Happy Samhain/Halloween

Days growing shorter, the harvest has ended,
wide fields all harvested, baled tidy away.
Fallen leaves and acorns lie deep in the woodland,
and geese in singing flight down to the river go -
bright autumn's scarlet edges fade swiftly.

Bright be the fire on your hearth this Samhain,
good friends at your table this evening,
throngs of ghosts and goblins at your door.
Bright wishes for peace and contentment.
May all good things come to you!

Thursday Poem - 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 - Yellow

Things on Trees in October

Hairy Parchment
(Stereum hirsutum)

Lemon Drops or Yellow Fairy Cup

(Bisporella citrina)

Northern Tooth
(Climacodon septentrionale)

Tree Ear
(Auricularia Polytricha)

Turkeytail
(Trametes versicolor)

Bole

Leaves down, the Two Hundred Acre Wood is a different realm, and it provides us with tableaux of a different kind altogether: the boles of old cedars and knotty ironwoods, rail fences, conks and lichens, fallen leaves bleached to a transparent paleness, but frost edged and crackling under our hiking boots (and Spencer's dancing feet too), wisps of spider webbing festooning furrowed bark here and there.

Am I tuning out the real world by walking in the groves and thickets of this world and seeing all this "stuff", then chronicling it? An urban acquaintance thinks that I am doing just that and said so this past week. I can't seem to get it across to her that this IS the real world, and it is magnificent.

To wander in the uncultivated places of the earth is to journey into the heart of existence and toward authenticity - toward one's wild, true (and perhaps shining) self. There is love at work here, tender, fierce and very protective.

Tree Spirit

Nested

It's one of the season's preferred activities after the leaves tumble down - a search through the woods for the abandoned nurseries of this year's wild fledgelings. The fierce winds of this week have scoured the leaves off most of the trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood except for the stalwart oaks, and every trail is ankle deep in frost rimed leaves. Spencer and I went crunching along the trail into the woods, and every step generated a crackling fragrant music - it was an orchestration composed of of bark and leaves, acorns, oak tannin and woodland herbs gone to seed, everything falling slowly into the timeless fund of wildness, hibernation and eventual rebirth.

This was our first nest find of this autumn, a vireo's nest, and it was beguiling that the wind had lifted away the bottom of the nest rather than simply shredding the entire structure and spreading it out on the forest floor below. The vireo is a master nest builder, and our find was lovely to behold, bits of birch bark, leaves and grasses, cottonwood fluff and wild grapevine, all knitted up elegantly with strands of spider web.

Standing directly underneath, we looked up and through, into the trees, beyond the trees and way up into the chilly blue sky.

Thursday Poem - Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Dylan Thomas, Poem in October

Dylan Thomas wrote the grandest of odes to the month of October, and after all these years, I still marvel whenever I read it - alas, there is not a single photo in my archive capable of doing justice to his glorious words.

Wordless Wednesday - Wet

Migrant

It's a classic late autumn day here, dark clouds, heavy rain and charcoal colored skies. On such days, our thoughts turn to travel and migrations, and one can't help thinking about such activities with so many northern Canada geese flying over the roof of the little blue house in the village. Many other species head south in autumn to escape our long icy winters in the north - ducks, loons, herons, swallows, larks and bluebirds all make the long trip south, and so do many of my favorite insects.

I've only touched on the matter briefly this year, but it was a disastrous season for cicadas and butterflies and other beautiful summer residents of the Two Hundred Acre Wood. We spent the summer season peering under milkweed pods, into clover blossoms and up into poplar groves, but there was little to be seen due to unseasonable temperatures and precipitation. We didn't find a single newly hatched cicada at midsummer, and there were no Luna moths hovering in the pines in September.

This gorgeous Monarch was perched on a milkweed pod by the gate only a few days ago, and I was very surprised to find it there. She (or he) fanned their wings slowly then rose and flew southward as I watched and worried about the success of Monarch migrations southward this autumn and home again in springtime.

I can't picture life without the vibrant mechanisms of the turning year this far north, but there are moments here and there when I wish that I too could hit the road for a few weeks. Rather than heading south though, I would be heading west and along the wild north shore of Lake Superior - going home, home, home.

Several weeks after her beloved husband Don's passing, Bev Wigney of the Burning Silo has undertaken the journey with her canine companion, Sabrina, and I am traveling along in her pocket. The photos are sublime, and her descriptions of the pilgrimage are wise and thoughtful, painting a perfect word picture of my favorite place on this whole dear little planet.

Wanted: One Turret (or Ivory Tower)

It's a good day for contemplating the pleasures of owning a turret (or an ivory tower) or an octagon shaped studio at the bottom of the garden. The doddering scribe and sometime photographer (me) is in something of a bemused state, and the weather has much to do with it.

The skies are leaden, damp and gray, and there is heavy rain in the forecast for later this afternoon. So much for flaming scarlet maple leaves seen against a brilliant blue sky - the brisk winds of the last few days have brought all (or most) of those fabulous leaves down from their mother trees, and there are drifts of crestfallen papery leaves everywhere, curling up on lawns in forlorn heaps and sighing in the gutters.

Spencer refuses to wear his coat (brilliant pumpkin in hue) this early in the season, but being a tad less furry than my sweet canine son, I am wearing gloves, a long bright woolen muffler and my heavy violet walking jacket, collar turned up against the wind. The day is a downer, but we (on the other hand) present a cheerful appearance as we go scuffling our way through the park, scattering leaves left and right with mad abandon.

This turret belongs to a neighbor in the village, and loving the idea of owning one, we are picturing our own: warm draperies shutting out drafts and the gray skies, a bookcase and a small desk, a good reading lamp and two chairs (one for each of us), a faded Oriental carpet on the floor in shades of maroon, gold and dark blue. Can we fit in a Buddha and a fireplace? We're working on it...

Drifting Free

Looking for...

What am I looking for on these cold morning walks in October's middling pages? Is it light or enlightenment? Is it the color of the leaves and the sound the wind makes as it moves through them? Is it the pleasant crunching of frosty grass underneath my feet? Is it sheer unfettered wonder, or perhaps the smallest soupcon of grace and wisdom written on a wall somewhere or glimpsed in the depths of a pool in the park? All of the above?

Every single early morning's pottering is a chilly (at this time of year) but very necessary undertaking in hope, a gesture of faith in the universe which enfolds and sustains me. It's coming back to my senses, however briefly, and renewing my connection with the sacred and the organic. It's a fine earthy reciprocity, and the search for a language in which to express it, or as David Abram wrote in The Spell of the Sensuous:

"To return to our senses is to renew our bond with wider life, to feel the soil beneath the pavement, to sense—even when indoors—the moon's gaze upon the roof."

I return home every single morning with Spencer trotting easy at my side—no newly found wisdoms, no new language and no enlightenment, however fleeting. I'm still crotchety, but bemused and strangely contented in my aching bones, pockets overflowing with acorns, pebbles and leaves, a heart that is wild and free and light.

The Friday Ramble - Twilight

(I know) the light whose name is Splendour,
And the number of the ruling lights
That scatter rays of fire
High above the deep.

This morning, I was going to write about light, specifically about the splendor of autumn sunrises and sunsets when one lives this far north and the awe they awaken in me every single time, even though I have been watching them for almost sixty years.

I was going to write about how twilight skies seem to go on and on forever in autumn and how sumptuous the colors of imminent nightfall are in their roses and golds and purples, how radiant the rising moon is in October and how bright the stars flung into the heavens by handfuls and dippers and cauldrons and great streaming waterfalls.

Alas, the photo says it all, and what is not covered by the photo is certainly covered by the few lines quoted (above) from Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees, that magnificent ancient Welsh poem attributed to the bard Taliesin. It's all about wonder, and that too arrives in handfuls and dippers and cauldrons and great streaming waterfalls.

Thursday Poem - Walking North

No matter how I turn
the magnificent light follows.
Background to my sadness.

No matter how I lift my heart
my shadow creeps in wait behind.
Background to my joy.

No matter how fast I run
a stillness without thought is where I end.

No matter how long I sit
there is a river of motion I must rejoin.

And when I can’t hold my head up
it always falls in the lap of one
who has just opened.

When I finally free myself of burden
there is always someone’s heavy head
landing in my arms.

The reasons of the heart
are leaves in wind.
Stand up tall and everything
will nest in you.

We all lose and we all gain.
Dark crowds the light.
Light fills the pain.

It is a conversation with no end
a dance with no steps
a song with no words
a reason too big for any mind.

No matter how I turn
the magnificence follows.

Mark Nepo

The Hunter's Moon of October

In the northern hemisphere, October's full moon rides a deep velvety evening sky, one spangled with the first winter stars like sequins and touched with crackling frost. This is the sparkling stuff a moon lover and backyard astronomer's dreams are made of, but there was impermanence in the air last evening and a sense of things passing away, a feeling of wabi-sabi as we (Spencer and I) watched the moon rising behind the leafless sumacs.

The harvest is over except for late yields of apples, squash, pumpkins and gourds, and we are readying ourselves for the longer nights to come, filling our larders like squirrels and turning the earth in readiness for a springtime that is still many months in the future. As the days grow shorter, we begin to spend more time indoors and closer to the hearth. We pickle and can and freeze and preserve; we pile up firewood and eye our hoards anxiously. Will there be enough wood to last through the winter this time? Will there be enough potatoes, corn and beans, tea and toast makings? Sprigs of hope are tucked into every mason jar and sealer we "do up", and into the jars too go large dollops of the obdurate self-sufficiency and forbearance needed to make it through a long cold winter here. I've already checked the bindings on my snowshoes, and I know where my boots, gloves and parka are stashed.

There is a delicious melancholy in these late autumn days and nights with their intense stormy skies and fiery sunsets. All the world seems to be either migrating or falling asleep, and only gormless humans seem to be awake, alert and on the go. Somewhere in the midst of our frantic scurrying, we decorate our doorways and thresholds for Samhain (or Halloween) with scarecrows, wreaths and swags, flying witches, bales of hay and jack-o-lanterns, and we plan celebrations for that magical time at the end of the month when the veil between the worlds is gossamer thin and woven through with strands of dazzling potential. If I have a favorite night in the whole turning year, it is October 31st.

We also know this magnificent autumn moon as the: Acorns Cached Moon, Acorns Falling Moon, Big Wind Moon, Big Chestnut Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blood Moon, Calendula Moon, Changing Season Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Corn Ripening Moon, Corn Ripe Moon, Drying Grass Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Frosty Moon, Hallows Moon, Harvest Moon, Ivy Moon, Joins Both Sides Moon, Kindly Moon, Leaf Falling Moon, Leaf Dance Moon, Leaves Change Color Moon, Maple Moon, Michaelmas Daisy Moon, Middle Finger Moon, Moon When Birds Fly South, Moon of Poverty, Moon When Geese Leave, Moon of Changing Season, Moon When Quilling and Beading Are Done, Moon When Water Begins to Freeze on the Edge of Streams , Moon of Harvesting, Moon When Deer Rut, Moon of Acorn Gathering, Moon When Corn Is Taken in , Moon of Changing Season, Moon of Falling Leaves, Moon That Turns the Leaves White, Moon of First Frost, Moon When They Store Food in Caches, Moon of Long Hair, Nut Moon, Raking Moon, Samhain Moon, Shedding Moon, Small Trees Freeze Moon , Song Moon, Striped Gopher Looks Back Moon, Strong Moon, Ten Colds Moon, Travel in Canoes Moon, Trees Felled by Fire at Butt Moon , Trout Moon, Vintage Moon, White Frost on Grass and Ground Moon, Wild Turkey Moon, Wilted Moon, Wine Moon, Winter Coming Moon

I am rather fond of the names "Kindly Moon" and "Leaf Dance Moon".

Loon Lake

Yesterday's ramble was one of our regular October potterings around Dalhousie Lake to check on the progress of the autumn migration and try to establish what birds remain on the lake - this weekend, we were primarily interested in mergansers, grebes, Canada geese, herons and loons.

The lake was quiet, and a long time resident told us that the great herons had arisen and departed a few weeks ago, around the time that their principal diet of little green frogs disappeared from the shallows for the season. I thought of a beloved friend who passed away this summer, and of the love of herons we shared - whenever I encountered a great (or small) heron in my travels, I shared the news and tucked in photos too.

There were several large flights of Canada geese over the lake during our visit yesterday, but judging by the low altitudes of the various skeins, the birds were local residents, and not northern migrants flying high and riding air currents southward.

Northern Ontario is well on its way to freezing up entirely and flocks of northern Canadas have been passing overhead for weeks now - the birds are traveling at such a high altitude that they can hardly be seen against the blue, and their resonant voices are only a whisper on the wind. Canada geese are wonderfully strong fliers, and when they harness the impressive power of a good southbound air current, they can cover 2,400 km (1,500 miles) in 24 hours: 100 km (or approximately 60 miles) per hour. That is what I call traveling, and there is no petrol involved in the exercise whatsoever.

We didn't see any mergansers or grebes yesterday, but there are many quiet coves on the lake, and I think there are probably still quite a few of the handsome creatures in residence - I thought I heard them from time to time.

It was delightful to discover that there are still a few loons on the lake though. I had assumed that they were long gone, and I couldn't resist doing a lurching dance on the shoreline when I saw the first one. These photos are either (a) an immature bird (less than three years of age), or (b) an adult bird which has already morphed into its winter plumage and no longer views the world through sparkling ruby red eyes. My apologies for the quality of these two images - the dear little loon (loonling???) was clear across the lake when I saw it.

The name notwithstanding, there is absolutely nothing common about our magnificent local loons, and I have always preferred their other name: the Great Northern Diver. Loons are poetry in motion on their summer waters, and in the depths of winter, their farewell songs haunt my dreams. I shall be sad when they have departed.

Morning on the Hill

There are questions I ask myself every October morning when the skies are clear.

Have there ever been trees as golden in hue as these, and as expressive in their flowing movement? Have there ever been skies as blue, any old where or any time? Has there ever been another morning as perfect as this one in the story of the world?

We send our roots down into the good dark Lanark soil and stand with our arms upraised in sheer dancing jubilation (lovely word that, jubilation).

Moon Waxing

Off you go at the end of an October afternoon, camera slung around your neck and Spencer trotting happily along at your side. The sky is vast and blue all the way to the horizon, no edges and no limitations, only a flock of singing geese crossing it now and again as a natural counterpoint and providing a spontaneous harmony that would make any choral composer envious. A sanctus or a kyrie eleison?

The waxing moon coming up over the red and gold maples is pearly, luminescent and too beautiful for mere words, so we aim the camera upward in a momentary expression of serendipity - no tripod, no telephoto lens and no pause for detailed calculations. Surprise, surprise, the results of our clicking turn out after a fashion, a small gift at the end of a perfect autumn day.

Before the rising of the light this morning, we (Spencer and I) took our coffee out into the garden and watched Orion as he danced his way above the horizon and climbed (still cavorting) into the early darkness. This evening's reading is astronomer Chet Raymo's lyrical volume on the plethoric beauties of night, the stars and our whole magnificent cosmos, "The Soul of the Night", and a borrowed copy of his more recent "When God is Gone, Everything Is Holy" rests easy on the library table - I eye it with pleasure whenever I pass by.

These late autumn days are my very own season and time, and they sing their delight in everything that moves in this blue and gold world. Spencer hums as he potters his way along, sniffing everything in sight - to a young German Shorthair Pointer, the world is a fabulous place indeed. Me??? I just croak along and smile, marveling like a child at the wonder of it all.

Golden

Wordless Wednesday - Umbilicus

At Large, At Small

Spencer, our new son, is coming along beautifully. He has put on weight and muscle, and he loves this new life with its wide rolling fields and woods to run freely in, its hedgerows to explore and its deep blue rivers to gaze into on a cold October morning. He goes about his wild potterings, as free as a bird, beaming from ear to ear and with his tail in constant expressive motion - he is as attentive to a bumble bee in the wild asters as he is to mountains and moonrises.

He is still nervous around strangers and rather shy, but he is learning that the world is a wonderful place after all, and he is recovering (in the words of Barbara Kingsolver) his wordless trust in the largeness of life, in its willingness to take him in. He is beginning to understand that he is much loved and that there are many sunny days, blue skies and fine adventures ahead of him. The change in him after only a few weeks is remarkable, and it is a heartwarming thing to witness.

Like my dearest departed Cassie (who is always along on our morning walks with us in spirit), Spencer is turning out to be a wise and loving teacher, and I suspect I shall be learning much from him.

Flowing

Leaf and Stone

What can I say about autumn in the Lanark highlands which would improve on this simple image of an oak leaf resting on granite?

I love northern arroyos and ravines at this time of year, the steep fissured rock walls and glacial erratics below them, the pale sunlight falling across the rocks and dancing through the old oaks, their fallen leaves ankle deep and rustling underfoot, the shadow of leaf on old stone.

No words needed at all, and here I am am nattering away . . .

Turning

Thursday Poem - Autumn Song

A crunching frost last evening in the highlands,
the lambent moon high above the trees,
a sweet embracing darkness and the
aurora borealis dancing over the hill,
autumn stillness flowing like a river almost visible,
down the trail below the oaks at nightfall.

Winter stirs among the short days, there's
the whisper of cold moons yet to come,
the rattling dry breath of coming long nights,
like these old bones that move creaking
through the brown grass, fallen leaves and twigs

Patterns everywhere, and not of my making,
but the Old Wild Mother's perfect weaving,
marbled stones, hoary branches, mottled leaves,
prints of wolf and deer along the winding trail,
puddles deep in the wooded hollows rimed with ice,
shreds of tattered birch bark blowing free.

There are fragile ghosts on the wind this evening,

scents of fresh turned earth and summer fields,

loons on the dreaming lake singing to their kin,

echoes of wild geese going south, the old rail
fence creaking when I leaned on it at dusk in June.

I can hear the stream moving cold in its faraway gorge.
Rest, little sister, it tells me in its hollow voice, rest
you now, for all things turn in time, and we too, like
the seasons, must await the time of our turning.
As we attend our sure translation into story,
light and song, let us make a joyful noise.

Wordless Wednesday - Smiling