Friday Ramble - Reflect/Reflection

On a cold day near the end of February, one wraps up and goes for a twilight walk along streets and lanes, through fields, parks and the village common with camera in hand. She is a little restless and in search of something, but she has no idea what that something is or rather, what it will turn out to be. She reckons she will recognize it when she sees it.

There is snow everywhere, and not much color to be seen in the landscape, but she pauses in a quiet scrap of urban field where an intermittent creek flows in season.  No water is flowing now of course, but in one place the north wind has lifted the snow covering the little tributary, and the burnished surface is revealed in all its fractal perfection.  As old Helios goes down everything flashes, the frozen stream capturing the end-of-day light and holding it up like a mirror.  There are wide vistas up there in the sky, oceans, islands and cloud archipelagos, and the whole scene is one of joyous and untrammeled reciprocity, no reservations, no limitations and no holding back.

The words reflect and reflection emerge from the Middle English reflecten and Latin reflectere, meaning to bend, but when we use the words in mundane conversation, we tend to think of light and mirrors and deep thought, anything and everything except  bending.  No deep thoughts at the edge of the field last evening, but whatever notions I entertained were probably closer to the original meaning of the word reflect  than to anything else I can think of offhand.

Watching the slow flush and shimmer of sunset  moving across the ice, I felt like bending and giving a deep gassho or a bow of some kind. Words and images (mine anyway) cannot ever hope to do justice to such a moment or such a glow - all my efforts are merely echos, soupçons, shadows, whispers on the north wind.  This is enough,  I tell myself, this is enough.

Thursday Poem - Treading the Gate

Approach the gate as a pilgrim, a seeker,

wear sturdy boots for walking,

go cloaked and hooded against the wind,

blackthorn staff and lantern in hand,

an abundance of candles in your pack

for the long journey ahead.

Bring gifts and offerings for those who

dwell beyond the ancient gate, bundles

of sage, clear water, kindling, earth and salt,

bring flasks of tea, incense and bread,

bring tales and laughter to share around the fire

with those you will meet along the way.

Travel lightly and make your journey by the moon,

taking the owls, true kindred, as your

fierce and tender companions, feel

their breath along your own wings, share

their dark and mindful wisdom as you flow.

Let the song you sing as you are questing

be your own sweet music, and the stories

you spin by the fire in the nights ahead

be the narratives of your own wild and shining life,

this journey you are making into an unknown land.

Listen to the night and be content, for you are not alone —

around you is a vast and singing throng,

the very stars are singing with you as you go.

Cate

Happy Losar (Tibetan New Year)

Wordless Wednesday - Rumors of Spring

The suchness of all things

It is, just what it is. In the beginning, we are glad to see it, but by late February, we are weary of it, and we are ready to see it pass away.

Winter stays around here for several months out of the calendar year, bitter cold making us dance in place to stay warm when we are out of doors.  The long white season mutes skies by day, conceals the moon and stars by night. It wraps around village, field and forest, rounding with alike tenderness and reciprocity, the contours of houses, streets, vehicles, hillsides and sleeping trees.

Rather than trying to tune out all the white stuff, I photograph it patiently, playing with the light and looking for the essence of winter - now and then, I encounter that essence in unlikely places.

In a sunny place under the trees, a cold clear spring is rising from several hundred feet underground, the small pool liquid for only a moment or two. The bubbles, fingers of glossy icicles and frayed wood suspended over them take on the elements of a painting, and what I see in the viewfinder leaves me breathless. As mundane as such natural compositions are at first glance, they hold the world in their delicate shadings and curves, graceful acknowledgments of the suchness of all things.

And there in the wood (2)...

White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)

Ambrosial Cakes for the Journey

I awakened long before dawn and stood in the darkness, waiting for a fragile scrap of waning moon to show her face above the horizon in the southeastern sky.  She was visible for only a minute or two before fading away in a graceful gesture of fealty to the rising sun, but the slender crescent of light remained on the inside of my eyelids long after retreating into the high still light of morning.

A single male cardinal was perched in a maple tree in the garden, singing blithely and not seeming to care that it is only February, and there were owls perched in the bare oaks on a nearby hill, a splendid pair of mated "great hornies" welcoming the day with gentle nudgings and hootings.There was no mistaking their pleasure in being here at sunrise, in being together and sharing a tree. 

Returning indoors, I made a robust pot of French roast (freshly ground beans) and ransacked the freezer for blueberries, the refrigerator for gluten free flour and maple syrup from the highlands.  Such a fine rosy beginning to a late winter day and the advent of a new lunar cycle calls for a celebratory rite of some kind.  Fresh "made from scratch" journey cakes (pancakes or bannock) seemed like the right way to go, and the fragrance in the kitchen was downright ambrosial.

And there in the wood...

Black-capped Chickadee

(Poecile atricapillus)

Friday Ramble - Wintery Abundance

It may seem a bit odd to be writing about abundance in February.  The word made its appearance in the fourteenth century, coming to us through the good offices of Middle English and Old French, thence from the Latin abundāns, meaning full or overflowing.  There are a number of synonyms for the adjective form including the aforementioned full and overflowing, lavish, ample, plentiful, copious, exuberant, rich, teeming, profuse, bountiful and liberal.

We use abundance or abundant to describe circumstances of fullness, ripeness and plenty, and most often in summer and early autumn as we weed and reap and gather in, turning the earth over for next year's garden, "putting things by" and storing the bounty of the season for future consumption.  We scurried about like squirrels a few months ago, hoarding the yieldings of our gardens for winter, for the short dark days when the north wind howls in the eaves and snow lies deep across the landscape.

Winter's eye is as passionate as summer's visual apparatus, but it views the world in a different way, watching not for the shapes of wildflowers and butterflies, but the graceful arch of bare branches against the clouds, light falling across old rail fences and slanting deep blue shadows across the snow, dead leaves dancing in the wind, the thousand and one worlds resting easy within a glossy icicle down by the creek. Bales of hay still rest in winter fields, but they are cloaked in snow, and if not quite forlorn in their silent windswept places, they are certainly poignant.  Each and every one cries out for attention, for loving eyes and lens, a slender scrip of words. 

The long white season is about harvest and abundance too, but the harvesting is inward, the abundance quieter and dotted here and there with questions.  In February's middling pages, I always seem to find myself questioning the shape of my journey - my slow progress through across the highlands with camera and notebook in hand, the sheaves of images captured or described and carefully archived, even the eyes with which this old hen is seeing the world.

I must remember that questions are an important part of the journey and a kind of harvesting too.  There is not the slightest chance that I will ever capture a scrap of all the wonder and grandeur around me, and lo, these days on the earth are numbered. In the warm darkness of my uncertainty, I gather everything in and rejoice.

Thursday Poem - Everything Is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

---David Whyte

 My thanks to Terri Windling for reminding me about David's gorgeous poem.

Wordless Wednesday - Waiting for Words to Come

Thought for This Day

Love blooms wherever we plant it.

The rose is a Chrysler Imperial given to me by my daughter a few summers ago.  We all loved her, especially Spencer, who would cheerfully have eaten each and every bloom, but (alas), the lady only survived for a year this far north - even with the most stalwart winter protections.

Oh, how our rose bloomed while she was with us though.  In her brief span of days on the hallowed earth, she filled the garden of the little blue house in the village with color and fragrance, and she gladdened our hearts.  Surely that is the essence of love.

Spencer Then and Now

Cold by the Door

Here we are again in the puckish mercurial month of February, weather swinging back and forth like a pendulum in wide arc.  A few days ago we enjoyed a brief interval of mild temperatures and melting, this morning we are back to clear skies, deep icy cold and bitter wind, everything in village and highland crowned by ice and glittering like the contents of a jeweler's vault. The amplitude of weatherly change boggles the mind, but perhaps such doings are to be expected - after all, this is the month of the madcap woodland god, Pan, also called Lupercus or Faunus.

Pan is a satyr or faun, the horned and furry deity of shepherds and flocks, wild mountain places, hunting, the shepherd's pipes (Pan flute) and rustic musics - he's a wild and randy god famed for his pursuit of fair young maidens far and wide, and his name hails from the Greek word paein, meaning "to pasture."

In his Arcadian birthplace, Pan was revered as the protector of fields, groves and woodland glens, thence comes his affiliation with fertility rites and springtime. The lusty old guy is a primal spirit from the beginning times, and he never comes to mind without my thinking of the incandescent chapter (VII) in Kenneth Graham's The Wind and the Willows called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".

Why write about it this morning?  This is the week of the Lupercalia, an ancient pastoral festival dedicated to Pan, rites celebrated to banish evil spirits, ensure rude good health and ensure fertility. Such festivals appear to have been popular for many centuries - the Lupercalia superseded Februa, an earlier Roman spring festival from which the month of February took its name.

In only a few weeks, old barns in the highlands will be home to the first wee lambs of the season. This year, we may have to issue them with parkas and snowshoes.

At Ease in the Elements

I am not sure what it is about bison that captures my attention and tugs at my sensibilities like a magnet - their size and formidable hulking stance, their disdain for humanity and all its works, their air of insouciance and subtle menace? Their very wildness perhaps?

Majestic, that's the word... the majestic creatures at Battle River Bison are not the slightest bit put out by winter weather, and on sunny days, they inhabit the white stuff with such aplomb that one would think they had invented it. Maned, shaggy and looking for all the world like an ancient herd of tundra mammoths, they stand facing into winter storms (unlike domestic bovines), and they shrug off gale winds, driving snow and ice pellets as though such things are minor nuisances.  Bison are just plain magnificent.

Knowing perfectly well that bison are more dangerous than grizzlies, I'd still like to find a way to get closer to them, but all my scheming avails me not. Since it is not going to happen, a very long lens is the way to go.

(Sorry to be retooling this post, but I was rather woolly in the noggin this morning thanks to a bad head cold, and this post simply would not fall into place.  First I posted the wrong image, and then I couldn't put words together - that hardly ever happens, but it happened today.)

Friday Ramble - Immanent/Immanence

The words mean existing or within, and they come to us from the Late Latin immanens, present participle of immanere, meaning "to remain within".

When something is immanent, it is everywhere, inherent, pervading or present throughout the universe and not separated from planes of existence.  In religious doctrine, immanence is the belief that the sacred dwells beyond us and at the same time is intimately present within us and everything around us.  Thus, there is contrast with conventional notions of transcendence in which the sacred dwells beyond, but is not part of this world in which we are journeying along together.

I am fond of the words of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus who said, and a very long time ago: "We all look up to the same stars; the same heaven is above us all; the same universe surrounds us all.  What does it matter by what system of knowledge we seek to know the truth? Not by one path alone may we attain to so great a secret.”

Does immanence matter?  To me it does, and I suspect it does to anyone who cares about her/his fellow creatures and this planet.  The sacred is above us, around us and within us, in these creaking old bones of mine, in sunrises and flaming sunsets, brilliant blue days and starry starry nights, the revolving seasons and the Great Round of time, the earth under our feet, the branches and good green leaves over our heads (hopefully some day soon). It seems to be what most of my wandering around with the camera is about, however badly captured or expressed here - seeing, experiencing and honoring the incandescent spark that dwells at the heart of everything.

My puckish Zen side feels compelled to add that mere existence is never an issue, a parameter or a condition of immanence.  No doubt, the immanent dwells as happily within things that don't exist as it does within things that do. The concept of non-duality and the expression "all one world" cover things nicely.

I needed a reminder of all that "stuph" this morning, and there it was in the rising sun shining though the frost on my window.  Emaho!

Thursday Poem - Winter

WINTER, a sharp bitter day
the robin turns plump against the cold
the sun is weak
silver faded from gold

he is late in his coming and short in his stay
Man, beast, bird and air all purging, all cleansing, earth already
purified awaits the rite of spring
Her bridal gown a virgin snow and frosts in her hair
A snowdrop by the road today bowed gracefully and high upon
the wing up in the sparkling nothingness, a lone bird
began to sing
Can gentle spring be far away?

Tommy Makem

The "Bard of Armagh" was best known (and loved) as a singer, storyteller, song collector and actor, but he was also a very fine poet.

February's Full Hunger Moon

Across the velvet bowl of night,
we are hunting the rising moon. 
With brushes and lenses we go,
longing to catch her radiant face
in a net of dreaming trees.

The Moonhunters (excerpt)
C. Kerr, February 2009

On clear winter nights, the stars are so bright and close one can almost reach up and touch them. Usually the second moon of the calendar year, February's full orb is a cold one up there in the inky night sky attended by guardian stars and delicate feathery snow clouds. Photographing this moon is an icy business, so what am I doing outside with camera and tripod after dark?

Around this time, the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), having taken a mate a few weeks earlier, crafts a nest and settles down to the happy business of raising an unruly brood. The great "hornies" are among my favorite birds, and I adore their soft songs - it's a lovely thing to hear a couple calling companionably to each other across the snowy woods in winter's (hopefully) closing pages. Quintessential northern residents, the great owls thrive on the tough northern climate - the further north one travels, the bigger they grow. The Saw-whet Owl (or sugar bird) will not be far behind the hornies in courtship rituals, and nor will the other owls of the Lanark highlands. Strange as it may seem, springtime is already on its way. Love and fertility are in the air, among the owls anyway.

Life is a little more stressful for those of us who lack feathers and fur and do not dine on mice and voles. The Wolf Moon was last month, but the wolves continue to howl at village gates, and hunger is a beast well known as days grow longer and winter (hopefully) draws to a close. We count sticks of firewood in our woodsheds, vegetables in our bins and jars in our larders, hoping to hang on to last autumn's gathering for a little longer.  If we can manage to hang on, the full moon of March promises relief and sweetness, for the wild sylvan alchemy of the maple syrup season will be in full swing when the next full moon makes its appearance.

For a fine trove of moon lore and thoughtful observations about the ways in which humanity have traditionally hunted, gathered, cooked and "put things by" for the long nights, read Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feasts. Her book, follows the thirteen moons of an agricultural year, beginning with this month's Hunger Moon. Each of the thirteen chapters contains recipes which are in tune with the timeless rhythms of the season.

We also know this moon as the: Ash Moon, Big Winter Moon, Bone Moon, Bony Moon, Budding Moon, Chestnuts Moon, Cold Winds Moon, Coyotes Frighten Moon, Crow Moon, Dark Red Calves Moon, Death Moon, Eagle Moon, Fish Running Moon, Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon, Gray Moon, Horning Moon, HUnger Moon, Ice in River Is Gone Moon, Ice Moon, Index Finger Moon, Little Bud Moon, Long Dry Moon, Makes Branches Fall in Pieces Moon, Mimosa Moon, Moon of Ice, Moon of Purification and Renewal, Moon of Rabbit Conception, Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind, Moon of the Raccoon, Moon of the Frog, Moon When Geese Come Home, Moon When Bear Cubs are Born, Moon When Spruce Tips Fall, Moon When Trees Pop, Moon When Trees Are Bare and Vegetation Is Scarce, Narcissus Moon, No Snow in Trails Moon, Peach Blossom Moon, Pink Moon, Plum Blossom Moon, Primrose Moon, Quickening Moon, Raccoon Moon, Rain and Dancing Moon , Red and Cleansing Moon, Second Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Snow Moon, Solmonath (Sun Moon), Squint Rock Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fish Moon, Sucker Moon, Trapper’s Moon, Treacherous Moon, Violet Moon, Wexes Moon, Wild Moon, Wind Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winter Moon

I am rather fond of Quickening Moon and Wild Moon.

By This Leaf Exposed

Little things leave you feeling restless in February. You ramble through stacks of gardening catalogues, plotting another heritage rose or three, new plots of herbs and heirloom veggies. You spend hours in the kitchen summoning old Helios with cilantro, fragrant olive oils and concoctions straight from Tuscany. You brew up endless pots of chrysanthemum tea, sunlight dancing in every china mug.

You play with filters, apertures and shutter speeds, entranced (and occasionally irritated) by the surprising transformations wrought by your madcap gypsy tinkerings. Camera in hand or around your neck, you haunt the woods, peering into trees and searching for a leaf somewhere, even a single bare leaf. You scan the cloudy evening skies, desperately hoping to see the moon, and you calculate the weeks remaining until the geese, the herons and the loons come home again.

The great horned owls who live on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are now building their nest in an old tree about a mile back in the forest and getting ready to raise another comely brood, and it makes me happy to think it is happening again.  This morning, a single delicately faded oak leaf was teased into brief flight by the north wind, and it came to rest on the veranda, bearing in its poignant wabi sabi simplicity an often and much needed reminder. This is the sisterhood of fur and feather, snowy earth and sky, wandering eye and dancing leaf.  Out of my small and frost rimed doings, a mindful life is made.

An Amaryllis in Her Blooming

Standing in the Light

Something is missing, but it is February before she remembers there were no amaryllis bulbs under the Yuletide tree last December.  That means that no flame colored Hippeastrum is flowering along that south facing wall now - no velvety cardinal colored blooms are swaying on statuesque stems, catching the morning sun through the frosted panes and lighting the midwinter day on its way.

Weary of ice and snow, she longs to have her morning tea on the veranda but knows that she will not be doing that for months.  A little bright color right about now would be grand, and vastly appreciated too.

On a trip to the local organic market, a tin bucket of bright tulips catches her eye, and she scoops up a large bunch, carrying them home as tenderly as if they were fledgling birds in her hands.  Arrayed in an old glass vase (a flea market find from last summer) against the aforementioned wall, the glossy red blooms and green leaves don't just light up the day - they light up just about everything else too.

She makes a fervent note to give herself  an amaryllis bulb for her birthday this year in December, and she resolves to keep a pot or vase of something flowering near that southern window all winter long.  She thinks about how a single rose will look there come summer, and it seems to her that this is not just about one rose, but about all the boundless gardens of the earth coming into riotous intoxicating bloom.