Here's That Rainy Day

Sometimes song titles present themselves to me. They float into consciousness, for no other reason but that I've heard the title, or read it on an album cover, and it seems to fit.

Like today. It was supposed to rain, and it's raining now, but I noticed that there was no rain in the forecast for midday, so I suggested to Hilary that we go on a field trip. I had discovered a new destination—the Grey Cloud Dunes Scientific and Natural Area, which lies on the east bank of the Mississippi a few miles downstream from St. Paul, beyond the Indian mounds, the railyards, the scrap metal company, and the oil refinery on Highway 61.

We parked in the gravel parking lot on the outskirts of Cottage Grove, read the informational sign for a minute or two, and then commenced our stroll south through the golden grasses high above the river. We couldn't see the river yet, but the skies were almost blue in some spots, and the dunes had a graceful roll. That shouldn't be surprising. They've been sitting here, shaped first by glacial rivers, then by wind and rain, for ten-thousand years at least.

Unlike state parks and recreation areas, "scientific and natural" areas do not have official trails or trail markings. Of course there are well-worn paths, but there's no way to tell which ones go where. At the first obvious fork, a quarter-mile in, we opted to stay on the ridge rather than descent to the lower level of the dunes. We wanted to get some perspective.

Fifteen minutes later we came to another fork. By this time the river had come into view to the southwest below us, and also the railroad tracks and two small ponds. Aided by the map I'd printed out before we left, we convinced ourselves that this would be a good place to head down to the strip of oak woods alongside the river. And so it proved to be.

There were hundreds of duck out on the water, but they were hugging the far shore (as usual) and we could only pick out a few common mergansers and ring-necked ducks with binoculars. It was more interesting watching the three eagles that were gamboling high above the river, soaring, then diving playfully at one another while making that strangely evocative clicking sound.

We sat on the bank in the dead leaves for a few minutes, and it occurred to me that this would have been a great place for any youth to head in search of adventure. I was reminded of the hikes I used to take with friends when I was in junior high, out beyond the confines of Mahtomedi on Maple Street or Hickory Street, to the woods, fields, and lakes to the east, sometimes with our .22s. (We shot at anything that moved, but rarely hit anything.)

On our way back, Hilary and I took a different path. It stayed in the lower dunes and crossed under the railroad tracks farther to the north. It was wetter down there and we had to take a few detours to avoid flooded sections, but we also heard, and then got a good look at, the first song sparrow of the season. At one point Hilary spotted some pussy willows in bloom—another first—and we also came across a flock of thirty-odd tree sparrows that were headed north for the summer, with a few juncos tagging along.

The lower trail wasn't nearly so majestic—no views of the valley or the river, and the dune grasses on the hillsides above us looked rattier than the ones up top—but it was different, and it gave us a new perspective on the area. A lone killdeer was peeping shrilly in the distance, again and again—they like to nest in rugged, barren spots—and at one point I spotted a northern shrike crossing the field in the distance ahead of us. That was the best sighting of the day.

The rain didn't start until an hour after we got home. I fried up some bacon and got a pot of pea soup going on the stove while we listened to a duo album by pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Charlie Haden.

Was "Here's That Rainy Day" on it? No.But the album does have quite a few standards along the same lines: "My Old Flame," "What'll I Do," "Long Ago and Far Away," and "Everything Happens to Me."

One reviewer remarked that the "casual intensity, and the willingness to commune with yearning lyricism one minute and dive into dark voids the next, make Mehldau and Haden's duo work here so compelling."

I would agree. And doesn't that look a little like Grey Cloud Island on the cover?