Coming Back Into the Light

For all the white stuff deposited here this winter, our weariness of the season and all its trappings, there are pleasing bits of gnarly magic poking out of the snow here and there, remnants of last summer, its vibrant coloration and fragrance.

The dried fronds, wands and seed heads coming back into the light of day have curving, sinuous shapes and just a hint of the vibrant hues they once wore, powerful suggestions that it is not just the season that is "getting old", but those of us who stand about in dwindling snowdrifts and bear witness to its passing.

Our all-too-human perceptions totter, wither, fade and take on strange shapes in late winter, and we need reminders of the earth's own wonder, magic and infinite change, in this case a desiccated strand of common tansy with flowing arty curves against a background of deep blue snow.

The Quiet Cove

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.

The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.

 Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Road Into the Light

Friday Ramble - The Small, the Blue, the Transcendant

She is a little weary of deep snow and icy cold, and at times, she is even a little tired of the color blue, no matter how intensely blue the blue happens to be.

It is at such times that something curved or fragile or delicately robed in snow shows up and begs rapt and focused attention, glossy bubbles suspended in the ice of the frozen creek, snow crystals frosting the evergreens over her head, an oak leaf in the trail at her feet, pine cones casting vivid shadows in pools of early morning sunlight.

Just when she decides that she will not sketch another icicle or take another photo of such things, another eloquent winter tableau presents itself to the eye. Small and perfect, complete within itself, it conveys an elemental peace and balance, lowers the blood pressure and stills the breathing, returns her eyes and focus to simplicity and grace and assent.

For a minute or two, her pain subsides into the background, and balance returns. It is a miracle that she is standing here at all, and her fleeting interval on the edge of the woods has to be enough. It is enough and more.

There are worlds great and small everywhere, worlds within and worlds without, and every one is a wonder to behold and remember and love with her eyes. Surely, she can do this for a little while longer.

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, The Moment
from Morning in the Burned House

Wordless Wednesday - The Stars in My Cup

Light Among the Trees

A vaguely restless time, these last weeks of February. At night, there are dreams of wild orchids, trout lilies and columbines, sunlight filtering through the trees and songbirds caroling in the leafy canopy.  In the wee hours of the morning, I wander the leafy understory, follow clouds across the western field, harken to bullfrogs in the beaver pond, bees in the wild apple trees by the fence.

By day, I measure icicles dangling from the roof, assess the strength of returning sunlight and the length of shadows in the landscape, watch as snowdrifts recede from favorite trails through the woods, leaving puffs of snow like cotton wool and a fine lacy fretwork behind as they go. Moving along, I find myself listening for the telltale sound of maple sap dripping sotto voce down tree trunks.

... and the birds. That gentle hoot is the unforgettable call of a Great Horned Owl (bubo virginianis) communicating with her mate - he is sitting on their nest in the old oak as she hunts nearby. Other monotonous (and repetitive) notes are the swooping courtship ballad of the Saw-Whet Owl (aegolius acadicus), that fierce little harbinger of the approaching maple sugaring season.

It is a few minutes before two in the morning as I tap this paragraph out. The waning crescent moon will not make its appearance  for another hour or so, but there are other wonders to be viewed through the kitchen window as I hang out there with a mug of herbal tea. Planet Jupiter is high in the inkiness of the southern sky, and Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, dances almost directly below it along the ecliptic. The panorama is dazzling, and I forget the pain that woke me up an hour ago. The thought makes me smile.

Rambles are brief by necessity this winter, but I take them whenever I can. Snowy trees, tiny red buds and artfully frosted grasses beckon as I lurch about with field notebook and camera; light flickers through the bare trees and slants across my path. All my restlessness vanishes like smoke, and I rest easy in the moment, content just to be here and watching the day unfold. The particular feeling is a late winter Zen thing, and it is always an honored guest on the threshold.

All Together Now

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

We are of the animal world. We are part of the cycles of growth and decay. Even having tried so hard to see ourselves apart, and so often without a love for even our own biology, we are in relationship with the rest of the planet, and that connectedness tells us we must reconsider the way we see ourselves and the rest of nature.

A change is required of us, a healing of the betrayed trust between humans and earth. Caretaking is the utmost spiritual and physical responsibility of our time, and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life, our work, our solution to the mystery of what we are.

Linda Hogan, from Dwelling: A Spiritual History of the Living World

Just A Little Green

Friday Ramble - Seeing Red

Beyond the window is an ocean of deep, pillowy white that goes on forever and ever. Weary of ice and snow, she longs to have her morning tea on the veranda, but she knows that she will not be doing that for months. Given the snowfall this winter, we may not see the garden until the end of April. A little bright color right about now would be grand, and it would vastly appreciated too.

While pottering about in a local organic market, a tin bucket of tulips catches her eye, and she scoops up a large bunch in assorted colors, carrying them home in her arthritic paws as tenderly as if they were fledgling birds.  The pinks, purples and yellows are fine stuff, but the scarlets are nothing short of amazing - they are attention grabbers of the first order.

Arrayed in an old glass vase (a flea market find from last summer), the glossy blooms and bright green leaves don't just light up the day - they light up just about everything else too. A single bloom would be enough, but a whole bouquet is almost indecently sumptuous.

She resolves to keep a cauldron, a pot, a tin, a bucket, a tankard or a vase of something flowering near the southern window. She thinks about how beautiful a single rose will look there come summer, and it seems to her that this is not just about a vase of tulips or a single rose, but about all the boundless gardens of the earth coming into riotous intoxicating bloom.

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 - Suspended in Light

Drinking In Morning Light (For Valentine's Day)

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
Marc Chagall

Morning light comes slowly on these middling pages in February days, beginning with a diffused blush on the horizon, then an intensely magenta sky and rosy clouds high over the bare trees.  Flamboyant coppery gold dances through everything, the burnished glow flowing like honey over the village. Frosted trees, chimneys and snowy rooflines are silhouetted against the early radiance, and they contribute their own, more rooted glow to the day that is just coming into being.

These are my "stained glass hours", and they have illustrious crafted kindred; the rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the panels of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Then there are the glorious creations of Marc Chagall: his paintings of the biblical Song of Songs, the windows (especially the Reuben window) depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel he designed for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Centre, the commemorative windows he created as a memorial for young Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmith in tiny All Saints Church, Tudeley, Kent.

Compelled for some reason to be up and about before the light show starts, I find a seat by the window and partake of the abundance. I bring a mug of tea, a heavy shawl and the camera.  Chagall often seemed to be seeing the beauty of the earth through stained glass, and wrapped up in morning's jeweled colors, I seem to be doing something similar.  Mother Nature and Chagall are true artists though - I am just a doddering observer, training my lens on the high perfect light of morning and floundering for words to describe it all.  How many lifetimes does it take to get this "stuph" right?

 Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Just a Little Snow

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity, when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world -- a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.

Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free

The Hunger Moon of February

Usually the second moon of the calendar year, February's full lunar round is an icy one, framed by the vague shapes of snowy evergreens and attended by faint faraway stars. Capturing this moon with one's lens and a slender scrip of words is an uncomfortable business, but we wrap up warmly and go outside with tripod and camera. It is our way of "saying yes to the world", to the innate wildness of life in the Great Round of time, to grandeur in the starry, starry night over our heads.

This month's lunar cycle has to be about owls.  In February, the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), claims a nest somewhere in the woods with its lifelong mate and settles down to the arduous business of raising another unruly brood. The great "hornies" are among my favorite birds, and it's enchanting to hear a couple calling companionably to each other cross the snowy woods in winter.  Northern residents to the core, the great owls thrive in cold climates, and the further one travels toward the Arctic, the bigger they grow. The Saw-whet Owl or sugar bird (Aegolius acadicus) is not far behind in its own courtship rituals, and neither are the other owls of the Lanark highlands. There is love and fertility in the air, among northern owls anyway. The rest of us are just trying to stay warm.

Life can be stressful for those who lack feathers and dine not on mice and voles. The Wolf Moon made its appearance in January, but wolves and coyotes howl plaintively at the gates in February., and hunger is a beast well known in wild and snowbound places.  If we can just manage to hang on for a few weeks longer, there are better times ahead.  March promises slightly milder temperatures, relief and sweetness; the splendid sylvan alchemy of the maple syrup season will be in full swing when the next full moon makes its appearance.

We also know this moon as the: Ash Moon, Big Winter Moon, Bone Moon, Bony Moon, Budding Moon, Chestnuts Moon, Cold Winds Moon, Coyotes Frighten Moon, Crow Moon, Dark Red Calves Moon, Death Moon, Eagle Moon, Fish Running Moon, Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon, Gray Moon, Horning Moon, Ice in River Is Gone Moon, Ice Moon, Index Finger Moon, Little Bud Moon, Long Dry Moon, Makes Branches Fall in Pieces Moon, Mimosa Moon, Moon of Ice, Moon of Purification and Renewal, Moon of Rabbit Conception, Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind, Moon of the Raccoon, Moon of the Frog, Moon, When Geese Come Home, Moon When Bear Cubs are Born, Moon When Spruce Tips Fall, Moon When Trees Pop, Moon When Trees Are Bare and Vegetation Is Scarce, Narcissus Moon, No Snow in Trails Moon, Owl Moon, Peach Blossom Moon, Pink Moon, Plum Blossom Moon, Primrose Moon, Quickening Moon, Raccoon Moon, Rain and Dancing Moon , Red and Cleansing Moon, Second Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Snow Moon, Solmonath (Sun Moon), Squint Rock Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fish Moon, Sucker Moon, Trapper’s Moon, Treacherous Moon, Violet Moon, Wexes Moon, Wild Moon, Wind Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winter Moon

As far as February's moon names go, I am fond of Quickening Moon, Wild Moon and Owl Moon, but from now on, this will always be Penny's Moon.

Thursday Poem - Don't wait for something beautiful to find you

Go out into the weather-beaten world
where straw men lean on frozen fields
and find the cardinal's scarlet flash of wing,
a winter heart, a feathered hope.

Without a camera or a memory,
we travel these old country roads,
turn corners like the pages of a book,
enchanted by the ordinary life

of fields and rocks and woods,
of small wild creatures stirring in the brush.
We take home pockets full of myths
and wonders seldom seen.

We will not give up easily,
Across the breakfast table
in our precarious nest,
we make those promises keep on going

that no one ever keeps.  And yet...
there is the cardinal again,
a finial on our old gray fence.
Red is for Valentines.

This morning's poem is reprinted with permission from Dolores Stewart's gorgeous volume of poetry, The Nature of Things.

Wordless Wednesday - Sunset and Frozen Pond

The Sisterhood of Wandering Eye and Dancing Leaf

Little things leave you feeling restless in February. You ramble through stacks of gardening catalogues, plotting another heritage rose or three, new plots of herbs and heirloom veggies. You spend hours in the kitchen summoning old Helios with cilantro, fragrant olive oils and recipes straight from Tuscany. You brew endless pots of herbal tea, sunlight dancing in every china mug.

You play with filters, apertures and shutter speeds, entranced (and occasionally very irritated) with the surprising transformations wrought by your madcap gypsy tinkerings. Camera in hand or around your neck, you haunt the woods, peering into trees and searching for a leaf somewhere, even a single bare leaf. You scan the cloudy evening skies, desperately hoping to see the moon, and you calculate the weeks remaining until the geese, the herons and the loons come home again.

It may not seem like it, but change is already on its way.  The great horned owls who live on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are now building their nest in an old oak tree about a mile back in the forest and getting ready to raise another comely brood.  It makes me happy to think it is happening again.

This morning, a single delicately frosted leaf was teased into brief flight by the north wind, and it came to rest in the birdbath in the garden, bearing in its poignant wabi sabi simplicity an often and much needed reminder. This is the sisterhood of fur and feather, snowy earth and clouded sky, wandering eye and dancing leaf.  Out of small and frost-rimed doings, a mindful life is made.

My friend Penny had an infectious grin and a dry sense of humor, a passion for crows and ravens, for organic food and fair trade coffee. She adored her cat, McBain, and she loved indie book shops.  She gave wonderful hugs, and she enjoyed getting them. She was a livelong member of the Sisterhood of Wandering Eye and Dancing Leaf, and when spring arrives, I will plant a tree for her, not far from where the owls are nesting now.  Wild soul that she was (and still is), she will love it.

A Lamp for Penny

(wherever she may journey in her next life)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes and sounds other than those we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task is that of taking up the written word, with all its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of things themselves—to the green uttering-forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again, sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page to inhabit the coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valley and swamps. Finding phrases that place us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or with the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs—letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

The Sweetest Cup

Friday Ramble - The Sound of Snow

Deep cold, falling snow and ice... One expects such things in February.  There are times when skies at sunrise are clear and bright blue, and they seem to go on and on forever.  More often, heavy clouds conceal the sky, and all the north is a tempest of blowing white.  I've written of such winter days: fey intervals when a winter squall appears out of nowhere, and the lake and its frozen gorge are so quiet one can hear snowflakes falling and coming to rest among the trees. When asked why I live where I do, I usually mention the perfect flaming autumns here, but I should be talking about the glorious winters. Every single one is a marvel.

I arose early a few days ago, looked out the window at the storm coming in and fumed silently.  It was not the weather that made me surly and a tad morose, it was the absence of light.  Clouds blanketed the sky from horizon to horizon, and the sun was completely blotted out.  This far along in a northern winter, one will do almost anything for a little light.

The cure for the winter peeves and gloomies is simple - get out the parka and heavy gloves, brew a flask of tea, grab snowshoes and camera, then make tracks for the gorge above Dalhousie Lake. The winding road to the lake is slick with ice and treacherous driving, but the scenery is grand, and balm to a winter weary spirit too, an essential element in this ardent and arduous journey into the wild. This year, my treks are brief, but they are magical nevertheless.

The trees on the heights are manitous watching over the frozen landscape in robes of white.  Behind them all is blue sky and blowing snow.  Sometimes standing up there feels like being in the high Himalayas, but, of course, no trees grow on the roof of the world. From the edge of the lake below, one sees little or nothing of the far shore for torrents of blustery white. The gorge's granite walls amplify sound wonderfully, and the north wind speaks (or sings) volumes as it makes its way down the deep corridor of old stone.

Joints protesting, I bend to look closely at the snow on spruces at the bottom of the ravine, and every suspended crystal is a sea of light. When I catch a flake on my tongue, it tastes like champagne.  Who was that flaky female mourning the absence of light a few hours ago?  One thing is certain - the English language could use a few more words for snow.

Thursday Poem - At Sunrise

at sunrise on winter days

our trail is through newly fallen white,

and every footfall a waxing moon.

muffled footsteps rising

through snow-drowned spruces,

hearts beating along in time,

goldenrod and milkweed,

great spruces weighted under snow,

all nod in early greeting.

ghost choirs of summer grosbeaks
sing above our heads, icicles forming

along rooflines as we pass by.

winter rounds the village out,

smoothing the contours of house and street,
spinning deserts out of snow.

in this morning softness, I know myself

at last—perfect, still and so complete

nothing abandoned or left behind.

Cate

Wordless Wednesday - Candlemas Alight