Jack-in-the-Woods

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

(also called Bog onion, Brown dragon, Indian turnip)

Snow covers the quiet ground down by the creek for months at a time, and the little tributary's voice is silent under its blanket of ice. The sheltering trees on the hillside above are bare and silent.

In springtime, the lovely, crumbly, dark earth is revealed in all its elemental fragrance, and the water sings a raucous ditty as it gambols downhill with its tumbling freight of winter detritus, broken twigs and and dessicated leaves.

Hallelujah, there are "jacks" dancing in all their stripey magnificence there now.  Wood ducks are nesting on a pond nearby, and the forest is green again. Trees sigh overhead, and a whole choir of robins is hopping from branch to branch in the overstory and singing their hearts out for another lifegiving rain.

Winter was all right, and we got through it, even managed to do a little inward blooming now and then.  Spring was late and rather brief, but summer has returned to the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and yes, we can certainly do this............  Verily, merrily, we can do this.

In the Orchard on the Hill

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

To be fully human is to be wild. Wild is the strange pull and whispering wisdom. It’s the gentle nudge and the forceful ache. It is your truth, passed down from the ancients, and the very stream of life in your blood. Wild is the soul where passion and creativity reside, and the quickening of your heart. Wild is what is real, and wild is your home.
Victoria Erickson

The Jester's Cap and Bells

Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

Friday Ramble - Aestival

This week's word is one of my favorites, hailing from French, thence the Late Latin aestīvālis and earlier Latin aestās meaning summer or summery.  Both forms are cognate with the Sanskrit इन्द्धे (inddhé) meaning to light or set on fire. At the root of our wordy explorations  is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form h₂eydʰ- meaning heat, fire or to burn.

In the science of zoology, aestival refers to the tendency of all living creatures to be somewhat sleepy and slow moving in the heat of summer, and botanists use the word to describe the arrangement of organs or components in a flower bud.

I once thought that the word siesta (referring to a leisurely nap after lunch) was related, but I discovered a year or two ago that its roots are in the Latin sexta meaning the sixth hour of the day (midday).  The two words sound similar, but as far as I know, they are not related.

June is only a few days away, and this week's word is one of my favorites for the brief greening season at the heart of the calendar year.  Of course, summer is a fine word too, but somehow or other, it doesn't hold a candle or even a tiny wooden match to the frothy perfumed magnificence of the golden season that reigns so briefly here in the sub-Arctic climes of Canada. Aestival says it all, and I love the shape of the word on my tongue.

I say "aestival" and its sibilance summons up images of outdoor festivals and al fresco celebrations, shaggy gardens of scarlet poppies and towering purple lupins, trees filled with singing birds, bees in the orchard, roses sweeter than any vineyard potion, perfect sunsets across the lake shared with stately herons.  It's all gold, and it's all good. Here comes June in all her glory, and I am ready.

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 - The Song My Paddle Sings

Little Dragons of the Air

American emerald (male)

(Cordulia shurtleffii)

 Four-spotted Skimmer (female)
(Libellula quadrimaculata)

The Flower Moon of May

At long last, northern trees have leafed out, and they are wonderfully silhouetted against the fine inky darkness of springtime.  You can't see leaves and catkins in this photo, but trust me, they are there.

It would have been grand to see the full moon last evening, then watch a meteor shower a few hours later, but the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaked during the first week of May, and that was not going to happen.   At the height of this year's meteor shower, the moon was new (or in its infancy), and conditions were perfect for watching meteors zoom through the darkness and burn up in earth's atmosphere a few hours before dawn.

We can thank Halley's Comet for spring and autumn's light shows.  Every year, Earth passes through the comet's orbit for the first time in late April and early May, and debris from the comet lights up the sky as meteor showers before dawn.  Spring's meteor shower is named after Eta Aquarii, a faint star in the constellation Aquarius from which the meteors appear to originate, but don't be fooled by appearances.  Eta Aquarii is about 170 light years away from us while May's light show takes place just 60 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.  Autumn's Orionid meteor shower occurs as our planet passes through Halley's orbit for the second time in October, and that makes the Orionids kin to this month's sparkling performance.  Always an ardent observer of meteor showers, I have probably spent years of my life watching them race across the night, but I have yet to capture a good photo of Halley's castaway children.

We also know May's moon as the: Alewife Moon, Blossom Moon, Bottlebrush Moon, Bright Moon, Budding Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Death Moon, Dragon Moon, Dyad Moon, Fawns Moon, Field Maker Moon, Fifth Moon, Fish Moon, Flowering Moon, Frog Moon, Frogs Return Moon, Geese Go North Moon, Geese Moon, Grass Moon, Green Leaf Moon, Hare Moon, Hoeing Corn Moon, Idle Moon, Iris Moon, Joy Moon, Leaf Dancing Moon, Leaves Appear Moon, Leaves Tender Moon, Lily of the Valley Moon, Little Corn Moon, Little Finger Moon, Magnolia Moon, Merry Moon, Milk Moon, Moon of Big Leaf, Moon of the Strawberry, Moon of the Camas Harvest, Moon of Waiting, Moon To Plant, Moon When Corn is Planted, Moon When Ponies Shed Their Fur, Moon When the Buffalo Plant is in Flower, Moon When the Leaves Are Green, Moon When the Little Flowers Die, Moon When the Horses Get Fat, Moon When Women Weed Corn, Mulberry Moon, Mulberry Ripening Moon, New Waters Moon, Old Woman Moon, Panther Moon, Penawen Moon, Peony Moon, Planting Moon, Putting Seeds in the Hole Moon, Seeds Ripen Moon, Sprout Kale Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Strawberry Moon, Suckers Dried Moon Summer Moon, Thrice Milk Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winnemon Moon.

As names go, I am fond of "Leaf Dancing Moon" and "Budding Moon".

Waiting for Sundown

Friday Ramble - Radical

This week's word is radical, and a natural choice for this madcap season when we plant packets of seeds and transplant flats of flowers, herbs and veggies into our gardens - it comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots, and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both entities originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root.

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, meat-and-potatoes, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

We often use the word radical to describe someone who dwells outside the mainstream, who has departed from accepted norms, traditions and social conventions and does their very own thing. The word has been in common use since the sixties, and being called radical may or may not be a compliment. I am always astonished and vastly tickled to think that a word used to connote the rebellious, unconventional,, confrontational and downright peculiar actually means something as lovely and organic and simple as "rooted.

Being radical simply means being connected, and that makes the word one of my favorites.  The word signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep connection with everything that matters, the earth under my feet, the sky and the sun and the moon and stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation and non-duality. Roots down, branches up and away we go...

Thursday Poem - This

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

Gregory Orr
(from How Beautiful the Beloved)

Wordless Wednesday - Purple

Hearts Opening to the World

Grouse drummed in sunny clearings, and a pair of red-tailed hawks hunted the clear blue bowl of sky over the Two Hundred Acre Wood - now and then they conversed as they soared in widening circles over our heads. We saw our first bluebird of the year this week, the first oriole, the first buttery male goldfinch. The first garter snake of the season slithered languidly across the toe of my hiking boot as I walked along the trail to the beaver pond to look at the first lily pads of the season.  On the way back, a lady woodcock launched herself from the grass in my path like a small, feathered rocket.

And then there are the whites.... The snow dunes of winter are grand in their way, but in all their breadth and vastness, they simply can't compare to the budding whites of springtime.  On every ramble, I come home with memory cards of captures and love every single image - can't make up my mind what to toss and what to keep so I land up keeping it all.

Close to home, irises and tulips in every color of the rainbow sway to and fro in the wind, and crabapple trees are covered in fragrant pink and white flowers. In late morning, the wind dies down for a few minutes, and every crabapple specimen in the village is tenanted by clouds of bumbles, wasps and hoverfilies.

In their wooded nooks and garden alcoves, springtime floral offerings glow like candles, and how tenderly they are enfolded by guardian leaves as they open slowly and offer their hearts to the world.  Really, does life get any better than this?

After the Rain

Greater White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

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

Friday Ramble - Springtime Flowers and Village Musics

Around the corner, three song sparrows are trilling their hearts out from a rooftop.  Their pleasure in the day and the season is echoed by a construction worker a few doors away belting out Doug Seegers' “Going Down to the River” as he installs drywall in the old Victorian house on the corner.  The door of the place is wide open, and his rendering of the gospel classic is somewhat off key, but it's a right soulful crafting and fine stuff indeed.

There are tulips everywhere and in every shade of the rainbow, but it is the reds that dazzle truly - the blooms are almost incandescent in the early sunlight and so bright they hurt one's eyes. Frilly daffodils and scarlet fringed narcissus nod here and there, and violets sprinkle the garden in deep purple and creamy white. A neighbor's bleeding heart bush is covered with tiny green buds swaying to and fro on artfully arching stems.  Magnolia trees in the village are coming to the end of their flowering, and they rain fragrant petals like snow. Wonder of wonders, the first bumble girls of the season have arrived, just in time to partake of the crabapple blossoms that will be out in a day or two.

What a splendid trip springtime is, and how much there is to feast one's eyes on. If I were to stop and take photos of every splendid thing I see on morning walks (and absolutely everything is splendid at this time of the year), I might not get home again for weeks.

Thursday Poem - Go Out to the Rainy Woods

Go out to the rainy woods, leaving

all the weary eidolons of the spirit and your

wayward thoughts at home in the warm and dry.

Bring only your camera and notebook,

yourself, if indeed a self you have or are.

Leave that self somewhere among the

earthy wetness and the old trees.

Sit quietly with the drenched leaves,

these birds, that flowing stream, and

wait for them to speak or sing in the green

and wordless language that you share.

Know there are atomies vast and

teeming with life in everything you see.

Return home at the end of the day, 

yourself a leaf, a stone perhaps, or a star

kerrdelune (me)

Wordless Wednesday - Reaching for the Sky

Spring in White and Gold

Late budding bloodroot cluster down by the creek, and along the trail into the deep woods, the first white trillium of the season blooms in the shelter of a warm, mossy boulder. On the other side of the same boulder are the first columbine leaves and buds I have seen this year, but they still have a long way to go.

There is only one way to capture my favorite springtime wildflowers, and that is to recline full length in the rustling sun-warmed leaves with camera and notebook in hand, eyelash to eyelash and nose to nose with some of the most beautiful and subtly elegant blooms ever to appear anywhere on the planet.

Only at close quarters can one can really take in the shapes and colors and textures of a bloodroot colony blooming in its native element, watch sunlight and leaflight journeying across snowy trilliums, revel in flickering shadows flowing over everything and making fluid patterns in their dancing.

Then along comes the wind.  Within minutes of capturing a few images this weekend, the velvety petals had been blown from their moorings and were drifting across the clearing in soft fluffy heaps like new snow.  I was fortunate in being there at just the right time and seeing the blooms before they were deconstructed by the roistering elements of springtime.

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, the prospect was absolutely dazzling, and I felt like an otter cavorting in the sunlight. All I needed was a river.

The Red Empress

Red trillium or Wake-robin

(Trillium erectum)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I’d be a fool not to listen. If God’s voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I’ll prick up my ears. If night’s faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I’ll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine.
Chet Raymo, Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

The Earliest Golden Lily

Trout lily or Dogtooth violet

(Erythronium americanum)

Friday Ramble - Rain, Sky and Rusty Undertakings

At times this week, we awakened to gray skies and rain beating a staccato rhythm that shunned meter and metronome. A puckish wind capered in the eaves and ruffled tiny leaves in the garden like decks of playing cards. A thousand and one little waterfalls appeared out of nowhere, and limpid, impromptu streams danced their way through village gutters carrying twigs, oak leaves, pine needles and fallen petals. Here and there were precious islands of stillness. Sheltered by overhanging trees, a friend's pond was like glass, its white and scarlet koi hovering almost motionless in the early light with their open mouths like tiny perfect "o"s. Sometimes they seemed to be swimming in sky.

There was water in our garage for an hour or two, and the old Passat rested in a shallow pool until the accumulation gurgled its way down through frantically working drains. When the waters receded, I scooped rust from an old spade into mason jars. Natural iron oxide pigments produce lovely ochres and umbers, and my gleanings will be used in various projects during the coming months, possibly on other rainy days.

Claiming my rusty bounty, I remembered that humans have used iron oxides in artistic undertakings as far back as the prehistoric caves of Lascaux - I would be a happy camper indeed if I ever managed to produce something a scrap as vibrant as the Chinese horse.

I thought too about the fact that a heady brew of rust (iron oxides), carbon dioxide and water is where all sentient life begins, and that the Japanese word for rust is sabi (錆) as in wabi sabi (侘寂), the all enfolding aesthetic or world view centered on notions of transience, simplicity and naturalness or imperfection. 

Clouds and rain, then sunshine and blue sky, and back to clouds and rain again.  Who knows what the day will hold?  If good weather prevails, we will be off into the woods. If not, we will read, listen to a little Rameau on the Bose and drink tea. We will watch raindrops dappling the windows, the painterly way in which trees, little rivers and old wood fences are beaded with moisture and shining in the grey. Each and every raindrop is a minute world teeming with vibrant life, whole universes within looking up at us, great and bumbling creatures that we are. Up and down, in and out, them and us, it's all good.

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)

Wordless Wednesday - Summoning Spring

Magnolia lights the day

Nights in the village are cold; morning skies are gray and overcast. The forecast here is for rain, days of rain. The word for this week ought to be "puddle".

Not a leaf to be seen on her fretwork of arching branches, magnolia ignores the gloom and unfurls a cloud of tulip-shaped blooms.  She gifts her subtle colors and delicate fragrance to commuters running for buses, to children in rainbow boots and slickers wending their way to school and postmen stuffing mailboxes, to rumbling trucks sweeping village streets clean of dust, to one old hen and her canine companion out for an early walk.

By the end of today, the tulip tree will probably be bare, her petals liberated by the fey north wind and floating down to carpet the garden like confetti.  This morning, she is a candle, a veritable tree full of candles lighting the murky day.

Rain, rain, rain....