Merry Samhain, Happy Halloween

Winter approaches with its chill breath. The harvest has been gathered, granaries and hay barns are full, and farm animals have been tucked into their barns for the long winter. Days are becoming shorter, and nights seem to last forever.

Native Americans call this the time of the Long Nights. Daylight is paler and more slanted, but these late October days have a translucent beauty of their very own. Foliage has already turned red, gold, brown and orange, and the brisk winds of autumn are scouring the hills and sweeping away the colored leaves. The air is spicy and carries the promise of cold days to come. Animals of field and forest are filling their pantries and preparing their burrows for winter.

Halloween or “Samhain”, as the ancient Celts called it, means “summer's end”. According to the old Celtic two-fold division of the year, summer was the interval from Beltane (May 1) to Samhain (October 31), and winter was the interval between Samhain and Beltane. This is (along with Beltane of course), is one of the most important days on the Wheel of the Year. The present year ends at sundown today, and a new year is inaugurated, the first day of the new year beginning in darkness just as the new year itself begins in the darkest time of the year.

To the ancient Celts, time was cyclical and their cross quarter observances represented pivotal cosmic points beyond time, intervals when the natural universal order dissolved back into primordial chaos before regenerating itself. Thus, Samhain is a magical night beyond the confines of time, and on such nights, one may be able to view other points in time using tarot cards, runes or tea leaves.

Two themes are intertwined at Samhain, divining the future and honoring the dead of one's tribe or clan. It was once believed that the hallowed dead returned to the land of the living on Samhain night to feast and celebrate with their clans and family members. The great burial mounds of Ireland (sidh mounds) were opened up and lighted by torches so that the honored dead could find their way back to their homes. Extra places were set at family tables and extra chairs placed near the hearth - food and drink were put out for loved ones who had passed beyond the fields we know. Old stories tell of Irish heroes making daring raids on the Underworld as the gates of Faery stood open on this night, but both the living and dead had to return to their appointed realms and stations by cock-crow or sunrise.

This is one of the most magical nights in the whole turning year, a night full of jack-o-lanterns, costumes, scarecrows, trick or treating, goblins, ghost stories, divination and scrying. It would be wise for us to remember however, that Samhain is also a night of great power and a night when the veil which separates our world from the spirit world is gossamer thin. Strange creatures are abroad on this night, and uncanny events may befall us if we are not prudent and cautious.

Tonight, as I give out candy to little goblins on the threshold, I shall be reflecting on the past year and entertaining good thoughts about the future. I shall be remembering that death is a natural part of earthly existence and that it should not be feared, whether that death be physical death, the end of a trend or pattern, emotional closure, or merely the settling of issues which need to be laid to rest. Life is a continuous cycle of death and rebirth, and Samhain accepts and celebrates this magnificent never-ending cosmic cycle.

Call it Samhain, Halloween, Hallowmas or any one of its many other beautiful names - it is my favorite day of the turning year. Blessing to you and yours on this day. May your jack-o-lanterns glow brightly this Samhain, and may there be many small guests on your threshold this evening. May your home be a place of warmth and light, and may your hearth be protected from things which go bump in the night.

Happy Samhain and Happy Halloween, and Happy New Year too!

Thursday Poem - Litany

This is a litany of lost things,
a canon of possessions dispossessed,
a photograph, an old address, a key.
It is a list of words to memorize
or to forget–of amo, amas, amat,
the conjugations of a dead tongue
in which the final sentence has been spoken.

This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean–
indifferent, anonymous, complete–
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.

This is a prayer to unbelief,
to candles guttering and darkness undivided,
to incense drifting into emptiness.
It is the smile of a stone Madonna
and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,
a benediction on the death of a young god,
brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.

This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
"Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return."
Savor its taste–the bitterness of earth and ashes.

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,
for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,
a rosary of words to count out time's
illusions, all the minutes, hours, days
the calendar compounds as if the past
existed somewhere–like an inheritance
still waiting to be claimed.

Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls–
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes–were not our life.

Dana Goia from (Interrogations at Noon)

Wordless Wednesday - Leaf and Stone

At the Farm

Blowing in the Wind

Hat Full of Rain

Dark clouds, a hat full of rain and sodden fields of despondently drooping foliage were the order of the day Saturday, as we squelched along through field and woodland in our boots and oilskins, Spencer dancing along beside us, sometimes bounding over the wet shrubbery with blithe insouciance.

The day was quiet as only a wet October day can be, not a deer to be seen this time, although there was an occasional muffled footfall heard in the woods - there was no sign of our resident black bear or our little pack of timber wolves. A flock of wild turkeys was foraging in the western field, but the birds kept their heads down and could hardly be seen for the dense fog cloaking every hill and leaf strewn cove.

There is usually something out in the highlands to engage one's eye and bind up one's rainy day thoughts in vibrantly colored streamers. Beyond the fields a stand of tamarack (larch) trees had turned brilliant gold by yesterday morning, and they floated above the foggy fields like gilded lace. Then there was this perfect stained glass leaf turning in the breeze along the trail into the woods.

If the day had been sunny, would I have noticed these things?

October Birch

Thursday Poem - Invocation to the Guardian

You who were with me before I was born,
dark shining on dark,
be with me now.
You who will stay with me after I die,
light traveling on light,
be with me now.

You who are nameless
in the marketplace of ten thousand things,
how shall I call you?
You who are invisible between the stars,
how shall I see you?

You who nurture me with silent wisdom,
speak to me now.
I am listening beyond the sounds of night,
I am looking beyond the sights of the day.
You who fill the infinite void,
travel small on my shoulder now,
show me the way.

Dolores Stewart
Invocation to the Guardian from Doors to the Universe
(reprinted with permission)

This exquisite volume of poetry was recently published by Bellowing Ark Press, and every lyrical word within its pages is magical and transforming.

Wordless Wednesday - Becoming Ice

Contrast and Communion

It is the little things which capture your wandering attention in October, the way the wind ruffles the trees and sets the leaves adrift in great floating clouds, the morning sky in quicksilver motion, the contrast between a fallen yellow leaf and the blue-green needles of the old pine in which it comes to rest.

Call it communion. All are part of the same thing or mu (no-thing or no-thingness) - the wind, the trees, the clouds and this old scribe in the park, looking up in dazzled wonderment...

Waiting

From the Window

There is always something wonderful to see in the highlands on a sunny but cold afternoon in late autumn.

A few weeks ago, it was a whole flock of wild turkeys wandering down the middle of the road near the hamlet of Rosetta. Yesterday it was a watchful doe and her two plump fawns grazing in a wide windswept field along the same road and close by. I looked closely at all three deer through my binoculars and was happy to see that they are in peak physical condition and should make it through the coming winter very well. We could hear turkeys conversing beyond the hill, but they didn't appear.

It is time again to think about bins of windfall apples and bales of hay for the deer, to drag out snowshoes and toboggan and see if they will do another long white season without falling apart. Somehow or other, I shall find the strength to do all that stuff this winter.

Is there a lovelier phrase in the English language than Dylan Thomas's "rivers of the windfall light"?

Dewy Turnings

You awaken one morning and look out into the garden, realizing that your floral and buggy garden wanderings are over for the year. The last rosebuds have succumbed to frost, and not a dragonfly, a bee or a spider adorns the foliage or offers up its small and shining life to your eyes and your camera.

Frost rimes the pools and puddles in the park when you set out with Spencer for an early walk, and the icy waters hold out a mirror to the clear October sky. The trees overhead sway in their own seasonal turnings, and grasses on the village common crunch pleasingly underfoot. Every drop of dew suspended in the hedgerow is a tiny perfect world, an atomy full of wonder.

It is good to be back, and thank you so much for your kind words. I will get through all this computer and health stuff, and I shall be (hopefully) stronger and a tad wiser for the experience - if anything, a little fiercer and even more passionate about this beautiful wild world we call home.

Companion

Eastern Gray Squirrel
(Sciurus carolinensis)

Some of the most amusing daily occurrences of the last week (while the computer was down and I was sick indoors) have involved the athletic antics of local gray squirrels who haunt feeders behind the little blue house in the village, contending with cardinals, chickadees and the resident chipmunks for sunflower seed, suet and millet.

The feeders are suspended "squirrel proof" creations, and it is hilarious to watch the squirrels attempting to teach the seed, sometimes hanging upside down from the crossbars and reaching frantically for the seed trays, occasionally falling off and landing on the veranda railing where they sit, squawking and complaining. This morning's visitor treated me to a long and winding ballad about the indignities heaped upon the head of a hungry sciurus in October.

Sometimes

There are times when Life throws one a curve or two, and this has been one of those times.

For the last several weeks, I've been contending with serious health issues, and just to make existence a little more interesting, my computer expired without warning on the weekend. I was in no shape to try and work out the techie problems and was compelled to leave the darned box turned off while I developed a little strength and enough focus to address the issues.

As of a few minutes ago, the computer is working again, but it is anything but reliable. In the next few days, I shall have to reformat the hard drive and start over from scratch, restoring archived data from my library and reinstalling a thousand and one programs. I am mapping the whole process out now so that I can proceed in an orderly fashion.

It appears too that I shall require invasive surgery at some point in the next several weeks and life away from the computer these days is a swaying forest of medical appointments, forms and tests. So far, the surgery is scheduled for December 10th, the day before my birthday.

I have so missed all of you! It is good to be back in the realm of blog.

Morning

Sometimes...

Sometimes she thinks about running away. Then she remembers summer sunrises seen from the top of the gorge, and she stays right where she is. Where on this good green earth could she go and have such coinage to tuck in the pockets of her old photographer's vest?

It is October, and she is far from her lofty granite perch, but she is there in her thoughts. She sits with her legs dangling over the edge and watches the clouds drift by - sometimes she feels like a cloud herself.

Friday Ramble - Focus

A year or three ago, I would not have been standing in the soggy hedgerow or out in the street at sunrise to look at leaves after rain. I did this morning, marveling at their colors, at the shape and luster of the beads of wetness along their verges and veins, at the knowledge that in each and every raindrop there are atomies beyond my ken and focus, whole tiny dancing worlds in each roundness.

Not so long ago, I wouldn't have been outside at twilight to watch geese flying down to the river either, their strong dark shapes silhouetted against skies of rose and gold, the tall stalwart forms of spruces and pines and backlighted wispy clouds.

Whatever else is going on in my life (and there is a fair bit at the moment), I am thankful for eyes with which to see the leaf, for ears with which to hear the songs of the geese as they fly, for a freckled nose with which to breathe in this spicy autumn fragrance in the hedgerow. I am thankful too for the doddering wits which allow me to "see" in a way which goes beyond the senses, to fathom on some inexpressible level just how astonishing this world is and how many wonders there are all around me, if I can just focus.

Thursday Poem - Frost in Lanark

A crunching frost last evening in the highlands,
the lambent moon high above my old trees,
a sweet embracing darkness, and the
aurora borealis dancing over the hill,
October stillness flowing like an shadow
down the trail below the oak trees at twilight.

Winter stirs among the short days,
whispering of cold moons to come,
the rattling dry breath of long nights,
like these old bones that move creaking
through the brown grass, dead leaves and fallen twigs.

Patterns everywhere, and not of my making,
but the Old Wild Mother's weaving,
marbled stones, hoary branches, mottled leaves,
prints of wolf and deer along the trail,
puddles deep in the wooded hollows rimed with ice,
shreds of tattered birch bark blowing free.

There are ghost scents on the wind this evening,
of fresh turned earth and summer fields,
There are echoes of the wild geese going south,
the old rail fence creaking when I leaned on it at dusk in June.
"Rest now sister," it tells me in its hollow voice.
"Rest you now, for all things turn in time, and we,
like the seasons, must await the time of our tuning."

Catherine Kerr

Wordless Wednesday - Blue Morning

At the Edge Looking Up

Bare trees, drifts of fallen leaves, and dry papery bulrushes gone brown and friable, early fog drifting around everything in wisps and fey curls and transparent streamers....

With a few hardy and courageous exceptions, the residents of the Two Hundred Acre Wood are thinking about flying south or sliding into a gentle hibernation. This morning, the land itself seems to be drowsy and hovering on the edge of a long winter sleep.

In the stillness, I can hear Lady Winter striding across the hills, and she is headed this way, her long skirts rustling and her boots crunching through the frosty grasses."Soon," says the wind in the trees in its hollow voice, "very very soon..."

The Full Hunter's Moon of October.

One learns to expect and accept autumn full moon nights when Lady Moon is a nebulous glow behind the clouds and trees. Last evening I saw the moon for only a few moments, and a mere corner at that. The night sky was filled with dark clouds and nary a star was to be seen up there in the darkness.

For all that, the night was magical, and it was filled with high flying geese, for the north has begun to freeze up entirely, and the northern Canadas are on their way south, flying high against the moon and calling to each other as they pass overhead. Flights during the day are at such high altitudes that the great geese are mere specks and their conversations just faint echoings.

This October full moon coincides with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (also called the Lantern Festival), which dates back over 3,000 years to the time of moon worship in China's Shang Dynasty. One of three important festivals in China, the occasion is sacred to Ch'ang-e, Chinese goddess of the moon, and the day is celebrated with open air altars, lanterns, incense, tree planting, dragon dances and an exchange of the lovely ornate pastries called mooncakes.

We also know this moon as the:

Acorns Cached Moon, Big Wind Moon, Big Chestnut Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blood Moon, Changing Season Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Corn Ripening Moon , Drying Grass Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Frosty Moon, Harvest Moon, Ivy Moon, Joins Both Sides Moon, Kantlos Moon, Kindly Moon, Leaf Falling Moon, Leaf Dance Moon, Leaves Change Color Moon, Maple Moon, Michaelmas Daisy Moon, Middle-finger Moon, Moon When Birds Fly South, Moon of Poverty, Moon When Geese Leave, Moon of Changing Season, Moon When Quilling and Beading Are Done, Moon When the Water Begins to Freeze on the Edge of Streams, Moon of Harvesting , Moon When Deer Rut, Moon of Acorn Gathering, Moon When Corn Is Taken in , Moon of Changing Season, Moon of Falling Leaves, Moon That Turns the Leaves White, Moon of First Frost, Moon When They Store Food in Caches, Moon of Long Hair, Nut Moon, Raking Moon, Shedding Moon, Small Trees Freeze Moon , Song Moon, Striped Gopher Looks Back Moon, Strong Moon, Ten Colds Moon, Travel in Canoes Moon, Trees Felled by Fire at Butt Moon , Trout Moon, Turkey Moon, Vintage Moon, White Frost on Grass and Ground Moon, Wild Turkeys Moon, Wilted Moon, Wine Moon, Winter Coming Moon

Of all the lovely names for the October Moon, my favorites are "Leaf Dance Moon" and "Kindly Moon", its Chinese name.

In Flight

Waxwing

Friday Ramble - A Delicate Balance

In early morning, mind and body fold themselves gingerly into the only meditative position they can cope with at this time in life and slide carefully into a breathing meditation. The physical position taken is precarious, ache inducing and anything but balanced, the mind equally precarious and seemingly intractable, ever inclined to wander, over the hills and far away.

When sitting, I sometimes think wistfully of the long limbed creature in her vibrant forties who scrambled easily up steep hillsides, down treacherous gorges and across soggy beaver dams in search of something, she knew not what. That younger woman was always searching for something, the sunlight falling across a wild orchid in the bog, the wind whistling through a crevice, the sound of a stream beyond the hill, a moment of radiant stillness at the top of a cliff. When younger self was engaged in these undertakings, she was in balance, and she knew it not.

Things are different now, for I am older, more brittle in my bones, less elastic in sinews and more ossified in physique. Perhaps I spilled coffee on the counter in the kitchen this morning at first light or dropped a mug and shattered it on the tile floor. This afternoon, my stiff fingers may be unable to grasp paint brush, camera or inkstone firmly, and my physical metabolism protests vigorously when I try to compel it to do anything at all beyond just sitting like a stone. For the most part, one ignores the creaks and protests of her aging organism and goes merrily on her way, only surrendering when absolutely necessary.

Balance is an elusive entity glimpsed now and then, but she always seems to be disappearing around the next corner in a graceful swirl of silken garments and tinkling bells. Sometimes I think I can hear her laughing at me as she moves away, amused by the longing of this eldering being for clarity, grace, balance and equilibrium. Let her laugh, for I am dancing onward and enjoying the journey all the way. Roots down, branches up, and off we go...

The artless suspension of the trout in its watery medium, the effortless grace of a fallen leaf resting in the patient arms of a sleepy tree in late October, the smooth stones resting easy by the beaver pond and its calm waters — these are the essence of a wild, true and natural balance. Each and every trout, leaf, stone and restless being in the great wide world is already in balance, and there is no need to pile up the stones of one's life into an inukshuk, a trail mark or a cairn. One can grow and bloom wherever she is planted, and I have been planted in some very strange places in the last sixty years or so. As for sitting like a chunk of rock, well, I am all for that — for sitting like a mountain, a boulder, a weathered glacial erratic or a chunk of volcano, and for thinking like one too.

Whenever and wherever I enter the landscape in a spirit of openness and reciprocity, I am at home and in perfect balance, but I am always forgetting that elemental truth. Perhaps in one of these lifetimes, I shall get my act together and be able to remember. In the interim, I often think of Linda Hogan's words (from her exquisite volume of essays Dwellings) as I am pottering along, and there is a large measure of comfort in them.

"I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and of immensity above.

It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Tonight, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and Listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."

Thursday Poem - You Are the Future

You are the future,
the red sky before sunrise
over the fields of time.

You are the cock's crow when night is done,
you are the dew and the bells of matins,
maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes
that rise from the stuff of our days—
unsung, unmourned, undescribed,
like a forest we never knew.

You are the deep innerness of all things,
the last word that can never be spoken.
To each of us you reveal yourself differently:
to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

Rainer Maria Rilke,
Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
The Book of Pilgrimage, II, 22