Wordless Wednesday - Surfacing

Moon By Rose Light

In the light of a brand new moon, the late August blooming of the David Austin rose in my garden called simply "Heritage".

The perfect shape and glowing petals were a fine earthly counterpoint to the new moon dropping below the western horizon in early evening.  The fragile lunar crescent poured her light out over the garden, Jupiter twinkled, and the rose lifted her face, gifting the realm of night with her own light and fragrance and song.

All the core elements of good counterpoint were there - a flowing lyrical relationship between two or more entities independent in their contour and rhythm, but seamlessly interwoven in lineament and harmony.

Moon, planet and rose were exquisite in themselves, but together they formed a greater wholeness - as Cassie, Himself and I did for so many years and Spencer, Himself and I are doing now.  Ever companions, we compliment other perfectly and last night we were all out there in the garden together, breathing gently in and out in the early darkness.  Cassie was right there with us, and I could feel her leaning happily against me as she did in life at such times - she loved late August moons and roses, and she would not miss such a night with us for anything.

Golden

By the Tay

 

 

Leaves and Berries

Friday Ramble - An Organic Silence

So watchful, serene and attentive in the peaceful waters on the edge of the pond that they seem to be meditating, and I love their expression.

On these days in August's closing pages, the mornings are lovely and cool.  Later, temperatures will be in the thirties and hovering near forty (Celsius) when humidity is factored into the equation.

Rural waters are receding as is usual at this time of year, and in many places one can traverse waterways without getting wet above the ankles.  Rivers and streams will be replenished by September rains, and we are all longing for the cooler days to come.

At our pond in the Lanark Highlands is a shallow waterfall surrounded by smooth old stones, and the sound of the incoming water makes a soothing song. I can sit there for hours and sometimes do just that in late August, often accompanied by scores of tiny jewel eyed frogs basking in the cool stone-scented wetness and the quiet. It's a peaceful place, and one of the scenes I remember in January when snow lies deep on the land and the waters have been silenced - the susurrus of the cascade like a mantra, late summer light and floating leaves dappling the surface, reeds swaying to and fro, the watchful repose and Zen posture of my little friends on their lovely wet rocks.

Summer time is kairos or nonlinear time anyway, but in late August, the hours seem to pass in another way altogether, this year perhaps more thoughtfully since I am indoors for the most past and beset by health issues, respiratory problems among other things.  My voice comes and goes (mostly goes), and being without a voice makes for some interesting moments. I make lunch plans with friends and sometimes just sit at their tables waving my hands in the air.  I run for the telephone and remember only as I am picking up the receiver that I have nothing to say, or rather that I can say nothing. I laugh when it happens, and my laughter is an odd sound, lacking the grace of flowing water or floating leaves but still organic - it falls somewhere between a rasp and a hollow creak like an old tree in the wind.

Poetry Thursday - Piute Creek

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

Gary Snyder

Wordless Wednesday - Rising

Here on Earth

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism 
is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. 
And we’ll change the world.

Jack Layton

Yesterday, I logged on here early and read that someone I admired very much and respected deeply had passed away.

Last month, Jack Layton had taken a leave of absence from his duties in parliament to battle cancer, having already weathered one bout of cancer and a broken hip. He had high hopes of coming back to the House of Commons next month, but treatment was not successful, and he passed beyond the fields we know early yesterday morning with his family at his side.

I am sorry for for the Layton/Chow family's loss, and my heart aches for them, but we are all poorer for the departure from life of this good man, gifted teacher and skilled politician. Jack was a soulful warrior, a passionate humanitarian and "the real thing" - someone with true grace within, a heart as wide as the world and a bone deep commitment to the common good. For those of you who did not know him (or of him), there is an excellent obituary here, The full text of his farewell letter to all of us is here.)

I couldn't settle after I read the news, just wandered around the house not sure of what to do with myself - stared out the window, kept losing my train of thought, read the same page in my current reading material over and over again, let cups of tea go cold, picked things up and put them down again. Grief is like that, and it is a wonder that anything got done at all yesterday.

Returning from an aimless walk late in the day, I looked up and saw a kite dancing in the breeze overhead. The scrap of rainbow colored silk was tethered to the planet by the lightest of cords and held in the chubby hands of a smiling toddler. I hadn't cried a single tear all through the day, but grief took over then.  I crumpled into the grass right there, and the tears came pouring out like a salty flood. Why they chose that moment to well up, I don't know - I only know that a good man has dissolved back into the great sea of being, and I am very very sad. Here on earth, it's up to us to carry Jack Layton's vision into the great wide world.

Our Daily Bread

Late Night Rains

Just a rose after rain, but what a rose it is.....  The bloom in our garden is beaded with rain, scalloped along its edges and looking more than a little tattered. 

In the wee hours of the morning, an earthshaking storm visited the village, and its deafening sound and light show seemed to be playing itself out right over the house - it resounded in our rafters, beat against the roof, rattled the windows and turned the eavestroughs and downspouts into madly gurgling rivers, each with its own impetuous waterfall. 

The sky was lit up at regular intervals, and under the street lamps, leaves and twigs, tennis balls, paper cups and discarded toys went sailing down the street, borne merrily along by torrents in the gutter and glad to be free of their moorings. 

Always distressed by storms, Spencer took his favorite blanket into our closet and stayed there until a crepuscular sunrise painted the trees a few hours ago.  When we two went into the garden a short time afterward, there was our rose, a little the worse for wear but lovely for all that and anointing the day with perfect hues and old rose fragrance.

The trick is to go out to garden, woodland, field and hedgerow without preconceived notions or expectations.  Do that, and there is elemental grace everywhere - wonders in surprising shapes and colors and textures everywhere one looks.

Road at Sunrise

The serendipity union of road and field and tree at sunrise could be a metaphor for life itself and our meandering earthly journey through it - so too, the rosy horizon, pale violet skies and drifting wisps of cloud.  There's a refreshing coolness in the air at the very beginning of day, a whispering of surprises and unknown adventures waiting away out there, somewhere along the shining rim. 

When I awakened early this morning, the waning moon was almost overhead, and planet Jupiter was suspended below it like a solitary dancing pearl.  Sometimes one needs a morning like this to start things off in late summer, especially when the projected temperature for the day is in the forties (Celsius) with humidity factored into the equation.

Friday Ramble - Splendor

Splendor is a word dating from the early fifteenth century at the very least, and perfect for a golden morning in August's middling pages. The word has its roots in the Latin splendēre, the late Middle English and archaic French splendure meaning to shine, and NOT in a quiet or understated way. To be robed in splendor is to shimmer and sparkle and glisten, to be lit from within as if from a sacred source. That which is truly splendid captures our attention and holds us rapt in its enfolding light.

Splendor is the old maple tree across the road, cavorting in the morning wind against a background of spangled bokeh (which comes from the Japanese boke (暈け or ボケ) meaning blur  or haze, or boke-aji (ボケ味), meaning "blur quality").  I often hanker for bokeh when wandering around with the camera, but I seldom manage it when trying to do so.  A few days ago, I wasn't trying at all, and there it was in a serendipity capture of the old maple tree doing its usual thing and going for the gold early.  At the time, my thoughts were on the waning moon overhead and not on matters of focus, aperture and depth of field.  I was amused a while ago when I learned that bokeh is also used to describe a state of mental haze, confusion or senility. Now there is food for thought...

Splendor is the roses of late summer blooming in the garden behind the little blue house in the village - their color, perfume and velvety dew-dappled texture a few minutes after sunrise.  It's the rich cream at their verges moving inward through shades of rosy pink and apricot to a perfectly cupped golden heart. When the roses pause for breath in their exuberant flowering, there is the splendid purple of Michaelmas daisies (early this year), the scarlet of late bergamot along the old wooden fence, the Autumn Joy sedum transforming from pale pink to luscious burgundy as it matures.  Always, there are chrysanthemums in burnished tawny hues.

In August, this old world doesn't just shine or bloom or cultivate splendor.  It dazzles the eyes, and a little of the dazzle lodges in my elderly sconce as I wander about with the camera.  Oh, the light of sunrise in August over turning trees - now there is splendor beyond expression.

Thursday Poem - Here is the Road

Here is the road: the light

comes and goes then returns again.

Be gentle with your fellow travelers

as they move through the world of stone and stars

whirling with you yet every one alone.

The road waits.

Do not ask questions but when it invites you

to dance at daybreak, say yes.

Each step is the journey; a single note the song.

Arlene Gay Levine (from Bless the Day)

Wordless Wednesday - Brushed

The Times, They Are A-Changin

Can it be?  You awaken one morning and realize that the world is changing, that days are much shorter than they were only a few weeks ago, and a brand new season is on its way.

Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, the higher branches of elderly maples on the upper ridges of the Two Hundred Acre Wood are tipped here and there with scarlet.  Sumac leaves are acquiring a rosy cast, and as Spencer and I potter along the trail together in the morning, the first acorns and fallen leaves drift languidly into our path like little boats.  There is a whiff of spice in the air from wild woodland organics going to seed.

The last hay cutting of the season is in progress; artfully winnowed grain in pleasing golden curves and bales like rolls of quarters (or loonies) everywhere in the fields.  Local barley is still standing, but it will be probably be harvested in the next week or so.

There is an earthy abundance of color on which to feast one's eyes these days, stands of milkweed along our fences going mustard yellow, rust and burgundy, roadside foliage providing contrast in dusty grays and silvers.  Rural scenes are fringed with amber and saffron as far as the eye can see, and between the usual August thunder storms, the rolling vistas are set off gloriously by fluffy clouds and brilliant blue skies.

Morning and evening skies are full of proclaiming geese traveling between cornfields and the river, and there are wild turkey clans gabbling in nearby woodland clearings as they forage for acorns, fallen apples and hickory nuts on the forest floor.  Approach their banquet place, and the birds scatter in all directions, chattering like squirrels and protesting our thoughtless interruption.

This morning we noticed that starlings and swallows are congregating on telephone lines in long dancing skeins, and as we tried (and failed) to count them, a heron flew over our heads and landed silently in the pond.  In only a few weeks, they will all have departed for warmer climes and a more reliable food supply.  Summer is a fleeting thing this far north, and Bob Dylan had it right methinks - the times, they are indeed a-changing.

Dragon Skimmer

Widow Skimmer  (Libellula luctuosa) 

and Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca)

The Barley Moon of August

What one is always looking for on full moon nights in late summer is a perfect golden moon. After many years of moon gazing, the longing remains in all its intensity - to be enfolded in something rich and lustrous and mysterious, in a wild and elemental sense of wonder, the sheer mind boggling grandeur of the night skies over this remarkable place where we have all been planted.

Whatever happens to this old self and its molecules when I shuffle off the mortal coil this time around, I would like to think that a tiny scrap of the world's grace and grandeur will remain in my thoughts as I go billowing off into the great beyond like a scrap of linen liberated from a clothesline... that and memories of Lady Moon gazing down on the earth, blithe and lambent of countenance. 

I've been fortunate enough to see the moon rise in some fabulous places in my time: dangling like a luminous pendant between arctic cliffs, high over western mountains and southern deserts, painting a sparkling road across the great inland sea of Lake Superior, dazzling over my favorite loch in the Lanark Highlands. Some of the loveliest moons (like this one) rise right over my own garden, and I cherish them one and all. French conductor Pierre Boulez once wrote: "just listen with the vastness of the world in mind; you can't fail to get the message." The moon, the stars and inky night skies have a music that is all their own, and their message to us is powerful "stuff" indeed.

August gifts us with the first definitively golden moon of the year, and her warm light bathes gardens of produce, orchards bowing down with fruit, fields of grain being gathered in and stored for the long nights time. Under the moon's perfect light, geese move back and forth between rivers and fields, deer and wild turkeys graze quietly along farm fences, and coyote clans call across the hills in voices hinting at autumn. "Barley Moon" is the perfect name for this radiant lady shining down on us all - this is the time of the barley harvest.

We also know the August moon as the: Acorns Ripening Moon, Autumn Moon, Berries Dried Moon, Berry Moon, Big Harvest Moon, Big Ripening Moon, Black Cherries Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blackberry Patches Moon, Blueberry Moon, Centáwen Moon, Cherries Turn Black Moon, Claiming Moon, Coho Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Corn Is in the Silk Moon, Corn Cutting Moon, Corn Moon, Crest of Hill Moon, Cutter Moon, Dahlia Moon, Dispute Moon, Dog Days Moon, Drying up Moon, Eighth Moon, Elembivos Moon, End of Fruit Moon, Feather Shedding Moon, Flying Moon, Fruit Moon, Gathering Rice Moon, Geese Shedding Their Feathers Moon, Gladiolus Moon, Grain Moon, Green Corn Moon, Green Moon, Harvest Moon, Hazel Moon, Joyful Moon, Leaves Moon, Lightning Moon, Moon After Lugnasadh, Middle Moon, Moon of First Harvest, Moon of Freshness, Moon of Life at It's Height, Moon When Young Ducks Begin to Fly, Moon When All Things Ripen, Moon When Cherries Turn Black, Moon When Choke Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When Elk Bellow, Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers, Moon When Indian Corn's Edible, Much Heat Moon, Much Ripeness Moon, Mulberries Moon, Paper Bark Moon, Pear Blossom Moon, Plum Moon, Red Berries Gathered Moon, Red Moon, Ripe Berries Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Rising Moon, Starts to Fly Moon, Still Green Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Tall Grass Moon, Thumb Moon, Vegetation Moon, Wode Moon, Wheat Cut Moon, Wild Rice Moon, Women's Moon, Wood Cutter’s Moon or Wort Moon

I am very fond of "Moon of Life at Its Height" and "Much Ripeness Moon".

Viceroy

Viceroy Butterfly
(Limenitis archippus)

Friday Ramble - Ephemeral

The word ephemeral comes to us from the Greek εφήμερος meaning "lasting only one day", and we use the adjective to describe entities existing for only a short duration.

A journal or diary describing our days is an ephemeris, and several together are called ephemeredes—someone who keeps a journal or writes an almanac may be called an ephemerist, although that word does not get a lot of use in modern times. A huge tattered book in my library, also called an ephemeris, charts the journeys of the stars and planets in their ceaseless musical motion through the heavens, their rising and falling through the known universe like flocks of birds. On clear nights, Spencer and the ephemeris and I gather in the garden with telescope and camera and peer through our lenses up into the starry spangled darkness.

As above, so below... Nature is is brimming over with ephemeral entities. Ephemeral streams and creeks flow for only a brief interval, usually in springtime when winter's snows have disappeared or after a torrential downpour. Plants and insects come into being, mature and pass away within a short time, and the scant hours of their living are bright, intense and vibrant.

Giant Saturnid or silk moths (like the Atlas, Ceanothus, Cecropia, Luna and bright eyed Polyphemus) are truly ephemeral wonders, and so is one of my other favorite summer residents - the jeweled cicada who performs such resonant music high in the trees on hot August nights. Like the magnificent saturnids, the adult cicada has no mouth, and so it cannot feed. After a long adolescence spent dwelling quietly underground, it climbs up into the light and sings gloriously to attract a mate. Once it has passed on its genetic material, it expires and passes effortlessly back into the essential matter of the universe.

Look around, and we begin to understand that almost everything we encounter is ephemeral: trees, rosebuds, woodland violets, cherry blossoms and garden lupins, fields of waving goldenrod or corn, rabbits in the hedgerow, herons and hawks, wild wolves and shy woodland deer. Our own specific motley collection of molecules and their allotted time on this planet is brief, but oh how we blaze with life while we are here. Walking through this world like mobile beacons and perambulating lighthouses, we are lit from within by a flame bright, intense, passionate, and oh so ephemeral.

through this life we pass
here only for seventeen
syllables, three lines

Thursday Poem - One Song

After Rumi

A cardinal, the very essence of red, stabs

the hedgerow with his piercing notes;

a chickadee adds three short beats,

part of the percussion section, and a white-

throated sparrow moves the melody along.

Last night, at a concert, crashing waves

of Prokofiev; later, the soft rain falling

steadily and a train whistle off in the distance.

And today, the sun, waiting for its cue,

comes out from the clouds for a short sweet

solo, then sits back down, rests between turns.

On the other side of the world, night’s black

bass fiddle rosins its bow, draws it over

the strings, resonates with the breath

of sleepers, animal, vegetable, human. 

All the world breathes in, breathes out.

It hums, it throbs, it improvises.  So many voices.

Only one song.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Watchful

Early Days....

Early days, the bittersweet stirrings of late summer and the harvest season...

Dawn skies in August are a fetching shade of violet, crinkled like crepe paper with rose and gold along their edges, high fluffy streaks of pink cloud from here to there and gossamer light touching everything with oro pallido, the pale lustrous gold that only visits the world at the beginning of day. One needs a very large brush to paint such sweeping confetti colored expanses, a wide angle lens that takes in all of the Old Wild Mother's creation.

How can one stay indoors on such a morning?   One cannot, and so Spencer and I went out to greet the new day together.  Barefoot, I sipped my tea thoughtfully, and my companion looked up at the sky and crooned softly, just as his big sister Cassie used to do on late summer mornings.   It is three years today since our darling girl passed beyond the fields we know and into the butterfly meadows beyond the bridge.

As we stood outside in sleepy wonder, thousands of geese were flying up from their night's rest on the river and out into the corn to feed - there were vast waves of joyous honking as they passed overhead and away to their breakfast in sun dappled fields. This is the music of August; this is "the music of what happens".

Lake and Early Sky

In the Blue Bowl of Morning

You awaken to skies that would make Maxfield Parrish want to dance, the late summer music of geese in singing flight back to the corn and barley fields to feed - this year's progeny are singing loudest of all up there in the blue bowl of morning. Their pleasure awakens your own as you stand watching and listening in the garden with your mug of tea, eyes shielded against the rising sun with a sleepy hand.

Setting off on an early walk with Spencer, you pause together by your neighbor's fish pond to watch the white and scarlet koi finning their way around in circles, and you notice that the first fallen maple leaves of the season have already drifted into the pool, making eddies and swirls and perfect round spirals.  Not an early autumn, just the dry heat of August setting the first leaf people free to ramble...

Sky blue, rose, gold, violet and scarlet lodge in your wandering thoughts, and on the way home, you consider hauling out your potter's wheel, throwing clay bowls and glazing them in just those perfect colors.  Emaho!

Turning With the Sun

An early morning rain dapples the sunflowers in the garden with beads of glossy wet. Then daylight arrives. They bow their shaggy yellow heads for a little longer, then lift their dark gypsy eyes to the rising sun and dance, long fuzzy stems and crepe paper skirts swaying as one to invisible instruments, cadence and tune.

Theirs is a journey round with the sun, turning to follow it across the sky all day long.

Friday Ramble - Fade/Fading

Fade hails from the Middle English faden, thence the Old French fader, and somewhere over the hills and a long way off, the Vulgar Latin fatidus or fatuus meaning silly, foolish or insipid. When something fades, it loses its shine, its brightness and lustre - it is drained of its vitality, pales, seems to go dim and gradually disappears from view.  The word fatuous shares the same Latin origins and means foolish, inane, dense, dull or dim-witted.

For obvious reasons (that wily versatile Latin root), I can never use fade in any of its forms without thinking of ignis fattuus or Will-o-the-Wisp, the puckish ghostly light occasionally seen at dusk or just after nightfall. Flickering over bogs, fens and dank marshes, the fey glow is also known as corpse candles, hobby lanterns, spook lights, jack-o'-lanterns, ghost lights and friars' lanterns.  In folklore, such appearances were sometimes thought to be malign entities, but more often they were treated as mischievous spirits out to play tricks and lead travelers astray just for the fun of it. I've been trying to capture a good image of the phenomenon for years.

In August, we can look at gray green foliage, tattered blooms and spiky thistles and see only sadness and ruin, or we can see them just as they are.  In their simplicity, naturalness and transience, the fading residents of summer wear shapes bestowed by the wind and the colors of the land itself.  They express perfectly the lineaments of their native soil - the place where their seeds were transported, rooted, bloomed and are now returning to the earth. The Japanese call this beautiful aesthetic or world view, "wabi sabi", and it is something very much with me in August as I wander about with camera in hand.

It is about three years since two beloved friends traveled beyond the fields we know, and I still miss them both so much - I thought of Aloha and Cassie this week while pottering along in the wind tossed western field with my sweet Spencer. The serene melancholy and fading wildflower thoughts of our slow rambles were kindred spirits, and they were eloquent expressions of the suchness of all things. They are also gentle harbingers of the dazzling season called autumn, when lakes turn purple at twilight and the evening sun goes down in flames over northern shores. If I were offered youth in exchange for not seeing, painting, writing about and photographing such wonders (however badly I do all those things), I would have to decline.

Thursday Poem - Morning Prayers

I have missed the guardian spirit

of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.

This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.

This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.

I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.

This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.

Joy Harjo,

from How We Become Human

Wordless Wednesday - Harvest Gold

For the Earth in All Her Contours

In some measure, the woman who is standing here with her DSLR, photographer's vest and bag of camera equipment is the same person who stood on the edge of the field with her prized Brownie Bullet many long years ago.

That wee girl was filled with wonder.  She marveled at the beauty of the rural morning around her, and she traced the contours of the field with her eyes, framing the image in her mind and wondering how best to capture it in the little box around her neck - she could have stood in perfect contentment by the rail fence forever.

There are the same feelings on this day of Lughnasadh or First Harvest, although the elder (me) creaks as she turns to frame a fey and ethereal shot out across the sleepy landscape. Some things never change, but should they change, and do they need to? Perhaps I never left this place - perhaps I have been here forever watching as the clouds and the light change and flow.

For Lughnasadh

How swiftly the days of summer pass.  Here we are again on the first day of August and the morning of Lughnasadh (also called Lammas, Lúnasa, Calan Awst, "First Harvest" and "Loaf Mass"), the timeless agrarian festival that celebrates high summer, the cultivation of grain since early times and the abundance of the harvest.

There is nothing new under the sun, and our reverence for grain and harvest is almost as old as humanity itself. Grain sheaves, grinding stones and mill wheels have been sacred to humanity for so many centuries that we can't begin to count them, and this day is sacred to a whole host of harvest, vegetation and "dying and rising" gods like Lugh, Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis and Attis. Then there is Dionysus (or Bacchus) - his magical tavern with its ever turning mill wheel and rapture inducing brews is the stuff of legend, and it can be entered from any street in the great wide world if one is in just the right frame of mind.

A book that always come to mind around this time is The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers - it's chock full of mythic metaphors related to grain harvesting and the brewing of beer, and it's a rollicking good read.  The central characters in the book are King Arthur (reincarnated as an aging Irish mercenary named Brian Duffy), a sorcerer calling himself Aurelius Aurelianus (the legendary Merlin himself), and the Fisher King.  Dionysus and his magical tavern put in an appearance, and they are in good company - the woodland god Pan, Finn MacCool, Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Odin, Thor and Hercules also appear.  There is a whole shipload of Vikings sworn to defend the ancient brewery at the heart of the tale and stave off Ragnarok, and there are mythical creatures too numerous to mention. If only the book had been published in hardcover...

This day is is sacred to harvest goddesses and grain deities like Demeter, Persephone, Ceres, Bridget, the Cailleach, Tailtiu, Selu, Nokomis, the Corn Mother and Freya, who is also known as the Lady of the Loaf. Lammas is medieval Christianity's name for the festival, and when observed, it too is a celebration of grain and the harvest. Bread is baked with flour milled from the first grain of the season; the loaves are blessed and placed on church altars as offerings for continuing good harvest and in thanksgiving for bounty still to come.

Essential activities of the festival have to do with natural cycles and the harmony of the seasons, with timeless rhythms of growing, winnowing, gathering and storing things for winter.  They include baking bread, weaving onion and garlic braids, making sun wheels, harvest wreaths and Corn Mother dolls, gathering and drying garden herbs and spices for winter. 

For the ancients, this day marked the beginning of the year's "gathering in", but it also signaled summer's end.  In these golden weeks, it is difficult to believe that summer is waning, but it certainly is - our days are growing shorter, and winter is only a few months away. The time has come to store the yieldings of orchard and garden to sustain us through long dark winter.

However far we have come from our roots and the ways of the ancestors, traces of old rites remain here and there.  When I came to Lanark County several years ago, I was delighted to learn that Lughnasadh festivities are alive and well in the highlands.  They are called céilidhs or "field parties", and the attendees are often unaware of the ancient origins and significance, but all the trappings are there; corn on the grill and fresh baked bread, wine and beer, music and storytelling, merrymaking (and occasionally ritual) in abundance.

Blessings of the harvest to you and your clan!