Merry Samhain, Happy Halloween

Sequestered, Week 184 (CLXXXIV)

It is an early winter thing for sure - the yen to add steamed milk, vanilla, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods and anise stars to whatever I happen to be drinking. There is something comforting and very uplifting about seeing dear little anise stars floating in a fragrant sea of masala chai or London Fog or whatever. I have a bit of a "thing" about anise.

The experience puts a pleasing spin on a cold, snowy morning when one awakens feeling as though she has been trampled by a herd of elephants. At such times, what she really wants to do is pull the quilt over her head and go back to sleep for a while.

She reckons the world will do without her just fine for an hour or two. 

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

After the Rain, Scarlet

Friday Ramble Before Samhain (Hallows, Halloween)

Here we are again, nearing the eve of Samhain, possibly my favorite night in the whole turning year. The festival begins at sunset on Tuesday (October 31), and the village adores the occasion. Jack-o-lanterns, witches, scarecrows and straw bales adorn thresholds all over the village, and wispy ghosts dangle from almost every tree.

On morning walks, there's a chill in the air that cannot be ignored. Daylight arrives later with every passing day, and sunset arrives earlier, village street lamps turning themselves on one by one, hours before they used to. The shorter days and longer nights are all too apparent to a crone's fierce and gimlet eye, at least to this crone's canny eye. How did we get here so swiftly?

In the great wide (northern) world, crops have been gathered in and stored, farm animals tucked into barns, stables and coops for the long white season. Rail fences sometimes wear frost crystals, and nearby field grasses crunch pleasingly underfoot. Foliage has already turned color and much of it has fallen, but the great oaks on my favorite hill are reluctant to part with their summer finery and are hanging on to every leaf. A north wind scours the wooded slopes and sweeps fallen fragments into rustling drifts and heaps. Native wild things are frantically topping up their winter larders and preparing warm burrows for winter. The air is spicy and carries the promise of deep cold days to come.

Tuesday's festival marks “summer's end', and the beginning of the dark half of the year according to the ancient Celts. According to their two-fold division of the year, summer was the interval between Beltane and Samhain, and winter the interval from Samhain to Beltane. It was also the gate between one year and another. For the ancestors, the old year ended at sunset on October 31, and a brand new year danced into being.

However the ancient Celts construed the light and dark halves of the year, we are already well into the dark half of the year here. It is not light until well after seven in the morning. and dark a little after five in the afternoon. That is quite a change from the balmy summer days when we were out in the garden a few minutes after five in the morning. 

The festival observances that marked ancient notions of time represented pivotal cosmic points, fey intervals when the natural order dissolved back into primordial chaos for a brief unruly fling before regenerating itself, burnished and newly ordered for another journey through the seasons. All the old festivals celebrate the cyclical nature of existence, but Samhain (or Halloween) does so more than any other.

Samhain celebrates the ancestors and loved ones who have left this life and gone on ahead, and I miss them so much. Those who passed beyond the fields we know in recent years were some of the wisest, kindest and most vibrant spirits I have ever known. They walked in this world loving it fiercely, appreciating its grandeur, grace and reciprocity and cherishing its innate abundance and wildness. Alight from within, they fairly blazed with life and passion, and they lighted up every room they entered. Places were always dimmer and a little darker when they left. 

On Tuesday night, we will think of departed loved ones, particularly my soulmate who left this plane of existence a little less than four years ago. Places will be set at the old oak table in the dining room, and there will be tea and cakes for all (doggie biscuits and cheese for much loved departed canines). In the afternoon, Beau and I will take a long walk among old trees and falling leaves, and my love will be tucked warm in my pocket (in spirit) and enjoying the season as he did in life. Our rambles have always been wild medicine of the very finest kind, and they are seasonal rites too.

Three cheers for trick-or-treating, tiny guisers, witches and goblins on the threshold. What's not to love about grinning jack-o-lanterns, the colors orange and black and purple? As I dole out treats to wee friends on Tuesday night, I will be reflecting on the old year and tucking it away under a blanket of fallen maple leaves. I will be thinking good thoughts about the cycle that is coming into being and trying to remember that endings and beginnings are natural parts of earthly existence, not something to be feared.

Happy Samhain, or Halloween if you prefer. Happy New Year! May throngs of tiny guests attend your threshold on Tuesday evening. May your home be a place of warmth and light, and your hearth be a haven from things that go bump in the night. May there be laughter and merriment at your door, music and fellowship in abundance. Bright blessings, and may all good things come to you and your clan at this turning in the Great Round.

Thursday Poem - All Hallows Eve

Night of the void between the worlds,
night when the veil between the worlds is

stirring, lifting, when the old year shrivels and

fades, and the new year has not yet begun,

when light takes the form of darkness,

when the last light sinks into darkness

like spilled water, disappears in the leaves,

in the hot secret runs of earth underneath.

when grandmothers rise like mist, the silent

grandmothers with soft tongues of fog

in the ear, claiming nothing for themselves,

or complaining that they were abandoned,

when children go out clothed in darkness,

the children with sweet orange lips slip among

whispers, go out with wavering candles

among crosses and mossy eyes in stone,

when children go out in the mist, the

children tasting of candy, of carelessly

spilled dreams, the children like faraway

stars flaming into the soft folds of darkness.

Dolores Stewart (Riccio), from Doors to the Universe

Wordless Wednesday - By Butternut Hill

Songs in a Different Key

Leaves crunching underfoot or rattling like sabres, ice crystals limning fences, blowsy plumes of frosted grasses, leaf strewn puddles on the trail—all are plangent leitmotifs in the windy musical work that is late autumn. At this time of the year, the woodland is an Aeolian harp, a vast musical instrument that only the wind can play.

The landscape is settling slowly into the subdued tints of early winter: bronzes, creams, beiges and silvery greys, small splashes of winey red, burgundy, russet, here and there touches of a deep inky blue almost iridescent in its sheen and intensity.

On our morning walks, frost forms sugary drifts on old wood along our path, dusts ferns and outlines fallen leaves almost transparent in their lacy textures. An owl's artfully barred feather lies in thin sunlight under the fragrant cedars down by the spring and seems to be giving off a graceful, pearly light of its own. The weedy residents of forest, field and fen cavort in fringed and tasseled hats.

One needs another lens and tuning for late autumn and early winter, a different sort of vision, songs in a different key. The senses are performing a seasonal shift of their own, moving carefully from longer, brighter days and grand summer happenings into the consideration of things small, still and muted, but complete within themselves and perfect, even when they are cold and wet and tattered.

There is light in the world, even in these dark times, and I have to remember that. My camera and lens never forget, and out in the woods, they drink in light like nectar. I am thankful that they do and that they remind me at every turning along on the trail—we are made of star stuff. We live in a sea of light.

Sequestered, Week 183 (CLXXXIII)

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

Easy Riders

Friday Ramble - Edgy

This week's word has been around since the eleventh century, making its way to us through the Middle English egge, the Old English ecg, the Old French aiglent and the Old Germanic ecke, all meaning "corner". It is also related to the Latin acer meaning "sharp", and the Greek akmē meaning "point". At the root of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form ak- meaning "sharp". Kindred words in the English language include acerbic, acid, acrid, acumen, acupuncture, acute, eager, ester, exacerbate, hammer and selvedge as well as eglantine (or sweetbriar), an old world rose known for its thorns.

An edgy time is this, for the old Celtic year is passing away, and we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, in the north a chilling contraption of fallen leaves and freezing earth, short days, darkness, frost and wind.

The eastern Ontario highlands always seem empty at this time of the year and rather lonesome. Except for Canada geese and a few intrepid herons, migratory birds have departed for warmer climes, and the lake seems still and empty. Most of our wild forest kin are already hibernating or are thinking about doing it.

On early morning walks, the long shadows falling across our trail have edges as sharp as the finest examples of the blade smith's craft. The earth beneath our boots is firm, leaves are crunchy, and puddles along our way are rimed with ice. For all the emptiness, morning sunlight changes the landscape into something rich and elegant and inviting: glittering weed fronds artfully curved and waving, milkweed sculpted into pleasing shapes, bare trees twinkling like stars, the margins of blackberry leaves rosy and sparkling with frost crystals. The air is fragrant with cedar, spruce and pine.

These weeks always seem chthonic to me. That engaging word with its bewildering arrangement of vowels and consonants springs from the Greek khthonios, meaning "of the earth", and it is usually employed in describing subterranean matters and deities of the underworld. In using the adjective, we focus on what is deeper or within, rather than on what is apparent at first glance or resting on the surface. Implicit in the expression are notions of rest, sleep, fertility and rebirth - entelechy, mortality and abundance coexisting and enfolding each other in a deep embrace.

Thursday Poem - Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don't you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

Wordless Wednesday - Held

And so it goes...

On a chilly morning this week, Beau and I spent a few hours doing autumn chores in the garden. On the day in question, I needed a woolly hat and warm gloves, and the collar of my tatty (but delightfully warm) old jacket was turned up against the north wind. Beau was decked out in his natty blue tartan coat with its fleecy lining and glad to be wearing it.

There is always so much to be done at this time of the year, removing annuals that have succumbed to the season, pruning shrubberies back and covering roses for the winter, pulling out veggies past fruiting and turning over the good dark earth for the next go around. This was not a good year for tomatoes by any means, but there are trays of green toms ripening on the old oak table in the dining room. 

When I looked up from my labours, I noticed that one maple in the garden has already lost its leaves, and blue sky is now visible in places where it was concealed by the tree canopy just last week. Crab spiders no longer lurked among the roses, and the fall asters that hosted throngs of bees, bumbles, and wasps a few days ago have gone to seed. Not a single little sister was dancing about in the faded purple and gathering nectar. 

Kales and culinary herbs in the veggie patch are hanging in for the time being, but no doubt about it, another growing season is fast coming to an end. Planting garlic (the Music and Nootka Rose varieties) and more crocus bulbs in the next few days will assuage our melancholy a bit, but we (Beau and I) are already missing the garden that kept us hopping happily about all summer.

Late autumn is my favorite time of the year, but the passing of summer's companions always tugs at my heartstrings, and I particularly miss the bumble girls when they have passed away, and their dear, fuzzy little bodies have returned to the earth. Yesterday I thanked them for their company and wished their new queens well in hibernation.

As I pulled out withered tomato vines later in the afternoon and consigned them to the compost bin, it was difficult not to feel like a traitor, and I hoped my once leafy friends forgave me for abandoning them in their dotage.

When we came back indoors after our toing and froing, the deck overlooking the garden was ankle deep in fallen gold and scarlet leaves, and that cheered us up immensely. Autumn's glorious coinage is something to crow about.

Sequestered, Week 182 (CLXXXII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond. We make our living by catching electrons at the moment of their excitement by solar photons, swiping the energy released at the instant of each jump and storing it up in intricate loops for ourselves.

We violate probability, by our nature. To be able to do this systematically, and in such wild varieties of form, from viruses to whales, is extremely unlikely; to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility.

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member of our own species unique. Everyone is one in 3 billion at the moment, which describes the odds. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing.

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Seeing Red (2)

Friday Ramble, Earth and Sky and Lake Together

The water is still, and trees along the far shore are cloaked in drifting fog that billows and swirls as though stirred by a vast, benign, and blessing hand. Earth and water are warmer than the air, and the meeting of the three elements spins a pearly veil over everything in sight. Sunlight or autumn rain - either will disperse the fog, but there is rain in the cards, and clouds are already moving in. It is rain that will lift the veil this morning.

There has not yet been frost, but it probably won't be long. Thanks to longer, chilly nights and the scouring north wind, the countryside is morphing into its early winter configuration. There is still a wealth of color in the eastern Ontario highlands, but here and there, trees are bare on their slopes, and fallen leaves lie ankle deep in the woods. Just out of sight in this photo, an old hawthorn has lost its leaves entirely, wearing only a few frosted berries and a brigade of wicked thorns.

Also unseen is the scribe in wellies and warm jacket, carrying her blackthorn walking stick, a camera, lenses, pen and field notebook. Her collar is turned up against the wind, and she is wearing gloves. In one of her pockets is a flask of Darjeeling tea, and in another, water and biscuits for her cherished companion, Beau. She can't wander as far as she used to, but wander she does by golly, every chance she gets.

Caught up in the fey ambiance of the scene before her, she breathes in the magic of morning sunlight filtering through lacy golden tamaracks on the other side of the lake and radiating through the fog to cast voluminous shadows on the water. She was feeling lost when she got here, and in truth, she is still feeling a little lost, but paradoxically, she is also feeling at home. Emaho.

Thursday Poem - This Time of Year

when the light leaves early, sun slipping down

behind the beech trees as easily as a spoon

of cherry cough syrup, four deer step delicately

up our path, just at the moment when the colors

shift, to eat fallen apples in the tall grass.

Great grey ghosts. If we steal outside in the dark,

we can hear them chew. A sudden movement,

they're gone, the whiteness of their tails

a burning afterimage. A hollow pumpkin moon rises,

turns the dried corn to chiaroscuro, shape and shadow;

the breath of the wind draws the leaves and stalks

like melancholy cellos. These days are songs, noon air

that flows like warm honey, the maple trees' glissando

of fat buttery leaves. The sun goes straight to the gut

like a slug of brandy, an eau-de-vie. Ochre October:

the sky, a blue dazzle, the grand finale of trees,

this spontaneous applause; when darkness falls

like a curtain, the last act, the passage of time,

that blue current; October, and the light leaves early,

our radiant hungers, all these golden losses.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Seeing Red

View From the Shore

An autumn afternoon, water, sky and silvery light, drifting fog and reeds almost invisible in its embrace, maples reddening and aspens going gold on the far shore. The rocks and hills away in the distance are smudges, but I don't need to see them or capture them with my lens. I remember them from other years, and I can see them in my mind's eye.

My departed soulmate loved the view across the lake from here at all times of the year but especially in autumn. He loved the peace, the stillness, the feeling of infinite possibility, the indwelling grace of the world, so perfectly expressed.

What more does one need on the trailing edge of a day on October's middling pages than this? A heron in the shallows would be grand, a loon or two calling from the center, a paddling of quackers, a skein of joyously honking geese? Perhaps an eagle describing majestic circles in the sky overhead?

Perfection would be having Irv standing right here beside me with Beau, but everything else that matters is already here. How I miss the man.

Sequestered, Week 181 (CLXXXI)

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians! 

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

The world of everyday matter, when properly understood, embodies concepts of extraordinary beauty. Indeed, ordinary matter is built up from atoms that are, in a rich and precise sense, tiny musical instruments. In their interplay with light, they realize a mathematical Music of the Spheres that surpasses the visions of Pythagoras, Plato, and Kepler. In molecules and ordered materials, those atomic instruments play together as harmonious ensembles and synchronized orchestras.

 Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design

Just a Little Rain

Friday Ramble, Village of Scarlet and Bokeh

In the village, scarlets, plums and deep inky blues are creeping into view, their emergence out of summer's dusty greens motivated by slightly cooler evenings and gently ruffling winds at nightfall. When Beau and I potter off in the morning, there are glossy coins of dew everywhere. No frost yet though...

In summer, a small gasp of koi or nishikigoi (錦鯉, "brocaded carp") makes its home in the shaded pond underneath this Japanese maple, but the fish are about to be moved to indoor tanks for the winter, and the pond will be a different place, still and silent. I didn't know until recently that a colony of koi is called a gasp. On morning walks, Beau and I visit the pond and maple until all her leaves have fallen, and the water below her eloquent branches has frozen over and is covered with snow.

As often as I witness the turning of the seasons and the vivid entities coming into being, the morphing of the village into deeper and more intense hues is always enchanting, and it takes us (Beau and I) by surprise each and every year. Autumn transformations are magics of a wilder kind, and I can't imagine living this old life without being here among them and watching as they flare and swirl and dance, blithely remaking the world in stunning elemental colors.

Northern light dazzles the eyes in autumn, and it lingers lovingly on everything it touches in its daily journey across the eastern Ontario highlands. Why do I say such things? It is we restless mortals who are in ceaseless motion, and not the magnificent star at the center of our galaxy. I wish I could paint everything old Helios touches, but come to think of it, that is just what my lens is doing. All I do is hold the camera.

Thursday Poem - October

October. Its brilliant festival of dry

and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.

The church's parking lot deserted

except for this one witness,

myself, just resting there.

Somewhere a radio plays Flamenco.

A spotlight of sunshine falls on the scattered debris.

Blood-red and gold, a perfect circle of leaves

begins to whirl,

slowly at first, keeping the pattern,

clicking against the blacktop

like heels and castanets,

then faster, faster, faster. . .

round as a ruffle, as the swirling

skirts of an invisible dancer.

Swept off into the tangled woods

by the muscular breeze.

The hoarse cheering of crows.

Inside the dark empty church,

long cool shadows, white-painted wood,

austere Protestant candles thriftily snuffed,

Perhaps a note on the altar,

Gone dancing. Back on Sunday

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

Wordless Wednesday - Binned

Creeping Into October

Days are warm and sunny, and nights are cool. Some mornings, the grass in the park is a little crunchy underfoot when we go out, a few minutes after sunrise. At the height of summer, we were on the trail into the woods a little after five in the morning, but the sun is not up until after seven these days, so we are later starting out. On chilly mornings, Beau wears his natty blue tartan jacket with its fleecy liner, and he is happy to do it.

I put on my old green canvas jacket with a cotton turtle neck sweater and cardigan underneath. Lacking much of a lining, the garment does not convey warmth, but its deep hood and waxed surface shut out the north wind and keep me dry in sudden showers. The garment has several deep pockets for items like glasses, keys, facial tissues, cell phone and poo bags, so taking a bag along to carry such things is not necessary. Of course, a woolly hat, scarf and warm gloves are occasionally needed these days.

Wonder of wonders, here it is at last, the splendid performance put on every year by a cluster of Virginia creepers a few blocks from home. Most of the creepers in the area turn red and burgundy in October, but this specimen always dazzles in bright orange and vivid teal, and we wait hopefully for it to turn. The colors make my heart sing.

Nudged into action by sunny days and cold nights, village trees have gotten the word and are throwing themselves joyously into what we (Beau and I) like to call hallelujah mode. Local maples cavort in flaming scarlet, birches and poplars wear buttery gold, and the beech sisters in the park delight our eyes in shimmering copper and bronze, all together a splendid seasonal coinage. On walks, Beau and I stop to look at the riches all around us, and it is a wonder we ever make it home again. Happy October!

Sequestered, Week 180 (CLXXX)

The creek in the park is filled with blue sky, trees, and fallen maple leaves.

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,
 Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants