World of Icy Wonders

Worlds great and small, worlds within and worlds without, and every one a wonder to behold and remember...

Just when one decides that she is thoroughly weary of ice and snow and won't take a single photo more of such things, another winter scene presents itself to the eye. Small and perfect, complete with itself, it conveys an elemental peace and balance, lowers the blood pressure and stills the breathing.

Waiting

Red-breasted Nuthatch
(Sitta canadensis)

Friday Ramble - Reflection

On a very cold day at the end of February, one wraps up and goes for a walk at twilight, touring carefully through streets, lanes, fields, parks and the village common with camera in hand. She is a little restless and in search of something, and she knows not 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 stops at the edge of a quiet urban scrap of field where an intermittent stream rambles during the liminal seasons of springtime and autumn. In one corner of the field, the icy north wind has blown the snow away from the frozen stream, and the glossy surface is revealed in all its fractal perfection. As the sun goes down, it goes dancing across the ice, and everything turns golden, the frozen stream holding up a dazzling reflection to the sky at the close of day. There are wide vistas, oceans, islands and magical archipelagos there beneath the fiery setting sun, and fine drifting adventures too. The 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 processes and giving back, oftentimes of light and mirrors and deep thought, anything and everything except bending.

Last evening, there were no deep thoughts as I stood at the edge of the field, and what thoughts I entertained there were closer to the original meaning of the word reflect than anything else. When I saw the slow flush and shimmer of gold and purple and red moving across the ice of the frozen stream, I felt like bending and giving a deep gassho or bow. An image (one of mine anyway) cannot ever hope to do justice to such a moment or such a glow - it is only an echo, a soupçon, a shadow, a whisper on the north wind.

Thursday Poem - Frost

Notice each windowpane has a different
Swirling pattern of frost etched on the glass.

And notice how slowly the sun melts
The glaze. It is indelible: a fossil of a fern,

Or a coelacanth, or a derelict who
Rummages in his pockets and pulls out a few

Apple cores. Notice the peculiar
angle of light in the slow shift of sunrise.

Where is the whir of the helicopter?
The search for escaped convicts in the city?

Be amazed at the shine and the wet.
Simply to live is a joy.

Arthur Sze
Frost from The Redshifting Web

Wordless Wednesday - Winter Rose

Kordana (Poetry)

Querying the Mundane Mosaic

Daylight arrives a little earlier now, and sometimes there is already a blush of dawn showing on the horizon when I shake myself loose from the old quilt and trot (or lurch) out to the kitchen to make coffee, wrapping myself in an old shawl first to hold the early morning chill at bay.

Today, I was in no danger of awakening too late to welcome the sun - it was snowing, but there was an ecstatic flock of crows in the old corner maple, flapping their wings, dancing about and making a splendid racket to welcome the high still light of morning. Then a single cardinal in the hedgerow added its liquid song to the orchestration, and it seemed as though a whole blissed out choir was singing a doxology in the garden.

As winter wanes and images of springtime arrive in my dreams like so many flocks of praising birds, I am asking my restless yearning self the same question I ask myself every year around this time.

It's a quiet life this - way beyond quiet in fact. I arise early and make coffee, standing near the kitchen window a few minutes later with a Wade Irish mug (the one with the granny in her rocking chair, the fireplace, the cauldron, the cat and the spinning wheel) full of lovely dark fragrant caffeine. I watch the sun come up over the trees, then turn my thoughts to other things: early morning walks past, present and (hopefully) future, photographing the small elements (or leitmotifs) of the world around me, the morning blog entry, the chores of the day, the stacks of books awaiting me on the old library table, my woefully inadequate efforts in art and calligraphy, work on a new quilt design.

I feed the birds and the deer in winter, potter about peering into trees and hedgerows, tend the garden in season, do the things which should be done and watch patiently as life ebbs and flows around me. There is little or no art or drama in this small northern life — there are few great events and no profound thoughts whatsoever on this quiet journey of mine.

Am I boring you? I hope not, but I thought I should ask...

Timber, Snow and Clover

A corner of the hill in Lanark, seen on a snowy morning, with next summer's fence posts and a few tufts of withered but very resilient tall white clover peering out of the snowdrifts.

This study is a simple one - there are no tall trees, no rocks or hillside springs here, but the wintery view speaks of stillness, patience and quiet contentment, and it is one of my favorite pieces.

Although the image is a photo, it looks rather like a painting, and I have noticed that such is often the situation with late February photographic captures and offerings - almost as if the universe is telling me to look at it with new eyes and in a different way. The Old Wild Mother is the real artist, and I am merely her doddering assistant.

Winter Atmospheric

High winds, blowing snow, an old road and bare trees...

A friend poking through my portfolio recently called this scene desolate and described the trees as being barren. That is not how it seemed to me - I thought the place and the moment were atmospheric, magical and wonderfully translucent.

I knew beyond any scrap of uncertainty that the gnarly old trees along the road were alive and simply sleeping winter away as they always do. In summer they are fully leafed out and tangy with green fragrance. They bestow a fragrant shade, and they are always full of singing birds.

Blooming

The amaryllis bulb was started at Yule, and it is a fond tradition of some years standing.

One is always hoping for a riotous and impetuous blooming some time around the beginning of February, an exuberant floral happening to banish the darkness of winter and welcome back the light of the sun.

This year's floral undertaking is a glorious thing - seven huge and rosy blooms on a plant so tall that it brushes the underside of the stained glass chandelier above the old oak table in the dining room.

Friday Ramble - Patience

The word patience comes to us from the Middle English pacient and the Middle French patient, thence from the Latin word pati, meaning to undergo something, to suffer through or put up with something. Patience is a good word for one who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it is definitely NOT a word for sissies.

When we act in patience, we are coping with provocations mild and severe, annoyance, misfortune, hardship and discomfort with serenity and fortitude, and we are doing so without irritation, whining or complaint. When we cultivate patience, we are acting from a place of grace, forbearance, acceptance and quiet confidence that "this too shall pass" - we are resting in the sure knowledge that the Great Round, the wheel of existence and the heavens will continue to turn as they should and as they must. We are resting easy in what John Tarrant calls the warm (sweet) darkness of uncertainty.

Patience is something of a mantra with me this winter as I peer through my windows into the village lanes and occasionally wander the safer areas of the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the Lanark Highlands. Alas, no ice glazed fields, snowy gorges, nunataks and steep slopes for me this year, and passing them by is difficult for someone who is passionate about rocky heights, inclines steep enough for rappeling and slopes strewn with glacial dropstones. I've had a few weak moments and done a little mild damage to myself this winter (thankfully none to the Pentax), and I am trying to cultivate patience: first of all for itself, secondly for the sake of my health, longevity and future wild rambling, and thirdly (I admit it cheerfully) because my surgeon yells at me.

The antique Buddha on the library table is a potent reminder of "what it's all about". Hour after hour and day after day, he sits patiently on the library table with his eyes closed and hands folded, and his message is clear. He tells me simply to breathe in and out and remember that the rocks and steep slopes will be there next year waiting for me.

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever manage to "get my act together". Over sixty years on the trail now, and here I am, still just fumbling, bumbling and lurching along. Perhaps I should begin by being more patient with myself - that, it seems to me, is the hardest thing of all.

Wordless Wednesday - Still Flowing

Island in the Stream

Looking down, the view resembled a wide flowing river with frothy rapids, billows, white-capped waves and even an island - the twigs poking out of the snow appeared to be a tall bare tree. It was (however) merely a little ice and snow and a few twigs. Looking toward the end of winter, one tends to become a tad fanciful.

I am SO ready for springtime to arrive, and the song of the owls brought that home yesterday. I listened to them calling to each other and thought that new life in the old nest by the beaver pond was beginning, that the next singers would be Saw-whet Owls and the maple sugaring season was not far off, that it would not be long before I could ramble the fields again and there would be wildflowers everywhere.

Mother Tree

A massive old white pine on the hillside, she stands regally on the far perimeter of the Two Hundred Acre Wood, the first old friend I look for when we round the final bend before turning in at the gate.

Tree's artfully curved form reminds me of a tall ship in full sail, and that is appropriate, given that her stature and shape and flowing branches have been shaped by the north wind. I am not allowed to wander these fields this winter, but I stood in lane this morning and bowed deeply to tree, happy just to see her again and watch her dance in the wind.

The sky was so brilliantly blue this morning that it dazzled the eyes. When the wind hushed for a moment now and again, I could hear the resident Great Horned Owls calling to each other from the grove by the beaver pond, and I came home happy to think that there are nesting "hornies" in the neighborhood again this year - probably raising their brood in the same tree they have been using for the last three years. They sounded like this.

For Valentine's Day

Winter's Little River Singing

In the depths of winter, temperatures climbed above freezing for a day or two, and the little river on my hillside in the Lanark Highlands flowed freely for a few hours in the sharp unfiltered sunlight.

The stream springs up from several hundred feet underground in the old granite of the Canadian Shield and only freezes as it nears the surface - a day or two of sunlight and "plus" temperatures, and it is free to sing again for a while. The water made a happy music, and one I have not heard in some time except in my dreams.

Thursday Poem - School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

Diane Ackerman,
(from I Praise My Destroyer)

Wordless Wednesday - Out of the Snow

Without The Bitterest Cold

Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world?
Basho

This little gem of haiku by Basho is one which I should "do up" in calligraphy and hang in a prominent place here at home, especially at this time of the year when winter is no longer quite the enchanting proposition it was in early November.

I always welcome the white season when it first appears, and I know perfectly well that there can be no Spring without these icy deeps in which we find ourselves now, but winter is old, and there are moments when it is difficult to picture plum (almond, crabapple and cherry) blossoms in February. Nevertheless, as I read Basho on this bitterly cold February morning, I find myself enfolded in the delicious fragrance of flowering almond, mock orange and cherry blossoms which are still to come, and that is a gift. I needed Basho's lyrical reminder that out of winter, a verdant springtime comes.

The Unspoken Language of Wonder

Last night we were gifted with one of those rare evenings in February when the twilight sky is a particularly intense shade of blue, and the color seems to suffuse everything else in the landscape too - ice and snow, buildings, streets and fences, trees and ice-bound shrubbery, these frozen leaves and their spiky endings.

At this time of the year, bearing witness to nightfall is an icy enterprise, but if we fey northerners are outside at dusk on such days, we find ourselves gazing on a shade of blue so deep and vivid and rich that it is beyond delineation. There are a few (but not many) adjectives which almost succeed in describing this rich hue, words like purple, pansy, cobalt, indigo, royal, violet, magenta, amethyst and heliotrope.

How would the ancients have described such luminosity? In my mind's eye, I can see them standing somewhere quietly on a winter night long ago, and my ancient kin are as entranced by the deep glow, by the radiant energy of this allowance of the infinite color spectrum, as I was last evening while I shivered in the snow drowned garden.

There may indeed have been a paucity of descriptive terms and expressions for such experiences in the long ago, but we would have understood one another without words and rejoiced in our sharing, for the rising moon on such nights has a beauty beyond measure. Across time and space, we are united in the unspoken language of wonder.

A Little Sun in the Woods

Woods, trees, pale winter sunshine, billowing snow and flowing deep blue shadows sharp enough to cut raw gemstones... Not a single footprint disturbed the sculptural elements of the late winter landscape or the image captured.

Just beyond the perimeter of the first photo are the tracks of fox, rabbits and wild turkeys, and it seemed to these old eyes that our resident fox had been spiral dancing across the hilltop this morning before we arrived. He(or she) didn't seem bothered by the deep cold at all and managed to look comfortable and even contented in the icy north wind.

Leaf in Snow

A single faded and almost transparent leaf is highlighted against the intense blue of newly fallen crystalline snow.

The essence of wabi sabi, it forms a simple, stark and delicate composition on a bitterly cold morning.

Friday Ramble - Song

In the beginning was the word, and the word was sung.

According to a wealth of traditions on this island earth, existence began with a Singer and a creation song, a creation narrative sung or chanted at the dawn of time when all was a formless void. Everything in the world was sung into being, we are told, and sentient creatures (it seems) have been putting words and melodies together ever since: grosbeaks in the forest canopy, loons on the lake, wolves on a winter hill at nightfall, Orcas and great whales in fathomless ocean deeps, children seated around campfires or singing old skipping songs as they jump the rope, adults singing the happenings of their lives large and small and passing on lore and traditions to younger members of the clan, tribe, or community.

The gift of song lives deep within us, and we may well have learned to express ourselves in song first, long before we mastered telling time by the seasons or writing things out, scratching our primitive calendars and runic symbols on ancient antlers, animal bones and cave walls.

We sing in joy and sorrow or praise and thankgiving, we sing to bring peace of mind and comfort to others, and whether or not our efforts are tuneful, we sing in our own words and tongue and with the voice the Old Wild Mother gave us. I often think that the most beautiful songs of all are the lullabies we mothers and grannies sing to lull our children and grandchildren to sleep when they are small.

On this cold morning, I can hear chickadees and nuthatches singing merrily as they breakfast at the feeders beyond the window. I am reading (again) Neil Gaiman, and he said it (or rather wrote) it all beautifully:

IT BEGINS, AS MOST THINGS BEGIN, WITH A SONG.

In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world.

They were sung.

The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the hunting grounds, and the dark.

Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a laughing stock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.

There are other things you can do with songs. They do not only make worlds or recreate existence.

Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

Thursday Poem - Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes
from American Zen: A Gathering of Poets

Wordless Wednesday - Winter Light

Imbolc - Blessing for Hearth Keepers

This morning's photo and poem are my contributions to this year's 5th Annual Cyberspace Poetry Slam Honoring the Goddess Brigid, and many "thank yous" to my mermaid sister Joanna for reminding me.

I can think of no more poetic offering for this day than the lovely and light-filled Blessing for Hearth-Keepers from The Little Book of Celtic Blessings by Caitlin Matthews. It is the poem I recite every year on the eve of Imbolc as I light beeswax candles and kindle a fire in the old fireplace downstairs.

Another of my favorites is Chains of Fire by Elsa Gidlow. Elsa's poem was actually crafted for Yuletide, but its motifs of renewal, cleansing, fire and community are perfect for this day too.

Brighid of the Mantle, encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs, protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us.
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory.
Mothers of our mother,
Foremothers strong.
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how
To kindle the hearth.
To keep it bright,
To preserve the flame.
Your hands upon ours,
Our hands within yours,
To kindle the light,
Both day and night.
The Mantle of Brighid about us,
The Memory of Brighid within us,
The Protection of Brighid keeping us
From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness.
This day and night,
From dawn till dark,
From dark till dawn