Thursday Poem - When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

Mary Oliver, from Thirst

Wordless Wednesday - Rain and Mist

Gifts of the Day

The day brought a return (hopefully brief) of winter: icy north winds, sleet and snow, gray skies and heavy clouds concealing or masking the presence somewhere over the hill (and hopefully not so far away), of sunlight and warmth and springtime.

In nests all over the village, birds were scrambling to keep their offspring warm and out of the wind today. The delicate house finches who have nested in the oak wreath on our front door for a second year were hunkered down, both parents devoted to the physical comfort and well being of the five children who emerged from their eggs into the great wide world yesterday afternoon. Whenever I passed by, there was a faint peeping to be heard emanating from the other side of the door, somewhere below the Georgian fanlight.

Of our inability to access the worldwide web today thanks to the weather, we shall say nothing, simply hosting a cup of fragrant Darjeeling and a copy of Laurie R. King's new "The God of the Hive".

White Empress

Great White Trillium
(Trillium grandiflorum)

Gold in the Shadows

Trout Lily
(Erythronium americanum)

Yesterday, the trail into the deep woods was carpeted with trout lilies in various stages of blooming and opening, and they were a treat for eyes and lens.

The quiet springtime bloomer has several common names, and they each draw attention to a distinguishing characteristic: "trout lily" from the resemblance of the artfully dappled leaves to the coloring of a brook trout, "fawn lily" for the way the leaves also resemble the freckled coat of a newborn fawn, "adder’s tongue" for the similarity of the leaf shape to a snake's tongue as it emerges from last autumn's dead leaves. The most common alternate name is "dog tooth violet”, and that is said to originate in the toothy white shapes of the underground corm, but the plant is a shy woodland member of the lily family and not a violet.

The Latin Erythronium comes from the Greek erythros, meaning “red” - that may refer to the vivid red of the sepals, or to the red veining on the outside of the petals, possibly to the red color of other members of the erythronium family but I think not. The sepals really are a lovely red color when viewed against the bright gold of the petals.

In April, the forest floor is carpeted with mottled single Trout Lily leaves, but they are mere children and will not bear blooms for another year or two - mature plants send up two leaves and a single vivid golden bell shaped flower. At sunrise, the closed downward pointing bloom resembles a member of the bellwort family, but as the day progresses, the six petals open out and curl back in the most wonderful way, resembling the artful curving shapes of kindred tiger, leopard and day lilies.

Red Empress Blooming

Red Trillium or Wake-robin
(Trillium erectum)

Also known as the Purple Trillium, Wake-robin, Bethroot and Birthroot, she is the reigning monarch of the Lanark Highlands in April, and she is the single northern wildflower most likely to leave me wide-eyed, breathless and down on my hands and creaking knees. There I was yesterday morning, down on the moist fragrant ground among last year's tattered leaves, peering into the leafy emerald shade like an old fool at one of the Old Wild Mother's finest creations ever.

If Georgia O'Keefe had been with me in the woods yesterday morning, she would have been kneeling too — and she would have begged for the privilege of painting this single magnificent bloom, its deep winey-red burgundy hue, its sumptuous flowing curves, and even its three whorled green leaves — all magic and a transcendant mystery.

While April days have been sunny for the most part, the nights have been cold in the Lanark Highlands, and my red empress is blooming almost alone in her protected cove. All around her, her red and white sisters sisters are tightly furled buds.

This is what the pure undiluted elemental grace of the earth looks like — this is perfection.

Friday Ramble - Work

The word work has been around since before 900 C.E. and comes to us through the good offices of the Middle English weorc and wyrcean, the Old English worc (or weorc), the Old Frisian werk, Old High German German werah and werc, the Greek ergon, the Old Norse verkja and the Gothic waurkjan. All these words mean (for the most part) simply "to do something", and that definition covers a multitude of activities: meditating, wandering in the woods, doing the dishes (or the laundry), digging in the garden, cooking a meal, painting a canvas or taking a photograph. Sweet or onerous, the word work covers it all.

Kindred words include include the English wrought and wright, the Greek organa, organon, organum and ergon, the modern Norse yrkja. All are testimony to the requirement of sentient beings to be actively engaged or truly involved in something from time to time and focused on that something, whatever it may be.

Trees, web spinners, bees, birds, sheep and wandering humans - we all have our work and our need for it, and work well done makes a sweet life. It is tempting to ramble on for many paragraphs, but nobody speaks (or writes) of life's work more beautifully than Mary Oliver, and her "Messenger" says it all for me, particularly in this Earth Day week.

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever

Mary Oliver
(Messenger from Thirst)

Wordless Wednesday - Red, White and Web

Budding Red

And so it goes..... The balmy temperatures of the past week were replaced by cooler temperatures and high winds on the weekend, a hollow whistling (and scouring) north wind that made us put up our hoods and look for shelter in quiet coves from time to time.

There was blessed sunlight though, as sharp and a clear as a knife without foliage to filter and diffuse its exuberant dancing across the hills, through the gorges and the bare trees. The wild turkeys are in the midst of their courtship rituals, and whenever the wind abated for a moment or three, one could hear them calling in the woods nearby. I've learned a little more about turkey language in the last few seasons, and yesterday I was able to identify four females and a single gobbler giving voice to their romantic aspirations.

We had thought that the highlands would be filled with spring wildflowers this weekend, and I went out to the woods equipped for hours and hours of happy photography, but the resident flora had furled their leaves closely and folded their buds inward against the cold wind, hardly a bloom to be seen anywhere. A single red trillium (Trillium erectum or Wake-robin) had taken up residence in the lee of a huge old fallen cedar log down near the spring, and safely out of the excoriating wind, the bud glowed from afar like a garnet.

Out of such quiet rambles, sylvan images, birdy sounds and gustings, a northern life is made.

Sweet Spring Violets

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Gary Snyder
(from Turtle Island)

Leafing Out

Tiny Woodland Blessings

Spring Beauty
(Claytonia virginica)

Round-lobed Hepatica
(Hepatica nobilis)

These tiny blooms are among the first wildflowers to come forth in the northern woodland, sharing the time of their blooming with Bloodroot, Dutchman's Breeches and the golden Trout Lily.

There is only one way to capture their delicate perfection, and that is to lie full length in the fragrant sun warmed leave matter with camera in hand, eyelash to eyelash and nose to nose with the tiny plants. It is only at such close quarters that one can take in the colors, count the petals and decide what she is actually looking at.

There is something to be said for looking at life and wild places from a slightly different angle once in a while. When I rolled over and looked up at the sky through the budding maple trees yesterday, the prospect was absolutely dazzling, and I felt like an otter cavorting in the sunlight.

Green Beginnings

As I stood in the sunshine on our hill in the Lanark Highlands, a returning loon, the first of the season, flew overhead toward the lake, singing its heart out in sheer unfettered gladness to be home again, and a grosbeak in the unpublished canopy lifted its voice to the blue sky overhead.

Oh the wonders that awaited up the trail... The first Bloodroot buds were popping out of the dead leaves like tiny white candles, and gloriously spotted leaves of the Trout Lily were everywhere underfoot - two or three specimens were blooming near sun warmed rocks on the slope down to the fast flowing creek. Columbine leaves were visible here and there, and tiny nosegays of Hepatica and Spring Beauty were in bud everywhere we looked.

Dutchman's Breeches were blooming in protected crannies, and there was a splendid clump about thirty feet up a vertical rock face in the gorge. The colony has been there for years, and as always, I stood down below with camera, telephoto and field notebook trying to figure out how I could get closer - climb up or drop down, hang over the edge, perhaps rappel up there and dangle like a monkey, nose to nose with that splendid flowering? Not this time, people were watching me....

There was a cold north wind in the open fields, but it was good just to be standing there, watching and listening as the northern world percolated gently and Mama Gaia sent up buds and flowers and green tendrils everywhere like magic. That is exactly what springtime is, a great and elemental magic - it is pure enchantment, the stuff of which art and dreams and wonder and enlightenment are made.

First Trout Lilies

Trout Lily
(Erythronium americanum)

In the Pink

Friday Ramble - Liminal

The sun comes lightly up over the hills, and April storm clouds go racing to meet it like yachts in a high wind. It's the first real whopper of a springtime storm this year, and Spencer and I are standing on the shoreline of our storm-tossed lake, watching the clouds sweep over everything in great tumbling billows. The clouds are as lustrous as pearls near the surface of the lake, and almost black along their uppermost reaches. Here and there, the darkness is punctuated by bolts of lightening, the air is tangy with ozone and filled with rattling peals of thunder that bounce off the headland and resonate clear across the water.

What is the word for such a thundering springtime day, for such wild, joyous and primitive power in untrammeled motion? The right word is liminal I think, as we perch on our rock at the beach, sheltered and out of the icy wind, soaking wet and as happy as clams amid the day's tumultuous doings. This day may be described as many things, but first and foremost, it is liminal.

The word has its origins in the Latin limen, meaning threshold, and it is comparatively modern, having come into common usage in the pioneering work of folklorist Arnold van Gennep and cultural anthropologist, Victor Turner. Both men were deeply interested in rites of passage and the elements of ritual as practiced by every culture on this dear little blue island, Earth, right from the beginning times.

This day is a seasonal rite of passage, and it wears the trappings of ritual, although the lineaments of the ritual are difficult to define amid the booming, blustering and driving rain. Out here on the edge of our northern lake, we stand on a fey and numinous threshold: between here and there, the mundane and the magical, between that which is tame and domesticated and that which is tempestuous, unfettered and seemingly shambolic, but in truth, anything but.

We are alone in this fierce and battering storm, and at the same time, we are part of something wild and free and magnificent. There is a whole vast community of us on this shoreline today, all of us breathing in and out together and watching the storm unfold. Can you hear us?

Thursday Poem - In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious

Lisel Mueller

Wordless Wednesday - Raining

Swiftly...

Swiftly the years, beyond recall,
Solemn the stillness of this fair morning.
I will clothe myself in spring clothing,
And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill.
By the mountain stream a mist hovers,
Hovers a moment, then scatters.
There comes a wind blowing from the south
That brushes the fields of new corn.

R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics

R.H. Blyth's verse is surely one of the most beautiful ever written, and it is one which ever comes to mind when I am wandering through the first blooms of northern springtime.

The first colorful squill (Scilla sibirica), grape hyacinth (Muscari spp.) and crocus (Crocus vernus) blooms are already showing up in local gardens and lawns, and they are gorgeous, but white tulips always engage my attention when I am wandering about in the village, and they do so in a way which no other spring bloom can ever do.

Eschewing intense reds and gold and purples, the gracefully nodding whites are quiet and assured, and they are delicately perfect in a way that no brighter tulip can ever hope to match. Seeing them, I stand still and catch my breath, wishing ardently that they may bloom for days and days rather than passing away swiftly in April's exuberant gusting and blowing.

Easter Monday - Rain

Easter was remarkable in every way - the sun shone bright, temperatures were almost tropical and breezes were balmy, all in all an unseasonably delightful day that seemed more like June than early April. The clan descended on the little blue house for food, wine, oceans of tea, music, single malt and happy nattering. We all sighed with contentment, and everyone went home happy and somewhat sleepy.

This morning, the village skies are cloudy, and a light rain is promised for the whole day - there is no sun to be seen, and a lustrous pearly gray sheen dapples everything within view. In the absence of good light for photography, it's a good day for reading and pondering and tending one's mental garden.

There is harp music on the sound system, and there are stacks of books on the old oak library table: books on art, photography, creativity, local geology, barn architecture, hydrostatics, bugs, butterflies and gardening. Volumes on the glorious gardens of Trelissick and Heligan beckon today too, and a copy of the National Trust Book of Gardens is close at hand. One simply cannot tackle such undertakings without pots and pots of Darjeeling, or perhaps a splendid smoky Lapsang Souchong.

Rain patters on the roof like footsteps - it sets the wind chimes in the eaves dancing, and it glosses with silver the enchantments of a day that might in other circumstances be called simply "gray".

Happy Easter

By the Pond

Friday Ramble - Happiness

The word happiness goes all the way back to the twelfth century, and it comes to us through the good offices of the Middle English hap meaning "luck or chance", probably related to the Old English gehæp meaning "fitting or convenient". Cognates include hap, happen, happenstance and haphazard, all related to luck, good fortune and destiny, the Old Church Slavic kobŭ meaning "auspices or auspicious" and the Old Irish word cob meaning "victory". Then there is the Old English eadig (from ead meaning "wealth or riches") and gesælig, which has morphed into modern parlance as silly. The Old English bliðe which originally meant happy survives as blithe, another one of my favorite words. Most of the European words now used for happiness and happy once meant fortunate or just plain lucky. A notable exception is Welsh, where the word once meant wise.

Happiness connotes a deep sensation of ease, security and well being, a sense of place and connection to each other: each of us walking, swimming, flying, lurching or hobbling along, or who lacking ambulatory appendages, (legs, feathers or fins) finds a place to stand, puts down deep roots and stands in dignity along this hallowed trail, face and leaves turned toward the sun. True happiness is made of small wonders, and there are enough small wonders on this beautiful earth to fill life right to the brim with happiness if one is thoughtful, patient and a little attentive.

On designated holiday weekends like this one, I think of the Kerr clan being together around the old oak table or curled up near the fireplace afterward with music, books and cups of tea. Our clan is expanding outward year by year to enfold kindred far and near, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, bright spirits and lost spirits encountered along our way. There is room at the hearth for all.

I think too of art, photography and the glorious keyboard creations of Bach and Scarlatti, of walking through the oak woods in autumn and peaceful winter days when one can hear the snow falling among the trees - those glorious winter days really do happen. I think of old log barns and rail fences, kindled hearths and woodsmoke, wild columbines and the whole turning year. All these things spell happiness for me, and they spell family too - this vast living and breathing earthly community of which I am such a small, awkward, fumbling and bewildered element.

This morning, the Manitoba Maple in the garden is a vision of plumed and tasseled springtime splendor, and an Eastern Cottontail visited us after sunrise. What a banquet, what a feast!

Thursday Poem - The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas