The Daily Bucket is a place where we can post and exchange our observations about the natural happenings in our neighborhoods. Birds, bugs, blossoms and more - each notation is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the natural patterns that are unwinding around us.
Seattle. May 20, 2012.
I posted this on May 19, 2011:
Headed over to the forest yesterday for the first time in a week and walked in dappled shade for the first time this year. Big-leaf Maple, Black Cottonwood, Red Alder, Dogwood. The last layer of the canopy has closed...
This year I walked in dappled shade for the first time a good week ago, on trails that had been in full light the week before. The transition from winter's open view is almost too sudden. There is a bit of claustrophobia this time of year, a green light that presses down from above and holds you there. Birding now is by ear alone, with maybe a quick peripheral glimpse of movement, a flash of yellow.
Looking up. Red Alder. The song of a Yellow-rumped Warbler.
Walking in dappled shade many years ago I was delighted by the realization that every one of the bright spots underfoot was perfectly round. It was if I was walking underneath an immense array of camera obscura, each one focusing an image of the sun at my feet. I twirled through the bright bits, crazy with the notion that I could dance across a thousand suns and that as I danced the sun itself became my partner, rippling along my outstretched arms.
Between 5:02pm and 7:26pm today the moon will pass across the sun. Here in Seattle its passing will be oblique. We will not see the totality's ring of fire, but at 6:18pm the maximally occluded sun will be visible as a bright crescent hanging in the sky.
Projected view of today's maximum solar eclipse in Seattle.
I will be in the Forest then, and I will dance in dappled shade with the crescent sun as my partner. And if there are clouds? No matter. I will dance happily in half light and listen for birdtalk in the closed green canopy.
May 20, 2012. The Forest canopy has been closed for a week now. A partial solar eclipse will occur between 5:02pm and 7:26pm.
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Where are you and what are the sun and the moon and the birds and the other critters doing there today?
I'll definitely be gone between 5:02pm and 7:26pm today, but will check in from time to time otherwise and report back after the sun has returned.