Snowy Mornings

There is a hush to our favorite walking places on early December mornings. The village is a different place than it was, only a few days ago. 

Snow seems to muffle everything in the park, the footsteps of early walkers, squirrels scrambling through whiskery branches and running along the frozen creek, dogs barking in the unleashed area on the other side of the woods. Sometimes it is so quiet that one can hear snowflakes falling on the old trees along the steep trail up the hill. At the top of the rugged incline is the alcove where the Beech Mother and her daughters make their home, and we always stop to greet them.

Then there is the matter of making trail. It is always difficult to come upon a trail blanketed in freshly fallen snow, no footprints on it at all, and know how to proceed. Do we go forward and defile the perfect, pristine avenue in front of us with our footprints, or just stand and admire it for a while, then find another way through the woods? This morning, we found another way.

There is wild magic here on winter mornings and no mistake. Shameful to disrupt its working with our bumbling about in the lovely, unmarked white stuff.

Advent Sun Wheel, Week 3

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

In Hampton Park

Friday Ramble - Counting Winter's Bounty

Over and over again, the village freezes and thaws. Every puddle in the park seems to be talking to the sky, sometimes clear and blue, mostly cloudy and grey. Encountering sunlight is engaging this late in the year, particularly in a pool of melt water.

Beau and I are outdoors for long walks every morning, and we potter along at a snail's pace, talking with the trees in the park (especially the beech mother and her daughters), listening to crows conversing over our heads, counting cones on the old pines in the woods.

This morning we returned home from our ramble with pockets full of fragrant seed bearers in all shapes and sizes, happier with our gathered abundance than we would have been with bags of glittering coin and rustling paper money. My companion has no pockets of his own of course, and he makes use of mine.

Long walks lighten winter hearts and make a hopeful (if bone chilling) start to December days. We walk for miles with hoods up against the north wind and listen to it cavorting in villages eaves and gutters. We pause at every puddle to watch how tenderly it holds the sky and clouds and (if we are lucky) a little sunlight.

The beloved who has gone on ahead is never far from our thoughts. Wherever he journeys, we send him our love. May his trail be easy and filled with light.

Thursday Poem - Waiting Game

Just as it seems the weather could not be

greyer or more dismal than November,

December comes along with wreaths of frost

and hangs on every tree the ragged crepe

of black leaves mourning for the wasted year.

But I have seen these funerals before,

and so I think of you, my dear old love,

of breathing ground, of sleeping roots and bulb,

the simple garden of our gathering years.

No matter now how fast and furious

the bitter dark comes on, I am not fooled.

I've witnessed resurrection every spring.

The winter birds are round and boisterous,

jousting for seeds at feeders with snow hats,

The ice man melts his fingers on their hearts,

Small miracles with wings beguile us now.

Dolores Stewart Riccio

Wordless Wednesday - Little Friend in the Garden

By the Winter River

The north wind brushes snowflakes away from ice on the river, and clouds of displaced white swirl through the air like confetti. Light flickers through nearby trees and everything sparkles: river, snowdrifts, whiskery branches and frozen weeds along the shore. The scene is uplifting for a crotchety human in December's middling pages. I long for light, and the sunshine is a shawl across my shoulders as it comes and goes through the clouds and the mist over the river—it's like honey in my cup.

Cattails, sedges and spiky wetland grasses fringe the waterway all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and withered, dessicated stalks swaying in the wind. The plumes and spikes outlined against the sky are pleasing when one can actually see them, their artfully curling tops eloquent of something wild and elemental and engaging. So too are the frosted fields, fences and trees on the far shore, the cobalt hues of hoarfrost, snow and ice, the golden setting sun painting the river, the diaphanous veil of cold vapor floating above everything.

There are no caroling birds by the river now, and there is silence for the most part, but this week, I remembered how the waterway sang jubilantly in the spring as it thawed, how it murmured softly against the shore on hot summer days. I remembered loons calling across the water in early morning and the last herons of autumn standing motionless in the reeds as the sun went down behind the trees on the other side. I thought of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, "Speak Memory". On another day, that might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

The world around me is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth am I going to fit sky, river, tempest and dancing snow into one 5x7 image? The sensible thing to do might be to just stand here quietly committing the scene to memory and take no photos at all, but I have never been sensible.

Advent Sun Wheel, Week 2

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

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

It's winter and there is smoke from the fires. The square, lighted windows of houses are fogging over. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

Two on Earth, Five Together

This morning marks the fifth anniversary of my husband's passing from pancreatic cancer. Irv took his last breath in my arms at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2019, and it feels like only yesterday that he left us and went on ahead. To say that life without my soulmate is difficult is understating things and then some. I loved Irv more than life itself, and it is difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of years of life without him. Surviving without him is hard work, and flourishing is probably not in the cards. This day will never be anything but painful, and it will be very quiet.

For many years, I was married to a guy with a razor-sharp mind, a dry wit, a fine sense of irony and a great laugh. The natural world was an endless source of delight to him, and he never wearied of its grandeur and its beauty. He was passionate about trees, rocks and rivers, fields and fens, birds, bugs and woodland critters, sunrises and sunsets, full moons and starry nights. He loved his tribe fiercely and unconditionally.

He loved rambling, and ramble we did by golly, hand in hand and all over the place, packs on our backs, notebooks in our pockets, a thermos of tea, a camera around my neck and our beloved doggy sidekicks trotting along with us. I could not have had a more wonderful companion if I had written him into being myself, and I simply could not believe my good fortune. I look back on our life together with amazement and gratitude and so much love.

Now it is Beau and I who wander through the great wide world together, in the flesh anyway. Cassie and Spencer, his older sister and brother, traveled beyond the fields we know long ago, but they are right here with Irv, and all three are walking along in the woods with us. There will be five of us on the snowbound trail this winter, but three of us will not need parkas and snowshoes or leave paw prints in the white stuff. There is a small measure of comfort in knowing that we will walk these trails together, forever. A fine untrammeled wildness dwells in our blood and bones, all of us.

Journey well, my love. May there be wide fields, fens, forests and sunshine wherever you go. May rose-breasted grosbeaks sing in the trees over your head as you go along, and may there be cold, clear streams in the woods nearby, tenanted by brook trout, spotted salamanders and little green frogs. Beau and I miss you so much.

Friday Ramble - Shelter

Shelter's a word dear to a cronish heart when winter arrives. When daylight hours wane, I retreat to tottering stacks of books, lighted candles, shawls, mugs of hot stuff and a comfy chair. At dusk, I pull the draperies closed, plump up the pillows, put on the kettle and tune out the cold and the darkness beyond the windows.

In its present form, this week's word has been around since the late sixteenth century, possibly coming from the Middle English sheltroun, sheltron or sheldtrume and Old English scyldtruma or scield, all forms meaning shield or protector. The most likely Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form is skel meaning “to cut". Early shelters were likely assembled from military shields fitted closely together, and the earliest shields in use would have been rounded plates of wood.  The origins of our word are disputed by linguistic scholars, but there is no doubt that shelter and shield are inextricably linked. 

A shelter is an enclosure of some sort, a cabin, a cave or a hollow, an embracing tree or thicket, a harbor shielded by guardian hills and out of the sea wind. We all have our shelters and sanctuaries, and their shapes and trappings are highly personal. For deer and wild turkeys, it's the protection and nourishment afforded by woodland cedar groves in winter. For hibernating bears, it's the secluded leaf-strewn dens where they sleep through the long white season. For rabbits and hares, it's snug burrows in the earth and the overhanging branches of evergreens shielding them from icy temperatures and the rapt attention of predators. For me, it's a fire burning on the hearth and my red shawl, a mug of Earl Grey or chai, a big fat book (better still a stack) and a comfortable chair. 

One does whatever she has to do to drive the dark away, or at least hold it at bay for a while. Hours are spent dreaming up beakers of steaming goodness, and everything brewed up seems to contain little moons of fragrant orange, clove nubbins, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods or anise stars, sometimes all at once. A flagon of tea always lifts my spirits, and posing creations on the sideboard is a labour of love. I season my potions with abandon and stir them deosil (clockwise) with a wand of rosemary from the pot in my kitchen. The mother plant once lived in my herb garden, now sleeping and blanketed in frost. A small evergreen plant of the mint family, Salvia rosmarinus is native to the Mediterranean and does not overwinter outside this far north. It will have to be planted again in the spring. 

In the dusky weeks between now and Yule, I turn ever inward and find myself thinking about the tiny flame at the heart of things, its tender bloom promising warmth, sunlight and longer days somewhere up the trail, if we can only hang on. Alas, there are many weeks to go before the light returns, at least noticeably so. After December 21st, days will begin to lengthen again, but we will be well into the new year before the change is apparent. Thank Herself for tea and books and warm socks!

Thursday Poem - This Thanksgiving

You don’t have to be grateful.
You could rail against
the injustice of it all and we
would certainly understand.
You could resent the hell out of
this year or your family or your health.
You could be livid about politics
or grieving climate change
or overwhelmed at the thought
of making toast, let alone gravy.

It’s OK. One way or another
the mist will wrap gently around the hills
and crows, sleek and unperturbed,
will manage their secret societies.
However you feel about
marshmallows on yams,
or eating alone, or the family table,
bees bunked tight in their hives
are humming each other lullabies.
Beetles under the leaves
are striding with such assurance
that I can only believe that
they have got this covered,
at least for now.

Lynn Ungar, from These Days

Wordless Wednesday - November Rain and Bokeh

Yuletide Reading List

This is a holiday tradition, a list of written materials about the winter holiday season and the return of the light to the north. Many of these books are out of print, but they can sometimes be found in used book shops, and they are often happy campers in your local library. May the works below be a light in your window, a red shawl around your shoulders, a pair of fuzzy socks, a mug of something hot and nourishing, a fire on your hearth conveying comfort, fellowship and festive spirit this holiday season.

No Yule interval would be complete without reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence. The five volumes are: Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. There is also John Masefield's Box of Delights, a childhood favorite, and at least four of my late friend Dolores Stewart Riccio's delightful Circle novels take place at (or near) Yule. This year, I will also read the late Phil Rickman's novel, December. He was a friend.

Christmas Folklore and Superstitions, A.R. Bane

The Oxford Book of Days, Bonnie Blackburn and

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Echoes of Magic: A Study of Seasonal Festivals

through the Ages, C.A. Burland

The Book of Christmas Folklore,

Tristram Potter Coffin

Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around

the World, Heather Conrad and DeForest Walker

Medieval Holidays and Festivals: A Calendar of

Celebrations, Madeleine Pelner Cosman

Christmas and Christmas Lore, T.G. Crippen

The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around

the World, for the Winter Solstice,

Carolyn McVickar Edwards

Christmas, A Biography, Cynthia Flanders

The Magic of the Winter Solstice: Seasonal

Celebrations to Honour Nature's Ever-turning Wheel,

Danu Forest

Yule: History, Lore and Celebration, Anna Franklin

A Calendar of Festivals: Traditional Celebrations,

Songs, Seasonal Recipes and Things to Make,

Marian Green

The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar

Observatories, John L. Heilbron

Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's Seasonal 

Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony,

Richard Heinberg

 Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual
Year in Britain, Britain, Ronald Hutton

The Winter Solstice, Ellen Jackson

The Dance of Time: The Origins of the Calendar:
A Miscellany of History and Myth, Religion and
Festivals and Feast Days, Michael Judge 

The Solstice Evergreen: History, Folklore and Origins

of the Christmas Tree, Sheryl Karas

Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, Charles Kightly

Sacred Celebrations: A Sourcebook, Glennie Kindred

Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of

the Sun, Moon Stars, and Planets, E.C. Krupp

The Ancient Celtic Festivals: and How We Celebrate

Them Today, Clare Walker Leslie and Frank E. Gerace

Celebrations Of Light : A Year of Holidays Around
the World, Nancy Luenn and Mark Bender

Llewellyn's Little Book of Yule, Jason Mankey

The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions
Christmas, John Matthews and Caitlin Matthews

Rituals of Celebration: Honoring the Seasons of Life

Through the Wheel of the Year, Jane Meredith

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Clement A. Miles

The Hedgewitch Book of Days, Spells Rituals and
Recipes for the Magical Year, Mandy Mitchell

Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth,

Dorothy Morrison

The Provenance Press Guide to the Wiccan Year:
A Year Round Guide to Spells, Rituals, and Holiday Celebrations, Judy Ann Nock

The Modern Witchcraft Guide to the Wheel of the Year:

From Samhain to Yule, Your Guide to the Wiccan Holidays, Judy Ann Nock

Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories

Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions, Charles Panati

Yule: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Winter Solstice,

Susan Pesznecker

The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice, Wendy Pfeffer

Christmas Folklore, Cory Nelson and Kyle Pressly

Celebrating the Winter Solstice, Theresa Reel

The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice,

Wendy Pfeffer and Jesse Reisch

The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for

the Darkest Days of the Year, Linda Raedisch

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at

the Origins of Yuletide, Christian Rätsch, Claudia

Müller-Ebeling

Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions In Norway and

the New Land, Kathleen Stokker

When Santa Was A Shaman: Ancient Origins of Santa

Claus and the Christmas Tree, Tony van Renterghem

How To Celebrate Winter Solstice, Teresa Villegas

The Fires of Yule: A Keltelven Guide for Celebrating

the Winter Solstice, Montague Whitsel

The Wicca Cookbook: Recipes, Ritual and Lore,

Jamie Wood

Advent Sun Wheel, Week 1

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

Little Pond Trying to Freeze Over

 

Friday Ramble - Calling the Sun Home

Herons, geese and loons have departed for balmier lodgings somewhere further south. Rivers and lakes in the eastern Ontario highlands are still and silent without their summer residents. Sometimes it is very cold after dark falls, but not always - October and November have been unseasonably warm this year, and temperatures have been oscillating back and forth like a pendulum. Beau and I are never sure what to expect when we get ready to go out, but there is always wind. Boreus, god of the north wind, is in residence and making his blustery presence felt. 

On early morning rambles, fallen leaves crunch pleasingly under our feet, and we examine puddles along the trail for skims of ice. Near home, a north wind rattles the eaves of the little blue house in the village and sets the whiskery trees nearby in raspy motion. It is raining as I write this, but there will be snow next week, lots of it.

When night falls, I pull draperies closed and shut out the gloom beyond the windows, taking refuge, comfort and great pleasure in small seasonal rites. I light scented candles, brew pots of tea, knead bread dough and stir mugs of hot chocolate, experiment with recipes for curries and paellas, sketch and read. I plot gardens for next year (more roses and herbs, perhaps a Medicine Wheel garden), craft grand and fabulous schemes which will probably never see the light of day. I do a little dancing from time to time, but my efforts are closer to lurching than anything else.

We are nearing the end of November, and in a few weeks, days will begin to lengthen again. It will be some time until we notice a real difference in our daylight hours, but at least we will be on our way, and for that reason, Yule just may be my favorite day in the whole turning year. When the winter solstice arrives, there will be celebrations and silliness to drive away the darkness and welcome old Helios back to the world. He is still here of course - it's the earth's seasonal wobble that makes him seem more distant than he actually is at this time of the year. We and our planet are the ones in motion, not the magnificent star at the center of our universe.

Beginning Sunday night and continuing until Yule, I will light a candle at dusk every Sunday night in a practice called the Advent Sun Wheel, four weeks and four candles, a fifth festive candle to be lit on the eve of the Winter Solstice. Now in its twentieth year, the observance was crafted by the late Helen Farias, founder of the Beltane Papers. Helen passed beyond the fields we know in 1994, and her creation has been carried on, first by Waverly Fitzgerald and since 2004 by my friend, Beth Owls Daughter. Waverly passed beyond the fields we know in December 2019, but she will be with us in spirit as we light our candles. She always is.

In touching match to candlewick, I join a circle of wise women and kindred spirits in far flung places, bright spirits like Beth, Joanna Powell Colbert and many others. I am not so wise myself, but that is quite all right. Together we will honor the earth and her fruitful darkness, and we will welcome the sun home with warm thoughts and healing energies. This has been a difficult year. May there be light ahead for all of us.

One needs only a wreath and five candles to participate in this observance. At sunset this coming Sunday, light the first candle in your wreath and spend a little time in quiet reflection, then blow out the candle when you are done. On the following Sunday at sunset, light the first candle and a second candle too... and so on and so on until the Winter Solstice when the fifth and last candle of the ritual is lit.

Magpie creature that I am and ever a passionate collector of seasonal lore, I am very interested in your own "before Yule" practices.

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

Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

Songs in a Different Key

Leaves crunching underfoot, frost crystals limning fences, blowsy plumes of grasses rattling like sabres, leaf strewn puddles on the trail—all are plangent leitmotifs in the windy musical work that is late autumn and early winter. The woodland is an Aeolian harp, a vast musical instrument that only the wind can play.

The landscape is settling slowly into the subdued tints of early winter: bronzes, creams, beiges and silvery greys, small splashes of winey red, burgundy, russet, here and there touches of a deep inky blue almost iridescent in its sheen and intensity.

On our morning walks, frost forms sugary drifts on old wood along our path, dusts ferns and outlines fallen leaves almost transparent in their lacy textures. An owl's artfully barred feather lies in thin sunlight under the fragrant cedars down by the spring and seems to be giving off a graceful, pearly light of its own. The weedy residents of forest, field and fen cavort in fringed and tasseled hats.

One needs another lens and tuning for late autumn and early winter, a different sort of vision, songs in a different key. The senses perform a seasonal shift of their own, moving from bright summer happenings toward other motifs and musics in the landscape, things smaller, quieter and more muted. For all their stillness and subdued appearance, the natural elements we encounter in our rambles are complete within themselves, and they are beautiful, even when they are cold and wet and tattered. There are times when one has to look and listen more closely to bear witness to the earth's indwelling grace, and this is one of those times.

There is light in the world, even in Stygian darkness, and I have to remember that. My camera and lens never forget, and out in the woods, they drink in November's silvery light like nectar. I am thankful that they do. They remind me at every turning along on the trail—we are made of star stuff. We live in a sea of light.

Sequestered, Week 239 (CCXXXIX)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

November Woods

Friday Ramble - Winter

This week's word hails from the Old English winter (plural wintru) meaning "the wet season". At first glance, it seems odd, but winter is usually the wettest season of the year. There are a few contenders for the word's Proto-Indo-European origins, the most popular being the PIE root forms *wend- and *wed- meaning "wet". Other possibilities include the PIE roots *wind- meaning "white", and *gheim-. The latter also means "winter" and forms part of chimera, hibernate, and the mightiest mountain range of them all, the Himalayas.

Whether or not the season involves snow and icy temperatures or just a hatful of rain, most cultures on island earth have a word for it, and it has a singular place in our thoughts, dancing in a stronger light than its other, more moderate kin. Those of us who live in the north tend to predicate our agricultural and culinary activities in spring, summer and autumn on making ready for the long white season.

For the Celts, winter began at Samhain (October 31) and ended on Imbolc (February 1) when springtime arrived. The Winter Solstice on or about December 21 marked the shortest day and longest night of the year, and it was a rowdy celebration of the highest order. From that day onward, the light of the sun would return, a little more every day until the Summer Solstice in June. The legendary King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice, and Druids sometimes refer to the Winter Solstice as Alban Arthuan ("The Light of Arthur").

Rugged northerners that they were, the Norse knew all about winter. They counted their years in winters and thought the world would end after the mightiest winter (the fimbulvetr) of them all. Their beliefs, compiled in the 13th century Icelandic Edda, contain a wealth of oral material from much earlier sources, and the collection is the main source of everything we know about Norse literature, beliefs, customs, deities and creation mythologies. One of these days, I will work my way through the Edda again, and the idea of doing it in winter seems appropriate.

It all comes down to cosmic balance. We owe the lineaments of our existence in the Great Round to a tilt in the earth's axis as it spins merrily in space. When winter reigns here in the north, lands south of the equator are cavorting in summer, and I cling to that thought in the depths of frozen January. Somewhere in the world, it is warm and sunny, and sentient creatures are kicking up their heels in the light.

Winter gifts us with the most brilliantly blue skies of the calendar year by day, and the most spectacular stellar expanses by night. There is nothing to compare with the sun shining through frosted trees on morning walks, with the sound of falling snow in the woods. The darkness is intense on cold nights, and the stars seem so close one can almost reach up and touch them. Stargazy is the word.  Backyard winter astronomy is bone chilling stuff, but I would not miss it for anything in the great wide world.

When winter beckons, I think about moving further south, but it isn't going to happen. Garden catalogues and canisters of wild bird seed take up residence on every surface in the house. I pile up books and music and tea, stir curries, stews and cauldrons of soup, ponder the ranks of pickles and chutneys in my larder.  My boots, skis and snowshoes are trotted out and made ready for treks in the woods. Rambles will be brief this winter (that pesky ice), but I will be taking them for sure, and Beau will be with me every step of the way, clad in one of his natty parkas.

There is clarity and comfort in knowing that long after I am gone, the winter fields and forests of the eastern Ontario highlands will remain, their snows unmarred by the clumsy footprints of this old hen. To know the north woods, one has to wander through them in winter, spend hours tracing the shapes of sleeping trees with eyes and lens, listen to snow falling among them, perhaps become a tree herself.

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of

red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and

freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out

maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out

lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing

sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds,

clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for

thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief

as the outbreath of beauty

or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and

precious:

Have a cup of tea... and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Wordless Wednesday - Upheld

Morning in Bloom

Skies are leaden, and a fine murk wraps the village, rounding shapes and blurring the edges of houses, cars, trees and streets. This is one of those mornings when the village seems to be dancing (or skating) on the edge of the world and the weather and is not quite sure where it belongs. Late autumn, early winter? Where are we?

Adjectives like dark and sunless are evocative, but there are better words for such intervals: bosky, caliginous, cloudy, crepuscular, dark, dim, drab, dusky, gloomy, murky, nebulous, obfuscous, obscure, opaque, overcast, shadowy, somber, stygian, sunless, tenebrous, twilighted, umbral, vague, wintry.

With no light to speak of, this is not a morning for wandering about with camera and peripherals, so far anyway. When Beau and I went out a few minutes ago, an icy wind teased the backs of our necks, and the matter of a longer morning walk was put aside for now. My furry son trotted back into the bedroom and curled up in my warm spot. A single eye peered mournfully at me from behind the patchwork when I entered the room to console him with a tummy rub.

What to do? Upright, but not quite awake, I pull a canister of Chinese flower tea out of the pantry and brew up a pot. As the dried blooms take in liquid and open out, the kitchen is filled with perfume, and home is summery all over again.

Vessel, beaker and contents are almost too arty to drink, and I take image after image, posing them on the kitchen counter, on the old oak table in the dining room, on a wooden platter, a bamboo mat, a brightly coloured napkin. The teapot and cup pose cheerfully, sending up little clouds of fragrant steam and giving breathy sighs now and then. Small wonders amuse small minds on a grey morning in November.

There is a stack of art books to prowl through, and there is a little Mozart on the CD player (Die Zauberflöte). There is a folio of lovely creamy paper and a box of art pens in splendid Mediterranean shades to play with. For dinner this evening, there will be something fragrant and spicy that sings and dances on the tongue. There is room at the table for everyone, and there are enough mugs and cups to go around, mismatched of course. On days like this, one does whatever she can do to light things up. The more kindred spirits around her hearth and table, the better.

In Remembrance

For the brave men in my family who served their country and have gone on ahead: my grandfather, my father, my Uncle Bob, my soulmate, Irv.

They are remembered with so much love.