"
a weird coral cum rose cum orangish pink
accentuated by the hot-pink
on the knees' kinky pink knobs
and the feet's pink webs.
Feathers fluffy as a flapper's pink boa
Legs so ink-thin you'd think they couldn't hold
the pink blood of the frilly pink bird
who, with a wink, a blink, and plink-plank-plink
just on the brink of what you think natural,
tickles me pink.

Collage

     I had not looked forward to the 75s item, suggested by Mariposa and Ni Aódagain, that I make a collage of 75 pieces. It was a good idea, but I don't particularly like making collages. My son suggested I concentrate on words, since words are closer to my heart than images, so I started tearing relevant words from magazines but without much enthusiasm. I just wasn't yet inspired.

      The first inspiration came at Christmas, when my son gave me a round piece of masonite, already gessoed, that I knew immediately would be the surface for the collage. The second impetus was when my eye fell on my decades-long post card collection. I loved those post cards. I have often gone through them just for the pleasure of it. I have used them as writing prompts in creative writing classes, and my old house, I made three large screens of sewn-together post cards. Some of them still have ragged stitches. Why couldn't I now cut them up for images in a collage?

      Suddenly I loved the idea of making a collage of 75 pieces.

   Dividing the collection into categories – animals, people, mountains, lakes, ocean, architecture, places, and so on – gave me a chance to look closely at each beloved post card again. Here were many cards Maren, my dear friend who died three or four years ago, had sent me from her travels. Here were mountain pictures from my backpacking partner Phil. Here were post cards from friends who have died, from friends who have passed out of my life, from my son, my sister, former boy friends, friends from the past, acquaintances writing to say, "We had a good time with you," and beloved friends who live far from me. Here were pictures of places I had been and places I would probably never see. Here were tributes to me and thank-you cards and love notes. For hours ghosts from the past fluttered around me, kissing me on the cheek, patting my head as I worked.

      After categorizing the post cards, I picked from each category the cards I knew I would want in the collage – those whose images I have always loved, those depicting places special to me in my life, those with pictures that seemed representative of me. Those cards totaled about 65, which was just about right. The other ten or so would come as I worked.

      I found that I had to cut the post cards into very small pieces to get 75 in one collage. For the center I used a painting of a woman reclining with a book, cut round. I arranged the pictures by categories around her; then I rearranged them by color. Then, carefully, I glued them on. The whole project took three days.

     This may not be a stunning art piece, but I love it. It is a collage of 75 years of my life. There is a backpacker on the board and a skier and swimmers in the ocean. There are art and food and music. There are flowers, birds, trees, animals of all kinds. There are place I have lived – Vanderbilt University, Cambridge, Sweden; places I have visited – Greece, France, Denmark; and places I love – Crater Lake National Park, Ashland, the Oregon coast. There are lakes and rivers and mountains. There are pictures with memories of friends deeply embedded. 

      There are also, of course, words: "Friends," "Théatre de l'Opéra," "Zornsamlingarna" ("Collections of the Swedish painter Anders Zorn," whose house I visited with Maren), and, across the picture of the reclining woman in the center of the collage, a quote by Rumi that was on one of my post cards: "Let the beauty we love be what we do." Indeed. That's what the whole collage is about.

With thanks to Mariposa and Ni Aódagain for setting me on this journey.