Under the Halloween Moon

 Sing a song of Halloween, jack-o-lanterns everywhere,
Bats and brooms and witches, flitting through the air.
Spirits and ghosties rising, by moon and crooked tree,
Brightest blessings are flying out to you from me.

Come one, come all!  It's the annual Witches Tea Party Under a Halloween Moon, hosted by the beautiful Frosted Petunia and moving merrily by broomstick, bicycle, horse and buggy or other conveyance from house to house this weekend.

There's a jack-o-lantern on the veranda, and a lovely fire going in the fireplace here, pots and pots of tea, vast urns of coffee and other fine potions.  The old oak banquet table holds glossy candied apples, tray upon tray of chocolates, plates of cunningly iced moon cookies and journey cakes. Bagpipes, fiddles and harps are being tuned as I write this, and the dancing is about to begin.

Join us by the fire and celebrate glorious technicolor October in all its vibrant hues, spice and fragrance.  Sing us a spell, weave us a spell or two, tell us your stories.  When you've warmed yourself by the fire, imbibed a few noggins, consumed a few journey cakes and danced a few jigs, other fine witchy tea parties await you this weekend.

Just Ducky in Early Twilight

  

Male and Female Mallard

Rideau River, October 27, 2011

Wordless Wednesday - Fallen

Views From Here

 

Looking down to the beaver pond, only a few feet deep at this time of year...

Paddock, flock and the trail through the old orchard down to the pond...

Ewe and early morning nibbling...

Dewy

Wordless Wednesday - Looking Through the Woods

Golden, Birch and Blue

Golden Leaf and Lichen

Thursday Poem - Storytelling

Come in out of the darkness.
Come in where the fire casts shadows of longing.
Sit near each other. Hold hands

while I tell you a story that has never been told,
a story with music, a flute and singing, a drum and dancing,
a story of life’s circle and the hungry wolves

waiting for caribou, and the caribou lingering
over a feast of lichen, and ravens poised in the trees
at the edges of the wolves’ eyes,

a story with a grandmother spider
stealing a piece of the sun,
a story with medicine plants and sacred weeds,

a story of how men and women found each other,
of how coyote got his cunning, of arrow boy,
of the owl’s beak tapping, always the owl, the death bird,

and the mouse, timorous, scuttling into its den,
a story of you, and you, and you.
What does it mean this dream fruit?

Nothing more than to peel and eat
the sweet juicy flesh, to let its seeds
become part of your spirit.

Long after I am gone
you will remember a story that never happened
how things that never were came into being.

Dolores Stewart
from Doors to the Universe

Dolores Stewart Riccio's beautiful poem is about the ancient and timeless art of storytelling around the communal hearth as the year wanes, and I always enjoy reading it in this time and season.  In the words of one of my favorite aboriginal sayings, "The world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told..."

The Hunter's Moon of October

October gifts us with the first cold moon of the season - Lady Moon is often veiled in drifting clouds for several days and nights at a time, for this is a stormy time in the north. That she is a rather spooky moon is perhaps not surprising, given that Samhain (or Halloween) is little more than two weeks away. 

The last day of October signified summer's end for the ancient Celts.  As Himself, Spencer and I shivered in the garden last evening, there were no two ways about it - summer is over and  autumn is well and truly in residence. Oh, there are splendid sunny days now and then, but nights are chilly, and the wind has icy fingers after dark.

In a few weeks, the deer hunting season will begin, and so October's glorious moon is traditionally known here as the "Hunter's Moon".  That is what my Algonquin ancestresses called it, and so it has always been.  This month's full moon is no brighter than the other full moons in a calendar year, but it always seems so because of the position of the ecliptic in the sky in late autumn.

As a lover of moon lore, I find it interesting that Lady Moon is a prominent motif in Halloween stories and decorations, and I am always on the lookout for new examples. Witches on broomsticks, bats, dancing skeletons, jack-o'-lanterns, ghosts, spectral owls and crooked trees - they all make their appearances silhouetted against ghostly full moons and vast inky skies. In truth, Lady Moon will be in her eleventh cycle of the year and almost at First Quarter when Halloween arrives this year - she will have risen from her fruitful darkness and be waxing bright once again in the great cauldron of night. 

The leafless tree in this photo seems to be holding the moon in its arms, and I feel a little sad - it (the tree) expired earlier this year and will be felled in a few weeks' time.   How many moons I have seen rising through my old friend and photographed, fully leafed out in spring and summer, attired in crimson creeper leaves and vines in autumn, stark and leafless in winter.

We also know this moon as the: Acorns Cached Moon, Banksia Moon, Big Chestnut Moon, Big Wind Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blood Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Corn Ripening Moon, Drying Grass Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Frosty Moon, Hallows Moon, Ivy Moon, Joins Both Sides Moon, Kantlos 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 Seasons, Moon of Harvesting, Moon When Deer Rut, Moon of Acorn Gathering, Moon When Corn Is Taken In, 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, Moon When Quilling and Beading Are Done, Moon When the Water Begins to Freeze on the Edge of Streams, Nut Moon, Pekelanew 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, Turkey Moon, Vintage Moon, White Frost on Grass & Ground Moon, Wild Turkeys Moon, Wilted Moon, Wine Moon, Winter Coming Moon

I am very fond of "Kindly Moon" and "Leaf Dance Moon".

In the Company of Herons

It was probably the last sighting of the season and a rare treat too - I had not seen a heron in several days and had come to the melancholy conclusion that they were gone until springtime rolls around again.

This "Great Blue" (Ardea herodias) was standing on a rocky ledge near the edge of the falls in Almonte yesterday, and he or she was utterly concealed by the towering rocks of the gorge - could not be seen from anywhere on the shoreline.

It was only when I reached the railing of the balcony at the power station and looked down over the edge that I could see the ardent fisherman standing there patiently in the deep shade of twilight.  Not the best of circumstances for photography by any means, but the heron was simply magnificent, and I had to try.  

The frothy white "stuff" in the background here is the thundering waterfall itself.  The roar of the water was almost deafening, but somehow or other, the moment was one of the most serene and uplifting in weeks, and I could have stood there with the great bird for hours.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and a very happy observance to everyone celebrating harvest and community around the family hearth and table.  Thanksgiving, however, should be every day and not just one in the turning year.  Have a good one!

Blue and Red and Orange

A puckish wind shakes the maple leaves loose, and sets them fluttering through the air and across the ridge like birds, brilliantly blue skies forming a vibrant background to such seasonal undertakings. 

The forest floor is already deep in fallen leaves, and they rustle underfoot like taffeta on our walks - leaves still on the trees tug at their moorings like tall ships made ready for journeys to faraway places and eager to be away on the very next tide.

There is color, sound and enticing fragrance everywhere: blue of sky, red and orange of the eaves, red squirrels chattering high in the overstory, the dry somewhat spicy perfume of native herbals going to seed and spreading their genetic wealth around for next year.

After several lovely cool and typically October days, it is going to be HOT here today - we are about to set a record for October in fact. Back into the cedar chest go our sweaters and out come our t-shirts, but only for a few days.  Temperatures will drop some time later this week, and we will be back to woollies and gloves.

Listening

Thursday Poem - The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

(from Morning in the Burned House)

Wordless Wednesday - Held

Going for the Gold

At this time of the year, our highlands are ablaze with scarlet, russet and gold, and no doubt about it, the sizzling October reds are radiant and sensuous, but there are vibrant golds and russets in riotous profusion here too.  Every year, earthier hues are eclipsed by the flamboyant red maples and their persistent public relations machinery, and as much as I love the dazzling reds, it always seems to me that the equally glorious golds, oranges and ochres don't get the attention they so richly deserve. In northern autumn, the oro (gold) on display is anything but pallido (pale or light).

Hickories, beeches, ashes, sugar maples and birches turn rich saffron as do the leaves of a favorite gingko tree in the village.  Oak leaves turn a fetching rosy rust shade.  The poplars and larches (or tamaracks) by our beaver pond go bright yellow; goldenrod and late blooming dandelions are brilliantly canary colored until they go to seed and start blowing about in the chilly wind.

In autumn, Yellow-Orange Agaric (Amanita muscaria) glows like a hundred watt light bulb in the woods, and one sees it among the dead leaves as it can be seen at no other time of the year.  A few days ago, I could see the lovely but poisonous mushroom clearly from a distance of several hundred feet away - there it was in the shadows, dishing out its light like a halogen lantern on high beam. 

After days spent rhapsodizing about the reds, this one is for the glorious golds.

Resting Easy

Gifts Upon the Shore

The cottages along the lake have all been closed up for the year, the blithe residents headed back to work and school in far flung places, and the place is quiet this weekend.  Small flocks of geese and ducks remain, but the herons and bitterns are gone, and the Great Northern Loon (Gavia immer) has departed for its winter home on the Gulf of Mexico - I heard loons calling goodbye as they flew overhead a few days ago.  In early October, the lake is as glossy and dark as any remote Scottish highland tarn, and it seems resigned and serene.

There are no wood fires burning in the cottages this weekend, but I breathe in the fine remembered fragrance of earlier woodsmoke, old stone, driftwood on the shore and wild things gone to seed, and I feel summer's warmth on my skin again.  Revisiting memories is a splendid thing at this time of the year. 

For some reason my mind persists in revisiting summer sounds, sights and scents in October: the call of the aforementioned loons in early morning, children on the beaches, canoe paddles dipping slowly into water, great herons fishing in the shallows, flocks of mergansers in flight.

Here we are again, all wrapped up in some of the most magnificent sunsets anywhere. Standing on the shoreline last evening with my collar turned up against the wind, hands in my pockets and Spencer leaning against me, I knew in my blood and bones that I simply could not be anywhere else, for these highlands feed me.  As long as I can journey into this wild place now and then, I can cope with anything that comes my way.

Happy October