Literature exists at every level of experience. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expressed. The purpose of the storyteller is to relate the truth in a manner that is simple: to integrate without reduction; for it is rarely possible to declare the truth as it is, because the universe presents itself as a Mystery. We have to find parables; we have to tell stories to unriddle the world.
Alan Garner
In early July, the trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are gloriously leafed out, and vast swaths of woodland are as dark as night - the shadowed alcoves are several degrees cooler than the sunlit fields skirting them. Winding strands of wild clematis wrap around the old cedar rail fence by the main gate, and the silvery posts and rails give off a fine dry perfume.
The fields are wonders: orange and yellow hawkweeds, buttercups and clovers, daisies, tall rosy grasses and ripening milkweed, several species of goldenrod, trefoils and prickly violet bugloss - everything is set in motion by the arid summer wind and swaying in place. The open areas of waving greenery have an oceanic aspect, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the masts of tall ships poking up here and there.
And then there are the birds, red-tailed hawks circling overhead, swallows and kingfishers above the river, bluebirds on the fence, grosbeaks dancing from branch to branch in the overstory and caroling their pleasure in the day and the season. I can't see them for the trees, but mourning doves are cooing somewhere nearby.
Fritillaries and swallowtails flutter among the cottonwoods, never pausing in their exuberant flight or coming down to have their pictures taken. Dragonflies (mostly skimmers, clubtails and darners) spiral and swoop through the air, a few corporals among them for good measure. These walks are filled with wonders.
I began this morning's post with the words "It is high summer". Then I remembered that the summer solstice has passed, and I went back and started again. And so it goes in the great round of time and the seasons. Many golden days are still to come, but we have stepped into the the languid waters that flow downhill to autumn.
Autumn with its burnished light, its grains and apples and gourds on the vine... The season feels like coming home to this old hen.
Lynn Schmidt saysshe saw You once as prairie grass,Nebraska prairie grass,
she climbed out of her car on a hot highway,leaned her butt on the nose of her car,looked out over one great flowing field,stretching beyond her sight until the horizon came:vastness, she says,responsive to the slightest shift of wind,full of infinite change,all One.
She says when she can't prayShe calls up Prairie Grass.
Pem Kremer
I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I’d be a fool not to listen. If God’s voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I’ll prick up my ears. If night’s faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I’ll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine.
Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage
One has to love creatures so lavishly endowed. Summer's roses are glorious creatures, be their flowering time an interval lasting a few weeks or one lasting all season long. All artful curves and lush fragrance, velvety petals and fringed golden hearts, the blooms are lavishly dappled with dew at first light, a rare treat for these old eyes as the early sun moves across them. If we are fortunate, there will be roses blooming in our garden until late autumn, and we (Beau and I) hold the thought close.
The word rose hails from the Old English rose, thence from the Latin rosa and the Greek rhoda. Predating these are the Aeolic wrodon and the Persian vrda-, and way back, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form wrdho- meaning "thorn or bramble". Humans have had a thing for roses for a very long time.
Most of the roses in our garden have thorns to reckon with, and we approach them with caution. The thorniest of the bunch are the multiflora which has ruled a corner of the garden for years, and a much younger, (but no less armored) rose from the Canadian Explorer series called 'William Baffin'. Wicked thorns on that one.
Around this time of the year, I find myself falling in love with the roses in my garden all over again. The blooms are lovely as they mature, and they are gracefully poignant as they fade and wither and dwindle, their petals tattering, falling away and fluttering to the earth like perfumed confetti.
Bumbles and bees love roses, and they spend sunlight hours flying from one bloom to another, burrowing deep into the centers and kicking their pollen bedecked legs in rapture. The air is filled with whirring wings and happy, buzzing musics.
There's a bittersweet and rather mournful aspect to one's thoughts in late June, and I remember feeling the same way last year around this time. Here we are again, pottering down the luscious golden slope to autumn and beyond. My pleasure in the season and a gentle melancholy seem to be all wrapped up together in falling rose petals and blissed out bumblebees.
Needing one, I invented her—
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.
Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,
and we'd travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker—
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.
At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back
scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;
or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;
or she'd hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,
this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.
Mary Oliver, from Twelve Moons
I wander about whenever I can, taking photos of things in the natural world that grab my attention: the light in the trees, summer grasses dappled with dew, the creek in the woods singing as it rambles downhill, cedar rail fences, flocks of geese, herons and loons, wild orchids, fallen leaves, mountains and rivers, sunsets and sunrises, full moons and starry nights, winter snowdrifts as high as the Himalayas.
Closer to home, there are the artfully arranged clothes on my neighbor's line (coordinated by colour) and her brightly colored plastic clothespins, sunlight coming through the kitchen window, leaning piles of books, beakers of espresso and mugs of tea, song birds, bumbles and butterflies in the garden, the Beech Mother (and her comely daughters), sweet Beau who lights up my world and my life.
There is (of course) the pesky business of finding words to accompany the images, but I am getting better at letting them speak for themselves. Most of the time, they don't need my clumsy tinkering and feeble attempts at description anyhow.
The gathering goes on and on like a wild litany, like the pearls of dew on a spider web or the beads on a very long mala. There is always something to see if I have the presence of mind to pay attention to the wonders around me. As Beau and I potter along, I give thanks to the Old Wild Mother (Earth) for all the fine stuff she is dishing out. I have always done that, but these days, my thanks to her have particular urgency in the light of what is happening in the great wide world.
Why am I mentioning all this stuff this morning? I need a reminder, and this is it.
It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, invisibly, inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke
This is the eve of Litha (Midsummer) or the Summer Solstice, and as with all the old festivals, the observance begins tonight at sunset. Tomorrow is the longest day of the calendar year, the Sun poised at its zenith or highest point and seeming to stand still for a fleeting interval before starting down the long slippery slope toward autumn, and beyond that to winter. Actually, it is we who are in motion and not the magnificent star at the center of our universe. Our sun stays right where it is.
This morning's image was taken by the front gate of the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the Lanark highlands some time ago, and it is one of my favorites. It captures the essence of midsummer beautifully with tall trees and hazy sky in the background, golden daisies, purple bugloss and silvery meadow grasses dancing front and center.
It seems as though summer has just arrived, but things are all downhill from here. After tomorrow, days will shorten until Yule (December 21) when they begin to stretch out again. The ebbing is bittersweet, but longer nights go along on the cosmic ride during the last half of the calendar year, and that is something to celebrate for those of us who are moonhearts and ardent backyard astronomers. There are some fine stargazing nights ahead. The Old Wild Mother strews celestial wonders by generous handfuls as the year wanes, spinning luminous tapestries in the velvety darkness that grows deeper and longer with every twenty-four hour interval.
The eight festive spokes on the Wheel of the Year are associated with fire, but the summer solstice more than any other observance. Centuries ago, all Europe was alight on Midsummer eve, and ritual bonfires climbed high into the night from every village green. Long ago festivities included morris dancing, games of chance and storytelling, feasting and pageantry and candlelight processions after dark.
Prosperity and abundance could be ensured by jumping over Midsummer fires, and its embers were charms against injury and bad weather at harvest time. Embers were placed in orchards and fields to ensure a good harvest, and they were carried home to family hearths for protection. Doorways were decorated with swags and wreaths of birch, fennel, white lilies and St. John's Wort which is in bloom now.
My days of jumping midsummer bonfires are over. I will try to be outside with a mug of Jerusalem Artichoke (or Earth Apple) tea and watch the sun rise tomorrow. The afternoon holds a few hours of working in the garden and (as usual) a few mugs of tea and a little reading time on the deck. At nightfall there will be a quiet festive meal, a little stargazing and moon watching later if the skies are clear.
We (Beau and I) cherish the simplicity of our small festive doings, the quiet pleasure of being with loved ones at such times. As always, we will think of my departed soulmate. This is our sixth Litha without Irv, and his passing still cuts like a knife. Some things cannot be tucked away or forgotten. They can only be carried.
Happy Litha (or Midsummer/Summer Solstice), however you choose to celebrate it, or not celebrate it. May the sun light up your day from sunrise to sunset, and your night be filled with stars from here to there. May all good things come to you.
The sky puts on the darkening blue coatheld for it by a row of ancient trees;you watch: and the lands grow distant
in your sight, one journeying to heaven
and one that falls;
and leave you not at home in either one,not quite so still and dark as the darkened
houses, not calling to eternity with
the passion of what becomes a star
each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)your life, with its immensity and fear,so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(translation by Stephen Mitchell)
The old guy (Hotei) sits in a sunny alcove in the garden under a canopy of old rose canes and buckthorn boughs. Birds serenade him in early morning, and rabbits visit him at nightfall. Bumbles and dragonflies buzz around him, spiders knit him into their webs, and sometimes butterflies land on him. There is a steady rain of maple keys, leaf dust and pine needles from the trees over his head.
He looks as though he is carved from stone, but he is actually made of some kind of polyresin and weighs only a pound or two. I discovered him in the window of a thrift shop many years ago, purchased him for a few coins and carried him home where he presides over a leafy enclave in the garden from early April until late October.
From October to April, the old guy hangs out in the potting shed, and he is carried there with great pomp and circumstance when the garden is put to bed in late autumn. Our procession to his winter lodgings is a cherished seasonal ritual.
Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles of our feet, shaped by the surfaces they press upon, are landscapes themselves with their own worn channels and roving lines. They perhaps most closely resemble the patterns of ridge and swirl revealed when a tide has ebbed over flat sand.
Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
In summer, I spend hours photographing dragonflies, butterflies, bumbles and bees, puddles and weeds, wild orchids, lupins gone walkabout and doing their own untrammeled thing in roadside ditches. The eastern Ontario highlands are a treasure trove of earthy abundance in all seasons, and I feel fortunate to be there and taking it all in, especially in summer.
Hours are also spent crawling about in the woods on all fours with a macro lens on the camera “doing” ferns, mosses, lichens and little green frogs. Every tump, stump, leafy alcove and stone has wonders to share. Is it difficult to lurch back to a standing position afterward after getting down on the forest floor? Yes, but worth it.
Still other hours are spent hanging out on the shore at the lake, capturing loons floating on the still water as the sun goes down, great herons standing motionless in the shallows, kingfishers hunting the last small meal of the day. Once in a while, an otter paddles by and peers up at me, displaying the bright red inside of its mouth and a set of wicked teeth. There is always something to see.
River otters are making a comeback in the Lanark highlands, and it is common to see them swimming along the lake and in nearby rivers. They are fabulous creatures, and I call them all "Portly", after the wandering otter child in the seventh chapter of Kenneth Graham's incandescent The Wind in the Willows.
These are kingfisher days, times out of time, full of magic and an elusive something I am always reaching toward and can't quite find, let alone capture with camera and lens. When I arrive home, dusty, sweaty and speckled with leaf dust, the day’s images are uploaded and archived. I look at everything first of course, but my efforts make me groan, so I file the DVD away and think no more of it.
Years later, while searching for the right image for something or other, I pull out a DVD and discover it is full of treasures. Imagine that. I have already taken the swallowtail, cicada, loon, fern, wildflower or rain dappled moss shot I am still hoping to find. I discover them all over again, and I remember when they were taken, my soulmate and Beau (or Cassie or Spencer) and I together in the woods on a glorious summer morning, chewed by bugs and as happy as clams.
Apologies to Susan Coyne for borrowing the title of her memoir Kingfisher Days for this morning's post. I have always loved the book.
The best time is late afternoonwhen the sun strobes throughthe columns of trees as you are hiking up,and when you find an agreeable rockto sit on, you will be able to seethe light pouring down into the woodsand breaking into the shapes and tonesof things and you will hear nothingbut a sprig of birdsong or the leafyfalling of a cone or nut through the trees,and if this is your day you might evenspot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geesedriving overhead toward some destination.
But it is hard to speak of these thingshow the voices of light enter the bodyand begin to recite their storieshow the earth holds us painfully againstits breast made of humus and brambleshow we who will soon be gone regardthe entities that continue to returngreener than ever, spring water flowingthrough a meadow and the shadows of cloudspassing over the hills and the groundwhere we stand in the tremble of thoughttaking the vast outside into ourselves.
Billy Collins,
(from The Art of Drowning)
The delightfully complex shape of columbines always reminds me of a harlequin's chapeau or a medieval court jester's cap. The architecture is splendid stuff, and there is a blithely capering choreography to the columbine's dancing "to and fro" movement on gracefully arching and swaying stems. With sunlight shining through them, the petals and sepals of the flower seem to be made of stained glass.
Their dwelling places are like woodland cathedrals, and the stained glass analogy is apt. The ceilings are up in the sky somewhere, and the nave's soaring green arches disappear into the clouds. The clerestories, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses would make any architect proud, and the leafy chapels seem to go on and on forever.
I am reading John Crowley's fabulous Little, Big for the nth time, and a sentence about the forest at the heart of the book comes to mind: “The further in you go, the bigger it gets.” If you have never read Crowley's novel, make a beeline for your nearest book shop or library and grab a copy. It is one of the most delightful pieces of fiction ever written, and perfect summer reading too.
Columbines often seem to be wearing at least one spider web, along with bits of fluff from nearby cottonwood trees and slender filaments of milkweed silk. I am always astonished and captivated by what my macro lens "sees" and records in its sylvan ramblings. At times, its loving eye seems to linger and caress everything it encounters, and that is particularly so when columbines are in bloom.
As I drifted through the woods on the weekend clicking ecstatically, the first dragonflies of the season whirred around my head and spiraled off into the sunlit trees in search of prey. There were clouds of black flies and mosquitoes, and the little dragons of the air were dining very well indeed.
Another summer of wildflowers, dragonflies, butterflies and bumbles... There are almost too many wonders for one old hen to take in.
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
Cormac McCarthy, from The Road
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