Last Sunday morning, clocks in the village turned back an hour, and Daylight Saving Time embraced the void until next year. Its departure marked the end of gardening and gathering, and it also marked twenty-one years of blogging here. I like the fact that the two events are aligned after a fashion.
The Beech Mother is at the top of this morning's post, and so she should be. For many years, we (Beau and I) have passed through her alcove on our morning walks, and we greet her and give her a pat whenever we do. Our dear friend is beautiful all year long, but she is absolutely breathtaking in late autumn and early winter.
For twenty-one years, I have been logging on here mornings and posting an image or two. Before that, there were notebooks - I still have a whole shelf of beautiful notebooks I never got around to using. Some days, I manage a few paragraphs to go along with the visual elements, and occasionally I spill my cuppa on the keyboard. I am still astonished that I had the cheek to set this place up, let alone post faithfully for twenty-one years in a row. Once in a while I am OK with my efforts, but mostly I am not. When I look at stuff I wrote here years ago, I am appalled. Yuck.
However lacking they are (and they are certainly that), these are my morning pages, and chances are they will remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a bit of font and banner tinkering, but that is all. I don't foresee significant changes to this place, and I expect blogging life will simply go on as it has been doing so far, photos and scribblings and quotations and bits of poetry.
In late November of 2019, my soulmate passed away, and life without him is still rough going. At the end of this month, he will have been gone for seven years, and most of the time, I still feel as though I am just clinging to the wreckage and paddling frantically to stay afloat. I keep lurching forward anyway, whatever it takes.
It is good to be here (most of the time anyway) and wrapped up in the toings and froings of what I like to call "the Great Round". Beau and I stay busy, and we go rambling in all weathers. Sometimes, I just tuck the cell phone in my pocket (along with a few of those snazzy little green bags), and off we go, heads down and collars turned up against the wind. Boreas (the north wind) has not hunkered down for the winter yet, but the old guy is certainly making his presence felt.
We wander along at our own pace, conversing with the great maples and beech mothers, watching leaves dance in the woods, feasting our eyes on the sun going down in flames over the river, on skies alight with winter stars and moons that seem almost close enough to reach up and touch. My departed love is always with us in spirit, resting easy in a pocket of my tatty old jacket, the one closest to my heart. The man loved rambling, and he was usually the first person out the door.
The road goes ever on, and there is magic everywhere if we have the eyes to see it and the wits to acknowledge it, the grace and common courtesy to show respect and say thank you. The small adventures of our wanderings will continue to make their way here every morning and get spilled out on the computer screen with a bad photo or two and a whole rucksack of wonder. The world is an achingly beautiful place, and sometimes an image says everything that needs to be said, all by itself, no words needed from this Old Thing. Mary Oliver said 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")
She once wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, and that is something Beau and I try to remember as we potter along together. Thank you for being with us on the trail this year. You are treasured more than you know. Be well. Be peaceable. Be kind to each other. Be happy.
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