Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.
The wings of mourning doves make a distinctive whistling sound when the doves fly off.
Not this morning. It was so damp with such a heavy fog that they made a much more sodden sound when taking flight.
It took me a bit to even realize that it was doves making the sound.
With a Sunday morning coming down, it seemed an apt to hum a few lines of the late Bob Ferguson’s “Wings of a Dove,”
The chorus is well known, at least by some of us:
On the wings of a snow white dove He sends his pure sweet love A sign from above On the wings of a dove
The country gospel classic, popularized by the late Ferlin Husky, reminded me o a duck hunter I once knew. He was construction guy, then working on the Deep Tunnel project, and he said he could not hunt doves.
I asked him why. He said doves were in the Bible and he couldn’t do that to his mother. The reasoning escaped me, but a few years later I bumped into him hunting doves with his daughter, so sometimes practical needs trumps ideology.
Religion, like ideology, is a tricky business.
My sermon for the morning.
There were so many humidity cobwebs this morning, I got to wondering how the humidity makes them.
On the far end of the extended ramble, it hit me.
I am an idiot. The humidity is not making the webs, water is just condensing on all the webs, which naturally occur in far greater numbers than we realize.
Don’t ask me why I didn’t figure that out before.
In town, there was thick fog, but out of town it was so thick the head swam.
I figured that one out. Town is a degree or so warmer than the wild portion of the ramble by the town pond, so it is just warm enough to make a difference in the fog.
Goose guano all over the road by the ball field, so there must be Canada geese around again. At some point yesterday, they must have been grazing and crapping all over the outfield.
In the dense fog, I heard a belted kingfisher on the southwest corner of the north old clay pit, but could not see it.
A black squirrel excited the meathead as it ran around the small trees along the water’s edge on the other side of the bridge over the neckdown between the two pits.
Tom the Fisherman was casting off the point by island as we crossed the bridge. He had not caught anything yet.
A few shots in the distance on the opening morning of dove hunting. With the fog, not nearly as many shots as I usually hear opening morning.
I did not hear any big guns going off at the lakes south of town, so I am guessing the geese are not around or not moving.
Back in town, a gray squirrel snuck around our neighbor’s maple without the meathead spotting it.
So damp this morning, my hair, what remains, was damp as we came in the house.
I can’t decide if the haunting sound of “On the wings of a snow white dove” is a cliche or not.
I tend to think not, the lyrics tie into a lot of Biblical history and just work well, even if relatively simple.
