Turning

There are not too many moments like this one left in our immediate future, for temperatures will plunge this evening, and there will be snow.

The Old Wild Mother, wearing the robes of the long cold white season, will come striding over the hill in her seven league boots, gently rounding the contours of lanes and streets, village homes and parked vehicles with new snow, dusting the branches of the old trees with sugar, lacing pools in the park with elaborate ice patterns.

Parts of myself cringe at the thought of the cold and wind and ice and snow on its way - the photographer rejoices and welcomes her old friend.

Dawning

I awake, and when I do the beauty of the world however fleeting, fills me with an incontestable joy that leaches right into my bloodstream. I need only allow it in. Born into a world of light, my senses mature and decay. But until they do, they are the gateways to the mysterious kingdom in which I find myself, one I could not have imagined, a land not entirely of hope and glory, yet no less beautiful because of that.

We exist as phantom, monster, miracle, each a theme park all one's own, and mainly unknowable in the end, not just to others, but to ourselves as well. I often think about the charade of trying to capture a self in the mirror. One day we feel like the toast of the town, the next day the hoax, one moment flighty, the next fully present for and part of life's contrapuntal fugue. Think about the lunacy of the moon landing, the lunatic fringe of loons on a lake in the Aleutians. A word is a kind of pebble in the hand, at once irritant, worry bead, reminder. Nothing surpasses the single suchness of this moment. Presence is always a present, a gift intransitively given, in some stage of unwrap, waiting to be explored.

Diane Ackerman, from Dawn Light

Friday Ramble - Fragile

Fragile... The word comes to us from Old French, thence from the Latin fragilis or frangere meaning to break. Tucked somewhere in there is the Indo-European bhreg and the Gothic brikan, both meaning to shatter. In modern parlance, the word means easily broken or damaged, delicate, brittle or frail, vulnerable or flimsy, lacking in body, strength or substance.

That which is fragile is often assumed to be anything but robust or bright, and certainly not vibrant by any means, but it is not necessarily so. Fragile, bright, robust and vibrant are not mutually exclusive, and they abide harmoniously together. Could anything be more fragile and at the same time, brighter, more vibrant and brimming over with robust life than we fragile humans and this island earth, this earthly journey we are all on together?

Early in November, a very dear friend dropped into a shop in the village one morning. He left the shop and drove away, stopping suddenly and pulling over to the curb. He put the car in park and then slumped forward against the steering wheel. When police arrived a few minutes later and broke into the vehicle, they discovered that my old friend had passed away from a massive heart attack.

It is an odd place to be in, and I am at sixes and sevens, leaning to port, out of kilter. I find myself waiting for Bernie to turn up at the door and ask if the coffee is "on". He liked his coffee strong enough to bend spoons - he drank it black, and he drank it without adding sugar. I listen for telephone calls and check for messages, read something and think that I must tell him about the book. Absent minded, I always seem to be losing things like bank cards, keys and reading glasses. I am easily distracted and wild places keep floating by behind my eyelids at night, Old Woman Bay on Lake Superior, Grise Fjord, Baffin Island, a certain frost touched grove in the Lanark Highlands on a foggy autumn morning - there is not an urban setting in the lot.

There is a large Bernie shaped hole in the fabric of the universe, and an aching hollow wind is blowing through it - at the bottom of the hole is a hard dark stone, and the name of that stone is grief. This is plain old grief and sadness, that is all.

My friend was a gentle and courageous soul with a huge heart and a generous spirit which burned as brightly as a beacon, fierce in his commitment to reciprocity, compassion and community. A few weeks ago his heart simply gave out, and we are all poorer for his passing. He is dancing in the light somewhere, and I hope that he too comes back to us very soon.

Thursday Poem - Thanksgiving

I have been trying to read
the script cut in these hills-
a language carved in the shimmer of stubble
and the solid lines of soil, spoken
in the thud of apples falling
and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak
as they gather in the fallen grain,
the blackbirds sing it
over their shoulders in parting,
and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript
where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue
I believe it might sound like a lullaby,
or the simplest grace at table.
Across the gathering stillness
simply this: "For all that we have received,
dear God, make us truly grateful."

Lynn Ungar,
(from Blessing the Bread)

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Wordless Wednesday - On the Edge of Winter

Standing in Winter Light

What I really need on a morning like this one, is to be out in a certain wild and liminal place at the edge of the winter woods. The pale lemon sunlight touches the fields, the grasses and the whiskery trees, illuminating their frosty garments, turning everything gold and platinum and sparkling like Yuletide ornaments.

I wander with the Pentax and the Lumix slung around my neck, pockets full of lenses and filters, sketching pens and a battered field notebook. There are so many wonders and graces in the cold November morning that I just can't take them all in or aspire to capture them on a memory card.

No matter what the icy cold and deep snow of the long white season do to this aging bod, winter is a fabulous sacred being making all things new.

Early Morning Crow

Frosted

For a few moments, the leaves of the wild roses in our hedgerow were lightly clad in frost this morning, each and every crystal clearly defined and sparkling like a gem in the early light.

Blue sky, silver and platinum frost crystals, russet and gold rose leaves dancing in the wind - who says there is no color about in November? One has only to look, and the best time for looking is just as the sun is rising over the bare trees.

Click on the photo for a better idea of how wonderful it all was...

Friday Ramble - Dawn Light

Dawn Light: Dancing With Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day
Diane Ackerman
W.W. Norton & Co. (September 1, 2009
ISBN-10: 0393061736
ISBN-13: 978-0393061734

This week's ramble is a brief ode to a brand new and truly incandescent book by Diane Ackerman, one of my favorite writers on realms wild and untrodden, both earthy and cosmic. A gift copy came my way a few weeks ago, and I have been tucking it into my big old carpet bag and taking it with me wherever I go. I've been reading Ackerman's poetry and nature essays for years, and my hardcover copies of her work are very tattered, well traveled and much loved.

The Washington Post called Diane "...an artist who sketches with tender words the small miracles of a vast universe", and I can do no better. This is a whole volume of what BookList calls "small astonishments and secular hallelujahs". There were lovely "aha" moments all the way through the first reading, and I keep finding others as I dip into the book again at home, in hospital and clinic waiting rooms.

Ackerman calls herself an ‘earth ecstatic’ and her creation is a rhapsodic book of hours, a lyrical volume focused on the glorious hours before dawn when stars paint the waning darkness and cloud glories at sunrise are just a glowing possibility. As a lifelong devotee of the liminal, I adored every single word and drank them all in like nectar. Oh to be able to write like this!

Dawn is also a metaphor for enlightenment, mindfulness and conscious awareness, and this is a lovely poetic work on being mindful, on waking up to the moments of our lives and savoring them as they come into being, dance in the light and then pass fluidly away.

This is a book to be treasured. Read, learn, be astonished, be inspired...

Thursday Poem - Praise Song

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn't cracked. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - November Dew

Spencer at Play

Throw it again, Mum!

Is that a grouse I hear?

Lately, our little guy has been doing what he loves to do best - cavorting in the woodland, kicking up the fallen leaves with his dancing feet, pointing grouse, partridge and wild turkeys, excavating sticks and chasing them when they are thrown for him. The secondary orange collar is a concession to the deer season which has been in progress here for the last few weeks.

Our fond and constant companion, he would be here more often, if only he would slow down once in a while - most of the images I snap of him are only a blur when uploaded here (the first one here just a tad so). Spence loves his bosky freedoms and expresses the opinion that is he is only young once and should make the most of it.

Note to Self

Just a brief reminder to myself this morning (after a long sleepless painful night), that the world is full of wonderment and surprise and laughter too. I have only to open my eyes and look. John O'Donohue said it best.

I would love to live
like a river flows,
carried by
the surprise
of its own unfolding.

John O'Donohue
(from Connemara Blues)

Progeny

Thursday Poem - Crone Wandering

Crone is abroad and wandering the hills
in her woolen skirt and stout shoes,
walking stick, battered hat, cloak of oak
leaves, forest lichens and dried grasses,
her mane littered with leaf dust, feathers,
acorns and the scarlet berries of the hawthorn,
cheeks withered as a frost touched apple, eyes
round and brown as the ripest hickory nuts,
twisted lean old hands gripping the stick.

She is the ancient one, the revered one,
the silent one who stands in shadow,
seeing everything and bearing witness
to all that moves here, to all that comes,
guardian of the crossroads, bone singer,
the one before the gate, keeper of the keys,
watchful spirit of the rolling windswept hills,
ruler of twilight, thresholds and liminal realms,
fearless guardian of lost and hidden places,
Lady of the Elder Tree, Old Wild Mother,
Queen of the Night.

She stops, listening for the crackle of coming winter,
for the icy wind that rattles the latch,
that dances in the eaves troughs,
that perches like a gargoyle on the roof,
that howls down the old stone chimney,
that rattles among the dry corn stalks,
that scours the dead leaves from the trees,
that harrows the wide and dreaming land.

She pauses to hear the geese in their long flight,
the chatter of massed swallows on power lines,
the plaintive cry of loons bound for silent waters,
the wild ducks in formation flying south,
with blessings to each for a safe flight away,
a journey without peril, a return to this northern place
in spring bearing gifts of new life, of warmth
and song above the greening earth.

A dark time to be sure, the somber woodland
without its choir of birds, the bones of the land
exposed, crowned by ragged trees and thorns,
stillness in the rocky coves and hidden clearings,
abandoned nests and empty dens, silent beaver ponds.

She lifts her head to the waning moon and sings a tale,
of stark winter days and long bitter nights,
of sharp ice forming and fields deep in snow
of north winds blowing, the touch of frost and fiery skies.

She sings too of warm barns and huddled sheep,
of lighted kitchen windows and blazing wood stoves,
of firelight and birch logs crackling in the grate.
She sings of peace at the journey's end.
She sings of resting in the arms of the Old Wild Mother.
She sings of new beginnings.

Behold I come as a dark wind out of the North,
Ancient breeze, and the chill breath of change.
Crone and sister am I, harbinger of rebirth am I!

kerrdelune

Wordless Wednesday - Remembrance

Four Years

Here we stand, Spencer and I, watching a classic November (but very mild) day unfold slowly around us. The sky is pale blue overhead, and the trees are bare. Geese are winging their way overhead, moving to and fro between the cornfields and the river. My sweet furry son has been with us for a little over a year now, and he is a fine companion for these late autumn rambles. He has turned out to be something of a philosopher, and he shares his thoughts on the workings of the great wide world as we potter along.

Me??? I was astonished when I realized that yesterday marked four years of blogging - four whole years of showing up here every morning and writing something, tucking in an image and then having the audacity to upload my mundane natterings to the worldwide web for fellow travelers to read. At times, my quotidian exercise strikes me as being banal, threadbare, appallingly self-indulgent and downright pathetic, but hey, these are my journal pages, my little stick men (and women), my wobbly scratchings on the rock wall of time. A lifelong devotee of the ancient, the mythic, the liminal and the mysterious, I like the cave art analogy, even it it is a tad wonky (and it certainly is).

These days, I almost always have the feeling that I am talking to myself on my wordy sunrise rambles, clucking away at this old hen, dishing out reminders, venting, admonishing, grumbling, exhorting myself to get my act together and perhaps even take it on the road. What is the point of reaching this ripe old age if I can't talk to myself?

As usually happens around now, I find myself wanting to overhaul this tatterdemalion realm, move the various elements around, jazz it up, add windbells and widgets, music and moonlight, sequins and finger cymbals, perhaps a tattoo somewhere. I suspect that changes will be small again this year - I rather like the place just as it is with its Zen-ish simplicity and understated color choices.

Health issues and other "stuff" aside, Spencer and I will simply continue to meander along at our own pace, watching mornings unfold in the village, trees swaying against the sky, and the last linden leaves raining dewdrops like honey in the park. Darling Cassie is always with us on our morning walks - sometimes we can hear her breathing and feel her rambling happily along beside us, but for the most part, her dancing feet make no sound in the fallen leaves. The words that came to mind as we three went along this morning are from Mary Oliver.

Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

Dazzled and reflective are good things to be. Thank you for being here on the journey with us this year. You are more precious and wonderful than you can ever know, and we cherish you.

Silky

November Roses

Some time ago, I pruned the roses in the garden behind the little blue house in the village and put them to bed for the winter, lovingly cocooned in leaf matter and covered over with hay for the winter.

As I beavered away on that chill morning, I discovered a late budding spray of David Austin's fragrant Heritage tucked into a protected alcove, and I marveled at the tenacity and insouciance of this remarkable garden resident so far north.

I cut the spray and brought it indoors, and this morning it bloomed, filling the kitchen with an old rose fragrance which took my winterized sensibilities back to high summer. Out of such small and unexpected gifts, a life both mindful and thankful is made.

Coming to Earth

There was a heavy frost over everything in sight yesterday just after sunrise, the roofs of the village houses spangled and glittering with ice crystals, the grass and tumbled leaves in the village crunching pleasingly underfoot on our early walk.

Spencer loves the sound the frost rimed leaves make under his dancing feet, and he runs through them at top speed to make them sing.

A brief snow, the first of the season, fell later in the day and disappeared at once.

Thin and papery at its verges, dry and rustling of texture at its heart and dappled with autumn wet, the last fallen leaf of my favorite red oak tree draped itself elegantly across an ash twig and waited for the north wind to carry it home to earth.

Friday Ramble - For Daido

Winding river, endless mountains—
the dark forest breathing mist.
There is no road into the sacred place.
It’s just that, the deeper you go,
the more wondrous it becomes.

John Daido Loori, Roshi

The verse above is taken from The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans, translated by John Daido Loori and Kazuaki Tanahashi, with commentary and verses by John Daido Loori. Abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery (ZMM), founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) in upstate New York and a reknowned photographer, Daido passed away last month from cancer.

I have been sitting here looking at this screen off and on since then, feeling a little lost and trying to figure out what to write about someone who has been a major influence on my mundane ramblings for years, and my wanderings in wild untrodden places with camera, notebook and brush too. Daido was an ardent advocate for the earth, and he saw the perfect workings of the dharma in every mountain, river, forest and limpid stream he encountered - he wrote passionately of the "inherent intelligence of wildness and wild places". I wanted more than anything to learn to see the world as he did, in all its beauty, suchness, transience and authenticity, and the news of his passing cut like a knife.

The best I can do methinks is to direct you to a post written three years ago about Daido's then recently published "The Zen of Creativity". That book still rests on my library table along with two other works on photography by Roshi, Making Love With Light and Seeing With the Ear, along with works by Freeman Patterson, Minor White, Kazuaki Tanahashi and Eugene Herrigel.

Visit the Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) for Roshi's biography and an overview of his accomplishments as abbot and founder of MRO. Then visit his online portfolio to feast your eyes on some of the most superb photographic imagery ever created by one man and his camera in communion with the living world. I miss him, but I have no doubt whatsoever that he will be back, and as soon as his forty-nine days in the bardo are up - he loved the earth too much to stay away.

Thursday Poem - November Twilight

winter at twilight
rustling draperies are drawn
against the shadows

fireplaces all alight
their fragrant smoke going
straight up and away

in every doorway
icy drafts craving entrance
iron cold without

by themselves
yellow street lamps turning on
one by glowing one

Wordless Wednesday - Dewy

The Full Frosty Moon of November

Oh what a fine cold moon was this eleventh full moon of the calendar year. It came up through the bare trees of the village like a beacon, and in the high wind, one could not tell whether the moon herself was dancing or the trees were dancing to see her rise.

Now and then, skeins of geese flew across the night sky and the moon's face, bound for the river and the companionship of their fellows. Our northern rivers are beginning to freeze, and it will not be long until the geese fly south. One morning, they will look around the frosty stubble fields, exchange meaningful glances and then rise as one, bound for sunlight and warmer foraging places. The highlands always seem empty when they have departed.

We also know this moon as the All Gathered Moon, Beaver Moon, Bison Moon, Blood Moon, Buffalo Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Cold Begins Moon, Corn Harvest Moon, Dark Moon, Deer Rutting Moon, Eleventh Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Fire Friend Moon, Fog Moon, Freezing Moon, Freezing River Maker Moon, Gardenia Moon, Geese Going Moon, Harvest Moon, Holy Frost Moon, Hunter's Moon, Jacaranda Moon, Large Tree Freeze Moon, Little Bear's Moon, Long Moon, Mad Moon, Moon of Cold, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Freezing, Moon of Storms, Moon of the Falling Leaves, Moon of the Shaker Leaves, Moon of the Turkey and Feast, Moon the Rivers Begin to Freeze, Moon When All Is Gathered in, Moon When Deer Shed Antlers, Moon When Deer Shed Their Antlers, Moon When Horns Are Broken Off, Moon When the River Freezes, Moon When the Rivers Start to Freeze, Moon When the Water Is Black with Leaves, Mourning Moon, Mourning Moon, Moon of Much Poverty, Prunus Moon, Ring-finger Moon, Sacrifice Moon, Samoni Moon, Sassafras Moon, Snow Moon, Snow Moon, Snow Moon, Snowy Mountains in the Morning Moon, Summer’s End Moon, Trading Moon, Trading Moon, Trading Moon, Trail Moon, Tree Moon, White Frost on Grass & Ground Moon, White Moon, Whitefish Moon, Willow Moon, Winter Divided Moon and Yew Moon.

"Geese Going Moon" seems appropriate, and I have always liked "All Gathered Moon" too.

Artfully Nested

Alas, the leaves in our woodland have fallen for the most part. A few stalwart oaks in the gorge have retained their russet foliage, but our early November footfalls were muffled this weekend by the soothing presence of deep rustling drifts of fallen leaves in red, burgundy, lemony yellow and bronze. The sound the fallen leaves made as we pottered along through them was wonderful.

Yesterday, I wandered about looking up into the bare trees for nests, and here is the first one of the season, an exquisite vireo construction woven out of birch bark, small twigs, spider silk, the fibers of abandoned cocoons and strands of grass. This was probably the nest of a Red-eyed Vireo, a species known to use a lot of birch bark in building its nests and to favor younger trees for its creations. There were a number of these delicate birds residing in the Two Hundred Acre Wood this year, and their cheery whistling songs were delightful to hear. (One of my winter projects for this year is to learn more about the voices of the summer birds in our woods, so that I can identify them without seeing them.)

The nest was high in a small birch tree, and it was dancing about in the wind with great gusto. My photo does not begin to do the nest justice, but clicking on the image takes you to a larger image - one which gives a better idea of how elegant and complex these structures are. Vireos are splendid architects and truly artful builders, and every single nest I have ever found has been a wonder.

November Morning

Only on the threshold of winter may one perch in her window with tea in hand, reveling in morning skies like these.

The intense clouds of rose and violet and indigo are sumptuous beyond reckoning or description. Burnished with gold, they are anointed from time to time with exuberant stipplings of Canada geese flying away into the stubble corn fields and singing as they go.

Such mornings make one feel very small in the greater scheme of things and rich beyond all earthly measure.