Catching the Sun

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

The All Gathered Moon of November

November's full lunar orb is usually the the second last moon of the calendar year, and it is certainly a colder moon than October's golden visitation. As is often the case at this time of year, I  briefly considered staying indoors last evening but wrapped up anyway, and Spencer and I went out to the garden with tripod and camera and waited.  A little before seven there was Luna rising in the east, as round and smooth and lustrous as a great pearl.

Spencer is accustomed to his mum's passion for backyard astronomy and her full moon night activities; he leaned comfortably against me and looked up at the sky, contented and sure that whatever we were doing out in the cold garden after nightfall, it was something worth doing and he wanted to be part of it.

November's moon is about loss and remembrance, but it is about community and trust too - trust in each other and those we love, trust in the wild and elemental grace of existence and what I like to call "the great round" of our days and nights. Standing in the darkness last evening, we remembered the gnarled old box elder tree that once honored the garden with her presence.  The dear old tree held the rising full moon in her arms for well over a century, but she has gone to her leafy reward and is flourishing somewhere else, perhaps even as a tree again.  We thought too of darling Cassie, of all the kindred spirits and journeying companions who departed this plane of existence and have gone on ahead. 

We also know this moon as the: Beaver Moon, Blood Moon, Buffalo Moon, Cold Begins Moon, Dark Moon, Deer Rutting Moon, Twelfth Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Fog Moon, Freezing Moon, Frosty Moon, Geese Going Moon, Hunter's Moon, Large Tree Freeze Moon, Little Bear's Moon, Long Moon, Mad Moon, Moon of Cold, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Freezing, Moon of Storms, Moon of the Falling Leaves, Moon of the Shaken Leaves, Moon of the Turkey and Feast, Moon the Rivers Begin to Freeze, Moon When All Is Gathered in, Moon When Deer Shed Antlers, Moon When Deer Shed Their Antlers, Moon When Horns Are Broken Off, Moon When the River Freezes, Moon When the Rivers Start to Freeze, Moon When the Water Is Black with Leaves, Mourning Moon, Moon of Much Poverty, Ring Finger Moon, Sacrifice Moon, Samoni Moon, Sassafras Moon, Snow Moon, Snowy Mountains in the Morning Moon, Trading Moon, Trail Moon, Tree Moon, White Frost on Grass & Ground Moon, White Moon, Whitefish Moon, Willow Moon, Winter Divided Moon, Yew Moon.

Among the many names for this month's moon, I am rather fond of Yew Moon and Moon of Falling Leaves, but for me, this will always be Christel's Moon.  My friend passed beyond the fields we know in November, 2011, and I still miss her .

A very Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Wordless Wednesday - Silken

Maple in All Her Glory

Some trees in our woodland hold their turning in abeyance until late November.  Many of the great oaks retain their russet and bronze leaves well into winter, and so do a few maples.  One of my favorites always puts on a magnificent golden performance at this time of the year, and I visit her to marvel at her one woman showing and say "thanks" for her efforts to brighten up a drab, faded and rather monochromatic interval in the turning of the seasons.

Himself has just been admitted to hospital again, and the maple's gilded presence is a particular comfort to Spencer and I this time around.  It has been a windy autumn, and we were delighted to discover this week that the north wind has not yet stripped the tree's leaves away and left her standing bare and forlorn with her sisters in their native place.

Mother Earth (the Old Wild Mother or Gaia Sophia) is the greatest artist of them all, and I would be "over the moon" if I could photograph or paint something even the smallest scrip as grand and elemental and graceful as my tree is creating in her alcove - every curve and branch and burnished dancing leaf is a wonder.

Writing this, I remembered that as well as being an archaic word for a scrap or fraction of something, scrip also describes a small wallet or pouch once carried by pilgrims and seekers.  That seems fitting for this journey into the woods and our breathless standing under Maple in all her glory.  Oh to be counted a member of the sisterhood of tree and leaf...

The Way We Were...

Sunday - saying Yes to the World

The true language of these worlds opens from the heart of a story that is being shared between species. For us to be restored to the fabric of this Earth, we are bidden to enter this tale once again through its many modes of telling, to listen through the ears of others to the mystery of creation, with its continually changing patterns, and to take part once again in the integral weave of the narrative. Might we not hear our true names if we learn to listen through the ears of Others? Through language, one can exchange one's self with other beings and in this way establish an ever-widening circle of existence.
Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness

Field and Morning Light

Friday Ramble - Hibernate

 

This week's offering is rooted in the Latin hībernātus, past participle of the verb hībernāre (to spend the winter), kin to the Classical hiems (winter), the Greek cheimá (winter) and the Sanskrit hima meaning cold, frost or snow. Theoretically, all are probably rooted in the Indo-European form ghei-, also meaning winter. That makes our word kin to the name of the mightiest mountain range on the planet, the Himalayas.

Most birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south, but other animal species go dormant and sleep through the long white season, and we call the process hibernating.  Bears exhibit an elegant and impressive physiology as they sleep through the winter in their dens. Ground squirrels, marmots, prairie dogs, dormice, hamsters, lemurs and hedgehogs also den up when temperatures fall, sleeping quietly until outside temperatures rise and food becomes available again.  Northern frogs, toads, snakes and turtles are also masters of the art of hibernation.

For humans, hibernation is something completely different, often involving retirement from the outside world to dens of our own or travel to warmer climes to escape inclement weather. We all have our mechanisms for dealing with short days, long nights and deep icy cold, and they are highly personal. For some of us, the accumulation of books, libations, potions and music is our hibernating thing—we kindle fires on our hearths, pull our draperies closed and surround our winter selves with things that are warm, embracing, spicy and redolent of comfort.  (A fringed shawl in deep, earthy red comes to mind here.) We curl up like bears, cocooning ourselves within and enfolded in all that we love best.

In my own case, hibernation also means getting outside and wandering around with camera in hand, trying to capture the light of the sun as it touches clouds, contrails and migrating geese, sparks across frost dappling fields, trees, farm buildings and old rail fences.   It's a personal meditative process holding out stillness and tantalizing glimpses of the wild, hoary and elusive wisdoms beyond the windows.  Ice, frost, snow and the paucity of light notwithstanding, it's all good, and something to be treasured. Every view is a wonder and no two images are ever the same, even when they were captured from the same place.

Thursday Poem - Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry.  And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings.  Look at the trees.  They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer.  And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May.  The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise.  Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Summer in my cup and stars...

Orchard tea with orange slice, anise star and cloves

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.
Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

Up there, from down here.....

Friday Ramble - Ten Years On

On the first Sunday in November, time danced backward an hour in the little blue house in the village, and Daylight Saving Time waved goodbye until next year. The week also marked ten straight years of blogging, ten years of logging on here in the morning, posting an image or three, then muttering along for a few paragraphs. Astonishing stuff indeed, and it boggles the mind—there are still moments when I can't believe I had the audacity to set this e-journal up in the first place, let alone do the blogging thing faithfully for ten years in a row.

These are my vägmärken (road marks), my morning or artist's pages, and they will probably remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a scant handful of font and banner tinkerings now and again, but that is about it. I don't foresee any significant changes to this place, and I expect life will simply go on as it has been doing so far.

We will continue to meander along at our own pace, watching morning fogs enfold the eastern Ontario highlands and oak leaves raining like honey in the autumn woods, feasting our eyes on skies alight with winter stars, on the sun going down like a ball of fire over Dalhousie Lake at the trailing edge of the year. This year's serious health "stuff" notwithstanding, it's grand to be here and all wrapped up in what we like to call simply, "the Great Round".  Every morning, the small adventures of our journeying will continue to make their way here and get spilled out on the computer screen with a bad photo and a whole rucksack of wonder. Mary Oliver says it best:

The years to come – this is a promise –
will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought
where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
(excerpt from Terns)

In another poem, she wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, something I need to remember and am always forgetting. Thank you for journeying along with me this year. You are treasured more than you can ever know.

Thursday Poem - Instructions in Magick

You don’t need candles,
only the small slim flame in yourself,
the unrevealed passion
that drives you to rise on winter mornings
remembering summer nights.

You don’t need incense,
only the lingering fragrance
of the life that has gone before,
stew cooking on an open fire,
the good stars, the clean breeze,
the warmth of animals breathing in the dark.

You don’t need a cauldron,
only your woman’s body,
where so many of men’s fine ideas
are translated into life.

You don’t need a wand, hazelwood or oak,
only to follow the subtle and impish
leafy green fellow
who beckons you into the forest,
the one who goes dancing
and playing his flute
through imperial trees.

And you don’t need the salt of earth.
You will taste that soon enough.

These things are the trappings,
the tortoise shell, the wolf skin, the blazoned shield.
It’s what’s inside, the star of becoming.
With that ablaze, you have everything you need
to conjure up new worlds.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things
(reprinted here with the poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - On Her Way

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Lighting Morning

Skies are leaden, and fog wraps the village.  This is one of those liminal November mornings when the village is dancing on the edge and cannot decide whether it dwells in the land of late autumn or the realm of early winter.

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

What to do? With no light to speak of, this is not a good morning for wandering about with the camera and the peripherals that go with it, so far anyway. When Spencer and I went out a few minutes ago, a cold raw wind teased the backs of our necks, and the matter of a longer morning walk was put aside for now. My furry friend trotted back into the bedroom and curled up in my warm spot.

Inside the little blue house in the village, I pull out a basket of herbal teas given to me by my sister Caroline at the autumn equinox, then brew up a glass pot full.  As the dried flowers take in liquid and open out, the kitchen is filled with floral perfume, and home is summery all over again.  The arrangement in my cup is almost too artful to drink.

There is the latest issue of Artful Blogging to "ooh and ahh" over today, the third Brandenburg concerto on the CD player, a box of art pens in splendid Mediterranean shades to play with.  There will be currant scones this morning, and for dinner this evening something fragrant and spicy (probably curried)  that sings and dances on the tongue.  There is room at the old oak table for everyone, and there are enough cups to go around too. On days like this, one simply does whatever she can do to light things up.

Small Wonder

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

I don’t pretend to understand this great mystery in which we participate.  Whether we call it life, cosmos, creation, Allah, God, or some other grand name, no label is large enough. I merely try to learn as much about it as I can, during my brief time under the sun. So I study what the most perceptive of our ancestors have discovered -- artists and scientists as well as spiritual seekers.  I turn outward to nature and to human artifacts, and inward to the images and voices that arise in silence.  The louder the world becomes, with its relentless demands and messages, the more precious silence becomes. I can’t prove that what emerges within me arises from a source beyond the boundaries of my own skin, but I believe this is so. Simone Weil wrote that 'Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.' What I pay attention to might be my breath, a sentence in a book, a butterfly on a zinnia blossom, my granddaughter’s face, a skein of music or a skein of geese. I may do my seeking outdoors or indoors, alone or in company, but always the goal is the same: to deepen my awareness of this encompassing mystery.
Scott Russell Sander from The Spirituality of Nature

The Shapes of Things to Come

Friday Ramble - Frost

This week's word seems to have been around forever, coming down to us from Middle and Old English forms meaning "freezing, becoming frozen or extreme cold". The present noun form is cognate with Old Saxon, High German and Norse words claiming the same ancestral roots.  Then there are the Proto Germanic frusta and Old High German vorst, both related to the old verb freosan meaning "to freeze". Somewhere back there are Old Saxon, Frisian and Dutch kindred, and at the root of it all, the PIE (Proto-Indo-European language) preus which seems to have described processes of both freezing and burning. Huh???

PIE has been around since at least 4500 BCE, but the late Neolithic ancestors who spoke it left no written records. When I excavate a ramble word, remove its old and middle European trappings and discover a PIE root, I am wrapped anew in reverence for words and language, for those who came before us and the commonalities of earthly existence right back to the beginning times.

A fine day is coming into being beyond the windows, skies in vibrant shades of lavender, purple and gold with planets Venus, Mars and Jupiter almost directly overhead.  The sun has yet to rise, but geese are already flying up from the river and out to stubbly farm fields to feed. The air is filled with their songs and exuberance on this brisk morning in early November. There is frost on trees, cobblestones and roof tiles in the village; puddles and fallen leaves in the streets are outlined in ice. The Virginia creeper vines in our local hedgerows seem undeterred by the night's plummeting temperatures, but they look as though their insouciance and jaunty stance is darned hard work.

The rose leaves in our garden are clad in frost this morning too, the crystals clearly defined and sparkling.  Blue sky and silvery frost, russet and gold rose leaves dancing in the wind - who says there is no color about in late autumn and early winter?  One has only to look, and the best time for looking is just as the sun is coming up over the trees.

Thursday Poem - It's Monday morning

It's Monday morning,
mid-November, the world turned golden,
preserved in amber. I should be doing more
to save the planet—plant a tree, raise
a turbine, put solar panels on the roof
to grab the sun and bring it inside. Instead,
I’m sitting here scribbling, sitting on a wrought
iron chair, the air cold from last night’s frost,
the thin sunlight sinking into the ruined
Appalachians of my spine. I know it’s all
about to fall apart; the signs are everywhere.
But on this blue morning, the air bristling
with crickets and birdsong, I do the only thing
I can: put one word in front of the other,
and see what happens when they rub up against
each other. It might become something
that will burst into flame.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Ardently Attentive

A Memory of Herons

 Great Blue Heron at Sundown

(Ardea herodias)

Some last things are more poignant than others, and one of the late autumn entities that always tugs at my heartstrings is the last heron of the season, he or she haunting the shallows of a Lanark lake at sundown in solitary splendor and looking for a few last minnows, frogs and/or water beetles to fuel the long trip south. It's a long arduous journey from here to there -  all the way to the southern states, Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador.

I once wrote about an autumn morning in northern Ontario when the heron migration was in full swing, and the great birds had gathered in predawn darkness to feed before flying onward.  Hundreds stood side by side in the foggy waters of the Mississagi river, and as I crept along the shoreline, their silhouettes appeared one by one out of the mist and the shrouded river as if by magic.

There is enough enchantment in such tatterdemalion snippets to last many lifetimes, and I hope to retain the memory for the rest of my earthly days and beyond, no matter how many other mind scraps embrace the void somewhere down the road.  I've been a lover of herons every since, and I revisit the scene often in my thoughts—it is always a place of peace and stillness.

For whatever reason, archaic English refers to a group of herons together, not as colony or a flock, but as "a sedge of herons".  Every summer I watch herons fishing in the shallows along Dalhousie Lake and think that if there were no other teachers about, I would be just fine with a sedge of herons to show me the way.

For heron lovers who must remain north in winter, the right expression for a gathering of our favorite birds is surely "a memory of herons".

This Sweet November Light

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

The practice of Touching the Earth is to return to the Earth, to our roots, to our ancestors, and to recognize that we are not alone but connected to a whole stream of spiritual and blood ancestors. We are their continuation and with them, will continue into the future generations. We touch the earth to let go of the idea that we are separate and to remind us that we are the Earth and part of Life.
Plum Village