Friday Ramble - Temenos

This week's word is temenos, coming to us from the Greek verb τέμνω, meaning "to cut". The earliest known form of the word occurs in the Mycenaean Greek te-me-no, written in Linear B syllabic script, and it signifies an area of earth or ground forbidden to mundane uses and dedicated to the sacred. The temenos was an important feature of the mythological landscape in early times, at times a shrine, temple or a sanctuary structure made by human hands, but most often an open air enclosure or sacred grove.

Such places abounded in ancient European cultures, and they can be found all around the Mediterranean: the Hellenic Dodonna, Delphi and Eleusis, Knossos (Crete), the Acropolis, Mount Olympus and the Sacred Valley of the Nile in Egypt (to name just a few). One of the most famous of all is the Italian Nemi (nemus Aricinum, or "grove of Ariccia"), an ancient grove of olive trees sacred to the goddess Diana Nemorensis (Diana of the Wood) and the focus of Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough.

There is something about a ring of trees which seems to draw humanity like a magnet. Early Norse cultures had their hörgr, and the ancient Celts had their own open air sacred places called nemetons after the Celtic Nemetes tribe of the Upper Rhine and their tutelary goddess, Nemetona. Nemeton, Nemetes and Nemetona are all rooted in the Celtic nemeto, meaning "of sacred places".

Living in touch with the earth and its timeless seasonal rhythms, one can't help but reflect that the whole earth and everything on it is sacred space, and a quotation from Awakening to the Sacred by Surya Das comes to mind. "Truth is the perfect circle. Its center is everywhere; its circumference stretches into infinite space. The land on which we stand is sacred, no matter where we stand."  In other words, wherever we happen to be standing is consecrated ground. 

Everyone needs special places, and this is one of mine at any time of year. Far from the hills in winter and craving stillness, this is the image that comes to mind, a rock resting in a lavishly treed and sheltered highland hollow where harsh winds never seem to blow.

In winter the hollow is deep blue and very restful, and so still that one can hear snow falling and coming to rest in the trees nearby.  In springtime and summer the place is green and shaded, all flickering leaf light, mosses, ferns and wildflowers.  I can sit comfortably for hours with my back against the stone, watching the dance of light and shadow in the peaceful secluded alcove.  The flavor and fragrance of the experience are described perfectly in a gorgeous excerpt from Directions by Billy Collins.

Time spent by the stone is kairos time rather than sequential time, and it's always time well spent. Much as I long for springtime in late January, I cherish intervals here - even when icy north winds blow as they are blowing this morning.

Thursday Poem - January

Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness. If a star
shines now, that shine is
swallowed and given back
doubled, grounded bright.
The timid angels flailed
by passing children lift
in a whitening wind
toward night. What plays
beyond the window plays
as water might, all parts
making cold digress.
Beneath iced bush and eave,
the small banked fires of birds
at rest lend absences
to seeming absence. Truth
is, nothing at all is missing.
Wind hisses and one shadow
sways where a window's lampglow
has added something. The rest
is dark and light together tolled
against the boundary-riven
houses. Against our lives,
the stunning wholeness of the world.

Betty Adcock from Intervale

Wordless Wednesday - Watchers on the Hill

By the Frozen River

On a winter day, the north wind brushes snow away from the ice on the river, and the displaced flakes whirl through the air like confetti, like autumn mist or spring's floating fog.  There is something in the process that is uplifting for this mere human in January, and even the frosty rimed reeds on the edge with their artfully curling tops are eloquent of something wild and alluring.

Pleasing beyond words are the russet spikes outlined against the bright blue sky, white of the fields and trees on the farther shore. We call the spikey creatures bullrushes, or reedmace, cattail, catninetail, punks, or corndog grass, tucking them into floral arrangements, weaving them into baskets, pounding their rhizomes into flour, or sometimes (as I am here) just watching them sway in the wind. Members of the typha family are pleasing in so many ways, but most of all standing tall in their native place.

In January, there are no caroling birds by the river, and there is silence here for the most part, but for a few moments this past week, I could hear the river singing in its exuberant springtime descent and I smiled, thinking of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir "Speak Memory". On another day, that might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

Gold in Morning's Cup

Morning's Radiant Window

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
Marc Chagall

The morning light comes slowly on these late January days, beginning with a diffused blush on the horizon, then a deep magenta sky and rosy clouds high over the trees, flamboyant coppery gold dancing through everything, a burnished glow flowing like honey over the village. Trees, chimneys and snowy rooflines are silhouetted against the early radiance, and they contribute their own rooted glow to the day that is just coming into being.

These are my "stained glass hours", and they have illustrious crafted kindred; the rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the vibrant panels of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Then there are the magnificent creations of Marc Chagall: his paintings of the biblical Song of Songs, the windows (especially the Reuben window) depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel he designed for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Centre, the commemorative windows he created as a memorial for young Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmith (also spelled Goldsmid) in tiny All Saints Church, Tudeley, Kent.

Compelled for some reason to be up and about before the light show starts, off I go to find a seat by the window and partake of the abundance. I bring a mug of tea, a heavy shawl and the camera.  Chagall often seemed to be seeing the beauty of the earth through stained glass, and wrapped up in morning's exquisite colours, I seem to be doing the same thing.  Mother Nature and Chagall are true artists though - I am just a doddering observer, training my lens on the high perfect light of morning and floundering for words to describe it.

Life Within

Friday Ramble - Village of Glass

Just when it seems that one cannot tolerate another dull January day, along comes a poignantly brief interval of brilliant blue skies, high wispy clouds and fluffy mounded snowdrifts. 

The village, which only a day or so ago was a greyscale study executed in deep liminal twilight, is blown glass from here to there, its myriad outdoor elements tinkling like a thousand and one madcap cymbals, each keeping its own rhythm and time.

There is ice everywhere: glossing roofs, vehicles and trees, coating the cobblestones on the front walk, dangling from the eaves of the house in sculptural shapes and dazzling the eyes whenever the sun alights on them. 

There are other things one ought to be doing, but she stands freezing on the deck with a very long lens on her camera and snaps pictures of the great trees on the hill dancing in the north wind.  Then off comes the telephoto lens, and on goes a 100mm macro - for some reason the windbells below the rafters and their attendant sparkling icicles engage her attention.  In January, light is everything, and how that light captures one heart in early morning.

The day is cold, the north wind is approaching gale force and walking is treacherous, but the word for days like this one just has to be “joy”.

Thursday Poem - The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, from Harmonium

Wordless Wednesday - Waiting

Quarrtsiluni Days

Somewhere to the south, wild orchids may be raising their heads, there may be fields of grazing geese and sunny lagoons of silently floating loons, but not here and not for some long time to come. We were a little late getting started on the long white season this time around, but winter is in full deep snowy swing, and with the wind chill factored into the equation, Fahrenheit and Celsius are of equal height and breadth and are dancing along through the drifting white, hand in hand.

There is an Inuit expression for what we find ourselves doing in January.  Qarrtsiluni is an Inupiaq word meaning "sitting together in darkness" or "sitting in the darkness waiting for something to burst forth". In the original sense, the expression has to do with creativity, describing a benighted interval when one is just sitting about waiting for an image, an idea or an inspiration to come hurtling out of nowhere. I've always loved the concept, and if there had not already been a fine online literary journal called Qarrtsiluni, that is what this blog would have been named. Just turf out the part about creativity, and that is where we are at the moment, sitting around in the darkness and the cold, waiting for something to happen.

There are wonders here and there though, deep crisp snow crunching nicely under one's skiis or snowshoes, frosting on the trees, long blue shadows falling across the trail into the woods. A season which is capable of creating such wonders surely merits more respect and appreciation than I grant it at this time of the year.  My insular, crotchety and rather taciturn winter crone self sometimes balks at the idea though. Now and then, she hunches over her tea and harbors mutinous thoughts.  Strangely enough (but then she is rather strange), the cure for such things is a trip into the woods. 

The Color of Winter

Chrysanthemums and redemption

The world beyond the windows is white, skies cloudy, and the village merely a collection of indistinct shapes and muffled sounds. Snow is falling thick and fast, and the day is cold and damp, the kitchen a shadowy realm in early morning light.  My doddering bones and aching joints protest such weather, and summer seems like a lovely dream from long ago and very far away.

How does one banish winter, even for a few minutes? In search of a fine hot potion to start the day and drown my doldrums, I rattle around in the larder, opening canister after canister and sniffing them appreciatively. French roast? Maxwell House? Earl Grey? Constant Comment? Northern Delights Cloudberry (Arpiqutik) or Crowberry (Paurngaqutik)? Rooibos? Ginseng? Lapsang Souchong? Perhaps plain old Orange Pekoe?

The last container is way in the back of the cupboard and rustles pleasantly, for it holds dried chrysanthemum buds. When I open it, the dry golden fragrance of last summer wafts out, and for a moment, I seem to hear tinkling bells and exotic musics. Ah, here is the tisane (liang cha or 凉茶) we will quaff this morning.

Waiting for the battered kettle to whistle scant minutes later, I find myself doing a little whistling of my own and glancing at the long shadows falling across the little Chinese bowl of chrysanthemum buds and my favorite mug on the counter. The shadows are fetching things and they contrast wonderfully with the fragile porcelain. Forget the staging and fancy lighting, this morning scene is perfect just as it is. Tea anyone?

Snow People

Friday Ramble - Rhapsody in Blue

The Winter Solstice came and went, and light is slowly returning to the world. Days are already growing longer, but the effects of December's turning are felt in their own good time, and it will be some time before we sense real change in the length of our days and nights and notice a great difference in our native landscape.

January is the coldest month here in the north, a time of deep snow and penetrating icy cold. It's tempting to remain indoors and just curl up by the fire with tea and books every day, but we need long woodland rambles in Lanark - snowy ambles nourish and sustain us, and we are still taking them, even on the coldest days in winter.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch" went the snowshoes yesterday as we made our slow meandering way through the woods.  It could be our imagination, but the snow seemed brighter and more brilliant than on potterings just a few days ago.  During the precious moments when there was sunlight, the fields glittered from here to there, and we felt as rich as old Croesus - as though every jeweler's vault on the planet had been harvested and spilled out at our feet.

Even the shadows in the countryside seem to be changing, and there was a subtle shifting in the shady hollows, movement typical of the season and very welcome to winter weary wanderers. Shadows were less attenuated, and at same time, they seemed deeper, more intense, more blue.  Here and there, a sprig of green emerged from the azure snows, and the color was a hopeful thing, one that not even the biting north wind could carry away in its gelid paws.

Thursday Poem - January First

It seems a shame to throw out that old year,
that had so many birthdays in it,
parties and vacations, fixings
of the body and the house, all finished
and no longer to be worried,

and now to pin up these new wolves and dogs and moons
blank squares and unmarked days.
A sleeping new year wakes, lumbers out of darkness,
hungry to consume us
bite by bite at each appointed hour.

There should be maps to guide us through
the wilderness ahead, survival tips and even prayers.
But cloudy gates of heaven close us out
from that eternal view
and leave us with the ticks and nicks of time.

At least, I’ll make a money soup
and let the rich aroma of lentils, garlic, oil
fill our empty bellies with its comfort.
At least, I’ll write some letters to the far ends,
call a friend who’s been where I have been,
and laughs about it,

then settle in behind my usual wall
of rough and solid words.
I love most the days of nothing
nipping at my heels with obligations.
How many will there be?

Dolores Stewart Riccio

(with the poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - The Joy of Books

January's Wolf Moon

January's moon seen above the evergreens on the hill is a thing of beauty, but it is a chill beauty that sings of ice, deep snow, wind and hunger in the wilds. A few months ago, I photographed waves of departing geese silhouetted against the rising moon, and although the great birds are long gone, their parting songs remained with me last evening.

We stoke up our fireplaces and wood stoves. We stay close by our hearths in the long nights. We brew endless pots of tea and countless cauldrons of soup, counting the sticks of firewood piled in our summer kitchens and along our verandas, silently calculating how long the supply of firewood will hold out this year. We wrap up in every warm garment we possess and take toboggan loads of food out into the forest for the birds and the red squirrels and the deer. We look for the first signs that daylight hours are increasing, and we measure the length of the long blue shadows along the trail into the woods.

Before nightfall last evening, our eastern timber wolves raised their voices in song, and the coyotes on the other side of the Two Hundred Wood sang a magnificent harmony, the two wild and elemental choruses rising and falling like waves across the snow. It was icy cold, and as I waited for Lady Moon to appear, I remembered that in several weeks, the Great Horned Owls will be nesting in our woods again. A few weeks after that, the maple syrup season will (hopefully) be starting in the Lanark Highlands.

We also know this moon as the: After Yule Moon, Big Cold Moon, Buckeyes Ripe Moon, Carnation Moon, Center Moon, Ceremonial Initiate Moon, Cold Moon, Cooking Moon, Turning Moon, Earth Renewal Moon, First Moon, Frost in the Tepee Moon, Frozen Ground Moon, Great Moon, Great Spirit Moon, Greetings Maker Moon, Her Cold Moon, Hibiscus Moon, Holiday Moon, Ice Moon, Lakes Frozen Moon, Little Winter Moon, Long Moon, Man Moon, Midwinter Moon, Moon After Yule, Moon of Darkness, Moon of Flying Ants, Moon of Life at It's Height, Moon of Strong Cold, Moon of the Bear, Moon of the Child, Moon of Whirling Snow, Moon When Animals Lose Their Fat, Moon When Limbs of Trees Are Broken by Snow, Moon When Snow Drifts into Tipis, Moon When the Snow Blows like Spirits in the Wind, Moon When the Sun Has Traveled South, Moon When the Old Fellow Spreads the Brush , Moon When Wolves Run Together, Ninene Moon, No Snow in Trails Moon, Old Moon, Pine Moon, Plum Blossom Moon, Quiet Moon, Rivros Moon, Rowan Moon, Severe Moon, Snow Blindness Moon, Snow Moon, Snow Thaws Moon, Snowdrop Moon, Snowy Path Moon, Strong Cold Moon, Sun Has Not Strength to Thaw Moon, Thumb Moon, Trail Squint Moon, Two Trails Moon, Weight Loss Moon, Whirling Wind Moon, White Waking Moon, Winter Moon, Winter's Younger Brother Moon, Wolf Moon

As an admirer of wolves, I like the name "Wolf Moon", but I am also fond of "Great Spirit Moon" and "Earth Renewal Moon".

Trees and Dancing Stars

Sun and Hills and Blowing Snow

What an unexpected gift it can be, a bitterly cold and diamond bright day with the sun shining through the snow blowing across the hills and through the whiskery trees on the ridge.

One stands out of the wind whispering descriptive words like a mantra, and they confer a blessing, a sense of comfort and balance on an icy day in January: winter, sunshine, very cold, hills and trees and blowing snow.

Never mind that one's hood is pulled up, that she is wrapped to keep the cold at bay and deflect the wind, looking like a yeti out among the shifting drifts of white stuff.

The mere suggestion of light on a winter morning is a fine thing, and if one stands out here long enough, she might truly embrace the poignant stillness that Wallace Stevens called "the mind of snow".  She has, however, a very long way to go.

Winter's Hand Held Out in Greeting